Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
Passage-1
Dante, a linguistic Darwin, held a heretical theory. Europe’s languages, he thought, had not been made in a single moment, in a biblical Babel, but had evolved. Four centuries later, a British judge and polyglot called Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta and was struck by the similarities between Latin and Sanskrit words for terms such as house (domus, dam) and god (deus, deva). Clearly they had “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”. The world’s languages were not a babel but a brotherhood. This “common source” now has a name: “Proto-Indo-European” (PIE). It was first spoken by as little as a few dozen people around the Black Sea then, roughly 5,000 years ago, spread with rapidity “from Ireland to India”. Today, its offshoots include Irish and Hindi, and more or less everything in between. Almost half of the world’s population speaks a descendant of it. To learn that English “mother”, Latin mater and Sanskrit mata share a root provokes a pleasing etymology.

Sir William Jones's conclusion that Latin and Sanskrit "had sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists" fundamentally assumes that:
(a) The observed lexical similarities between Latin and Sanskrit are too systematic and numerous.
(b) The geographical separation between ancient Europe and India was insufficient to prevent significant linguistic borrowing.
(c) All languages globally must ultimately trace back to a single, primordial human language from which PIE itself is a later offshoot.
(d) The "common source" language, if it existed, must have possessed a more complex grammatical structure than either Latin or Sanskrit.

Question

Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
Passage-1
Dante, a linguistic Darwin, held a heretical theory. Europe&rsquo;s languages, he thought, had not been made in a single moment, in a biblical Babel, but had evolved. Four centuries later, a British judge and polyglot called Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta and was struck by the similarities between Latin and Sanskrit words for terms such as house (domus, dam) and god (deus, deva). Clearly they had &ldquo;sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists&rdquo;. The world&rsquo;s languages were not a babel but a brotherhood. This &ldquo;common source&rdquo; now has a name: &ldquo;Proto-Indo-European&rdquo; (PIE). It was first spoken by as little as a few dozen people around the Black Sea then, roughly 5,000 years ago, spread with rapidity &ldquo;from Ireland to India&rdquo;. Today, its offshoots include Irish and Hindi, and more or less everything in between. Almost half of the world&rsquo;s population speaks a descendant of it. To learn that English &ldquo;mother&rdquo;, Latin mater and Sanskrit mata share a root provokes a pleasing etymology.

Sir William Jones's conclusion that Latin and Sanskrit "had sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists" fundamentally assumes that:
(a) The observed lexical similarities between Latin and Sanskrit are too systematic and numerous.
(b) The geographical separation between ancient Europe and India was insufficient to prevent significant linguistic borrowing.
(c) All languages globally must ultimately trace back to a single, primordial human language from which PIE itself is a later offshoot.
(d) The "common source" language, if it existed, must have possessed a more complex grammatical structure than either Latin or Sanskrit.

ONLiNE UPSC · Accepted Answer

Statement (a) is correct. For Jones to propose a common, possibly extinct, source based on similarities like "domus/dam and deus/deva", he must have assumed these were not random chance occurrences or independent developments. The implication is that the parallels were strong enough to suggest a genealogical link rather than coincidental convergence or simple borrowing without a deeper shared origin.

Statement (b) is not correct. Jones's theory points to a common source, which is distinct from direct borrowing between Latin and Sanskrit. If he assumed direct borrowing explaining the similarities, then the "common source" hypothesis would be redundant. The passage implies shared ancestry, not just contact.

Statement (c) is not correct. Jones's conclusion focuses on a common source for Latin, Sanskrit, and related languages (later PIE). It does not necessitate the broader assumption that all world languages trace to a single origin, nor does the passage make this leap for Jones.

Statement (d) is not correct. The passage discusses lexical (relating to the words or vocabulary of a language) similarities as the basis for Jones's insight. There's no mention or necessary assumption about the comparative grammatical complexity of the source language versus its descendants in this initial observation.

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M Question 1	⏱ 0
Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only. Passage-1 Dante, a linguistic Darwin, held a heretical theory. Europe’s languages, he thought, had not been made in a single moment, in a biblical Babel, but had evolved. Four centuries later, a British judge and polyglot called Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta and was struck by the similarities between Latin and Sanskrit words for terms such as house (domus, dam) and god (deus, deva). Clearly they had “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”. The world’s languages were not a babel but a brotherhood. This “common source” now has a name: “Proto-Indo-European” (PIE). It was first spoken by as little as a few dozen people around the Black Sea then, roughly 5,000 years ago, spread with rapidity “from Ireland to India”. Today, its offshoots include Irish and Hindi, and more or less everything in between. Almost half of the world’s population speaks a descendant of it. To learn that English “mother”, Latin mater and Sanskrit mata share a root provokes a pleasing etymology. Sir William Jones's conclusion that Latin and Sanskrit "had sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists" fundamentally assumes that: (a) The observed lexical similarities between Latin and Sanskrit are too systematic and numerous. (b) The geographical separation between ancient Europe and India was insufficient to prevent significant linguistic borrowing. (c) All languages globally must ultimately trace back to a single, primordial human language from which PIE itself is a later offshoot. (d) The "common source" language, if it existed, must have possessed a more complex grammatical structure than either Latin or Sanskrit.