304 THE ARYAN QUESTION VI 



about by internal or external agencies, will have 

 been analogous. Hence, it is permissible to 

 imagine that, even before primitive Aryan had 

 attained its full development, the course of that 

 development had become somewhat different in 

 different localities ; and, in this sense, it may be 

 quite true that one uniform primitive Aryan 

 language never existed. The nascent mode of 

 speech may very early have got a twist, so to 

 speak, towards Lithuanian, Slavonian, Teutonic, 

 or Celtic, in the north and west ; towards Thracian 

 and Greek, in the south-west ; towards Armenian 

 in the south ; towards Indo-Iranian in the south- 

 east. With the centrifugal movements -of the 

 several fractions of the race, these tendencies of 

 peripheral groups would naturally become more 

 and more intensified in proportion to their 

 isolation. No doubt, in the centre and in other 

 parts of the periphery of the Aryan region, other 

 dialectic groups made their appearance ; but what* 

 ever development they may have attained, these 

 have failed to maintain themselves in the battle 

 with the Finno-tataric tribes, or with the stronger 

 among their own kith and kin. 1 



Thus I think that the most plausible hypo- 

 thetical answers which can be given to the two 

 questions which we put at starting are these. 



1 See the views of J. Schmidt (stated and discussed in Schrader 

 and Jevons, pp. 63-67), with which those here set forth are 

 substantially identical. 



