SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 337 



THE PRIMITIVE HOME OF THE ARYANS.^ 



In ray address to the anthropological section of the British 

 Association in 1887, I stated, that, in common with many other 

 anthropologists and comparative philologists I had come to the 

 cnnclusion that the primitive home of the Aryans was to be sought 

 in north-eastern Europe. The announcement excited a flutter in 

 tlie newspapers, many of whose readers had probably never heard 

 of the Aryans before, while others of them had the vaguest possible 

 idea of what was meant by the name. 



Unfortunately it is a name which, unless carefully detined, is 

 likely to mislead or confuse. It was first introduced by Professor 

 Max Midler, and applied by him in a purely linguistic sense. The 

 " discovery " of Sanscrit and the researches of the pioneers of 

 comparative philology had shown that a great family of speech 

 existed, comprising Sanscrit and Persian, Greek and Latin, Teu- 

 tonic and Slav, all of them sister-languages descended from a 

 common parent, of which, however, no literary monuments sur- 

 vived. In place of the defective or cumbersome titles of " Indo- 

 German," " Indo-European," and the like, which had been sug- 

 gested for it, Professor Max Miiller proposed to call it " Aryan," 

 — a title derived from the Sanscrit v4rj'rt, interpreted "noble" in 

 later Sanscrit, but used as a national name in the hymns of the 

 Rig-Veda. 



It is much to be regretted that the name has not been generally 

 adopted. Such is the case, however, and it is to-day like a soul 

 seeking a body in which to find a habitation. But the name is an 

 excellent one, though the philologists of Germany, who govern us 

 in such matters, have refused to accept it in the sense proposed by 

 its author ; and we are therefore at liberty to discover for it a new 

 abode, and to give it a new scientific meaning. 



In the enthusiasm kindled by the sight of the fresh world that 

 was opening out before them, the first disciples of the science of. 

 comparative philology believed that they had found the key to all 

 the secrets of man's origin and earlier history. The parent-speech 

 of the Indo-European languages was entitled the Ursprache, or 

 " Primeval Language ; " and its analysis, it was imagined, would 

 disclose the elements of articulate speech, and the process whereby 

 they had developed into the manifold languages of the present 

 world. But this was not enough. The students of language went 

 even further. They claimed not only the domain of philology as 

 their own, but the domain of ethnology as well. Language was 

 confounded with race ; and the relationship of tribe with tribe, of 

 nation with nation, was determined by the languages they spoke. 

 If the origin of a people was required, the question was summarily 

 decided by tracing the origin of its language. English is, on the 

 whole, a Teutonic language, and therefore the whole English peo- 

 ple must have a Teutonic ancestry. The dark-skinned Bengali 

 speaks languages akin to our own : therefore the blood which runs 

 in his veins must be derived from the same source as that which 

 runs in ours. 



The dreams of universal conquest indulged in by a young science 

 soon pass away as facts accumulate and the limit of its powers is 

 more and more strictly determined. The Ursprache has become 

 a language of comparatively late date in the history of linguistic 

 development, which diiTered from Sanscrit or Greek only in its 

 fuller inflexional character. The light its analysis was believed to 

 cast on the origin of speech has proved to be the light of a will-o'- 

 the-wisp, leading astray and perverting the energies of those who 

 might have done more profitable work. The mechanism of primi- 

 tive language often lies more clearly revealed in a modern Bush- 

 man's dialect or the grammar of Eskimo than in that much- 

 vaunted Ursprache from which such great things were once ex- 

 pected by the philosophy of human speech. 



Ethnology has avenged the invasion of its territory by hnguistic 

 science, and has in turn claimed a province which is not its own. 

 It is no longer the comparative philologist, but the ethnologist, 

 who now and again uses philological terms in an ethnological 

 sense, or settles racial affinities by an appeal to language. The 

 philologist first talked about an " Intlo-European race." Such an 

 expression could now be heard only from the lips of a youthful 

 ethnologist. 



^ From The Contemporary Review. 



