When the question of the original home of the Aryan language and race was first presented, there were no conflicting opinions on the main subject.* All who took any interest in the problem referred to Asia as the cradle of the Aryans. Asia had always been regarded as the cradle of the human race. In primeval time, the yellow Mongolian, the black African, the American redskin, and the fair European had there tented side by side.

From some common centre in Asia they had spread over the whole surface of the inhabited earth. Traditions found in the literatures of various European peoples in regard to an immigration from the East supported this view. The progenitors of the Romans were said to have come from Troy. The fathers of the Teutons were reported to have immigrated from Asia, led by Odin. There was also the original home of the domestic animals and of the cultivated plants. And when the startling discovery was made that the sacred books of the Iranians and Hindoos were written in languages related to the culture languages of Europe, when these linguistic monuments betrayed a wealth of inflections in comparison with which those of the classical languages turned pale, and when they seemed to have the stamp of an antiquity by the side of which the European dialects seemed like children, then what could be more natural than the following conclusion: The original form has been preserved in the original home; the farther the streams of emigration got away from this home, the more they lost on the way of their language and their inherited view of the world; that is, of their mythology, which among the Hindoos seemed so original and simple as if it had been watered by the dews of life's dawn.

To begin with, there was no doubt that the original tongue itself, the mother of all the other Aryan languages, had already been found when Zend or Sanscrit was discovered. Fr. v. Schlegel, in his work published in 1808, on the Language and Wisdom of the Hindoos, regarded Sanscrit as the mother of the Aryan family of languages, and India as the original home of the Aryan family of peoples. Thence, it was claimed, colonies were sent out in prehistoric ages to other parts of Asia and to Europe; nay, even missionaries went forth to spread the language and religion of the mother-country among other peoples. Schlegel's compatriot Link looked upon Zend as the oldest language and mother of Sanscrit, and the latter he regarded the mother of the rest; and as the Zend, in his opinion, was spoken in Media and surrounding countries, it followed that the highlands of Media, Armenia, and Georgia were the original home of the Aryans, a view which prevailed among the leading scholars of the age, such as Anquetil-Duperron, Herder, and Heeren, and found a place in the historical text-books used in the schools from 1820 to 1840.

Since Bopp published his epoch-making Comparative Grammar the illusion that the Aryan mother-tongue had been discovered had, of course, gradually to give place to the conviction that all the Aryan languages, Zend and Sanscrit included, were relations of equal birth. This also affected the theory that the Persians and Hindoos were the original people, and that the cradle of our race was to be sought in their homes.

On the Other hand, the Hindooic writings were found to contain evidence that, during the centuries in which the most of the Rigveda songs were produced, the Hindooic Aryans were possessors only of Kabulistan and Pendschab, whence, either expelling or subjugating an older black population, they had advanced toward the Ganges. Their social condition was still semi-nomadic, at least in the sense that their chief property consisted in herds, and the feuds between the clans had for their object the plundering of such possessions from each other. Both these facts indicated that these Aryans were immigrants to the Indian peninsula, but not the aborigines, wherefore their original home must be sought elsewhere. The strong resemblance found between Zend and Sanscrit, and which makes these dialects a separate subdivision in the Aryan family of languages, must now, since we have learned to regard them as sister-tongues, be interpreted as a proof that the Zend people or Iranians and the Sanscrit people or Hindoos were in ancient times one people with a common country, and that this union must have continued to exist long after the European Aryans were parted from them and had migrated westwards. When, then, the question was asked where this Indo-Iranian cradle was situated, the answer was thought to be found in a chapter of Avesta, to which the German scholar Rhode had called attention already in 1820. To him it seemed to refer to a migration from a more northerly and colder country. The passage speaks of sixteen countries created by the fountain of light and goodness, Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda), and of sixteen plagues produced by the fountain of evil, Ahriman (Angra Mainyu), to destroy the work of Ormuzd. The first country was a paradise, but Ahriman ruined it with cold and frost, so that it had ten months of winter and only two of summer. The second country, in the name of which Sughda Sogdiana was recognised, was rendered uninhabitable by Ahriman by a pest which destroyed the domestic animals. Ahriman made the third (which by the way, was recognised as Merv) impossible as a dwelling on account of never-ceasing wars and plunderings. In this manner thirteen other countries with partly recognisable names are enumerated as created by Ormuzd, and thirteen other plagues produced by Ahriman. Rhodes's view, that these sixteen regions were stations in the migration of the Indo-Iranian people from their original country became universally adopted, and it was thought that the track of the migration could now be followed back through Persia, Baktria and Sogdiana, up to the first region created by Ormuzd, which, accordingly, must have been situated in the interior highlands of Asia, around the sources of the Jaxartes and Oxus. The reason for the emigration hence was found in the statement that, although Ormuzd had made this country an agreeable abode, Ahriman had destroyed it with frost and snow. In other words, this part of Asia was supposed to have had originally a warmer temperature, which suddenly or gradually became lower, wherefore the inhabitants found it necessary to seek new homes in the West and South.

