It was in 1808, after several years spent in the study of Sanscrit literature, Schlegel published the result of his researches and meditations in the celebrated work entitled the "Language and Wisdom of the Indians." This work, the first part of which is occupied with a comparative examination of the etymology and grammatical structure of the Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, Roman, and German languages, the second whereof traces the filiation and connection of the different religious and philosophical systems that have prevailed in the ancient oriental world, and the last of which consists of metrical versions from the sacred and didactic poems of the Hindoos--this work, I say, might not be inaptly termed a grammar, syntax, and prosody of philosophy. With respect to etymology, Schlegel points out the number of Sanscrit words identical in sound and signification with words in the Persian, or the Greek, or the Latin, or the German, or sometimes even in all those languages put together. He excludes words which are imitations of natural sounds, and which therefore might have been adopted simultaneously by nations unknown to each other; and selects those words only which are of the most simple and primitive signification, such as relate to those intellectual and physical objects most closely allied to man; as also auxiliary verbs, pronouns, nouns of number, and prepositions:--words which are less exposed than any to those casual and partial changes which conquest, commerce, and religion, introduce into language. With respect to grammatical structure, the author shows that the mode of declining nouns, and conjugating verbs, of forming the degrees of comparison in adjectives, of marking the gender and number of substantives, of changing or modifying the signification of words by prefixed particles, is common to the Sanscrit, and the other derivative languages above-mentioned. It is from this strong external and internal resemblance, these languages have received the appellation of the Indo-Germanic. The prior antiquity of the Sanscrit the author infers from the greater length and fulness of its words, and the richness and refinement of its grammatical forms; for, to use his own expression, "words, like coin, are clipped by use, and the languages, where abbreviation prevails, are ever the most recent."