[42.]
It strikes me, my dearest M., that we should be more correct in christening your essay Arian, instead of Iranian. I have always used Iranian as synonymous with Indo-Germanic (which [pg 430] expresses too much and too little) or (which is really a senseless name) Indo-European: Arian for the languages of Aria in the wider sense, for which Bactria may well have been the starting-point. Don't you think we may use Arian, when you confine yourself to Sanskrit, Zend, and Parsi?
I get more and more angry at L.'s perverseness in doubting that the Persians are Aryans. One cannot trace foreign words in Persian, and just these it must have carried off as a stigma, if there were any truth in the thing. One sees it in Pehlevi. But then, what Semitic forms has Persian? The curious position of the words in the status constructus is very striking. Yet you have explained that. Where, then, are the Aramœisms in the Achæmenian Inscriptions, which surely are Persian in the strictest sense? Earlier the Persians may have been tormented by the Turanians, and even subjugated; but the Babylonian rule of Shemites over Persia cannot be of old date. About 2200 B. C., on the contrary, the Bactrians conquered Babylon, and kept it for a long time. But would not totally different corruptions have appeared in Persian, if they had allowed their language to be so entirely ruined? A corruption, and then a later purification through the Medes, sounds Quixotic. Will you not prove this point?
If you can give some chronological landmarks for the epoch of the Veda dialect, pray do so. There is so much in Lassen, that one learns nothing. I fancied the age of the Mahâbhârata and Râmâyana epoch was tolerably settled, and that thus a firm footing had been gained, as the language is that of the same people and the same religion. If you can say anything in the language-chapter about the genealogy of the mythological ideas it would be delightful for you to take possession of it, without encroaching on your own future explanations. And so good luck to you!
[43.]
Your hearty and affectionate words for my birthday added to the happiness of the day, which I spent here in the quiet of the country, with my family. I have long looked on you as one of us; and when I look forward into the future, I see your form as one of the bright points which there present themselves to me. You groan now under the burden of a very heavy mountain, [pg 431] which you have taken on your shoulders as others would take a block; only the further you advance, the more will you be satisfied that it is a part of the edifice which you will yet find time to finish; and at the same time it will stand by itself as a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί.
George is well, and will be with us to-morrow week; Theodora a week later.
Place your essay where you will. I find the connection with the Gothic by means of “Grimm's Law” most natural. The foundation of my arrangement was the purely external idea of progression from the nearer to the more remote,—from the known to the unknown. I hope that next time Aufrecht's muse will give us an intermediate chapter on the Hellenes, Pelasgians, Thracians, Æolians, Dorians, and Ionians; it is curious enough that these are entirely passed over. I do not know, though, what positive facts have resulted up to now from comparative philology as regards the Hellenic element. An historical insight is needed here, such as Ottfried Müller had just begun to acquire when death robbed us of his noble mind. But Müller really understood nothing of comparative philology, as the Introduction to his Etruscans proves. The Pelasgians must have been a nearly connected people; the Thracians were certainly so. But from the north comes Hellas, and from Hellas the Ionian Asia Minor. However, the history of the language falls infinitely earlier than the present narrow chronologists fancy. The Trojan War, that is the struggle of the Æolian settlers with the Pelasgians, on and around the sea-coast, lies nearer 2000 than 1000 B. C. The synchronisms require it. It is just the same with Crete and Minos, where the early Phœnician period is out of all proportion older than people imagine. Had we but monuments of Greek, like the Fratres Arvales in Latin! Homer is so modern; even though he certainly belongs to the tenth or eleventh century. That was a time in which the Hellenic mind sang the history of the creation in the deep myth of Prometheus, the son of Iapetos, with his three brothers, the emblem of humanity; a poem which Homer no longer understood.
Now cheer up, my dearest friend. The book must come out.
Truly and cheerfully yours.