ON PROBLEMS IN INDO-GKRMAN PHILOLOGY. 143 



It can scarcely be necessary to trouble this Association with prolix details 

 respecting the Indo-Germanic family. For the sake of method and clearness, 

 however, I must recapitulate the main facts of the case. 



The district called Iran, which we must regard with filial respect as the 

 birthplace of our race, and with lively political interest as the western 

 limit of our eastern empire, may be defined generally as the plateau which 

 is bounded by the sea on the south, and by the Tigris, the Oxus, and 

 the Indus on the other three sides. These great rivers are however only a 

 part of the fences by which it is enclosed on the land side. On the north the 

 Caspian and Aral seas, together with long ridges of mountains, the offshoots 

 of the Himalayas, form a cordon more or less difficult of transit. And to 

 the east, more than one rocky range, now advancing to the Indus, now 

 receding from it, and penetrated only by passes white with the bones of 

 slaughtered armies, stand fast as a natural wall not easily surmounted by 

 those who would sally forth from the Sindian plains. 



Within these limits sprang up, side by side, the different members of that 

 great Iranian or Indo-German race, with the subdivisions of which I am now 

 concerned. One band after another of hardy and enterprising emigrants 

 escaped from the comparatively narrow limits of this plateau, and carried 

 their high courage and intellectual capabilities to be strengthened and in- 

 creased under the bracing influences of the climate of Europe. Among 

 themselves and within the limits of Iran they were known by different names, 

 just as brothers are distinguished from brothers; they had also marked di- 

 stinctions of moral and speculative qualities, just as the children of one parent 

 may differ from one another in these respects. According to their different 

 characteristics were their different destinies, which they have all fulfilled 

 according to the original pattern. 



Omitting the desert interior of the Iranian plateau, we may divide its an- 

 cient population into the four following groups : the Persians or Germanians 

 who abutted on the Persian Gulf and Sea and looked towards Arabia ; the 

 Medes or Matians, who extended from the Caspian until they reached the 

 Persian borders ; the Sacce, who extended from Khorassan to Bokhara ; and 

 the Arians, who spread themselves from Hinduh-kuh over the mountains 

 which look down upon the Indus and its tributaries. It is the consistent 

 result of all ethnographic speculations that the conquerors of the Punjab and 

 Hindostan, to whom we owe the Pali and Sanscrit languages, belonged to 

 this last branch of the Iranian stock ; and it is equally clear that the di- 

 stinctive elements of the population of Europe are traceable to the other 

 three branches. 



The Turanian and Celtic races, to whom we undoubtedly owe the first 

 beginnings of the population of Europe, have been extruded to the uttermost 

 parts of the continent, and are so overruled by and intermixed with sub- 

 sequent importations of ethnical ingredients, that they may be and usually 

 are omitted in a general survey of the Indo-Germanic race. Indeed, if we 

 except the comparatively modern settlements of the Ugro-Tatarians in Hun- 

 gary, and of the Turco-Tatarians in Macedonia and Greece, we must divide 

 the whole population of Europe into three and only three classes — the Scla- 

 vonians, whom we will call A ; the Low- Germans, Goths or Saxons, B ; and 

 the High- Germans, or Herminones, C. Of these it is clear that class A en- 

 tered Europe first, and that throughout the greater part of the district where 

 it is now found, it escaped all mixture with the subsequent bands of emi- 

 grants from Iran, In ancient Greece and Italy the fusion in different pro- 

 portions of A+C and A + B gave rise to the Pelasgo-Hellenic and Pelasgo- 

 Umbrian races, and a similar mixture of A + B in the north of Europe 



