पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/१४

SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN 7 gressive improvement and refinement, and new discoveries have continued and still continue to produce a wider and deeper understanding of the subject. The methods first evolved in the study of the Indo-European languages have further been successfully employed in the study of independent linguistic families (Semitic, Finno-Ugrian, Bantu, etc.). The whole science of linguistics has come into existence as a result of the stimulus provided by the discovery of Sanskrit. The Indo-European languages are divided into ten major branches, in addition to which there are known to have been other branches which have died out without leaving adequate record. The ten major branches are as follows : L Aryan or Indo-Iranian, summarised above. II. Baltic (Lithuanian, Lettish and the extinct Old Prussian) and Slavonic (Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, etc.). These two groups are very closely related to each crther, though not as closely as Indo-Aryan and Iranian. There are some ancient divergencies between them which make it impossible to recon- struct a primitive Balto-Slavonic language, intermediate be- tween Indo-European and the existing languages in the same way as Indo-Iranian can be reconstructed. Nevertheless in view of their many close resemblances it is convenient to group them together under a common name, Balto-Slavonic. The earliest recorded Slavonic is the Old Bulgarian of the ninth century ; Lithuanian is known only from the sixteenth century. III. Armenian, known from the fifth century a.d. IV. Albanian, known only from modern times. These four groups are collectively known as the safcm-languages for reasons which will be explained below. Opposed to them are the ctfM^m-languages, which are as follows : V. Greek, with numerous dialects. The literature begins with the Homeric poems, c. 800 b.c., but during the last twenty- five years the decipherment of documents in the linear B script and Mycenean dialect has pushed back the history of the language by 500 years. VI. Latin, which has developed into the various Romance Languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, etc.). It is known in literature from c. 200 b.c., and there are scanty inscriptional remains from an earlier date. VII. Celtic, consisting of Continental Celtic or Gallic,