o preserve its literature
intact through captivity, dispersion and persecution, for a period of
four thousand years.

SANSKRIT.

Sanskrit has only recently become known to Europe through the
researches of English and German Oriental scholars. It is now
acknowledged to be the auxiliary and foundation of all civilized
speech, and is important as being the language of an extensive
literature which records the life of a wonderful people from a remote
age nearly to the present time.

The ancient home of the Aryan, or Indo-European race, was in Central
Asia, whence many of its people migrated to the West, and became the
founders of the Persian, Greek and Roman Nations, besides settling in
Spain and England. Other offshoots of the original Aryans took their
lives in their hands and penetrated the passes of the Himalayas,
spreading all over India. Wherever they went, they seem to have held
themselves superior to the aboriginal people whom they found in
possession of the soil.

"The history of civilization," says a well-known authority on
literature, "is everywhere the history of the Aryan race. The
forefathers of the Greek and Roman, of the Englishman and the Hindu,
dwelt together in India, spoke the same language, and worshipped the
same gods. The languages of Europe and India are merely different forms
of the original Aryan speech. This is especially true of the words of
common family life. Father, Mother, brother, sister and widow, are
substantially the same in most of the Aryan languages whether spoken on
the banks of the Ganges, the Tiber or the Thames. The word daughter,
which occurs in nearly all of them, is derived from the Sanskrit word
signifying to draw milk, and preserves the memory of the time when the
daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan household."

The Hindu language is founded on the Sanskrit, of which we may name the
books of the Vedas, 1500 B.C.

All the poetical works of Asia, China and Japan are taken almost
entirely from the Hindu, while in Southern Russia the meagre literature
of the Kalmucks is borrowed entirely from the same source. The
Ramayana, or great Hindu poem, must have had its origin in the
history-to-be of Christ. It has been translated into Italian and
published in Paris. The Hitopadesa, a collection of fables and
apologues, has been translated into more languages than any book except
the Bible. It has found its way all over the civilized world, and is
the model