ON PROBLEMS IN INDO-GERMAN PHILOLOGY. 145 



and the former indicating their usual occupation. The name Sclavonian, 

 Sloio-ja7ie, Sloio-jene, has generally been derived, either from s/«?<7a, 'glory,' 

 and so considered as synonymous with slawetnj = gloriosi, laicdabiles, celebres, 

 or else from slotvo, 'a word,' in which case it would signify the o/.i6yXwTroi, 

 Sermonales, articulateiy-speaking natives, as opposed to the Nemj, Nemci, 

 ' dumb,' /japjSapoi, or unintelligible foreigners. Instead of these compli- 

 mentary derivations, Schafarik now proposes {Slmo. Alterth. ii. p. 42 foil.) 

 to consider the word as a local title, like the other words in -a7ie or -ene, and 

 would rather derive it from the geographical name Sloioi/, which he would 

 connect with sallmca, ' an island,' ' meadow,' or ' holm,' so that the Sloivjanin 

 would be the ' islanders,' with reference perhaps to the marshes which sur- 

 rounded their original settlements. A comparison ofsrebro with silver might 

 even suggest the possibility of identifying the roots xerb and slaiv. At any 

 rate it is clear that when the wars of the ninth and tenth centuries furnished 

 an abundance of Sclavonians as prisoners and captives, the German names 

 for these unhappy persons were indifferently Slave and (Sly?;/", a circumstance 

 which indicates a widely-spread identity of ethnical designation. 



That the ancient Saiiromatce or Sarmatians wei'e ethnologically identical 

 with the Sclavonians appears to me to be certain. The grounds on which 

 Schafarik has maintained tiie contrary opinion do not amount to a valid ar- 

 gument. It is quite possible that the ancients may have used the term Sar- 

 matian in a lax and vague manner, and may have classed with the Scla- 

 vonian tribes, to whom this name belonged, some others which were more 

 or less connected with different branches of the Indo-German family. For 

 example, the title seems to have included the Lithuanians, who were Scla- 

 vonized Low-Germans belonging to the great stock of the Getas. In the 

 same way, the term Scythian is extended so as to include, not only the Sar- 

 matian tribes, but also others of Gothic and Turanian origin. It is quite 

 clear, indeed it is generally admitted, that the Sarmatians, as such, were 

 Sclavonians, and, as Grimm has observed (Gesch. d.deulschen Spr. p. 173), 

 if the Sarmatian word ft'pts, given by Lucian in his Toxaris (40), can be 

 shown to be Sclavonian, this alone would settle the point. Schafariii himself 

 admits (p. 370), that many of the Sarmatian proper names betray a Scla- 

 vonian origin. The question is one of considerable importance ; for if the 

 universal belief, that the Sclavonians and Sarmatians are identical, be allowed 

 to hold its ground, we can trace the Sclavonian migration from Iran through 

 all its stages, until we get back to the original starting-point. Every au- 

 thority concurs in assigning a Median origin to the Sauromatce, and according 

 to Gatterer's etymology, which is generally received, the name itself signifies 

 " the Northern Mateni or Medes." One of their tribes was called Ixa-matce 

 or laxa-matce, i. e. " Medes from the laxartes or Oxus." And thus we can 

 lay down the route of the Sclavonian population from the borders of Assyria 

 through Media and Hyrcania, round the eastern shores of the Caspian and 

 Aral seas, across the Tanais, and so on, until we find them extending from 

 the Baltic to the Adriatic. 



Now if we can identify the Sclavonians with that branch of the great 

 Iranian family which occupied Media, it will follow that their language, in 

 its oldest form, must furnish the point of contact between the Indo-Germanie 

 and Semitic idioms. And I proceed to indicate some of the important in- 

 ferences which may be drawn from the comparison thus suggested. 



The researches of Col. Rawlinson may be regarded as supplying us with 

 at least prima facie evidence of the fact that the language of the ancient 

 Assyrians and Babylonians was in the same syntactical or disintegrated con- 

 dition as the Hebrew and other Semitic dialects. He seems to have recog- 



1851. L 



