Third Anniversary Discourse (Jones)
"Third Anniversary Discourse" (scil. "Contio anniversaria tertia") est oratio a Gulielmo Jones anno 1786 apud Societatem Asiaticam habita, anno 1788 tandem edita in volumine primo libellorum quorum titulus est Asiatick Researches. Ibi Jones primus omnium philologorum unitatem familiae illius linguarum, quam hodie Indoeuropaeam appellamus, pleniter recognovit, his verbis utens: "The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."