CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



differences, and that one section made their way 

 across the Indus, to become the Sanscrit-speaking 

 Hindus, while the other moved southwards, and 

 settled in Persia.* But that the Indo-Persians 

 had always lived in that northern region, or that 

 the western members of the family migrated from 

 thence, there is no direct evidence. One dis- 

 tinguished ethnologist, Dr Latham, believes the 

 seat of the mother Aryan nation to have been 

 Central Europe ; but the probability seems, to be 

 in favour of the East 



The time of these migrations is equally unknown 

 with the point of departure ; they had taken place 

 ages before the dawn of history. 



But although left in darkness as to the when 

 and where of the primitive Aryans, we are able, 

 strange as it may seem, to speak with some con- 

 fidence as to their state of civilisation. Where 

 the same name for an object or notion is found 

 used by the widely spread members of the family, 

 it is justly inferred that that object or notion must 

 have been familiar to them while yet resident 

 together in the paternal home. It is in this way 

 established, that among the primitive Aryans not 

 only were the natural and primary family relations 

 of father, mother, son, daughter, hallowed, but 

 even the more conventional affinities of father- 

 in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law ; that to the 

 organised family life there was superadded a 

 state organisation with rulers or kings ; that the 

 ox and the cow constituted the chief riches and 

 means of subsistence ; and that houses and towns 

 were built. In this mainly pastoral life, the more 

 important of the primitive arts were known and 

 exercised ; fields were tilled ; grain was raised 

 and ground into meal ; food was cooked and 

 baked ; cloth was woven and sewed into garments ; 

 and the use of the metals, even of iron, was 

 known. The numbers as far as a hundred had 

 been named, the decimal principle being followed. 

 The name for a thousand had not come into requi- 

 sition until after the dispersion, for it differs in 

 the different Aryan tongues. 



THE SEMITIC FAMILY. 



The only other group of tongues among which 

 a family relation has yet been satisfactorily made 

 out, is the Semitic or Shemitic, so called from 

 Shem, the son of Noah, who is represented in 

 Genesis as the ancestor of the chief tribes that 

 spoke those tongues. The Semitic tongues are 

 divided into three classes : i. The northern or 

 Aramaic, spoken at one time over the region lying 

 to the north of Palestine and Arabia as far as the 

 Taurus range in Asia Minor, and extending in 

 longitude from the Mediterranean to the Tigris. 

 Eastern Aramaic, comprising the dialects of 

 Assyria and Babylon, is sometimes called Chaldee ; 

 the western is known as Syriac. Aramaic was 

 the common language of Palestine in the time of 

 Christ, the Hebrew being then the sacred lan- 

 guage. 2. The southern class, comprising Arabic, 



* The region that forms the water-shed between the basin of the 

 Sea of Aral and the streams that run eastward and southward has 

 been only recently explored. It is not so much a mountain chain 

 as a vast table-land of great elevation fringed with towering 

 sierras, and is called the Pamir Steppe or Plateau. In the upper 

 valleys that slope down from this great mountain mass are found 

 isolated tribes strikingly different from the Tatar races all around 

 them, and shewing what are believed to be affinities, both in 

 physique and language, with the Aryan races. 

 28 



and the Amharic of Abyssinia, which has super- 

 seded the older allied Ethiopic. 3. The middle 

 class, consisting of Hebrew, and the dialects 

 spoken by the other inhabitants of Palestine, the 

 chief of which was the Phoenician. This Semitic 

 dialect had at one time an extensive area by means 

 of the settlements of the Phoenicians at Carthage, 

 and other places on the islands and coasts of 

 the Mediterranean. With the exception of some 

 remnants of Syriac, spoken by a few scattered 

 Christian communities in Asia, and the Amharic 

 of Abyssinia, Arabic is the only living repre- 

 sentative of the Semitic tongues. From Arabia 

 proper it has spread into Egypt and the whole of 

 North Africa, and the vocabularies of modern 

 Persian and Turkish are largely composed of 

 Arabic words. 



The inflection of the Semitic tongues is of a 

 type quite distinct from that of the Aryan family, 

 nor can any correspondences be found between 

 the words of the two families beyond chance 

 resemblances in sound. The cases of similarity 

 that have been adduced are those of words 

 directly borrowed from the Semitic, as camel 

 from gatnal, sapphire from sappir, or of onomato- 

 poetic words, formed in imitation of the sound of 

 the action, as char at = grate, parak = break. The 

 attempt, on which so much learned labour was 

 once bestowed, to trace Latin, Greek, and other 

 words to a Hebrew origin, is now acknowledged 

 by all competent philologists to be futile. 



TYPES OF LANGUAGE. 



Besides the division of languages into families 

 bearing traces of a common origin the genealog- 

 ical classification there is a division into three 

 orders, as they may be called, depending upon a 

 radical difference of structure. Speech, as the 

 expression of thought, contains two elements : 

 ideas or conceptions, which constitute the sub- 

 stance or material part ; and the relations of 

 these ideas to one another, which constitute the 

 formal part ; and the nature of a language depends 

 upon the particular way in which the vocal ex- 

 pression of these two elements is combined. At 

 the foundation of all words lie roots, or simple 

 sounds expressive of meaning. Now, some lan- 

 guages, as the Chinese, use these roots in their 

 naked form as words, the same syllable, according 

 to its position, serving as noun, adjective, verb, 

 &c. e.g. ta means 'great,' 'greatness,' 'to be or to 

 make great,' 'greatly,' or 'very.' The relational part 

 of the thought, for the most part, gets no vocal 

 expression ; it is only indicated by position, as 

 when min, people, and //, power, are simply put 

 together (min li) to signify the people's power. 

 Relations not readily indicated by position are 

 expressed in a round-about way, by using addi- 

 tional significant words : thus, tschitng (mass or 

 multitude) jin (man) = men ; niu (woman) tsl 

 (child) = daughter ; y min li (employ people 

 power) = with the people's power. Even in such 

 cases, each root preserves its independence, and 

 is felt to express its own radical meaning. Lan- 

 guages like the Chinese, whose development has 

 been arrested at this rudimentary stage, are called 

 Monosyllabic or Isolating. 



The next stage of development is that of the 

 Agglutinate languages, which are by far the most 

 numerous, including the Turanian and American 