The view that the sources of Oxus and Jaxartes are the original home of the Aryans is even now the prevailing one, or at least the one most widely accepted, and since the day of Rhode it has been supported and developed by several distinguished scholars. Then Julius v. Klaproth pointed out, already in 1830, that, among the many names of various kinds of trees found in India, there is a single one which they have in common with other Aryan peoples, and this is the name of the birch. India has many kinds of trees that do not grow in Central Asia, but the birch is found both at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and on the southern spurs of the Himalaya mountains. If the Aryan Hindoos immigrated from the highlands of Central Asia to the regions through which the Indus and Ganges seek their way to the sea, then it is natural, that when they found on their way new unknown kinds of trees, then they gave to these new names, but when they discovered a tree with which they had long been acquainted, then they would apply the old familiar name to it. Mr. Lassen, the great scholar of Hindooic antiquities, gave new reasons for the theory that the Aryan Hindoos were immigrants, who through the western pass of Hindukush and through Kabulistan came to Pendschab, and thence slowly occupied the Indian peninsula. That their original home, as well as that of their Iranian kinsmen, was that part of the highlands of Central Asia pointed out by Rhode, he found corroborated by the circumstance, that there are to be found there, even at the present time, remnants of a people, the so-called Tadchiks, who speak Iranian dialects. According to Lassen, these were to be regarded as direct descendants of the original Aryan people, who remained in the original home, while other parts of the same people migrated to Baktria or Persia and became Iranians, or migrated down to Pendschab and became Hindoos, or migrated to Europe and became Celts, Greco-Italians, Teutons, and Slavs. Jacob Grimm, whose name will always be mentioned with honour as the great pathfinder in the field of Teutonic antiquities, was of the same opinion; and that whole school of scientist who were influenced by romanticism and by the philosophy of Schelling made haste to add to the real support sought for the theory in ethnological and philological facts, a support from the laws of natural analogy and from poetry. A mountain range, so it was said, is the natural divider of waters. From its fountains the streams flow in different directions and irrigate the plains. In the same manner the highlands of Central Asia were the divider of Aryan folk-streams, which through Baktria sought their way to the plains of Persia, through the mountain passes of Hindukush to India, through the lands north of the Caspian Sea to the extensive plains of modern Russia, and so on to the more inviting regions of Western Europe. The sun rises in the east, ex oriente lux; the highly-gifted race, which was to be found the European nations, has, under the guidance of Providence, like the sun, wended its way from east to west. In taking a grand view of the subject, a mystic harmony was found to exist between the apparent course of the sun and the real migrations of people. The minds of the people dwelling in Central and Eastern Asia seemed to be imbued with a strange instinctive yearning. The Aryan folk-streams, which in prehistoric times deluged Europe, were in this respect the forerunners of the hordes of Huns which poured in from Asia, and which in the fourth century gave the impetus to the Teutonic migrations, and of the Mongolian hordes which in the thirteenth century invaded our continent. The Europeans themselves are led by this same instinct to follow the course of the sun: they flow in great numbers to America, and these folk-billows break against each other on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean. "At the breast of our Asiatic mother," thus exclaimed, in harmony with the romantic school, a scholar with no mean linguistic attainments--"at the breast of our Asiatic mother, the Aryan people of Europe have rested; around her as their mother they have played as children. There or nowhere is the playground; there or nowhere is the gymnasium of the first physical and intellectual efforts on the part of the Aryan race."

