and the skins worn by the community, the course of progress, it will undergo the with which to protect themselves against same alteration as native words containthe rigors of the climate, were sewn to- ing the same sounds. The phonetic gether by means of needles of bone. It changes which have marked off the High is even possible that the art of spinning German dialects from their sister tongues had already been invented, though the art do not seem to go back beyond the fall of of weaving does not appear to have ad- the Roman Empire, and words borrowed vanced beyond that of plaiting reeds and from Latin before that date will accordwithies. The community still lived in the ingly have submitted to the same phonetic stone age. Their tools and weapons changes as words of native origin. Inwere made of stone or bone, and if they deed, when once a word is borrowed by made use of gold or meteoric iron, it was one language from another and has of the unwrought pieces picked up from passed into common use, it soon becomes the ground, and employed as ornaments; naturalized, and is assimilated in form of the working of metals they were en- and pronunciation to the words among tirely ignorant. As among savage tribes which it has come to dwell. A curious generally, the various degrees of relation- example of this is to be found in certain ship were minutely distinguished and Latin words which made their way into named, even the wife of a husband's the Gaelic dialects in the fourth or fifth brother receiving a special title; but they century. We often find a Gaelic c correcould count at least as far as a hundred. sponding to a Welsh p, both being derived They believed in a multitude of ghosts from a labialized guttural or qu, and the and goblins, making offerings to the dead, habit was accordingly formed of regardand seeing in the bright sky a potent ing a c as the natural and necessary repredeity. The birch, the pine, and the withy sentative of a foreign p. When, therefore, were known to them; so also were the words like the Latin pascha and purpura bear and wolf, the hare, the mouse, and were introduced by Christianity into the the snake, as well as the goose and raven, Gaelic branch of the Keltic family, they the quail and the owl. Cattle, sheep, assumed the form of caisg and corcur. goats, and swine were all kept; the dog had been domesticated, and in all probability also the horse. Last, but not least, boats were navigated by means of oars, the boats themselves being possibly the hollowed trunks of trees. It is clear that such borrowings can only take place where the speakers of two different languages have been brought into contact with one another. Before the age of commercial intercourse between Europe and India we cannot suppose that This account of the primitive commu- European words could have been bornity is necessarily imperfect. There rowed by Sanskrit or Persian, or Sanskrit must have been many words, like that for and Persian words by the European lan"river," which were once possessed by guages. But the case is quite otherwise the parent speech, but afterwards lost in if instead of comparing together the vocabeither the Eastern or Western branches ularies of the Eastern and Western memof the family. Such words the compara- bers of the Indo-European stock, we wish tive philologist has now no means of dis- to compare only Western with Western, covering, he must accordingly pass them or Eastern with Eastern. There our over along with the objects or ideas which difficulties begin, and we must look to histhey represent. The picture he can give tory, or botany, or zoology for aid. From us of the speakers of the primeval Indo-a purely philological point of view the European language can only be approximately complete. Moreover it is always open to correction. Some of the words we now believe to have been part of the original stock carried away by the derived dialects of Asia and Europe may hereafter turn out to have been borrowed by one of these dialects from another, and not to have been a heritage common to both. It is often very difficult to decide whether we are dealing with borrowed words or not. If a word has been borrowed by a language before the phonetic changes had set in which have given the language its peculiar complexion, or while they were in English hemp, the Old High German hanf, the Old Norse hanpr, and the Latin cannabis might all be derived from a common source, and point to the fact that hemp was known to the first speakers of the Indo-European languages in northwestern Europe. But the botanists tell us that this could not have been the case. Hemp is a product of the East which did not originally grow in Germany, and consequently both the plant itself and the name by which it was called must have come from abroad. So, again, the lion bears a similar name in Greek and Latin, in German, in Slavonic, and in Keltic. But the only part of Europe in which the spread primitive community is implied by lion existed at a time when the speakers the numerous languages of Europe than of an Indo-European language could have by the two languages of Asia. A widely become acquainted with it were the spread community, however, is less likely mountains of Thrace, and it must, accord- to wander far from its original seat than a ingly, have been from Greek that its community of less extent, more especially name spread to the other cognate lan- when it is a community of herdsmen, and guages of the West. the track to be traversed is long and barren. It has been needful to enter into these details before we can approach the question, What was the original home of the parent Indo-European language? They have been too often ignored or forgotten by those who have set themselves to answer the question, and to this cause must be ascribed the larger part of the misunderstandings and false conclusions to which the inquiry has given birth. Until a few years ago I shared the old belief that the parent speech had its home in