Volume 1

History of the European languages; or, researches into the affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Sclavonic, and Indian nations / By Alexander Murray. With a life of the author [by Sir H.W. Moncreiff].

  • Murray, Alexander, 1775-1813.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the European languages; or, researches into the affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Sclavonic, and Indian nations / By Alexander Murray. With a life of the author [by Sir H.W. Moncreiff]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Slavi; which all spoke the same language, and possessed similar manners and governments. Some account of the Slavonic nations will be found in the Second Part of this work, when the properties of their language come to be considered. The de¬ scendants of that people are the Poles, Vends, and Bohemians, all the nations from the Adriatic to the Euxine, which lie between the 44th and 46th degree of N. latitude, and the Russians, whose dominions extend from the Baltic and Spitsbergen to the American Ocean, and the boundaries of China. The language of this vast portion of man¬ kind is too little known in Europe ; and the uses to which it may be applied in historical and philo¬ logical discussions have been hitherto almost un¬ perceived or neglected. In the north of the Russian empire, on the shores of the Frozen Ocean, exists the progeny of another race, which, though now obscure and inconsiderable, once peopled the countries in the vicinity of Caucasus, inhabited the banks of the Wolga, and established itself, under a certain de¬ gree of civilized and regular government, in the re¬ cesses of the Arctic forests. This race, which Tacitus describes nearly in the same manner that modern and better information would approve, was, IV. The Finni, the ancestors of the Lapland¬ ers and Finns, and of several savage tribes on the