The theory that the cradle of the Aryan race stood in Central Asia near the sources of the Indus and Jaxartes had hardly been contradicted in 1850, and seemed to be secured for the future by the great number of distinguished and brilliant names which had given their adhesion to it. The need was now felt of clearing up the order and details of these emigrations. All the light to be thrown on this subject had to come from philology and from the geography of plants and animals. The first author who, in this manner and with the means indicated, attempted to furnish proofs in detail that the ancient Aryan land was situated around the Oxus river was Adolphe Pictet. There, he claimed, the Aryan language had been formed out of older non-Aryan dialects. There the Aryan race, on account of its spreading over Baktria and neighbouring regions, had divided itself into branches of various dialects, which there, in a limited territory, held the same geographical relations to each other as they hold to each other at the present time in another and immensely larger territory. In the East lived the nomadic branch which later settled in India; in the East, too, but farther north, that branch herded their flocks, which afterwards became the Iranian and took possession of Persia. West of the ancestors of the Aryan Hindoos dwelt the branch which later appears as the Greco-Italians and north of the latter the common progenitors of Teutons and Slavs had their home. In the extreme West dwelt the Celts, and they were also the earliest emigrants to the West. Behind them marched the ancestors of the Teutons and Slavs by a more northern route to Europe. The last in this procession to Europe were the ancestors of the Greco-Italians, and for this reason their languages had preserved more resemblance to those of the Indo-Iranians who migrated into Southern Asia than those of the other European Aryans. For this view Pictet gives a number of reasons. According to him, the vocabulary common to more or less of the Aryan branches preserves names of minerals, plants, and animals which are found in those latitudes, and in those parts of Asia which he calls the original Aryan country.

The German linguist Schleicher has to some extent discussed the same problem as Pictet in a series of works published in the fifties and sixties. The same has been done by the famous German-English scientist Max Müller. Schleicher's theory, briefly stated, is the following: The Aryan race originated in Central Asia. There, in the most ancient Aryan country, the original Aryan tongue was spoken for many generations. The people multiplied and enlarged their territory, and in various parts of the country they occupied, the language assumed various forms, so that there were developed at least two different languages before the great migrations began. As the chief cause of the emigrations, Schleicher regards the fact that the primitive agriculture practised by the Aryans, including the burning of the forests, impoverished the soil and had a bad effect on the climate. The principles he laid down and tried to vindicate were: (1) The farther East an Aryan people dwells, the more it has preserved of the peculiarities of the original Aryan tongue. (2) The farther West an Aryan-derived tongue and daughter people are found, the earlier this language was separated from the mother-tongue, and the earlier this people became separated from the original stock. Max Müller holds the common view in regard to the Asiatic origin of the Aryans. The main difference between him and Schleicher is that Müller assumes that the Aryan tongue originally divided itself into an Asiatic and an European branch. He accordingly believes that all the Aryan-European tongues and all the Aryan-European peoples have developed from the same European branch, while Schleicher assumes that in the beginning the division produced a Teutonic and Letto-Slavic branch on the one hand, and an Indo-Iranian, Greco-Italic, and Celtic on the other.

This view of the origin of the Aryans had scarcely met with any oppositions when we entered the second half of our century. We might add that it had almost ceased to be questioned. The theory that the Aryans were cradled in Asia seemed to be established as an historical fact, supported by a mass of ethnographical, linguistic, and historical arguments, and vindicated by a host of brilliant scientific names.