As soon as the discovery was made that the Indo-European lan- 

 guages were derived from a common mother, scholars began to 

 ask where that common mother-tongue was spoken. But it was' 

 agreed on all hands that this must have been somewhere in Asia. 

 Theology and history alike had taught that mankind came from the 

 East, and from the East accordingly the Ursprache must have 

 come too. Hitherto Hebrew had been generally regarded as the 

 original language of humanity. Now that the Indo-European 

 Ursprache had deprived Hebrew of its place of honor, it was natu- 

 ral, if not inevitable, that, like Hebrew, it should be accounted of 

 Asiatic origin. Moreover, it was the discovery of Sanscrit that had 

 led to the discovery of the Ursprache. Had it not been for San- 

 scrit, with its copious grammar, its early literature, and the light 

 which it threw on the forms of Greek and Latin speech, compara- 

 tive philology might never have been born. Sanscrit was the ma- 

 gician's wand which had called the new science into existence, 

 and without the help of Sanscrit the philologist would not have 

 advanced beyond the speculations and guesses of classical schol- 

 ars. What wonder, then, if the language which had thus been a 

 key to the mysteries of Greek and Latin, and which seemed to 

 embody older forms of speech than they, should have been assumed 

 to stand nearer to the Ursprache than the cognate languages of 

 Europe 7 The assumption was aided by the extravagant age as- 

 signed to the monuments of Sanscrit literature. The poems of 

 Homer might be old ; but the hymns of the Veda, it was alleged, 

 mounted back to a primeval antiquity, while the Institutes of Manu 

 represented the oldest code of laws existing in the world. 



There was yet another reason which contributed to the belief 

 that Sanscrit was the first-born of the Indo-European family. The 

 founders of comparative philology had been preceded in their ana- 

 lytic work by the ancient grammarians of India. It was from Panini 

 and his predecessors that the followers of Bopp inherited their 

 doctrine of roots and suffixes and their analysis of Indo-European , 

 words. The language of the Veda had been analyzed two thou- 

 sand years ago as no other single language had ever been analyzed 

 before or since. Its very sounds had been carefully probed and 

 distinguished, and an alphabet of extraordinary completeness had 

 been devised to represent them. It appeared as if the elements 

 out of which the Sanscrit vocabulary and grammar had grown had 

 been laid bare in a way that was possible in no other language ; 

 and in studying Sanscrit, accordingly, the scholars of Europe 

 seemed to feel themselves near to the very beginnings of speech. 



But it was soon perceived that if the primitive home of the Indo- 

 European languages were Asia, they themselves ought to exhibit 

 evidences of the fact. There are certain objects and certain phe- 

 nomena which are peculiar to Asia, or, at all events, are not to be 

 found in Europe ; and words expressive of these ought to be met 

 with in the scattered branches of the Indo-European family. If 

 the parent-language had been spoken in India, the climate in which 

 they were born must have left its mark upon the face of its off- 

 spring. 



But here a grave difficulty presented itself. Men have short 

 memories, and the name of an object which ceases to come before 

 the senses is either forgotten or transferred to something else. 

 The tiger may have been known to the speakers of the parent- 

 language, but the words that denoted it would have dropped out of 

 the vocabulary of the derived languages which were spoken in 

 Europe. The same word which signifies an oak in Greek, signifies 

 a beech in Latin. We cannot expect to find the European lan- 

 guages employing words with meanings which recall objects met 

 with only in Asia. 



How, then, are we to force the closed lips of our Indo-European 

 languages, and compel them to reveal the secret of their birth- 

 place.' Attempts have been made to answer this question in two 

 different ways. 



On the one hand, it has been assumed that the absence in a par- 

 ticular language, or group of languages, of a term which seems to 

 have been possessed by the parent-speech, is evidence that the ob- 

 ject denoted by it was unknown to the speakers. But the assump- 

 tion is contradicted by experience. Because the Latin egiiiis has 

 been replaced by cabalhts in the modern Romanic languages, we 

 cannot conclude that the horse was unknown in western Europe 

 after the fall of the Roman Empire. The native Basque word for 



