I. Of these families, the noblest and most widely spread is the Indo-European, or as it is now more generally called, the Arian family. Neither of these names is entirely[238] unobjectionable, though either of them is preferable to the term Indo-Germanic, which is now abandoned as wholly inaccurate. The name Indo-European marks the geographical extent of these languages, but it is inconvenient, and not quite wide enough. The name Arian was given them because the ancestors of the people who spoke them are supposed to have called themselves “Arya,”[239] or nobly-born. This name is now generally adopted, and M. Pictet, one of the profoundest of modern comparative philologists, has called his most recent work, “Les Origines Indo-Européennes ou les Aryas Primitifs.” But although this term Arya is of frequent occurrence in the later Sanskrit literature, and was also familiar to the Persians, the traces of it among the other branches of the race are few and dubious; they are but very “faint[240] echoes,” if echoes at all, “of a name which once sounded through the valleys of the Himâlaya.” Still it is not likely that this name will now be superseded, as Rask’s term Japhetic involves an unwarrantable assumption; and the name Pataric (derived from Patar, the Sanskrit “pitar,” a father), which has been recently suggested,[241] is not likely to gain ground.
The Arian family comprises eight divisions, the Hindu, the Persian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Sclavonic, Teutonic, and Celtic; of these it is uncertain whether the Celtic or the Sanskrit represents the oldest phase, but it is known that all of them are the daughters of a primeval form of language which has now ceased to exist, but which was spoken by a yet-undivided race at a period when Sanskrit and Greek had, as yet, only an implicit existence. “It is,” says M. Renan,[242] “the noblest conquest of comparative philology to have enabled us to cast a bold glance over this primitive Arian period, when the whole germ of the world’s civilisation was concentrated in one straight ray. Just as the Romance dialects are all derived from a language which was once spoken by a small tribe on the banks of the Tiber; so the Indo-European languages presuppose a language spoken in a very narrow district. What motive, for instance, could have induced all Indo-European nations to derive the name of ‘father’ from the root ‘pa’ and the suffix ‘tri’ or ‘tar,’ if this word, in its complete shape, had not formed part of the vocabulary of the primitive Arians? What motive, above all, could have induced them, after their departure, to derive the name of ‘daughter’ from a notion so special as that of milking[243] (Sanskrit duhitri, θυγάτηρ, dochter, &c.), if this word had not deduced the reason for its form in the manners of an ancient pastoral family?” It is from considerations such as these that we prove the great fact of the Indo-European unity,—the New World now thrown open to modern scholarship. “That the Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, the very[244] existence of which was unknown to the Greeks and Romans before Alexander, and the sound of which had never reached a European ear till the close of the last century, that this language should be a scion of the same stem, whose branches overshadow the civilised world of Europe, no one would have ventured to affirm before the rise of comparative philology. It was the generally received opinion that if Greek, Latin, and German came from the east, they must be derived from the Hebrew,—an opinion for which, at the present day, not a single advocate could be found,[245] while formerly to disbelieve it would have been tantamount to heresy. No authority could have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army that their gods and their hero-ancestors were the same as those of King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins, as in the veins of the dark Bengalese. And yet there is not an English jury now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claims of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in India and in England that witnessed the first separation of the northern and southern Arians, and these are witnesses not to be shaken by any cross-examination. Though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Danes, the Greeks, the Italians, the Persians, and Hindus, were living beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.”
Comparative philology enables us to form a very probable conjecture respecting the cradle of the Arian race, and even to draw in outline a picture of their primitive civilisation. We know that this race was not indigenous in India. M. Lassen has proved that it entered India from[246] the north as an aristocratic and conquering nation, distinguished by its fair complexion from the swarthier aborigines; and a crowd of linguistic inferences converge into a proof that it sprang from the mountain-cradle of Imäus, from which neighbourhood it seems likely that the Shemites also derived their origin.
