They were therefore co-
ordinated, not with each single Aryan tongue, but with the general
complex of Aryan tongues, and were conceived to be anterior to them
and apart from them, as it were the strayed vanguard of European
colonisation or conquest from the East. The reason of this
misconception was, that their records lay wholly uninvestigated as
far as all historical study of the language was concerned, and that
nobody troubled himself about the relative age and the development of
forms, so that the philologists were fain to take them as they were
put into their hands by uncritical or perverse native commentators
and writers, whose grammars and dictionaries teemed with blunders and
downright forgeries. One thing, and one thing alone, led to the
truth: the sheer drudgery of thirteen long years spent by Zeuss in
the patient investigation of the most ancient Celtic records, in
their actual condition, line by line and letter by letter. Then for
the first time the foundation of Celtic research was laid; but the
great philologist did not live to see the superstructure which never
could have been raised but for him. Prichard was first to indicate
the right path, and Bopp, in his monograph of 1839, displayed his
incomparable and masterly sagacity as usual, but for want of any
trustworthy record of Celtic words and forms to work upon, the truth
remained concealed or obscured until the publication of the Gramatica
Celtica.
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