In 1786 Sir William Jones had pointed out the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and Celtic, and suggested a common parentage, which was confirmed by Bopp in 1835. Unfortunately, a primitive unity of speech was held to imply a primitive unity of race.
Among the ethnological papers read at the meeting of the British Association in 1847 was one “On the Results of the recent Egyptian Researches in reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology, and the Classification of Languages,” in which Baron Bunsen sought to show that the whole of mankind could be classified according to language. In fact, it was taken for granted in 1847 that the study of comparative philology would be in future the only safe foundation for the study of anthropology.[[122]] The spread of this fallacy is usually attributed to Max Müller, whose charm of style and high reputation as a Sanskrit scholar did much to popularise the new science of philology. He invented the term “Aryan,” which in itself contains two erroneous assumptions—one linguistic, that the Indo-Iranian group of languages is older than its relatives; and the other geographical, that its “cradle” was in ancient Ariana, in Central Asia. Moreover, in his lectures he not only spoke of an Aryan language, but of an “Aryan race.” He is credited with having made “heroic reparation” for these errors when he wrote later: “To me an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar. It is worse than a Babylonian confusion of tongues—it is downright theft.” But, as he pointed out,[[123]] he himself never shared the misconception that he was accused of launching on the world. He admits that he was not entirely without blame, as he allowed himself occasionally the freedom to speak of the Aryan or the Semitic race, meaning the people who spoke Aryan or Semitic languages; but as early as 1853 he had protested against the intrusion of linguistics into ethnology, and
called, if not for a complete divorce, at least for a judicial separation between the study of Philology and the study of Ethnology.... The phonologist should collect his evidence, arrange his classes, divide and combine as if no Blumenbach had ever looked at skulls, as if no Camper had ever measured facial angles, as if no Owen had ever examined the base of a cranium. His evidence is the evidence of language, and nothing else; this he must follow, even though in the teeth of history, physical or political.... There ought to be no compromise between ethnological and phonological science. It is only by stating the glaring contradictions between the two that truth can be elicited.[[124]]
[122]. Rep. Brit. Assoc. (Cardiff), 1891, p. 787.
[123]. Rep. Brit. Assoc. (Cardiff), 1891, p. 787.
[124]. Rep. Brit. Assoc. (Cardiff), 1891, p. 787.
The protest was in vain. The belief in an “Aryan race” became an accepted fact both in linguistics and in ethnology, and its influence vitiates the work of many anthropologists even at the present day.
Naturally the question of the identity of the Aryan race was soon a subject of keen debate. The French and German schools at once assumed opposite sides, the Germans claiming that the Aryans were tall, fair, and long-headed, the ancestors of the modern Teutons; and the French, mainly on cultural evidence, claiming that the language, together with civilisation, came into Europe with the Alpine race, which forms such a large element in the modern French population.
There are two ways in which linguistics may be studied as an aid to Anthropology—first, with regard to structural analysis, by which linguistic affinities may be proved; secondly, by what has been called “linguistic palæontology,” or the study of root words, by means of which the original culture of a people may be ascertained. Philology pushed both these methods too far. It claimed the right, by proof of structural analysis, to link up the racial relationships of the European and Asiatic peoples, and, by linguistic palæontology, to determine the culture of the original “Aryans,” and to identify their original home. It was over the question of the “Aryan cradle” that they were forced to relinquish their too ambitious claims.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was generally believed that our first ancestors were created in 4004 B.C. and spoke Hebrew, and that the origin of the European languages dated from the migration of Japhet from the plains of Shinar, cir. 2247. The Asiatic origin of race and language was for long unchallenged. But in 1839 Omalius d’Halloy, followed by Latham in 1851, began to cast doubts on the Asiatic “cradle,” noting that the Asiatic languages had no real claim to be considered older than those of Europe, and that in many ways the Lithuanian and Armenian were the most archaic in the family. More important still was the work of Benfey,[[125]] who may be regarded as the originator of linguistic palæontology, and who used its evidence to shift the original dispersal from Asia to Europe. Various philologists followed, employing different methods to prove different theories; and the Aryan cradle was located in many parts of Europe and Asia, ranging from the Pamir plateau to the Baltic plains. Max Müller confessed in 1888 that “the evidence is so pliant that it is possible to make out a more or less plausible case” for almost any part of the world.