अटकलबाजी का विज्ञान

इस बात पर कभी किसी ने ध्यान नहीं दिया गया तुलनात्मक भाषाविज्ञान का आरंभ ही अटकलबाजी से हुआ और यह लगातार कयासों के सहारे आगे बढ़ता रहा। इसकी भूमिका तो कुछ पहले से तैयार हो रही थी परंतु यह युरोप की भाषाओं तक सीमित थी और नितांत बचकानी थी। उदाहरण के लिए
Giuseppe Scaligero (1540-1609) used the word for “God”, thereby classifying the languages of Europe into “deus-languages” (Latin and the Romance languages) “gott-languages” (the Germanic group), “boge-languages” (the Slavic
group), and Greek, in which the word for “god” is theos. (LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY –Comparative and Historical Linguistics – Ranko Matasović, 3) उन्होंने भाषाओं के बीच किसी तरह का संबंध तलाशने की जगह उन्हें भिन्न व्यवस्थाओं या संयोजनों (matrices) की संज्ञा दी। संस्कृत से परिचय ने यूरोप की भाषाओं से भारतीय के संबंध को ही उजागर किया था, अपितु यूरोप की भाषाओं को देखने का नजरिया बदल दिया था। उदाहरण के लिए अभी तक जो पृथक व्यवस्थाएं प्रतीत हो रही थीं वे अब ऐसे धागों से जुड़ी दिखाई दे रही थीं और ये धागे संस्कृत से जुड़े थे। कहें यूरोप की भाषाएं संस्कृत के हाथ की कठपुतलियों या संस्कृत के उपग्रहों में बदल गई थीं-

संस्कृत से Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) came very close to recognizing
the fundamental relatedness of (Indo-European) languages of Europe, most of which he
classified as “Celto-Schytian”.

Sanskrit
dev/dyaus
bhag/bharg
asuro mahan
(>mahishasur)

Greek, in which the word for “god” is theos
“deus-languages” (Latin and the Romance
Iranian
ahur mzda
“boge-languages” (the Slavic
gott-languages” (the Germanic group

In the eighteenth century information about Sanskrit, the learned language of India, became known among the learned circles in Europe. This was mostly due to the work of Christian missionaries in India, such as the French Pierre de Coeurdoux, or the Croat-Austrian Filip Vezdin (a. k. a. Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo, 1748-1806), who published the first European grammar of Sanskrit. While many scholars had thought that the similarities of major European languages could be explained as the result of language contact, the obvious similarities of basic Sanskrit words with their synonyms in the classical languages required a different explanation. It was highly unlikely that the similarity between, e. g., Sanskrit pitar- “father”, mātar- “mother”, and bhrātar-
“brother” with Latin pater, mater, and frater could have been the result of borrowing. It was not long before William Jones (1746-1794) proposed that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and several other languages we now call Indo-European, had “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.”