OUR ARYAN FOREFATHERS 



The seventh and eighth grand divisions of Ar- 

 yan language are the closely related Lettic and 

 Slavonic. The Lettic languages, like the Keltic, 

 are fast dying out. Of Old Prussian, which has 

 been dead for two centuries, nothing is now left 

 save the Catechism of Albert of Brandenburg. 

 Lettish and Lithuanian, of which the latter is 

 remarkable for its strong resemblance to San- 

 skrit, are still spoken in the Baltic provinces of 

 Russia. 



As for the Slavs, they appear in history north 

 of the Black Sea about the time of Trajan, and 

 begin to be frequently mentioned in the sixth 

 century. Since then they have pushed westward 

 far into the Teutonic domain, but have nowhere, 

 save in Russia, retained political independence. 

 Of the fifteen or more Slavonic languages, the 

 old Bulgarian and the modern Russian, Polish, 

 Bohemian, Croatian, and Serbian are of most 

 importance. 



Looking thus over our modern linguistic Ar- 

 yana, we see that in the Old World it pretty 

 nearly covers the geographical area included be- 

 tween the Ganges and the Atlantic Ocean. 

 Small regions of non-Aryan speech, however, 

 occur here and there within this area, and a brief 

 glance at these will serve to increase the definite- 

 ness of our knowledge. 



Wherever n on- Aryan languages are spoken 

 within this Indo-European domain, it is for 

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