EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



More than a hundred different names for the 

 horse have been counted in Sanskrit, but most 

 of these are comparatively modern in origin. 

 The only one we need notice is a$va, from an 

 Old Aryan akva, meaning " the swift." In 

 Lith. the same word aszwa is the name of the 

 mare only, but the Lat. equus preserves the old 

 meaning. The classic Greek ITTTTOS does not 

 sound so much like equus as one might expect, 

 but we find the requisite transitions in the 

 Aiolic IKKOS and Old Aiolic t*Fos- In Irish 

 nothing is left but the first syllable, ech. In 

 Gothic the word reappears quite regularly as 

 aihva, and in Old Eng. this is clipped down 

 into eoh. Modern English, however, and the 

 other Teutonic languages have lost this word 

 and replaced it by another, which goes back 

 to the times of Teutonic unity, but does not 

 seem to have been known to the primitive 

 Aryans. The Old High Germans and the 

 Norsemen pronounced this word hross, but the 

 oldest Teutonic form was probably horsa, from 

 a root hor^ identical with Lat. currere, " to run." 

 Horse is accordingly connected by bonds of 

 etymological kinship with its descriptive syn- 

 onym courser. Modern High German, in turn, 

 though it has not lost the word ross, has adopted 

 a new name, pferd, which is in more frequent 

 use, and the history of which is extremely 

 curious. 



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