The traditions of the Arians, as well as the facts of their language, point to Bactriana, as the region in which they first appeared; central in position, temperate in climate, rich in the metals always found in mountainous countries, resembling Europe in its flora and fauna, and equally removed from tropical luxuriance and northern poverty, no other country could be found more perfectly suited for the peaceable development of the noble family which was destined to mould the character of the world.
The Arians did not appear till late in the world’s history. “The Achæmenid empire, which is the first great conquering Arian empire, is contemporary with a period when the descendants of Ham had already lost all excellence, and when China had long arrived at that degree of administrative absorption of which the Tcheou-li affords an astonishing picture, and which has so near a resemblance to absolute decrepitude. Brilliant civilisations, powerful kings, organised empires, already existed in the world at a period when our ancestors were still a race of poor and ignorant peasants. And yet it was these austere patriarchs who, in the midst of their chaste and obedient families, thanks to their pride, their cultivation of right, and their noble self-respect, laid the foundation of the future. Their thoughts, their terms, were destined to become the law of the moral and intellectual world. They created those eternal words, which, with many changing shades of meaning, were destined to become ‘honour,’[247] ‘virtue,’ ‘duty.’”
In speaking thus of the apparition of a race or a language, we only mean the time at which man awoke to reflection and consciousness. The origin of language is not necessarily identical (considered scientifically) with the origin of mankind. The circumstances and conditions under which man first appeared on the face of the world is a subject for the research of the physiologist, rather than the philologist, and it is more than doubtful whether the most earnest inquiries will ever be able to draw aside the thick veil which hides the dawn of human life. In endeavouring to derive from the facts of language some conjecture as to the nucleus around which it grew, and the primitive condition of the races with whose distinctive genius it is indelibly stamped, we are not pretending to throw any light on the original appearance of the fathers of mankind.
II. Second in importance, although earlier in historical development, stands the great SEMITIC family of languages. Formerly they were called by the general name of oriental languages, and Eichhorn was, we believe, the first to give them their present designation. The name is, however, defective, since many people who spoke Semitic languages (as for instance the Phœnicians) were descended, according to Gen. x., from Ham, and several mentioned in that chapter as descendants of Shem (for instance, the Elamites), did not speak a Semitic language. But it is now generally agreed that the sense of this document is geographical, not ethnographical, and that the name of Shem is a general term to describe the central zone of the earth. Were we to name these languages, on the analogy of the word Indo-European, from their extreme terms, we must call them Syro-Arabian. Leibnitz suggested the name Arabic, but this would be to use an objectionable synecdoche, and, on the whole, the term Semitic involves no inconvenient consequences if it be considered as purely conventional.[248]
The Semitic languages have been destined to exercise a stupendous influence over the religious thought of mankind. Almost unconscious of science and philosophy, this theocratic race has devoted itself to the expression of religious instincts and intuitions,—in one word, to the establishment of Monotheism. The three most widely spread and enduring forms of belief originated in the bosom of this family. They were essentially the people of God, and to them belong, par excellence, the psalm, and the proverb, and the prophecy,—the words of the wise, and their dark sayings upon the harp. Clear but narrow in their conceptions, marked by their subjective character, and capable of understanding unity but not multiplicity; they lacked alike the lofty spiritualism of India and Germany, the keen sense of perfect beauty which was the legacy of Greece to the new Latin nations, and the profound yet delicate sensibility which is the dominant mark of the Celtic peoples. And yet neither India nor Greece alone could have taught the world the great lesson which was connected by the Semitic race with their most imperious instincts, that there is but one God, and that religion is something more than a relative conception. Destitute of that restless spirit of inquiry which has led the sister-race to explore every nook of the universe and every secret of the mind, the highest attainment of Semitic research is to declare that the increase of knowledge is the increase of sorrow, and that the praise and service of God is the sole end and aim of life. It was a great lesson which the world could ill have spared, and it more than atoned for the absence of research, of imagination, of art, of military organisation, of public spirit, of political life: it more than atones even for an egotistic poetry and a defective conception of morality and duty.