96 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



meaning of which we shall presently note, and their country has 

 been called the Aryan Plain, Prom the language of the Rig- Veda we 

 ^earn not only the hymns they sang, but the kind of life they led. By 

 means of that language we have the veil lifted from one of the most 

 fascinating portions of the history of the human family, disclosing 

 to us old scenes of romantic interest and surpassing beauty. To 

 use the language of Farrar : " The discovery of Sanskrit has revealed 

 to us a wholly new chapter in the history of the world's youth. It 

 has enabled us to study the infancy of our race in the first gorgeous 

 bloom of its imaginative passions." — (Families of Speech, p. 34). 



From a careful study of the Sanskrit language, and an exam_ 

 ination ot words it contains, which are names of trees, mountains 

 streams and other natural objects, philologists have been able to 

 ascertain the position of the original Aryan home. From such inti- 

 mations as are found in these names, aided by a host of other con- 

 current circumstances, it may be assumed as almost certain that this 

 early home of our forefathers, and of the forefathers of many of the 

 Hindoos, was somewhere in the vast plateau of Iran, in the central part 

 of Western Asia, in the quadrilateral which extends from the Indus 

 to the Euphrates, and from the Oxus to the Persian Gulf. " In this 

 region," says Farrar, " amid scenery, grandiose yet severe, where 

 nature yields her treasures, but does not lavish them, lived a race 

 unguessed at by history, unknown even to tradition, but revealed by 

 philology, ^ — a race which in a peaceful life, and under a patriarchal 

 government, wrought out a language admirable for the wealth, har- 

 mony and perfection of its forms, and through which it learnt to 

 acquire ideas, which were destined to bear fruit a hundredfold in the 

 conquest, colonization, free institutions, and increasing Christian 

 progress of the world." 



From a careful comparison of that language with the language 

 of Persia and India, and with all the languages of Europe, including 

 our own, we can trace the course of the successive migrations which 

 took place in early times from the Aryan home. The precise time 

 of these migrations cannot be determined with any certainty, but 

 possibly it may not have been earlier than 2000 before Christ, or 

 about the time of the call of Abraham. These migrations were 

 mainly two, one northwestward into Europe ; the other southeast- 

 ward into Persia and India. "The causes which led to their migrations 



