LESSONS IN ETHNOLOGY. 



LKSSONS IN KTII NOMH! Y I V me honour.. The shepherds o UM Punj*ub (MOM* UM 



v -vnr I'oiTioN OF TIM- vitviv PA, -I- BmhiMuw of India, while the criouttaricte who hd emifrated 



AM A ' [ '' A1U AN BACE< to Centra! Asia were the progenitor, of UM old Peniian*. The 



:ulirig tribes comprehended under thin Mention of the great gulf between the two faction* widened with the kp*e of jean. 



)if HrahumnR and tho Iranians or Persiaii ilaencod Heeruingly by the Turanian*, among 



Moth tvo had thoir curly history wonderfully irhan tln-y h:id *<-ttli!<l, f.-ll ii.to idolatry, while the Iranian* in 



vuxtigations into the Vedas, or oldest of tho Bactria abstained from thin form of mi.. and, finally, 



I 1 '!;,'. \. PARSEE LADY. 



Hruliiimtiio sacred writings, and into tho 

 '/.ii(l:tvi-t.i. in- Paraee scriptures. In con- 



li tho Vodio inquiries, tho niiiuo 



i if Pi >. Mullor of Oxford deserves 



lii>ii"iir:il>li' iii--:iti..ii ; whilst a ninal! 



and unpretending volume, published at 



Unmliay in 1862, by Dr. Martin Haug, of 



;-it College at Poona, and entitled 



ii the Sacred Language, Writings, 

 and Religion of tho Parseos," has quite 

 revolutionised oar ideas of early Persian 

 history. 



The old Aryan triho from which sprang 

 ancestors of tho leading European 

 nations, as well as those of the Brahtnana 

 and Parsces, seems to have had its place 

 somewhere north of tho Hindoo Koosh. 

 range of mountains, in the region which 

 used to be called in maps of Asia " Inde- 

 pendent Tartary," but which ia now more 

 accurately termed ' ' Independent Turkestan. ' ' 

 When those Aryans who were destined 

 ultimately to people Europe left their 

 primitive abode in Central Asia, tho rest 

 of the tribe lingered for some time in the old settlement ; 

 and when at length they did move, they journeyed not westward 

 but southward, wont through or around, first, tho Hindoo Koosh, 

 and next the stupendous Himalaya Mountains ; and ended by 

 leading a wandering shepherd 

 life in the Punjaub. At that 

 time their worship was a simple 

 one, being, in the main, the 

 adoration of the elements in 

 Nature. They found the north 

 of India, as is believed, in- 

 habited by Turanians, against 

 whom, however, they managed 

 to hold their own. The date of 

 their immigration into India 

 was a very remote one, being 

 possibly as far back as 1700 

 B.C. After many years, a por- 

 tion of the shepherds becoming 

 tired of the pastoral life, began, 

 to cultivate patches of land, 

 and probably became what we 

 should now call wealthier than 

 the rest of the tribe. The 

 shepherds felt no scruple in 

 helping themselves to a share 

 of tho farm produce, raised and 

 stored up through the industry 

 of their agricultural brethren ; 

 and a quarrel, which deepened 

 into a feud between the two, 

 was the result. The agricul- 

 turists ultimately left the Pun- 

 jaul) in disgust, and returned 

 to the region beyond tho Hindoo 

 Koosh, where for a long period 

 they resided in Bactria, a province of which the capital 

 in subsequent times was at the place now called Balkh. 

 The oddest thing about this political separation was the 

 religions schism which accompanied it. The agriculturists 

 who hud hitherto been of the same faith as the shepherds, 

 took up the notion that the gods they had been accustomed to 

 worship, or some of them at least, instead of protecting them, 

 had helped their plundering co-religionists ; and they cast off 

 allegiance to the spiritual authority which had been exercised 

 eo unfairly. They considered those beings demons instead of 

 gods, while the other party, of course, continued to pay them 



145 N.E. 



Moore makes las 



about the time ]>crhap of MOM, 1500 B.C., 

 there arose in tho Bactrian settlement a 

 very remarkable man Zarathuntra Spitama 

 by name, tho same whom the Greeks call 

 Zoroaster who remodelled and fixed the 

 faith of his people, preached the doctrine* 

 embodied in the older i>artx of the Zeuda- 

 veato, and made the Parsee religion very 

 much what it is to-day. He believed in the 

 unity of God. In accounting for the preva- 

 lence of evil in tho world, he assumed the 

 existence of two principles one good, and 

 the other bad, ultimately elevated by his 

 followers into two great supernatural beings 

 in perj etual antagonism. The old elemental 

 worship still remains in the adoration of 

 the sun and fire. Cyrus, Darius Hystaspes, 

 and Xerxes were of the Parsee race and 

 faith. Yet more interesting, some of the 

 most enterprising natives of Bombay are 

 Parsees. Sir Jamsetjee Jeejheebhoy was 

 one. Some may be seen in the streets of 

 London, having come here to establish 

 mercantile houses. It is the Parsees whom 

 heroes in the well-known poem, " Lalla 



Fig. 5. BEDOUIN OF SINAI. 



Kookh." In Fig. 4 an excellent representation is afforded of 

 the physical appearance presented by this interesting race. 

 The evidence of language shows the Affghans (who speak the 



Pushtoo tongue), the Koordu, 

 the Ossetians of the Caucasus, 

 and the Armenians to belong to 

 the Iranian race. 



We must now follow the 

 fortunes of the Punjaub shep- 

 herds. They became, as already 

 mentioned, the Indian Brah- 

 mans. Time was when it was 

 supposed that all the Hindoos 

 belonged to a single family of 

 mankind, and that the Brah- 

 manic one ; but this notion has 

 been quite abandoned during 

 receut years. The languages 

 of Southern India as we shall 

 afterwards have occasion more 

 particularly to remark though 

 modified by Sanscrit, the Brah- 

 manic language, are still essen- 

 tially distinct from it, and are, 

 in fact, Turanian. Even the 

 tongues spoken in Central and 

 Northern India, which were 

 once regarded as offshoots of 

 Sanscrit, are now held to be 

 of a Turanian origin, though 

 changed by a great infusion of 

 Sanscrit words. All that is 

 known of early Indian history 

 goes to confirm the conclusions 

 to which an examination of the 



languages naturally leads. Though, as before mentioned, the 

 Brahmans entered India at a remote period of antiquity, yet 

 for a long time they never passed beyond the Punjaub, and 

 centuries elapsed before they reached the Vindhyan mountains 

 in the middle of India. Either that elevated range, or the 

 Nerbudda river just south of it, for a long time constituted 

 their southern boundary; so much so that Hindostan, which 

 etymologically means " the place of the Hindoos," properly 

 signifies not the whole of India, but only that portion of it 

 which is north of the Nerbudda. 



The Indian Brahmans are, as a rule, fairer than the Turanur 



