पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/२१

14 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN II. Four peripheral dialect groups surrounding the central group, namely (i) West Indo-European comprising Italic, Celtic and Germanic ; (2) Greek, which however has special relations with the central group ; (3) Eastern Indo-European which has survived as ' Tocharian ' ; (4) Hittite and other IE languages of Asia Minor which separated earliest from the original IE stock. The historical distribution of the IE languages corresponds on the whole to this, but in the case of Sanskrit migrations at a comparatively late date took it to the extreme East of the Indo- European domain. Before this period its ancestor, primitive Indo-Iranian must have held a fairly central position, being directly in contact with the other dialects of the satem-group, and having to the East of it that form of Indo-European which eventually turned into the dialects A and B of Chinese Turke- stan. Its position can further be determined by the specially close relations which are found to exist between it and Balto- Slavonic. Since the Balts and the Slavs are not likely to have moved far from the positions in which they are to be found in their earliest recorded history, the original location of Indo- Iranian towards the South-East of this area becomes highly probable. The Western group of Indo-European languages consisting of Italic, Celtic and Germanic, is distinguished by certain com- mon features in grammar and vocabulary, which indicate a fairly close mutual connection in prehistoric times. These ties are particularly close in the case of Italic and Celtic, even though they are not sufficient to justify the theory of common Italo-celtic. The connections of Germanic with the other two groups are less close, but they are quite definite. At the same time it has some special affinities with Slavonic, and further with the central group in general (e.g. absence of the medio-passive terminations in -r). There is an almost complete absence of special features com- mon to Indo-Iranian and Western Indo-European. All that has been pointed out so far consists of certain common elements of vocabulary which have been largely eliminated in the rest of Indo-European. These words are in many respects highly inter- esting and important, but they consist entirely of ancient Indo- European words which have been preserved independently by two groups which otherwise have no special connection. Such