OF THE ARYANS

In the year 1854 was heard for the first time a voice of doubt. The sceptic was an English ethnologist, by name Latham, who had spent many year in Russia studying the natives of that country. Lathum was unwilling to admit that a single one of the many reasons given for the Asiatic origin of our family of languages was conclusive, or that the accumulative weight of all the reasons given amounted to real evidence. He urged that they who at the outset had treated this question had lost sight of the rules of logic, and that in explaining a fact it is a mistake to assume too many premises. The great fact which presents itself and which is to be explained is this: There are Aryans in Europe and there are Aryans in Asia. The major part of the Aryans are in Europe, and here the original language has split itself into the greatest number of idioms. From the main Aryan trunk in Europe only two branches extend into Asia. The northern branch is a new creation, consisting of Russian colonisation from Europe; the southern branch, that is, the Iranian-Hindooic, is, on the other hand, prehistoric, but was still growing in the dawn of history, and the branch was then growing from West to East, from Indus toward Ganges. When historical facts to the contrary are wanting, then the root of a great family of languages should naturally be looked for in the ground which supports the trunk and is shaded by the crown, and not underneath the ends of the farthest-reaching branches. The mass of Mongolians dwell in Eastern Asia, and for this very reason Asia is accepted as the original home of the Mongolian race. The great mass of Aryans live in Europe, and have lived there as far as history sheds a ray of light. Why, then, not apply to the Aryans and to Europe the same conclusions as hold good in the case of the Mongolians and Asia? And why not apply to ethnology the same principles as are admitted unchallenged in regard to the geography of plants and animals? Do we not in botany and zoology seek the original home and centre of a species where it shows the greatest vitality, the greatest power of multiplying and producing varieties? These questions, asked by Latham, remained for some time unanswered, but finally they led to a more careful examination of the soundness of the reasons given for the Asiatic hypothesis.

The gist of Latham's protest is, that the question was decided in favour of Asia without an examination of the other possibility, and that in such an examination, if it were undertaken, it would appear at the very outset that the other possibility, that is, the European origin of the Aryans--is more plausible, at least from the standpoint of methodology.

This objection on the part of an English scholar did not even produce an echo for many years, and it seemed to be looked upon simply as a manifestation of that fondness for eccentricity which we a wont to ascribe to his nationality. He repeated his protest in 1862, but it still took five years before it appeared to have made any impression. In 1867, the celebrated linguist Whitney came out, not to defend Latham's theory that Europe is the cradle of the Aryan race, but simply to clear away the widely spread error that the science of languages had demonstrated the Asiatic origin of the Aryans. As already indicated, it was especially Adolphe Pictet who had given the first impetus to this illusion in his great work Origines indo-curopeennes. Already, before Whitney, the Germans Weber and Kuhn had, without attacking the Asiatic hypothesis, shown that most of Pictet's arguments failed to prove that for which they were intended. Whitney now came and refuted them all without exception, and at the same time he attacked the assumption made by Rhode, and until that time universally accepted, that a record of an Aryan emigration from the highlands of Central Asia was to be found in that chapter of Avesta which speaks of the sixteen lands created by Ormuzd for the good of man, but which Ahriman destroyed by sixteen different plagues. Avesta does not with a single word indicate that the first of these lands which Ahriman destroyed with snow and frost is to be regarded as the original home of the Iranians, or that they ever in the past emigrated from any of them. The assumption that a migration record of historical value conceals itself within this geographical mythological sketch is a mere conjecture, and yet it was made the very basis of the hypothesis so confidently built upon for years about Central Asia as the starting-point of the Aryans.

The following year, 1868, a prominent German linguist--Mr. Benfey--came forward and definitely took Latham's side. He remarked at the outset that hitherto geological investigations had found the oldest traces of human existence in the soil of Europe, and that, so long as this is the case, there is no scientific fact which can admit the assumption that the present European stock has immigrated from Asia after the quaternary period. The mother-tongues of many of the dialects which from time immemorial have been spoken in Europe may just as well have originated on this continent as the mother-tongues of the Mongolian dialects now spoken in Eastern Asia have originated where the descendants now dwell. That the Aryan mother-tongue originated in Europe, not in Asia, Benfey found probably on the following grounds: In Asia, lions are found even at the present time as far to the north as ancient Assyria, and the tigers make depredations over the highlands of Western Iran, even to the coasts of the Caspian Sea. These great beasts of prey are known and named even among Asiatic people who dwell north of their habitats. If, therefore, the ancient Aryans had lived in a country visited by these animals, or if they had lived in a country visited by these animals, or if they had been in their neighbours, they certainly would have had names for them; but we find that the Aryan Hindoos call the lion by a word not formed from an Aryan root, and that the Aryan Greeks borrowed the word lion (lis, leon) from a Semitic language. (There is, however, division of opinion on this point.) Moreover, the Aryan languages have borrowed the word camel, by which the chief beast of burden in Asia is called. The home of this animal is Baktria, or precisely that part of Central Asia in the vicinity of which an effort has been mad to locate the cradle of the Aryan tongue. Benfey thinks the ancient Aryan country has been situated in Europe, north of the Black Sea, between the mouth of the Danube and the Caspian Sea.

