vi TIIE ARYAN QUESTION. 277 



could scarcely have failed as completely as they 

 did, if his great powers had been bestowed upon 

 making his books not only worthy of being read, 

 but readable. The impression left upon my mind, 

 at that time, by various conversations about the 

 " Sarmatian hypothesis," which my friend wished 

 to substitute for the Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir specula- 

 tion, was that the one and the other rested pretty 

 much upon a like foundation of guess-work. That 

 there was no sufficient reason for planting the 

 primitive Aryans in the Hindoo Koosh, or in 

 Pamir, seemed plain enough; but that there was 

 little better ground, on the evidence then adduced, 

 for settling them in the region at present occupied 

 by Western Russia, or Podolia, appeared to me to 

 be not less plain. The most I thought Latham 

 proved was, that the Aryan people of Indo-Iranian 

 speech were just as likely to have come from Eu- 

 rope, as the Aryan people of Greek, or Teutonic, 

 or Celtic # speech from Asia. Of late years, Lath- 

 am's views, so long neglected, or mentioned merely 

 as an example of insular eccentricity, have been 

 taken up and advocated with much ability in Ger- 

 many as well as in this country — principally by 

 philologists. Indeed, the glory of Hindoo-Koosh- 

 Pamir seems altogether to have departed. Pro- 

 fessor Max Miiller, to whom Aryan philology owes 

 so much, will not say more now, than that he holds 

 by the conviction that the seat of the primitive 

 Aryans was " somewhere in Asia." Dr. Schrader 



