On the Aryan or Indo-Germanic Theory

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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