EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



word meant originally " that which obstructs or 

 keeps out." Another old name for the door, 

 which appears in Skr. as arara, has been pre- 

 served in Europe only in the Irish or air y a 

 " porch " or " vestibule," and Welsh oriel. 

 This latter is one of the very few Keltic words 

 to be found in English, where it has become 

 the name of a kind of bay-window. 



Among the Aryan words for " window " 

 there is no such identity, though there is a most 

 curious similarity in the metaphors by which 

 they have been constructed. In Sanskrit the 

 window is grhaksha, or " the eye of the house," 

 and a big round window is called gavaksha, a 

 compound of gau y " cow," and aksha y " eye," 

 which is about equivalent to our expression 

 " bull's-eye." The Slavonic languages have okno y 

 from okoy " an eye," while Gothic has augadauro 

 and O. H. G. augatora, or "eye-door." The 

 meaning of our English word is not so immedi- 

 ately apparent, but in one of our nearest rela- 

 tives, the Danish, it occurs as vindue, and in Old 

 Norse this was vindauga^ that is, " an eye or 

 hole for the wind to blow through." These 

 coincidences are interesting as showing how 

 easily and naturally the same association of ideas 

 may occur to different people, for these words 

 have been independently formed. Whether we 

 are entitled to infer from this that the Aryan 

 mother tongue had no word for window, and 

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