[237] Compare with Gainet, i. 92, 93.
[238] “Now it is clear that the train of thought which leads from purification to penance, or from purification to punishment, reveals a moral and even a religious sentiment in the conception and naming of pœna, and it shows us that in the very infancy of criminal justice punishment was looked upon (Mr Max Müller is speaking with reference to what I may call briefly the Sanscrit epoch) not simply a retribution or revenge, but as a correction, as a removal of guilt. We do not feel the presence of these early thoughts when we speak of corporal punishment or castigation; yet castigation too was originally chastening, from ‘castus,’ pure; and ‘incestum’ was impurity or sin, which, according to Roman law, the priests had to make good, or to punish by a ‘supplicium,’ or supplication or prostration before the gods.”
[239] Compare with Max Müller, “Chips,” ii. 256.
[240] Vide chapter on Savage Life in “Pre-historic Times.”
[241] It may perhaps be doubtful to what extent Sir J. Lubbock maintains his theory of a Stone Age; although Sir John formally excludes China and Japan from the argument, he nevertheless appears to me to assume the existence of universal transitional periods through which the human race necessarily passed. “It would appear that pre-historic archæology may be divided into four great epochs. Firstly, that of the Drift: when man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, &c. This we may call the ‘palæolithic period.’ Secondly, the later or polished Stone Age; a period, &c. Thirdly, the Bronze Age, &c. Fourthly, the Iron Age.” Sir John adds, certainly—“In order to prevent misapprehension, it may be well to state at once, that for the present I only apply this classification to Europe, though in all probability it might be extended also to the neighbouring parts of Asia and Africa. As regards other civilised countries, China and Japan for instance, we as yet know nothing of their pre-historic archæology. [I should rather say, as we as yet have no reason to suppose that they have ever lost the knowledge of metals.] It is evident also that some nations, such as the Fuegians, Andamaners, &c., are even now only in an age of stone. But even in this limited sense, the above classification has not met with general acceptance; there are still some archæologists who believe that the arms and implements—stone, bronze, and iron—were used contemporaneously.”—Pre-historic Times, pp. 2, 3. I think that the concluding sentence makes it quite clear that Sir John assumes the existence of universal progressive periods as above. In any case it may be proved in this way. Sir John argues upon the hypothesis of the unity of the human race; and I also think that he will not refuse the unbroken testimony to the fact of the civilisation of Europe from Asia. Either, then, the first colonisation took place when Asia was in the state of the “Drift,” or in the “later polished Stone Age,” or else the migration left Asia with the knowledge of bronze or iron. On the latter supposition the argument I contend for is conceded, and original civilisation and subsequent degeneracy is established. To escape this alternative the universality of a Stone Age in Asia as well as in Europe, must be proved or assumed. This assumption I maintain is essential to Sir John’s argument.
[242] Wilson (“Archæologia of Scotland,” 360) says, “But after all it is to Asia we are forced to return for the true source of nearly all our primitive arts, nor will the canons of archæology be established on a safe foundation till the antiquities of that older continent have been explored and classified.” Not only bronze but iron has been found in the East in use at an early period (vide Layard, “Nineveh and Babylon,” 178–9, 194). At Nimroud, Dr Percy (id. 670) says the iron was used to economise the bronze; if so it must have been cheaper, and therefore probably more abundant; and he is of opinion that “iron was more extensively used by the ancients than seems to be generally admitted.” Philology seems also to establish an early common knowledge, and subsequent tradition of the use of metals. Mr Max Müller (ii. 45) says, “That the value and usefulness of some of the metals was known before the separation of the Aryan race can be proved only by a few words; for the names of most of the metals differ in different countries. Yet there can be no doubt that iron was known, and its value appreciated, whether for defence or attack. Whatever its old Aryan name may have been, it is clear that Sanscrit ‘ayas,’ Latin ‘ahes,’ in ‘ahencus’ and even the contracted form ‘æs, æris’; the Gothic ‘ais,’ the old German ‘er,’ and the English iron, are names cast in the same mould, and only slightly corroded even now by the rust of so many centuries.” The Swedish Gothic race had no tradition but of weapons of iron. (Professor Nillson’s “Stone Age,” p. 192.) I find in Captain Cook’s Voyages that in Otaheite their word for iron is “eure-eure.” Germans (apud Tacitus) called their iron lances “framea,” which has great resemblance to ferrum. (Vide Wilson, 195.) The following passage from Wilson’s “Archæologia” seems to prove this common terminology still more extensively—“The Saxon ‘gold’ differs not more essentially from the Greek ‘χρυσος’ than from the Latin ‘aurum’; iron from ‘σιδερος’ or ‘ferrum’; but when we come to examine the Celtic names of the metals it is otherwise. The Celtic terms are: Gold: Gael, ‘or,’ golden, ‘orail’; Welsh, ‘aur’; Latin, ‘ aurum.’ Silver: Gael, ‘airgiod,’ made of silver, ‘airgiodach’; Welsh, ‘ariant’; Latin, ‘argentum’—derived in the Celtic from ‘arg,’ white, or milk, like the Greek ‘ἀργος,’ whence they also formed their ‘ἀργυρος.’ Now, is it improbable that the Latin ‘ferrum’ and the English ‘iron’ spring indirectly from the same Celtic root? Gael, ‘iarunn’; Welsh, ‘haiarn’; Saxon, iron; Danish, ‘iern’; Spanish, ‘hierro,’ which last furnishes no remote approximation to ‘ferrum.’ Nor with the older metals is it greatly different, as bronze, Gael, ‘umha’ or ‘prais’; Welsh, ‘pres,’ whence our English ‘brass,’ a name bearing no very indistinct resemblance to the Roman ‘æs.’ Lead in like manner has its peculiar Gaelic name ‘luaidha,’ like the Saxon ‘læd’ (lead), while the Welsh ‘plwm’ closely approximates to the Latin ‘plumbum.’ It may undoubtedly be argued that the Latin is the root instead of the offshoot of these Celtic names, but the entire archæological proofs are opposed to this idea,” p. 350.
Sir J. Lubbock, “Pre-historic Times” (p. 372) says, “The tools of the Tahitians when first discovered were made of stone, bone, shell, or wood. Of metal they had no idea. When they first obtained nails they mistook them for the young shoots of some very hard wood, and hoping that life might not be quite extinct, planted a number of them carefully in their gardens.”
Captain Wallis, however, speaking of the islands within the Polynesian group, remarks “as an extraordinary circumstance that although no sort of metal was seen on any of the lately discovered islands, yet the nations were no sooner possessed of a piece of iron, than they began to sharpen it, but did not treat copper or brass in the same manner.”—“Voyages of English Navigators round the World,” iii. 108.
Would not these different appreciations of iron and brass be accounted for if we suppose iron to be the last metal they had been traditionally acquainted with? iron being the more common and inexpensive metal.
[243] “Mr Vaux of the British Museum has added the following interesting note on the metallurgy of the ancients. 1st, The earliest form of metal work appears to have been employed in the ornamentation of sacred vessels for temples, &c.... Occasionally the floor or foundation of some temples was of brass: thus χαλκεος οῡδὸς (Soph. Œd. Col.), perhaps like the room at Delphi called λαϊνος οῡδὸς, itself also a treasury.”—Layard, “Nineveh and Babylon,” p. 673.