In its grammatical structure the language of India is absolutely similar to the Greek and Latin, even to the minutest particulars. But the grammatical forms of the Sanscrit are far richer and more varied than those of the Latin tongue, and more regular and systematic than those of the Greek. In its roots and words the Sanscrit has a very strong and remarkable affinity to the Persian and Germanic race of languages; an affinity which furnishes interesting disclosures, or gives occasion at least for instructive comparisons, on the progress of ideas among those ancient nations, and, as one and the same word is sometimes extended, sometimes contracted in its meaning or applied to kindred objects--reveals the first natural impressions, or primary notions of life in those early ages. To prove more clearly, by one or two examples, this affinity between the languages of nations so widely removed from one other, and almost separated by the distance of two quarters of the globe, and to shew the important data which the discovery of such facts furnishes to history, I will mention, as a striking instance, that the German word _mensch_ (man) perfectly agrees in root and signification with the Indian word, _manuschya_, with this only difference, that in the Sanscrit the latter word has a regular root, and is derived from the word _manu_, which means spirit. Thus the word mensch (man) in its primitive root signifies a being endowed with spirit by way of pre-eminence above all earthly creatures. It is evident, too, from this, that the Latin word _mens_ (mind) is of a cognate kind, and belongs to the same family of words; for, in these philological comparisons, the members of one radical word, scattered through different languages, serve when combined to illustrate each other. To cite an instance of a remarkable extension and contraction of meaning in one and the same word, we may remark that the same word which in the German _loch_, signifies the space of a narrow aperture, and in the Latin locus, comprehends the general notion of space, as well as of a particular place, means the universe in the Sanscrit _lokas_. Thus the Sanscrit word _trailokas_ or _trailokyan_, signifies the three worlds or the triple world--the world of truth or eternal being, the world of illusion or vain appearance, and the world of darkness;--a division which constitutes one of the main points in the Indian philosophy, and is expressed by the two Sanscrit words _trai_ and _lokas_, which are at the same time also Latin and German. I will adduce but one more example. As mostly the ancient nations of Asia, and likewise of Europe, were led by a certain natural feeling and a not erroneous instinct, (totally independent of the nomenclature and classifications of our natural history,) to regard the bull the most useful and important of all the animals which man has domesticated, as the representative of earthly fertility, and (as it were) the primary animal of the earth, and