Chapter XII.
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
48grasps that he repeats them again and again," (Max Muller, p.
13)- 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
49upper 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
50something 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.
51
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
52or 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,
53vitiated 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
54language which, preserving so many of the roots in the
aboriginal form, and clearing from the immediate, but
transitory, polysynthetical stage so many rude incumbrances,
s 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; thuat 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 later.
