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English Pages [28] Year 1861
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ON THE ARYAN, OE INDO-GERMANIC THEORY.
A
THEORY which had its origin in Germany, and which has since had a wide acceptance among the learned in other parts of Europe, makes all the nations and tribes, from the eastern limits of Bengal to the western shores of Europe, to be of one and the same race of mankind, the onlymaterial exceptions being the Arabs, Jews, ancj other people speaking
cognate languages.
founded on a supposed essential conformity of
It is
language among the diverse people to physical
whom
it
form or intellectual capacity.
embraces, without regard
I entertain great doubts
of
the soundness of this theory, and propose in the present paper to state
my
objections to
The
and ingenious
work
I
it.
theory, in its ripest state,
shall
Orientalist,
endeavour
is
Professor
to give
most
fully described
Max
by the learned
Muller, and from his recent
a sketch of
it.
The term Aryan is who
derived from Aryana, the supposed parent country of the people
spoke the Sanskrit language, and
this
word
the root Ar, which signifies " to plough or
was an agricultural one.
beyond
all
;
till,"
be derived from
implying that the nation
branches of this people, at a time far
history or even tradition, are imagined to have migrated, the
one south-east, to dustan
Two
itself is said to
civilize
and
in a great measure,
and the other north-west,
to
even
perform the
Europe and the countries of Western Asia.
to
people Hin-
same
office
for
Before these migrations,
the theory asserts that there were no Hindus in India, and no Greeks, Italians^
Germans, Sclavonians, or Celts
in
Europe.
Before the invasion
of the Aryans, India and Europe, the hypothesis assumes to have been
peopled by savages or barbarians, such as we find at present in the
mountainous regions of Hindustan.
The
original language of the people
supposed
to
have played so great a part over so large a portion of the
globe has been preserved in India only, where
a dead tongue, telling even it
mummy
than does an Egyptian
it
has been immemorially
less of the history of the
people
who spoke
of the history of ancient Egypt.
of this strange history the Sanskrit language, although con-
Now
taining abundant ancient written records,
word Sanskrit
itself is
tells
The very
us nothing.
a factitious one, and not, as in almost every other
case, whether with Oriental or European nations, ancient as well as modern, derived from the name of the people who spoke it, or of the
country in which
it
was spoken.
perfect," a definition obviously
country of the people of
names of
and more especially
The
simply signifies " adorned, completed,
make no
Its writings
tion of grammarians.
trary, the
It
showing that the word
whom
it
heroes, gods,
was the living tongue
mere
crea-
:
on the con-
to Hindustan,
and places are confined
to the north-western portion of
derivation both of the
the
is
reference to the parent
it.
word Sanskrit and Aryana
suspect,
is, I
amenable to the charge which Niebour makes against similar Greek and Roman etymologies. *' Names of countries were always formed in antiquity, as .
.
by the Germans afterwards from the name of the people."
" Nor
.
is it
to be explained, except
from that unspeakable
spirit
came over the most sagacious Greeks and Romans the moment they meddled with etymology, how any one could stumble on the notion of interpreting a name out of itself." of absurdity which always
Notwithstanding the
total
absence of
parent country of the people, of the great probability
from the north-west
is
whom
all
were not an Indian nation, but came
that they
and intermixing with the
would become a result
is
evidence of the
— the region which we know, from authentic
history,
people than the
latter, they, as the
smaller element, it.
Such
and what has really taken place everywhere.
The
absorbed by, and undistinguishable from
in time
inevitable,
A
fairer
has always supplied the conquerors of India. natives,
reliable
Sanskrit was the mother tongue,
Turkish conquerors of India are at present hardly distinguishable from the Hindus, and the Arabic blood
is
not distinguishable in the Persians
or the people of Southern Spain.
We discover, however, from certain
hymns,
that, for
the most ancient of the Sanskrit writings,
some time
after the arrival of the strangers, or
speakers of the Sanskrit in India, their social condition was wholly different
from what
it
is
known
authentic history, and from what infer that the
Hindu
to have
it is
been within the period of
at the present
religion, with its castes
day
;
and hence we
and other singularities, was
formed
in
Northern India, from which, with various modifications,
it
was
disseminated east as far as China, and south as far as Ceylon and the
remotest islands of the Indian Ocean, as
we
influence constantly diminishing
its
recede from the parent country of Hinduism, the upper valleys of
the Ganges, the Jumna, and the five rivers which ultimately
become the
Hindu
institutions
Indus.
It is in the region thus described that the
are
still
the most complete, and,
all
its
attributes, has, in reality,
Hindu
the genuine
A to
it
may
be added, that Hinduism, with
never extended beyond Hindustan and
race of man.
crowd of objections against the Aryan theory must,
any impartial
inquirer,
and
I think,
enumerate a few of them.
