Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex Part 5

And it is also noteworthy that the recognition of this position of the verb, together with these other matters of which we are speaking, seems nearer at hand and clearer to those students who are led beyond Aryan languages to the study of American and Asiatic, especially Central and Northern Asiatic. For instance, G. v. d. Gabelentz, _Die Sprachwissenschaft_, and other works.

[53-*] It was not until after this paper was already in type that my attention was directed to the complete agreement of this and the succeeding sentences with the following pa.s.sage in _The Secret Doctrine_, by H. P. Blavatsky, London, 1888, vol. II, page 199. After saying that some of the Atlantean races spoke the agglutinative languages, the pa.s.sage continues: "While the 'cream' of the Fourth Race _gravitated_ more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution, _thus_ leaving as an heirloom to the nascent Fifth (the Aryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, scattered now, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America." Note the words I have italicized, marking the evolution of the "inflectional" languages as an attendant phenomenon on physico-intellectual evolution, compare the pa.s.sage with von Humboldt's thesis, already quoted, that the incorporative quality denotes an exaltation of the imaginative over the ratiocinative processes of mind in its users, and further with the surviving genius of Chinese, the type of monosyllabic languages, and the agreement is evident. Von Humboldt, however, did not carry out so fully the archaeological results, for which indeed the materials were in his day still lacking. See also other pa.s.sages in _The Secret Doctrine_.

[61-*] _Traite de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_, Disc. Prel. et seq.

[62-*] The suggestion above is linguistic, and in that phase is given as a corollary to the foregoing discussion; but, as stated, it is at the same time in accord with the "Aryan" theory in its essentials (though not in its hypothetical and ultra-historical speculations), and it also finds confirmation by various pa.s.sages in _The Secret Doctrine_, by H.

P. Blavatsky, as already quoted. "The traces of an immense civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This civilization is undeniably _prehistoric_.... The Eastern and Central portions of those regions--the Nan-Shan and the Altyn-Tagh--were once upon a time covered with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting sand, and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains of the basin of Tarim testify.... In the oasis of Cherchen some 300 human beings represent the relics of about a hundred extinct nations and races--the very names of which are now unknown to our ethnologists." (Vol. I, page x.x.xii et seq.) See also Col.

Prjevalsky's _Travels_. Why should it not be so? The above was written in 1888, but the evidences are growing every day, and it will be against all archaeological precedent if far-reaching results do not follow from Dr. Stein's _small_ find, and from Capt. d'Ollone's recent researches among the Lolos, and the securing by him, as we are informed, of the long-sought knowledge of their hieroglyphic system.

[63-*] The study of Tibetan has so far been approached almost exclusively from the south, that is by those already familiar with Sanskrit and Pali. To this fact, as well as to the overwhelming influence exercised on literary Tibetan by the Buddhist propaganda, is due the difficulty one meets in any study of its origins. The traces, however, do nevertheless exist. Some interesting facts concerning both Chinese and Tibetan, which seem to be entirely omitted in such later standard works as those of Summers, Wade, and Giles, are to be found in the almost forgotten _Chinese Grammar_ of Dr. Marshman, Serampore, 1814.