_ have systematically traced
back the entire wealth of their abundant language, we must not suppose
that these roots really constituted the original and complete material
with which the primitive Aryan tongue began its historical career. This is
not true even of the Indian branch of this primitive tongue, for in its
development much may have been lost, and much so changed that we dare not
think of restoring a perfect picture from these fragments of the earliest
mental development of the Indians. These things are so simple that
philologists accept them as axioms; but it is curious to observe, that in
spite of the widespread interest that has been created in all civilised
nations by the results of the science of language, philosophers who write
about language and its relation to thought still trouble themselves over
notions long since antiquated. I had, for instance, classified the
principal ideas expressed in Sanskrit roots, and had reduced them to the
small number of 121.(46) With these 121 ideas, Indian philology pledges
itself to explain all the simple and derivative meanings of words that
fill the thick volumes of a Sanskrit lexicon. And what did ethnologists
say to this? Instead of gratefully accepting this fact, they asserted that
many of these 121 radical ideas, as for instance, weaving or cooking,
could not possibly be primitive. Impossible is always a very convenient
word. But who ever claimed that these 121 fundamental ideas all belonged
to the primitive Aryan language. They are, in fact, the ideas that are
indicated in the thousands of words in classical Sanskrit, but they have
never made any claim to have constituted the mental capital of the
primitive Aryans, whether acquired from heaven or from the domicile of
apes. And if now a few of these ideas, such as to weave, to cook, to
clean, appear modern, what of that compared with the simple fact that they
are actually there?

These ethnologists, too, always make the old mistake of confounding the
learning of a language, as is done by every child, with the first
invention or formation of a language. The two things are as radically
different as the labour of miners who bring forth to the light of day gold
ore out of the depths of the earth, and the enjoyment which the heirs of a
rich man have in squandering his cash. The two things are quite different,
and yet there are books upon books which attempt to draw conclusions as to
the creation of language from children