I will
occur
The
very name of the people implies that they were agricultural, which equivalent to a home-keeping nation. civilization,
This, indeed, as
they ought to have been,
if
implies
is
some
they were the instruments by
which the rude people of the lands they invaded were are, however, said to
it
civilized.
They
have been nomadic, or wandering, which, indeed,
would be indispensable
to enable
one branch of them
to
have migrated
eastward as far as Bengal, and another north and west, to the shores of
—
Spain and Britain.
The
cultural people they
would not have undertaken distant migrations
alternative
is
obvious;
they were an agri-
if
;
if
a roving one, they would themselves be barbarians, incapable of civilising the tribes they conquered.
A
palpable objection to the theory consists in
its
comprehending a
great variety of the races of man, differing from each other in physical
form and intellectual capacity.
Some
are black, like the majority
of pure Hindus; some brown, like the Persians and Turks, and some
very
fair,
Some
like the Scandinavians.
are of weakly frame, as the
numerous people who speak the language of Bengal comparison, robust, like the people of Europe first
in
mere
bulk, weight
superior mental endowment.
;
—the
and physical strength,
Some,
like
many
while others are, in
exceeding the
last
to say nothing of
of the people of Europe,
are in rapid progress of improvement, and, within the historical period, have
advanced from the savage like the
after
making a
tionary,
state to the highest civilization
;
whilst others,
Hindus and the principal nations of Central and Western Asia, certain precocious advance, continue afterwards nearly sta-
making
less
progress in a thousand years' time than the people
of Europe in a hundred.
by geographical or
Some
races,
not apparently more favoured
local position than others, are so superior in bodily
strength and mental endowment, that a mere handful of them suffices to
hold in subjection
many
millions,
whom
the theory supposes to be of
Thus
one and the same blood with themselves.
it
is
we
that
ourselves
have, within a century's time, subdued, not only the Hindus, but the
descendants of those who had subdued the Hindus.
Now,
as far as authentic history carries us, no physical change has
man
taken place in any race of
men grown a race
is
such as the theory here supposes to have
know
In no time that we
taken place.
men grown
white, or white
pure and unmixed,
to
The
now
millions of negroes
people of the African nations from
and migration of
nations,
test of race, for
lible
very
is
to
whom
they sprang.
far
indeed from being always an infal-
Hebrew,
for example, has, for
above
be the spoken language of the Jews.
In
own country they once spoke Greek, and they now speak Arabic.
Some two thousand
years ago three distinct native idioms were spoken
may
in France, exclusive of such as it
same country,
races have lost their original tongues and
adopted those of opposite races.
their
existing in the
often of great value in tracing the history
many
two thousand years, ceased
diflfer
day of Arragon and
be distinguished in form from the
for almost as long a time, are not to
But language, although
The descendants
America 350 years ago, do not
in physical form from their brethren of the present
Andalusia.
So long as
black or swarthy.
continues unaltered.
it
who migrated
of the Spaniards,
have black, or even swarthy,
of,
have prevailed in that portion of
which, at the time, had been conquered by the Romans.
exception of two small
relics,
these have been supplanted
With the
by a tongue of
Nearly the same revolution has taken place over the
Italian origin.
whole Iberian Peninsula.
In our
own
two exceptions, a
Islands, with
language of Teutonic origin has superseded the Celtic tongues, which
were spoken fourteen centuries back. In America, the millions of Africans
who have been have
some of the
transported to
it
within the brief period of three centuries
lost all their native tongues, while
Italian origin
Roman conquests
languages, some of
German and
In
Italy, before
have been substituted
for
at least, half-a-dozen native
them.
languages were spoken,
but in the course of time one of these came to supplant
The assumption
—
that
is,
that
it
of the
Aryan theory
that India
all
the rest.
was without Hindus
was without other inhabitants than a few barbarous
mountaineers, whose descendants
still
exist
— seems sufficiently refuted by
the broad, undeniable fact that the civilized natives of
speak several distinct languages, which are
now
well
its
southern portion
known not
to
be of
Sanskrit origin, and into the composition of which Sanskrit enters only in the
same manner
in
which Arabic enters into Persian, Turkish, and Spanish;
Persian into the languages of India, and Latin into the Celtic tongues-
Mr
Caldwell, the learned author of the
Grammar,' a believer too clusion on this subject:
in the
Aryan
'
Dravidian Comparative
theory, comes to the following con-
— "The evidence
not only decidedly opposed
is
to the supposition that the Dravidian languages are derived
Sanskrit, but
from the
equally inconsistent with the supposition of the connexion
is
of those languages with the family to which the Sanskrit belongs, either as a
member
Of
of the family, or even as a remote offshoot."
