George Webbe Dasent

“ From the East, then, came our ancestors, in days of immemorial antiquity, in that grey dawn of time of which all early songs and lays can tell, but of which it is as impossible as it is useless to attempt to fix the date. Impossible, because no means exist for ascertaining it; useless, because it is in reality a matter of utter indifference, when, as this tell-tale crust of earth informs us, we have an infinity of ages and periods to fall back on, [2] whether this great movement, this mighty lust to change their seats, seized on the Aryan race one hundred or one thousand years sooner or later. ”

“ No poverty of invention or want of power on the part of translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of those popular traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwindled out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as homegrowths. We had learnt to buy our own children back disguised in foreign garb; and as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle hour—as to their having any history or science of their own—such an absurdity was never once thought of. ”

“ What are we to say of those who, when the old crust which clogs and hampers human knowledge is cracking and breaking all around them, when the shell is too narrow an abode for the life within it, which is preparing to cast it off, still cling to the crust and shell, looking, like the disciples by the sepulchre, at the linen clothes lying, and know not that He has risen in glory? ”

“ Of those who went west, we have only to enumerate the names under which they appear in history—Celts, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Slavonians—to see and to know at once that the stream of this migration has borne on its waves all that has become most precious to man. To use the words of Max Müller: "They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. ”

“ When we say, therefore, that in these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and West have met and kissed each other; that they now go hand in hand; that they lend one another mutual support; that one cannot be understood without the other, we look to be believed. ”

“ In a general way, then, we may be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a law which is always in force, that the first authentic history of a nation is the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the literature of a country apart from its language, and the consideration of its language necessarily involves the consideration of its history. ”

“ That is the fact to keep steadily before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt, Teuton, Slavonian, from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and kin behind us; and after thousands of years, the language and traditions of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock. ”

“ The affinity, which exists in a mythological and philological point of view, between the Aryan or Indo-European languages on the one hand, and the Sanscrit on the other, is now the first article of a literary creed, and the man who denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument as he who, in a religious discussion, should meet a grave divine of the Church of England with the strict contradictory of her first article, and loudly declare his conviction that there was no God. ”

“ This is what our Western Brahmins say; but if they remembered that He who set sun and moon also planted the eye and ear, that He gave sense, and speech, and mind; if they considered that faith is a lively thing, elastic and expansive; that it embraces a thousand or a million years as easily as a moment of time; that bonds cannot fetter it, nor distance darken and dismay it; that it is given to man to grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength ”

“ In such an inquiry the history of a race is, in fact, the history of its language, and can be nothing else; for we have to deal with times antecedent to all history, properly so called, and the stream which in later ages may be divided into many branches now flows in a single channel. ”

“ And lastly, what rather concerns us here, his Teutonic Mythology, his Reynard the Fox, and the collection of German Popular Tales, which he and his brother William published, have thrown a flood of light on the early history of all the branches of our race, and have raised what had come to be .looked on as mere nursery fictions and old wives' fables—to a study fit for the energies of grown men, and to all the dignity of a science. ”

“ To shew the truth of this, we need only observe, that they adopted Christianity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff-necked the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their birthright, suffered their inheritance to pass into other hands. ”

“ They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other, and with Semitic and Mongolian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. ”

“ But here arises the question, What interest can we, the descendants of the practical brother, heirs to so much historical renown, possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless, and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? ”

“ The speech of the emigrants to the west rapidly changed with the changing circumstances and various fortune of each of its waves, and in their intercourse with the aboriginal population they often adopted foreign elements into their language. ”

“ We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring, they have not been obstinate and self-willed; they have been distinguished from all other nations, and particularly from their elder brothers whom they left behind, by their common sense, by their power of adapting themselves to all circumstances, and by making the best of their position ”

“ We believe in it we will believe in nothing else, not even in our senses. We will believe literally in the first chapter of Genesis, in working days and nights of twenty-four hours, even before the sun and moon were made, on the fourth day, 'to divide the day from the night,' and to be 'for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.' We will not hear of ages or periods, but 'days,' because the 'letter' says so. ”

“ These are they for whom the Nile, as he brings down year by year his tribute to the sea from Central Africa, lays down in vain layer after layer of alluvial deposit, which can be measured to an inch for tens of thousands of years. These are they to whom the comparatively younger growth of trees, the dragon tree of Orotava, and the cedars of California, plead in vain when they shew, year after year, ring on ring of wood for thousands of years. "No; the world is only five or six thousands of years old, or thereabouts. ”

“ These are they who obstinately refuse to believe in the "Testimony of the Rocks," who deny Geology the thousands, nay millions, of years which she requires to make her deposits in Nature's great saving-bank. ”

“ In these pages, where we have to run over a vast tract of space, the reader who wishes to learn and not to cavil—and for such alone this Introduction is intended—must be content with results rather than processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must be satisfied with the soup that is set before him, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled. ”

“ It is scarce worth while to inquire—even if inquiry could lead to any result—what cause set them in motion from their ancient seats. Whether impelled by famine or internal strife, starved out like other nationalities in recent times, or led on by adventurous chiefs, whose spirit chafed at the narrownessof home, certain it is that they left that home and began a wandering westwards, which only ceased when it reached the Atlantic and the Northern Ocean. ”