Asia, probably on the slopes of the Hindu Kush. The fact that the languages of Europe and Asia alike possessed the same words for "winter" and "ice" and "snow," and that the only two trees whose names were preserved by both the "birch" and the "pine were in habitants of a cold region, proved that this home did not lie in the tropics. But the uplands of the Hindu Kush, or the barren steppes in the neighborhood of the Caspian Sea, or even the valleys of Siberia, would answer to the requirements presented by such words. Taken by themselves they were fully compatible with the view that the first speakers of the Indo-European tongues were an Asiatic people. But when I came to ask myself what were the grounds for holding this view, I could find none that seemed to me satisfactory. There is much justice in Dr. Latham's remark that it is unreasonable to derive the majority of the Indo-European languages from a continent to which only two members of the group are known to belong, unless there is an imperative necessity for doing so. These languages have grown out of dialects once existing within the parent speech itself, and it certainly appears more probable that two of such dialects or languages should have made their way into a new world, across the bleak plains of Tartary, than that seven or eight should have done so. The argument, it is true, is not a strong one, but it raises at the outset a presumption in favor of Europe. Before the dialects had developed into languages, their speakers could not have lived far apart; there is, in fact, evidence of this in the case of Sanskrit and Persian; and a more widely Apart from the general prejudice in favor of an Asiatic origin due to old theological teaching and the effect of the discovery of Sanskrit, I can find only two arguments which have been supposed to be of sufficient weight to determine the choice of Asia rather than of Europe as the cradle of Indo-European speech. The first of these arguments is linguistic, the second is historical, or rather quasi-historical. On the one hand it has been laid down by eminent philologists that the less one of the derived languages has deflected from the parent speech, the more likely it is to be geographically nearer to its earliest home. The faithfulness of the record is a test of geographical proximity. As Sanskrit was held to be the most primitive of the Indo-European languages, to reflect most clearly the features of the parent speech, the conclusion was drawn that that parent speech had been spoken at no great distance from the country in which the hymns of the Rig-Veda were first composed. The conclusion was supported by the second argument, drawn from the sacred books of Parsaism. In the Vendîdâd the migrations of the Iranians were traced back through the successive creations of Ormazd to Airyanem Vaêjô, "the Aryan Power," which Lassen localized near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. But Bréal and De Harlez have shown that the legends of the Vendîdâd, in their present form, are late and untrustworthy - later, in fact, than the Christian era;* and even if we could attach any historical value to them, they would tell us only from whence the Iranians believed their own ancestors to have come, and would throw no light on the cradle of the Indo-European languages as a whole. The first argument is one which I think no student of language would any longer employ. As Professor Max Müller has said, it would suffice to prove that the Scandinavians emigrated from Iceland. But to those who would still urge it, I must re Bréal, "Mélanges de Mythologie et de Linguistique" (1878), pp. 187-215; De Harlez, "Introduction à l'Etude de l'Avesta," pp. cxcii., sqq. Darmesteter's Introduction to the Zend-Avesta. pt. i, Compare in "The Sacred Books of the East." must really be grouped with the languages of Europe. What is more, the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions of Van has cast a strong light on the date of its introduction into Armenia. These inscriptions are the records of kings whose capital was at Van, and who marched their armies in all directions during the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries before our era. The latest date that can as yet be assigned to any of them is B. C. 640. At this time there were still no speakers of an Indo-European language in Armenia. The language of the inscriptions has no connection with those of the Indo-European family, and the personal and local names occurring in the countries immediately surrounding the dominions of the Vannic kings, and so abundantly mentioned in their texts, are of the same linguistic character as the Vannic names themselves. peat what I have said elsewhere. Although in many respects Sanskrit has preserved more faithfully than the European languages the forms of primitive Indo-European grammar, in many other respects the converse is the case. In the latest researches into the history of Indo-European grammar, Greek holds the place once occupied by Sanskrit. The belief that Sanskrit was the elder sister of the family led to the assumption that the three short vowels a, e, and Ŏ have all originated from an earlier ǎ. I was, I believe, the first to protest against this assumption in 1874, and to give reasons for thinking that the single monotonous ǎ of Sanskrit resulted from the coalescence of three distinct vowels. The analogy of other languages goes to show that the tendency of time is to reduce the number of vocalic sounds possessed by a language, not the contrary. In place of the numerous vow els possessed by ancient Greek, modern The evidence of classical writers fully Greek can now show only five, and culti- bears out the conclusions to be derived vated English is rapidly merging its vowel from the decipherment of the Vannic insounds into the so-called "neutral" ǝ.scriptions. Herodotus tells us that the Since my protest the matter has been Armenians were colonists from Phrygia, worked out by Italian, German, and the Phrygians