CHAPTER XII
THE ARYAN CRADLE
DURING the middle half of the nineteenth century the minds of many European savants were focussed upon what was termed the Aryan hypothesis, which was investigated with more enthusiasm than discretion by comparative philologists in England and France, and with still greater vigour in Germany. Since then the general conclusions of these mid-nineteenth century speculations have been current among politicians and journalists, who talk glibly about Teutons and Celts and Slavs, and that medley of races and peoples, who still continue to use in a modified form the speech imposed upon them by their Roman conquerors, and are therefore called the Latin race. Such terms, meaningless though they are as applied to nations, have become popular during the last half century, with disastrous results, since they have been used to emphasise certain divisions which were growing up among European peoples, and which in their turn did much to give rise to the European war, and are still retarding the Peace for which everyone is longing.
The idea was first put forward in 1786, when Sir William Jones,[424] in a communication to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, pointed out the similarities between the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German and Celtic languages, but little progress was made until in 1833–5 Bopp[425] published his comparative grammar. For the next fifty years the hypothesis grew at a great pace. The world was anxious for a scientific classification of its peoples, especially of the peoples of Europe. Men were also enquiring what had happened in this continent before early Greek legend and literature began to lift the veil. The sciences of anthropology and prehistoric archæology were in their infancy, and unable to provide answers to these questions, and the comparative philologists, from the evidence of language alone, were prepared to give full and most detailed explanations.
Thus arose the Aryan hypothesis, forced upon an eagerly inquiring public with great enthusiasm and complete, or almost complete, agreement. But during the eighties rifts appeared to disturb this harmony, anthropology and archæology began to claim a hearing, and to disagree with the conclusions of philology. By 1890 the philological enthusiasm died out, at least in this country and in France, though for a time it lingered on in Germany. All those acquainted with the subject felt that the question needed reconsideration, partly in the light of more accurate philological study, and especially having regard to the newer evidence being produced in such quantities by the sciences of anthropology and prehistoric archæology. The general public, however, continued to talk and to write, with more confidence than before, of Teutons, Celts, Slavs and the Latin races.
A word as to the term Aryan. When it was found that Sanskrit was allied to most of the European languages, it was felt that a term was needed to describe the group. Bopp, thinking that the German or Teutonic group was the most westerly, as the Indian dialects were the most easterly, used the term Indo-Germanic, which had previously been suggested by Klaproth in 1823.[426] But when it was fully realised that the Celtic tongues were also included in the group, French and Italian scholars, who felt that the term German was receiving too much prominence, suggested the name Indo-European. Neither of these terms is quite accurate and both are clumsy, so to avoid the latter defect Professor Max-Müller suggested the term Aryan. This, too, is misleading, for the Aryas were the noble caste among the Vedic Indians and the early Persians. The name, however, is convenient, and is still used by many people, especially in this country. Recently Dr. Giles[427] has suggested for the original people who spoke these tongues the name of Wiros, as words similar to this, meaning men, occur in most of these languages. The term has much to recommend it, and it will be used in the following pages for the first users of this speech.
When the connection between these languages was first realised, it was felt that all the tongues had been derived from a primitive mother speech, and that this primitive speech must have been spoken originally by a small group of people, the primitive Aryans, or, as we shall call them, the Wiros. But owing to loose thinking all the people who speak these languages to-day, as well as those who have spoken them in the past, were considered Aryans, and it was assumed that because their languages were related they were racially identical. As long as this applied only to European peoples no one raised any protest, but when Max-Müller asserted that the same blood runs in the veins of English soldiers as in the veins of the darkest Bengalese,[428] the Nordic spirit in this country, which, as we have seen, is prone to race exclusiveness, rose in its wrath, and the whole generalisation was questioned.
It was then shown that languages could be imposed by conquerors upon their subjects, and that there were instances on record of the reverse process taking place, as in the case of the Frankish invaders of Gaul and the Viking settlers in Normandy. People then, with equal lack of lucid thinking, ran to the opposite extreme and said, “there is now no Aryan race, and there never has been one.” To Penka[429] is due the credit of making the matter clear. He pointed out that Aryan blood is not co-extensive with Aryan speech. He showed that those who use the latter are of several distinct anthropological types, but he argued that the primitive Aryans or Wiros must have been of one type.
Penka’s contention seems eminently reasonable and, one would think, incontrovertible, for a group of languages, so closely resembling one another, must have grown up in a somewhat restricted area, among a people who had, during the formative period of the language, little intercourse with the outside world. The very conditions which would produce a specialised type of language, would, we may feel sure, have produced an equally specialised type of men, that is to say, a race in the anthropological meaning of the term.
The failure of Penka’s views to carry widespread conviction was, I am inclined to think, due to the fact that his theory involved the identification of the primitive Wiros with the Nordic race. There is really no valid objection to this view, and, as will be seen later, the evidence which I am adducing points to a similar conclusion. But, unfortunately, this theory became associated with certain political opinions, and so became distasteful to those with a different outlook.