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The question naturally suggests itself whether this primitive Aryan tongue stood alone, wholly isolated from any languages which may at that period have been spoken around it, or whether it was merely one of a group, the members of which were related to each other in a somewhat similar way to that in which the languages of the Aryan family are now connected. The latter alternative seems in itself the more probable one, and the facts adduced by Mr. Edkins in his suggestive and valuable treatise “China’s place in Philology” appear to point unmistakeably to the conclusion that the ancient Chinese was one of these languages. Have we any grounds for supposing that Japanese, or rather that ancient tongue from which the modern Japanese is descended, occupied a similar position?
Before adverting to those points of resemblance between Japanese and Aryan languages which lend countenance to this supposition, it may be well to clear the ground a little by indicating in what respects it is evident that little similarity exists. Broadly speaking, the grammatical systems are entirely different. Japanese has no declensions, no conjugations (properly speaking) no grammatical distinctions of gender, number, or person such as all Aryan languages possess or have possessed at some period of their history. The construction and syntax proceed upon wholly different principles. The numerals are different, so are the names of the metals, and altogether the differences in the most important and fundamental respects are so numerous that it is quite plain that no near affinity need be looked for. In other words the point of divergence must be thrown back to a very remote period, and the common ancestor which this theory would give to Japanese and Aryan tongues must have been a language rude and undeveloped to a degree of which it is difficult for us to form an adequate conception. It must have been spoken in a remote antiquity by a tribe of ignorant savages belonging probably to the stone period of the history of our race.
Granting, however, that an affinity does exist such as
