this was the reverse of true, and that in their case the same detailed etymological correspondences, the same regular sound-changes, and so forth could be demonstrated as were already familiar from Indo-European. Such detailed and indisputable relationships had not, he maintained, been yet shown to exist between Finno-ugrian and the other members assigned to the "Turanian" group, and that until this had been done the question of their relationship must be regarded as unproved. Where Dravidian was concerned he had no difficulty in pointing out certain elementary mistakes which Caldwell and Max Müller had made owing to their lack of specialist knowledge of the Finno-ugrian languages. For the rest of the evidence, where such objections could not be offered, he held that there was not sufficient of it to justify the conclusions based on it. In his own words: "These numerous dialects form several distinct families, each of which has its own nucleus which must be treated like the Finno-ugric family. The further question, whether those different nuclei point to one common nucleus, cannot be answered in the present state of the knowledge of them we possess. The Turkish and Samojedian languages, which are geographically nearest to the Finno-ugric family, constitute two different nuclei, which cannot be included in the Finno-ugric one.... The Dravidian languages have their source likewise in a different nucleus."7 Hunfalvy's objections were shared by his fellow-workers in the Finno-ugrian field, and from that time the question of Dravidian relationship has been to all intents and purposes ignored. The general attitude was expressed by O. Donner : "Die von Rask und Max Müller geschaffene einheit der nordasiatischen sprachen mit den dravidischen wird wohl jetzt überall als eine geistreiche hypothese betrachtet...."8 The theory was not disproved, it was merely regarded as unproven unless further evidence were forthcoming. The subject was, however, taken up by no one for half a century after Caldwell, naturally enough, since from that time hardly anybody studied the Dravidian languages at all. The few people who paid any attention to Dravidan showed no inclination to follow Caldwell in this matter and while the question seems never to have been re-examined by any scholar, in general scepticism prevailed. In the Linguistic Survey of India9 Sten Konow remarks: "With regard to the Dravidian languages the attempt to connect them with other linguistic families outside India is now generally recognized as a failure, and we must still consider them as an isolated family." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7Loc. cit., p. 89. 8Atti del IV Congresso Internazionale degli Orientalisti tenuto in Firenzenel settmbre 1878. Tom. ii, p. 231. Firenze, 1881, 9 Vol. iv, p. 282 (1906). |