themselves having been a French scholars, and we now know that it is the vocalic system of the European languages rather than of Sanskrit which most faithfully represents the oldest form of Indo-European speech. The result of the discovery, for discovery it must be called, has been a complete revolution in the study of Indo-European etymology, and still more of Indo-European grammar, and whereas ten years ago it was Sanskrit which was invoked to explain Greek, it is to Greek that the "new school "now turns to explain Sanskrit. The comparative philologist necessarily cannot do without the help of both; the greater the number of languages he has to compare the sounder will be his inductions; but the primacy which was once supposed to reside in Asia has been taken from her. It is Greek, and not Sanskrit, which has taught us what was the primitive vowel of the reduplicated syllable of the perfect and the augment of the aorist, and has thus narrowed the discussion into the origin of both. Until quite recently, however, the advocates of the Asiatic home of the Indo-European languages found a support in the position of the Armenian language. Armenian stands midway, as it were, between Persia and Europe, and it was imagined to have very close relations with the old language of Persia. But we now know that its Persian affinities are illusory, and that it Thrakian tribe which had migrated into Asia. The same testimony was borne by Eudoxos,† who further averred that the Armenian and Phrygian languages resembled one another. The tradition must have been recent in the time of Herodotus, and we shall probably not go far wrong if we assign the occupation of Armenia by the Phrygian tribes to the age of upheaval in western Asia which was ushered in by the fall of the Assyrian Empire. Professor Fick has shown that the scanty fragments of the Phrygian language that have survived to us belong to the European branch of the Indo-European family, and thus find their place by the side of Armenian. Instead, therefore, of forming a bridge between Orient and Occident Armenian represents the furthermost flow of IndoEuropean speech from West to East. And this flow belongs to a relatively late period. Apart from Armenian we can discover no traces of Indo-European occupation between Media and the Halys until the days when Iranian Ossetes settled in the Caucasus and the mountaineers of Kurdistan adopted Iranian dialects. I must reiterate here what I have said many years ago: if there is one fact which the Assyrian monuments make clear and indubitable, it would lend to it its name. In Keltic the I cannot now enter fully into the rea sons which have led me gradually to give up my old belief in the Asiatic origin of the Indo-European tongues, and to subscribe to the views of those who would refer them to a northern European birthplace. The argument is a complicated one, and is necessarily of a cumulative character. The individual links in the chain may not be strong, but collectively they afford that amount of probability which is all we can hope to attain in his is that up to the closing days of the Assyrian monarchy no Indo-European languages were spoken in the vast tract of civilized country which lay between Kurdistan and western Asia Minor. South of the Caucasus they were unknown until the irruption of the Phrygians into Armenia. Among the multitudinous names of persons and localities belonging to this region which are recorded in the Assyrian inscriptions during a space of several centuries there is only one which bears upon it the Indo-European stamp. This is the name of the leader of the Kimmerians, a nomad tribe from the north-east which descended upon the frontiers of Assyria in the reign of Esar-haddon, and was driven by him into Asia Minor. The fact is made the more striking by the further fact that as soon as we clear the Kurdish ranges and enter Median territory, names of Indo-European origin meet us thick torical research. Those who wish to and fast. We can draw but one conclusion from these facts. Whether the IndoEuropean languages of Europe migrated from Asia, or whether the converse were the case, the line of march must have been northward of the Caspian, through the inhospitable steppes of Tartary and over the snow-covered heights of the Ural Mountains. An ingenious argument has lately been put forward, which at first sight seems to tell in favor of the Asiatic origin of IndoEuropean speech. Dr. Penka has drawn attention to the fact that several of the European languages agree in possessing the same word for "eel," and that whereas the eel abounds in the rivers and lakes of Scandinavia, it is unknown in those cold regions of western Asia where, as we have seen, it has been proposed to place the cradle of the Indo-European family. But it is a curious fact that in Greek and Latin, and apparently also in Lithuanian, the word for "eel" is a diminutive derived from a word which denotes a snake or snake-like creature. This, it has been urged, may be interpreted to mean that the primeval habitat of the Indo-European languages was one where the snake was known, but the eel was not. The argument, however, cannot be pressed. We all agree that the first speakers of the Indo-European languages lived on the land, not on the water, and that they were herdsmen rather than fishermen. Naturally, therefore, they would become acquainted with the snake before they became acquainted with the eel, however much it might abound in the rivers near them, and its resemblance to the snake 66 study them may do so in Dr. Penka's work on the "Herkunft der Arier," published in 1886. His hypothesis that southern Scandinavia was the primitive Aryan home" seems to me to have more in its favor than any other hypothesis on the subject which has as yet been put forward. It needs verification, it is true, but if it is sound the verification will not be long in coming. A more profound examination of Teutonic and Keltic mythology, a more exact knowledge of the