nearly to the present day, and as being the most ancient and original of
the Indo-European languages, throwing light upon them all. The Aryan or
Indo-European race had its ancient home in Central Asia. Colonies migrated
to the west and founded the Persian, Greek, and Roman civilization, and
settled in Spain and England. Other branches found their way through the
passes of the Himalayas and spread themselves over India. Wherever they
went they asserted their superiority over the earlier people whom they
found in possession of the soil, and the history of civilization is
everywhere the history of the Aryan race. The forefathers of the Greek and
Roman, of the Englishman and the Hindu, dwelt together in India, spoke the
same language, and worshiped the same gods. The languages of Europe and
India are merely different forms of the original Aryan speech. This is
especially true of the words of common family life. _Father, mother,
brother, sister_, and _widow_, are substantially the same in most of the
Aryan languages, whether spoken on the banks of the Ganges, the Tiber, or
the Thames. The word _daughter_, which occurs in nearly all of them, is
derived from the Sanskrit word signifying _to draw milk_, and preserves
the memory of the time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the
primitive Aryan household.

It is probable that as late as the third or fourth century B.C. it was
still spoken. New dialects were engrafted upon it which at length
superseded it, though it has continued to be revered as the sacred and
literary language of the country. Among the modern tongues of India, the
Hindui and the Hindustani may be mentioned; the former, the language of
the pure Hindu population, is written in Sanskrit characters; the latter
is the language of the Mohammedan Hindus, in which Arabic letters are
used. Many of the other dialects spoken and written in Northern India are
derived from the Sanskrit. Of the more important among them there are
English grammars and dictionaries.