equally high authority and importance in Slavic matters, who formerly
agreed with him,[4] proved in a later work,[5] by arguments of no
less weight, that the true home of the language of the Slavic Bible
was to be sought among the _Pannonic_ or _Carantano-Slavi_, the
_Slovenzi_ or _Vindes_ of the present times.[6] The adoption of a
number of _German_ (not _Greek_) words for Christian ideas, as
_tzerkwa_ Kirch, _post_ fast, _chrestiti_ christening, etc., can only
be explained, he asserts, by German neighbourhood and German
influence. These Pannonian Slavi were Methodius' own diocesans; for
their instruction the Scriptures were first translated, and only
carried by the two brethren, at a later period, to the Bulgarians and
Moravians, who easily understood the kindred dialect.

Kopitar's arguments have hitherto failed to convince other eminent
Slavic scholars, especially those of the Bohemian school; who still
accept it as a fact, that the language of the Slavic Bible was, in the
ninth century, the Servian-Bulgarian dialect; and Bulgaria its home.
Schaffarik, another great name in Slavic philological researches,
seemed in an earlier work to adopt the opinion of Kopitar; but, after
continuing his investigations further, he too came to the result, that
Bulgaria was the home of the Old Slavic; and that the language still
spoken in that province, corrupted indeed by foreign influences more
than any other Slavic dialect, is its direct descendant.[7]

Be this as it may, the Old Slavic has long since become the common
property of all the Slavic nations, and its treasures are for all of
them an inexhaustible mine. Dobrovsky counted in it 1605 radical
syllables.[8] Hence, it is not only rich in its present state, but has
in itself the inestimable power of augmenting its richness, the
faculty of creating new forms of expression for new ideas. But its