I proceed, however, to our specification:—
- a. The Turanians in respect to their physical conformation are a branch of the Mongolians; the Chinese, Eskimo and others, being members of similar and equivalent divisions.
- b. In respect to their language, they are the highest group recognized, a group subordinate to none other.
To change the expression of this difference, the anatomical naturalist of the Human Species has in the word Mongolian a term of generality to which the philologist has not arrived.
II. The Greeks and Latins—the Sarmatians—and the Germans are referrible to a higher group; a group of much the same value as the Turanian.
The characteristics of this group are philological.
- a. The numerals of the three great divisions are alike.
- b. A large per-centage of the names of the commoner objects are alike.
- c. The signs of case in nouns, and of person in verbs, are alike.
So wide has been the geographical extent of the populations speaking languages thus connected (languages which separated from the common mother-tongue subsequent to the evolution of both the cases of nouns and the persons of verbs), that the literary language of India belongs to the class in question. Hence, when this fact became known, and when India passed for the eastern and Germany for the western extremity of the great area of this great tongue, the term Indo-Germanic became current.
But its currency was of no long duration. Dr. Prichard showed that the Keltic tongues had Indo-Germanic numerals, a certain per-centage of Indo-Germanic names for the commoner objects, and Indo-Germanic personal terminations of verbs. Since then, the Keltic has been considered as a fixed language, with a definite place in the classification of the philologist; and the term Indo-European[26], expressive of the class to which, along with the Sarmatian, the Gothic, and the Classical tongues of Greece and Italy, it belongs, has superseded the original compound Indo-Germanic.
We now know what is meant by Indo-European; a term of, at least, equal generality with the term Turanian.
- a. In physical conformation the Indo-Europeans are a branch of the higher division so improperly and inconveniently called Caucasian.
- b. In language they are the highest group hitherto recognized, a group subordinate to none other.