456 ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. chap. XXIii. 



has occurred in three or four thousand years, we should be 

 obliged to assume a far more remote date for the first 

 branching off of such races from a common stock than the 

 supposed period of the Aryan migrations and the dispersion 

 of that language over many and distant countries. 



But Mr. Crawfurd has, I think, himself helped us to remove 

 this stumbling-block, by admitting that a nation speaking a 

 language allied to the Sanscrit (the oldest of the eight tongues 

 alluded to) once probably inhabited that region situated to 

 the northwest of India, which within the period of authentic 

 history has poured out its conquering" hordes over a great 

 extent of "Western Asia and Eastern Eurojje. The same 

 people, he says, may have acted the saine part in the long, 

 dark night which preceded the dawn of tradition.* These 

 conquerors may have been few in number Avhen compared to 

 the populations which the}" subdued. In such cases the new 

 settlers, although reckoned by tens of thousands, might 

 merge in a few centuries into the millions of subjects which 

 they ruled. It is an acknowledged fact that the color and 

 features of. the Negro or European are entirely lost in the 

 fourth generation, provided that no fresh infusion of one or 

 other of the two races takes place. The distinctive physical 

 features, therefore, of the Aryan conquerors might soon 

 wear out and be lost in those of the nations they overran ; 

 yet many of the words, and, what is more in point, some of 

 the grammatical forms, of their language might be retained 

 by the masses which they had governed for centuries, these 

 masses continuing to preserve the same features of race 

 which had distinguished them long before the Aryan in- 

 vasions. 



There can be no question that if we could trace back any 

 set of cognate languages now existing to some common point 



* Crawfurd, Transactions of the Ethnological Society, vol. i. 1861. 



