The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly interesting, because it seems
to me to exhibit with great clearness the traces of the three main
transitions through which language passes in attaining to perfection of
form.
One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Muller, in
arguing for the analogy between the strata of language and the strata
of the earth, lays down this absolute dogma: “No language can, by
any possibility, be inflectional without having passed through the
agglutinative and isolating stratum. No language can be agglutinative
without clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum of
isolation.”--‘On the Stratification of Language,’ p. 20.
Taking then the Chinese language as the best existing type of the
original isolating stratum, “as the faithful photograph of man in his
leading-strings trying the muscles of his mind, groping his way, and so
delighted with his first successful grasps that he repeats them again
and again,” (Max Muller, p. 3)--we have, in the language of the Vril-ya,
still “clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum,” the evidences
of the original isolation. It abounds in monosyllables, which are the
foundations of the language. The transition into the agglutinative
form marks an epoch that must have gradually extended through ages,
the written literature of which has only survived in a few fragments of
symbolical mythology and certain pithy sentences which have passed
into popular proverbs. With the extant literature of the Vril-ya the
inflectional stratum commences. No doubt at that time there must have
operated concurrent causes, in the fusion of races by some dominant
people, and the rise of some great literary phenomena by which the
form of language became arrested and fixed. As the inflectional stage
prevailed over the agglutinative, it is surprising to see how much more
boldly the original roots of the language project from the surface that
conceals them. In the old fragments and proverbs of the preceding stage
the monosyllables which compose those roots vanish amidst words of
enormous length, comprehending whole sentences from which no one part
can be disentangled from the other and employed separately. But when
the inflectional form of language became so far advanced as to have its
scholars and grammarians, they seem to have united in extirpating all
such polysynthetical or polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of
the aboriginal forms. Words beyond three syllables became proscribed
as barbarous and in proportion as the language grew thus simplified it
increased in strength, in dignity, and in sweetness. Though now very
compressed in sound, it gains in clearness by that compression. By a
single letter, according to its position, they contrive to express
all that with civilised nations in our upper world it takes the waste,
sometimes of syllables, sometimes of sentences, to express. Let me here
cite one or two instances: An (which I will translate man), Ana (men);
the letter ‘s’ is with them a letter implying multitude, according to
where it is placed; Sana means mankind; Ansa, a multitude of men. The
prefix of certain letters in their alphabet invariably denotes compound
significations. For instance, Gl (which with them is a single letter, as
‘th’ is a single letter with the Greeks) at the commencement of a word
infers an assemblage or union of things, sometimes kindred, sometimes
dissimilar--as Oon, a house; Gloon, a town (i. e., an assemblage of
houses). Ata is sorrow; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is the health
or wellbeing of a man; Glauran, the wellbeing of the state, the good of
the community; and a word constantly in ther mouths is A-glauran, which
denotes their political creed--viz., that “the first principle of a
community is the good of all.” Aub is invention; Sila, a tone in music.
Glaubsila, as uniting the ideas of invention and of musical intonation,
is the classical word for poetry--abbreviated, in ordinary conversation,
to Glaubs. Na, which with them is, like Gl, but a single letter, always,
when an initial, implies something antagonistic to life or joy or
comfort, resembling in this the Aryan root Nak, expressive of perishing
or destruction. Nax is darkness; Narl, death; Naria, sin or evil.
Nas--an uttermost condition of sin and evil--corruption. In writing,
they deem it irreverent to express the Supreme Being by any special
name. He is symbolized by what may be termed the heiroglyphic of a
pyramid, /\. In prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too
sacred to confide to a stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they
generally use a periphrastic epithet, such as the All-Good. The letter
V, symbolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an initial, nearly
always denotes excellence of power; as Vril, of which I have said so
much; Veed, an immortal spirit; Veed-ya, immortality; Koom, pronounced
like the Welsh Cwm, denotes something of hollowness. Koom itself is
a cave; Koom-in, a hole; Zi-koom, a valley; Koom-zi, vacancy or void;
Bodh-koom, ignorance (literally, knowledge-void). Koom-posh is their
name for the government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most
ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom, implying, as
the reader will see later, contempt. The closest rendering I can give to
it is our slang term, “bosh;” and this Koom-Posh may be loosely rendered
“Hollow-Bosh.” But when Democracy or Koom-Posh degenerates from popular
ignorance into that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its
decease, as (to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the
French Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic
preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state of
things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife--Glek, the universal strife. Nas, as I
before said, is corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may be construed, “the
universal strife-rot.” Their compounds are very expressive; thus,
Bodh being knowledge, and Too a participle that implies the action of
cautiously approaching,--Too-bodh is their word for Philosophy; Pah is
a contemptuous exclamation analogous to our idiom, “stuff and nonsense;”
Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is their term for
futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of metaphysical or
speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue, which consisted in making
inquiries that could not be answered, and were not worth making; such,
for instance, as “Why does an An have five toes to his feet instead of
four or six? Did the first An, created by the All-Good, have the same
number of toes as his descendants? In the form by which an An will be
recognised by his friends in the future state of being, will he retain
any toes at all, and, if so, will they be material toes or spiritual
toes?” I take these illustrations of Pahbodh, not in irony or jest, but
because the very inquiries I name formed the subject of controversy by
the latest cultivators of that ‘science,’--4000 years ago.
In the declension of nouns I was informed that anciently there were
eight cases (one more than in the Sanskrit Grammar); but the effect
of time has been to reduce these cases, and multiply, instead of these
varying terminations, explanatory propositions. At present, in the
Grammar submitted to my study, there were four cases to nouns, three
having varying terminations, and the fourth a differing prefix.
SINGULAR. PLURAL.
