OLD ARYAN WORDS 



avisams karnauti svabhyam gharmam vastram 

 avibhyams ka varna na asti. 



Tat kukruvants avis agram a bhugat. 1 



The Sheep and the Horses. 



A sheep, whose wool had been shorn, looked 

 upon the horses as they drew a heavy wagon, 

 bore a great load, or swiftly carried a man. 

 The sheep said to the horses, "It grieves my 

 heart to see Man driving horses." 



The horses said, " Listen, sheep ; it grieves 

 our hearts to think how the despot Man makes 

 his warm garment of sheep's wool, while the 

 sheep goes woolless." 



On hearing this, the sheep quit the field. 



In the simple diction of this little apologue, 

 there can be no doubt that we have a very close 

 approach to the words that our Aryan fore- 

 fathers would have understood in the days be- 

 fore they had as yet invaded Europe and mixed 

 with the swart Iberian, whom physically 

 though not linguistically we also reckon as 

 our ancestor. But with respect to such attempts 

 at reproducing the Aryan mother tongue in its 

 concrete reality, there is one thing which we 

 must always bear in mind. Granting that a 

 word A and a word B both existed in Old 



1 Kuhn and Schleicher, Beitrage zur vergleichenden 

 Sprachforschung, v. 207. 



Ill 



