Let us begin with the _First Period_, which Professor Curtius calls the _Root-Period_. There must have been, as I tried to explain before, a period for the Aryan languages, during which they stood on a level with Chinese, using nothing but roots, or radical words, without having reduced any of them to a purely formal character, without having gone through the process of changing what Chinese grammarians call _full_ words into _empty_ words. I have always held, that to speak of roots as mere abstractions, as the result of grammatical theory, is self-contradictory. Roots which never had any real or historical existence may have been invented both in modern and ancient collections or +Dhâtupâṭhas+; but that is simply the fault of our etymological analysis, and in no way affects the fact, that the Aryan, like all other languages we know, began with roots. We may doubt the legitimacy of certain chemical elements, but not the reality of chemical elements in general. Language, in the sense in which we use the word, begins with roots, which are not only the ultimate facts for the Science of Language, but real facts in the history of human speech. To deny their historical reality would be tantamount to denying cause and effect. Logically, no doubt, it is possible to distinguish between a root as a mere postulate, and a root used as an actual word. That distinction has been carefully elaborated by Indian grammarians and philosophers, but it does in no way concern us in purely historical researches. What I mean by a root used in real language is this: when we analyze a cluster of Sanskrit words, such as +yodha-s+, a fighter, +yodhaka-s+, a fighter, +yoddhâ+, a fighter, +yodhana-m+, fighting, +yuddhi-s+, a fight, +yuyutsu-s+, wishing to fight, +â-yudha-m+, a weapon, we easily see that they presuppose an element +yudh+, to fight, and that they are all derived from that element by well-known grammatical suffixes. Now is this +yudh+, which we call the root of all these words, a mere abstraction? Far from it. We find it as +yudh+ used in the Veda either as a nominal or as a verbal base, according to suffixes by which it is followed. Thus +yudh+ by itself would be a fighter, only that +dh+ when final, has to be changed into t. We have +goshu-yúdh-am+, an accusative, the fighter among cows. In the plural we have +yúdh-as+, fighters; in the locative +yudh-i+, in the fight; in the instrumental, +yudh-â+, with the weapon. That is to say, we find that as a nominal base, +yudh+, without any determinative suffixes, may express fighting, the place of fighting, the instrument of fighting, and a fighter. If our grammatical analysis is right, we should have +yudh+ as a nominal base in +yúdh-ya-ti+, lit. he goes to fighting, +yudh-yá-te+, pass.; +(a)-yut-smahi+, aor., either we were to fight, or we were fighters; +yú-yut-sa-ti+, he is to fight-fight; +yudh-ya-s+, to be fought (p. 94), etc. As a verbal base we find +yudh+, for instance, or +yu-yudh-e+, I