Nom. An, Man, | Nom. Ana, Men.
Dat. Ano, to Man, | Dat. Anoi, to Men.
Ac. Anan, Man, | Ac. Ananda, Men.
Voc. Hil-an, O Man, | Voc. Hil-Ananda, O Men.
In the elder inflectional literature the dual form existed--it has long
been obsolete.
The genitive case with them is also obsolete; the dative supplies its
place: they say the House ‘to’ a Man, instead of the House ‘of’ a Man.
When used (sometimes in poetry), the genitive in the termination is the
same as the nominative; so is the ablative, the preposition that marks
it being a prefix or suffix at option, and generally decided by ear,
according to the sound of the noun. It will be observed that the
prefix Hil marks the vocative case. It is always retained in addressing
another, except in the most intimate domestic relations; its omission
would be considered rude: just as in our of forms of speech in
addressing a king it would have been deemed disrespectful to say “King,”
and reverential to say “O King.” In fact, as they have no titles of
honour, the vocative adjuration supplies the place of a title, and is
given impartially to all. The prefix Hil enters into the composition of
words that imply distant communications, as Hil-ya, to travel.
In the conjugation of their verbs, which is much too lengthy a subject
to enter on here, the auxiliary verb Ya, “to go,” which plays so
considerable part in the Sanskrit, appears and performs a kindred
office, as if it were a radical in some language from which both
had descended. But another auxiliary or opposite signification also
accompanies it and shares its labours--viz., Zi, to stay or repose. Thus
Ya enters into the future tense, and Zi in the preterite of all verbs
requiring auxiliaries. Yam, I shall go--Yiam, I may go--Yani-ya, I shall
go (literally, I go to go), Zam-poo-yan, I have gone (literally, I
rest from gone). Ya, as a termination, implies by analogy, progress,
movement, efflorescence. Zi, as a terminal, denotes fixity, sometimes in
a good sense, sometimes in a bad, according to the word with which it
is coupled. Iva-zi, eternal goodness; Nan-zi, eternal evil. Poo (from)
enters as a prefix to words that denote repugnance, or things from
which we ought to be averse. Poo-pra, disgust; Poo-naria, falsehood,
the vilest kind of evil. Poosh or Posh I have already confessed to be
untranslatable literally. It is an expression of contempt not unmixed
with pity. This radical seems to have originated from inherent sympathy
between the labial effort and the sentiment that impelled it, Poo being
an utterance in which the breath is exploded from the lips with more or
less vehemence. On the other hand, Z, when an initial, is with them a
sound in which the breath is sucked inward, and thus Zu, pronounced Zoo
(which in their language is one letter), is the ordinary prefix to words
that signify something that attracts, pleases, touches the heart--as
Zummer, lover; Zutze, love; Zuzulia, delight. This indrawn sound of
Z seems indeed naturally appropriate to fondness. Thus, even in our
language, mothers say to their babies, in defiance of grammar, “Zoo
darling;” and I have heard a learned professor at Boston call his wife
(he had been only married a month) “Zoo little pet.”
I cannot quit this subject, however, without observing by what slight
changes in the dialects favoured by different tribes of the same race,
the original signification and beauty of sounds may become confused and
deformed. Zee told me with much indignation that Zummer (lover) which in
the way she uttered it, seemed slowly taken down to the very depths of
her heart, was, in some not very distant communities of the Vril-ya,
vitiated into the half-hissing, half-nasal, wholly disagreeable, sound
of Subber. I thought to myself it only wanted the introduction of ‘n’
before ‘u’ to render it into an English word significant of the last
quality an amorous Gy would desire in her Zummer.
I will but mention another peculiarity in this language which gives
equal force and brevity to its forms of expressions.
A is with them, as with us, the first letter of the alphabet, and
is often used as a prefix word by itself to convey a complex idea of
sovereignty or chiefdom, or presiding principle. For instance, Iva is
goodness; Diva, goodness and happiness united; A-Diva is unerring and
absolute truth. I have already noticed the value of A in A-glauran,
so, in vril (to whose properties they trace their present state of
civilisation), A-vril, denotes, as I have said, civilisation itself.
The philologist will have seen from the above how much the language
of the Vril-ya is akin to the Aryan or Indo-Germanic; but, like all
languages, it contains words and forms in which transfers from very
opposite sources of speech have been taken. The very title of Tur, which
they give to their supreme magistrate, indicates theft from a tongue
akin to the Turanian. They say themselves that this is a foreign word
borrowed from a title which their historical records show to have been
borne by the chief of a nation with whom the ancestors of the Vril-ya
were, in very remote periods, on friendly terms, but which has long
become extinct, and they say that when, after the discovery of vril,
they remodelled their political institutions, they expressly adopted a
title taken from an extinct race and a dead language for that of their
chief magistrate, in order to avoid all titles for that office with
which they had previous associations.
Should life be spared to me, I may collect into systematic form such
knowledge as I acquired of this language during my sojourn amongst the
Vril-ya. But what I have already said will perhaps suffice to show to
genuine philological students that a language which, preserving so many
of the roots in the aboriginal form, and clearing from the immediate,
but transitory, polysynthetical stage so many rude incumbrances, has
attained to such a union of simplicity and compass in its final
inflectional forms, must have been the gradual work of countless ages
and many varieties of mind ; that it contains the evidence of fusion
between congenial races, and necessitated, in arriving at the shape of
which I have given examples, the continuous culture of a highly
thoughtful people.
That, nevertheless, the literature which belongs to this language is a
literature of the past; that the present felicitous state of society at
which the Ana have attained forbids the progressive cultivation of
literature, especially in the two main divisions of fiction and history,
--I shall have occasion to show.