be started by a linguistic congress, what term should be employed instead of "Indian," which is unsatisfactory in many respects; a thorough remodelling of the terminology used in Indian grammars would form another fruitful theme of discussion. Our indogermanic ideas of grammar must he entirely disregarded if we would write a correct grammatical sketch of some Indian language.
The vocabularies,[1] in the shape as we possess them now, are useful in many respects. They do not give us much information about the structure of the languages, but serve at least for classifying purposes, and the small number of them which hear the stamp of accuracy in their notation of the accent and the use of a scientific alphabet, at least give a foothold for Indian phonology.
But men of science need a great deal more than this. Language is a living organism, and to study it, we must not only have the loose bones of its body, but the life-blood which is throbbing in its veins and forms the real essence of human speech. Not the stems or words alone, but the inflectional forms, the syntactical shaping of the spoken word and the sentence itself are desideratums mostly craved for. Linguists must therefore, as reliable grammars and full dictionaries (all the words properly accentuated!) cannot be expected at once, place their hopes in collections of texts illustrating the native customs and manners, the religious beliefs, superstitions, scraps of Indian history, speeches, dialogues, songs and dirges, descriptions of manufactured articles, and of the houses, tools, implements and dress of each nation and tribe visited.
These texts should be given in the Indian language, and accompanied by a very accurate, and if possible, an interlinear and verbal translation of the items. All the commentaries and remarks needed for a full understanding of the texts should be added to it. The more material is furnished in this way, the better our linguists will be enabled to disclose the hidden scientific treasures stored up in these curious, but now almost unknown, forms of human speech, and to present them to the world, in the shape of grammars, dictionaries and anthologies of aboriginal prose and poetry. To the ethnologist such texts will be just as valuable as to the historian and the linguist.
The Languages of the Western Slope.
A most singular fact disclosed by the topography of language-stocks all over the world is the enormous difference of the areas occupied by the various families. In the Eastern hemisphere, we see the Uralo-Altaic,
- ↑ In 1875, the 29th year from its foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, had collected texts, phraseology, and 771 vocabularies of about 200 words each, but for unknown reasons had published only a small portion of this enormous linguistic material.