words in the sev eral Indo-European languages which are not of Indo-European origin, and the progress of archæological discovery, will furnish the verification we need. Meanwhile, it must be allowed that the hypothesis has the countenance of history. Scandinavia, even before the sixth century, was characterized as "the manufac tory of nations; "*and the voyages and settlements of the Norse vikings offer a historical illustration of what the prehistoric migrations and settlements of the speakers of the Indo-European languages must have been. They differed from the latter only in being conducted by sea, whereas the prehistoric migrations followed the valleys of the great rivers. It was not until the age of the Roman Empire that the northern nations became acquainted with the sailing boat; our English sail is the Latin sagulum, "the little cloak of the soldier," "borrowed by the Teutons along with its name, and used to propel their boats in imitation of the sails of the Roman vessels. The introduction nationum: " Jordanes, De Getarum sive Gothorum "Quasi officina gentium aut certe velut vagina origine, ed. Closs, c. 4. of the sail allowed the inhabitants of the Scandinavian "hive" to push boldly out to sea, and ushered in the era of Saxon pirates and Danish invasions. Dr. Penka's arguments are partly anthropological, partly archæological. He shows that the Kelts and Teutons of Roman antiquity were the tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired, dolicho-cephalic race which is now being fast absorbed in Keltic lands by the older inhabitants of them. The typical Frenchman of to-day has but little in common with the typical Gaul of the age of Cæsar. The typical Gaul was, in fact, as much a conqueror in Gallia as he was in Galatia, or, as modern researches have shown, as the typical Kelt was in Ireland. It seems to have been the same in Greece. Here, too, the golden-haired hero of art and song was a representative of the ruling class, of that military aristocracy which overthrew the early culture of the Peloponnese, and of whom tradition averred that it had come from the bleak north. Little trace of it now remains; it is rarely that the traveller can discover any longer the modern kinsfolk of the golden-haired Apollo or the blue-eyed Athênê. | of their serfs. We know at any rate that it was so in Ireland. Here the old "Ivernian" population adopted the language of the small band of Keltic invaders that settled in its midst. It is only where the conquered possess a higher civilization than the conquerors, above all, where they have a literature and an organized form of religion, that Franks will adapt their tongues to Latin speech, or Manchus learn to speak Chinese. Moreover, in southern Scandinavia, where we have archæological evidence that the tall blonde race was scarcely at any time in close contact with other races, it is hardly possible for it to have borrowed its language from some other people. The Indo-European languages still spoken in the country must, it would seem, be descended from languages spoken there from the earliest period to which the evidence of human occupation reaches back. The conclusion is obvious; southern Scandinavia and the adjacent districts must be the first home and starting-point of the western branch of the Indo-European family. highlands of Persia, tall long-headed blondes with blue eyes can still be met with, but as we approach the hot plains of India, the type grows rarer and rarer until it ceases altogether. An Indo-European dialect must be spoken in India by a dark-skinned people before it can endure to the third and fourth generation. As we leave the frontiers of Europe behind us we lose sight of the race with which Dr. Penka's arguments would tend to connect the parent speech of the IndoEuropean family. If we turn to the eastern branch, we find that the further East we go the fainter become the traces of the tall blonde race If we would still find the ancient blonde and the greater is the resemblance be race of northern Europe in its purity we tween the speakers of Indo-European must go to Scandinavia. Here the pre-languages and the native tribes. In the vailing type of the population is still that of the broad-shouldered, long-headed blondes who served as models for the Dying Gladiator. And it is in southern Scandinavia alone that the prehistoric tumuli and burying-grounds yield hardly any other skeletons than those of the same tall, dolicho-cephalic race which still inhab its the country. Elsewhere such skeletons are either wanting or else mixed with the remains of other races. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that it was from southern Scandinavia that those bands of hardy warriors originally emerged, who made their way southward and westward and even eastward, the Kelts of Galatia penetrating like the Phrygians before them into the heart of Asia Minor. The Norse migrations in later times were even more extensive, and what the Norse vikings were able to achieve could have been achieved by their ancestors centuries before. Now the Kelts and Teutons of the Roman age spoke Indo-European languages. It is more probable that the subject populations should have been compelled to learn the language of their conquerors than that the conquerors should have taken the trouble to learn the language I cannot now follow him in the interesting comparison he draws between the social condition of the southern Scandinavians as disclosed by the contents of the prehistoric "kitchen-middens," and the social condition of the speakers of the Indo-European parent speech according to the sobered estimate of recent linguistic research. The resemblance is certainly very striking, though, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that archæological science is still in its infancy, and that Dr. Penka too often assumes that a word common to the European languages belonged to the parent speech, an assumption which will not, of course, be admitted by his opponents. E |