of the Aryan nations and the origins of the Sanskrit language, they hardly show the modesty that might, under these circumstances, be expected from them.  Placing as they do that great separation of the races at the first “dawn of traditional history,” with the Vedic age as “the background of the whole Indian world” (of which confessedly they know nothing), they will, nevertheless, calmly assign a modern date to any of the Rik-vedic oldest songs, on its “internal evidence;” and in doing this, they show as little hesitation as Mr. Fergusson when ascribing a post-Christian age to the most ancient rockcut temple in India, merely on its “external form.”  As for their unseemly quarrels, mutual recriminations, and personalities over questions of scholarship, the less said the better.

“The evidence of language is irrefragable,” as the great Oxford Sanskritist says.  To which he is answered—­“provided it does not clash with historical facts and ethnology.”  It may be—­no doubt it is, as far as his knowledge goes—­“the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods;” but when something of these alleged “prehistorical periods” comes to be known, and when what we think we know of certain supposed prehistoric nations is found diametrically opposed to his “evidence of language,” the “Adepts” may be, perhaps, permitted to keep to their own views and opinions, even though they differ with those of the greatest living philologist.  The study of language is but a part—­though, we admit, a fundamental part—­of true philology.  To be complete, the latter has, as correctly argued by Bockt, to be almost synonymous with history.  We gladly concede the right to the Western philologist, who has to work in the total absence of any historical data, to rely upon comparative grammar, and take the identification of roots lying at the foundation of words of those languages he is familiar with, or may know of, and put it forward as the result of his study, and the only available evidence.  But we would like to see the same right conceded by him to the student of other races; even though these be inferior to the European races, in the opinion of the paramount West:  for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent regards as ante-historical.  The bare fact that, while Western men of science are referred to as “scholars” and scholiasts—­native Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as “Calcutta” and “Indian sciolists”—­affords no proof of their real inferiority, but rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that “self-conceit is rarely companion to politeness.”