The earliest Indian Sagas speak of the Arja as already established in Central India, and give no help to the discovery of when or how they settled there. Like most other peoples of the old world, they believed themselves aborigines, and they placed the Creation and the origin of species in the very land where they found themselves living, nor do their myths bear a trace of allusion to any earlier dwelling-place or country outside their Bhâratavarsha[4]. It is true, that the sanctity they ascribe to the north country, and the mysterious allusions to the sacred mountain-country of Meerû, the dwelling of the gods in the far, far north, over the Himâlajas, is calculated to mislead for a moment with the suggestion that they point to a possible immigration from that north, but a closer observation shows that that very sacred regard more probably arose from the very fact of its being an unknown country; while the effect of the majestic and inaccessible heights, with their glorious colouring and their peculiar natural productions, was enough to suggest them the seat of a superior and divine race of beings.
The fact that Sanskrit, the ancient tongue of the Aryan Indians, is so closely allied to the languages of so many western nations, establishes with certainty the identity of origin of these people, and lays on us the burden of deciding whether the Aryan Indians migrated to India as the allied peoples migrated to their countries from a common aboriginal home, or whether that aboriginal home was India, and all the allied peoples migrated from it, the Indians alone remaining at home.
Reason points to the adoption of the former of these two solutions. In the first place, it is altogether unlikely that in the case of a great migration all should have migrated rigidly in one direction. It is only natural to expect they should have poured themselves out every way, and to look for the original home in a locality which should have formed a central base of operations. The very feuds which would in many cases lead to such outpourings would necessitate the striking out in ever new directions. Then, there is nothing in the manners, ideas, speech—in the names of articles of primary importance to support life, in which at least we might expect to find such a trace—of the other peoples to connect them in any way with India. Had they ever been at home there, some remnants of local influence would have been retained; but we find none. Besides this, we have, on the other hand, very satisfactory evidence of at least the later journeyings of the Indian family. Their warlike and conquering entrance into the Dekhan and crossing of the Vindhja range is matter of positive history. Some help for ascertaining their earlier route may be found in the necessity established by the laws and limits of possibility. Encumbered with flocks and herds, and unassisted by appliances of transport, we cannot believe them to have traversed the steep peaks of the Himâlajas. The road through eastern Caboolistan and the valley of the Pangkora, or that leading from the Gilgit by way of Attok, or over the table-land of Deotsu through Cashmere, are all known to us as most difficult of access, and do not appear at any period to have been willingly adopted. But the western passes of Hindukutsch, skirting round the steep Himâlajas—the way trod by the armies of Alexander and other warlike hosts, no less than by the more peaceful trains of merchants, with whom it was doubtless traditional—affords a highly probable line of march for the first great immigration.
We are reminded here of the fact already alluded to, of the common origin of the earliest name of both Indians and Persians, leading us to suppose they long inhabited one country in common. For this supposition we find further support in other similarities: e. g. between the older Sanskrit of the Vêda and the oldest poems of the Iranian tongue; also between the teaching, mythology, the sagas, and the spoken language of the two peoples. On the other hand, we find also the most diverse uses given to similar expressions, pointing to a period of absolute separation between them, and at a remote date: e.g. the Indian word for the Supreme Being is dêva; in Zend, daêva, as also dêv in modern Persian, stands for the Evil Principle. Again, in Zend dagju means a province (and its use implies orderly division of government and the tranquil exercise of authority); but in the Brahmanical code dasju is used for a turbulent horde, who set law and authority at defiance.
Such transpositions seem the result of some fierce variance, leading to division and hatred between peoples long united.
Proceeding now to trace the original wandering farther on, we find some help from Iranian traditions. The Zendavesta distinctly tells of a so-called Aîrjanem Vaêgo as a sacred country, the seat of creation, and place it in the farthest east of the highest Iranian table-land, the district of the source of the Oxus and Jaxartes; by the death-bringing Ahriman it was stricken with cold and barrenness[3], and only saw the sun thenceforth for two months of the year. The particularity with which it is described would point to the fact that the locality treated of was a distant one, with which the race had a traditional acquaintance; while at the same time it cannot be adopted too precisely in every detail, because details may be altered by a poetical imagination—merits may be exaggerated by regret for absence, and defects magnified by vexation, or invented in proof of the effects of a predicated curse.
If we may conclude that we have rightly traced up the Indians and Persians to a common home between the easternmost Iranian highlands and the Caspian Sea, it follows from the linguistic analogies of the so-called Indo-European peoples that this same home was also theirs at a time when they were not yet broken up into distinct families. This common local origin gives at once the reason for the analogies in the grammatical structure of their languages, and no less of their mythical traditions, which are far too widely spread, and have entered too radically into the universal teaching of both, to be supposed for a moment to have been borrowed by either from the other within the historical period, or at all since their separation.
It remains only to say a few words on the scope and object of the work, and the profit that may be derived from its perusal. I know there are many who think that mere amusement is profit enough to expect from a tale, and that to look for the extraction of any more serious result is tedious. But I will give my young readers—or at least a large proportion of them—credit for possessing sufficient love of improvement to prefer that class of amusement which furthers their desire for information and edification.
The collections of myths with which I have heretofore presented them have all had either a Christian origin, or at least have passed through a Christian mould, and have thus almost unconsciously subserved the purpose of illustrating some phase of Christian teaching, which is specially distinguished by keeping in view, not spasmodically and arbitrarily, as in the best of other systems, but uniformly, in its sublimest reach and in its humblest detail, the belief that an eternal purpose and consequence pervades the whole length and breadth of human existence.