Since the presentation of this argument, several defenders of the European hypothesis have come forward, among them Geiger, Cuno, Friedr. Müller, Spiegel, Posche, and more recently Schrader and Penka. Schrader's work, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, contains an excellent general review of the history of the question, original contributions to its solution, and a critical but cautious opinion in regard to its present position. In France, too, the European hypothesis has found many adherents. Geiger found indeed, that the cradle of the Aryan race was to be looked for much farther to the west than Benfey and others supposed. His hypothesis, based on the evidence furnished by the geography of plants, places the ancient Aryan land in Germany. The cautious Schrader, who dislikes to deal with conjectures, regards the question as undecided, but he weighs the arguments presented by the various sides, and reaches the conclusion that those in favour of the European origin of the Aryans are the stronger, but that they are not conclusive. Schrader himself, through his linguistic and historical investigations, has been led to believe that the Aryans, while they were still one people, belonged to the stone age, and had not yet become acquainted with the use of metals.

THE ARYAN LAND OF EUROPE

On one point--and that is for our purpose the most important one--the advocates of both hypotheses have approached each other. The leaders of the defenders of the Asiatic hypothesis have ceased to regard Asia as the cradle of all the dialects into which the ancient Aryan tongue has been divided. While they cling to the theory that the Aryan inhabitants of Europe have immigrated from Asia, they have well-nigh entirely ceased to claim that these peoples, already before their departure from their Eastern home, were so distinctly divided linguistically that it was necessary to imagine certain branches of the race speaking Celtic, others Teutonic, others, again, Greco-Italian, even before they came to Europe. The prevailing opinion among the advocates of the Asiatic hypothesis now doubtless is, that the Aryans who immigrated to Europe formed one homogeneous mass, which gradually on our continent divided itself definitely into Celts, Teutons, Slavs, and Greco-Italians. The adherents of both hypotheses have thus been able to agree that there has been a European-Aryan country. And the question as to where it was located is of the most vital importance, as it is closely connected with the question of the original home of the Teutons, since the ancestors of the Teutons must have inhabited this ancient European-Aryan country.

Philology has attempted to answer the former question by comparing all the words of all the Aryan-European languages. The attempt has many obstacles to overcome; for, as Schrader has remarked, the ancient words which to-day are common to all or several of these languages are presumably a mere remnant of the ancient European-Aryan vocabulary. Nevertheless, it is possible to arrive at important results in this manner, if we draw conclusions from the words that remain, but take care not to draw conclusions from what is wanting.

The view gained in this manner is, briefly stated, as follows:

The Aryan country in Europe has been situated in latitudes where snow and ice are common phenomena. The people who have emigrated thence to more southern climes have not forgotten either the one or the other name of those phenomena. To a comparatively northern latitude points also the circumstance that the ancient European Aryans recognised only three seasons--winter, spring, and summer. This division of the year continued among the Teutons even in the days of Tacitus. For autumn they had no name.

Many words for mountains, valley, streams, and brooks common to all the languages show that the European-Aryan land was not wanting in elevations, rocks, and flowing waters. Nor has it been a treeless plain. This is proven by many names of trees. The trees are fir, birch, willow, elm, elder, hazel, and a beech called bhaga, which means a tree with eatable fruit. From this word bhaga is derived the Greek phegos, the Latin fagus, the German Buche, and the Swedish bok. But it is a remarkable fact that the Greeks did not call the beech but the oak phegos, while the Romans called the beech fagus. From this we conclude that the European Aryans applied the word bhaga both to the beech and the oak, since both bear similar fruit; but in some parts of the country the name was particularly applied to the beech, in others to the oak. The beech is a species of tree which gradually approaches the north. On the European continent it is not found east of a line drawn from Konigsberg across Poland and Podolia to Crimea. This leads to the conclusion that the Aryan country of Europe must to a great extent have been situated west of this line, and that the regions inhabited by the ancestors of the Romans, and north of them by the progenitors of the Teutons, must be looked for west of this botanical line, and between the Alps and the North Sea.