the
Southern languages, here called collectively Dravidian, there are no fewer than nine, four of them cultivated tongues, written in at least three distinct alphabets, all of
which
differ
from the character
in
which Sanskrit
The author of the Grammar estimates the people speaking them, and who in physical form and mental endowment differ no more hardly, indeed, so much from the Hindus of the north than Spaniards and Italians do from Germans and Russians, at 32,000,000. usually written.
is
—
—
This numerous population, then, must be at once struck
numbers imagined While there
to
this
is
off
from the
speak the supposed Aryan languages. exception to the East,
we have
one in
at least
Europe, the Basque, spoken by an European people, and which the
Baron William Humboldt has proved
careful examination of
to
have no
words or structure with the Sanskrit or with any other dead or
affinity in
living language of
Europe or of Asia.
The theory which would make identity of race
is
similarity of language equivalent to
founded on a supposed correspondence of words and
grammatical structure.
If the object in
view be
to
prove that
all
the
languages of the world are derived from one parent tongue, the theory cannot, of course, apply to monosyllabic tongues, for in these there are
no tangible points its
for
examination and therefore, there
is
excluded from
operation the languages of half the inhabitants of the globe.
can
it
apply to the
many tongues
these, while the grammatical structure totally differ.
This
is
the
more
Red man
of the is
Neither
of America, for in
essentially the same, the
striking, since the race of
man
words is
the
same nearly throughout the whole continent.
M. Bopp, *'
The
the highest authority
describes
theory,
relations
the
process
one who
casts a glance at
is,
subject "
is
the advocates of the the inquiry
of the ancient Indian languages
kindred," says he, " are, in
facility
among
by which
fact, so
to
is
their
Aryan
conducted.
European
palpable as to be obvious to every
them, even from a distance."
This promised
however, forthwith contradicted by an assurance that the so concealed, so deeply implicated in the most secret passages
of the organization of a language, that
we
are compelled to consider
every other tongue subjected
to a
comparison with
from new stations of observation, and
itself,
powers of grammatical science and method illustrate the original unity of the different
tion, then, instead of
language
in order to recognise
The
and
investiga-
being an easy and obvious one, turns out to be one
consequence, amenable to chief
as also the
employ the highest
grammars."
much
of great difficulty, demanding the exercise of
The
it,
to
much
means resorted
ingenuity, and, as a
speculation, conjecture, and uncertainty.
to for tracing the
supposed derivative lan-
to Sanskrit as their source, consists in the well-ascertained prin-
guages
ciple of the
organic
Such commutations, as applicable
commutations of sounds.
most frequent in consonants of the same
to languages generally, are class, as
one
one nasal, for another
labial or
labial or
another
nasal, or in the substitution of a broad for a slender vowel, or the converse.
The
actual changes, however, are
for there is hardly
by no means confined
to such sounds,
one consonant or vowel in the wide range of language
which, in the transfer of the words of one tongue into another, has not
been exchanged, so that a
manipulator has a very wide
skilful
field
The changes which, undergone, appear to me to be so great,
indeed for the exercise of his fancy and ingenuity. in practice,
and often
words have actually
so capricious, that
it
seems utterly impossible
The
ject under general rules.
alterations
are,
complete, that the derived word can only be traced to identity of to
which
A
belongs.
few examples
ferro
;
by the
source
its
meaning, and by the ascertained history of the language
a son, folium a
filius
and
it
its
to bring the sub-
indeed, frequently so
in
may be
loaf,
French,
given in
illustration.
and ferrum iron, become, feuille,
fils,
and hierro, the pronunciation in
and
fer
and in Spanish,
;
these cases being
all
from the original words than the orthography. derivative words bear
more
The Latin
words,
in Italian, figlio, foglio,
still
hijo, hoja,
more remote
In these instances the
or less resemblance to their originals, but
abundant examples occur where, although the etymology be undoubted, there
is
hardly any resemblanceat all in form.
Of this the Spanish language
Thus, aguja, a needle, comes from
affords
some very striking examples.
acus
andar, to go or walk, from ambulare
;
turbare
;
bafio,
a bath, from balneum
dedo, a finger, from digitus
January, from Januarius
;
;
;
an
infant,
thirst,
;
from
vow
>
enero,
engano, fraud, fromingenium; hambre, hunger,
from minimus
from oculus; sed,
azor, to be agitated,
echar, to throw or cast, from jactare
from fames; hembra, a female, from femina; nifio,
;
boda, marriage, from votum, a
;
from
oir, to hear, sitis;
clave, a key,
from audire
sieste, a siesta,
;
from
clavis;
ojo, the eye,
from sexta hora;
;;
sobaco, the arm-pit, from sub brachium
a mare, from equa
;
una, a nail, from unguis
yoma, a bud, from
;
gemma
;
ye