OLD ARYAN WORDS 



familiar an animal, and we need no better illus- 

 tration to convince us of the danger, above 

 pointed out, of relying too confidently upon 

 negative evidence in such inquiries as we are 

 here making. Looking at the contemporary 

 names only, we find the English and French say- 

 ing horse and cheval y " the swift runner," while 

 High German and Greek szypferd, " the extra 

 drawer of a post-carriage," and aXoyov, "the 

 brute," names quite distinct both in sound 

 and in meaning. If all the other forms had been 

 lost and replaced by new words, as might 

 easily be the case where there are so many syn- 

 onyms for the same object, we might perhaps 

 have inferred that there was no common Aryan 

 name for the horse, and that hence the animal 

 was not known until after the separation of 

 Aryan tribes had begun ; but this would have 

 been very plainly a mistake. 



Besides the horse and cow, the primitive Ar- 

 yans had domesticated sheep, goats, and pigs, as 

 well as dogs. With regard to the cat, the case is 

 less clear. That wild species of the cat family 

 were known seems probable, and the word puss 

 has some claim to an Old Aryan pedigree, for 

 we find pushak in modern Persian, -puiz'e in 

 Lithuanian, pusag and puss in Irish, whence we 

 have adopted the word ; but whether the primi- 

 tive form of these names was applied to a wild 

 or to a domesticated cat is uncertain. With this 

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