Linguistic comparisons also show that the Aryan territory of Europe was situated near an ocean or large body of water. Scandinavians, Germans, Celts, and Romans have preserved a common name for the ocean--the Old Norse mar, the Old High German mari, the Latin mare. The names of certain sea-animals are also common to various Aryan languages. The Swedish hummer (lobster) corresponds to the Greek kamaros, and the Swedish sal to the Greek selachos.

In the Aryan country of Europe there were domestic animals--cows, sheep, and goats. The horse was also known, but it is uncertain whether it was used for riding or driving, or simply valued on account of its flesh and milk. On the other hand, the ass was not known, its domain being particularly the plains of Central Asia.

The European Aryans must have cultivated at least one, perhaps two kinds of grain; also flax, the name of which is preserved in the Greek linon (linen), the Latin linum, and in other languages.

The Aryans knew the art of brewing mead from honey. That they also understood the art of drinking it even to excess may be taken for granted. This drink was dear to the hearts on the ancient Aryans, and its name has been faithfully preserved both by the tribes that settled near the Ganges, and by those who emigrated to Great Britain. The Brahmin by the Ganges still knows this beverage as madhu, the Welchman has known it as medu, the Lithuanian as medus; and when the Greek Aryans came to Southern Europe and became acquainted with wine, they gave it the name of mead (methu).

It is not probable that the European Aryans knew bronze or iron, or, if they did know any of the metals, had any large quantity or made any daily use of them, so long as they linguistically formed one homogeneous body, and lived in that part of Europe which we here call the Aryan domain. The only common name for metal is that which we find in the Latin aes (copper), in the Gothic aiz, and in the Hindooic ayas. As is known, the Latin aes, like the Gothic aiz, means both copper and bronze. That the word originally meant copper, and afterwards came to signify bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin, seems to be a matter of course, and that it was applied only to copper and not to bronze among the ancient Aryans seems clear not only because a common name for tin is wanting, but also for the far better and remarkable reason particularly pointed out by Schrader, that all the Aryan European languages, even those which are nearest akin to each other and are each other's neighbours, lack a common word for the tools of a smith and the inventory of a forge, and also for the various kinds of weapons of defense and attack. Most of all does it astonish us, that in respect to weapons the dissimilarity of names is so complete in Greek and Roman tongues. Despite this fact, the ancient Aryans have certainly used various kinds of weapons--the club, the hammer, the axe, the knife, the spear, and the crossbow. All these weapons are of such a character that they could be made of stone, wood, and horn. Things more easily change names when the older materials of which they were made give place to new hitherto unknown materials. It is, therefore, probable that the European Aryans were in the stone age, and at best were acquainted with copper before and during the period when their language was divided into several dialects.

Where then, on our continent was the home of this Aryan European people in the stone age? Southern Europe, with its peninsulas extending into the Mediterranean, must doubtless have been outside of the boundaries of the Aryan land of Europe. The Greek Aryans have immigrated to Hellas, and the Italian Aryans are immigrants to the Italian peninsula. Spain has even within historical times been inhabited by Iberians and Basques, and Basques dwell there at present: If, as the linguistic monuments seem to prove, the European Aryans lived near an ocean, this cannot have been the Mediterranean Sea. There remain the Black and Caspian Sea on the one hand, the Baltic and the North Sea on the other. But if, as the linguistic monuments likewise seem to prove, the European Aryans for a great part, at least, lived west of a botanical line indicated by the beech in a country producing fir, oak, elm, and elder, then they could not have been limited to the treeless plains which extend along the Black Sea from the mouth of the Danube, through Dobrudscha, Bessarabia, and Cherson, past the Crimea. Students of early Greek history do not any longer assume that the Hellenic immigrants found their way through these countries to Greece, but that they came from the north-west and followed the Adriatic down to Epirus; in other words, they came the same way as the Visigoths under Alarik, and the Eastgoths under Theodoric in later times. Even the Latin tribes came from the north. The migrations of the Celts, so far as history sheds any light on the subject, were from the north and west toward the south and east. The movements of the Teutonic races were from north to south, and they migrated both eastward and westward. Both prehistoric and historic facts thus tend to establish the theory that the Aryan domain in Europe, within undefinable limits, comprised the central and north part of Europe; and as one or more seas were known to these Aryans, we cannot exclude from the limits of this knowledge the ocean penetrating the north of Europe from the west.

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