Indo-European

“ But even when a word is found very widely diffused over the area of the Indo-European languages, it is not justifiable to conclude that therefore the word must have belonged to the original language. The dispersion of the Indo-European people over the areas they now inhabit, or inhabited in the earliest times known to history, must have been gradual, and commerce or communication between different branches must have always existed to some extent ”

“ Indo-European, an epithet applied to a family of the human race with the languages of its several members descended from the Aryans, and found dispersed over an area including the better part of India and Europe. ”

“ In short, there is not nor has there ever been either a Caucasian or an Indo-European race, but there was once, thousands of years ago, an original Aryan race long since vanished into dim memories of the past. ”

“ There was a time when all Indo-Europeans made up one people and spoke one common language, as has now been established by linguists through a comparison of the old and new Indo-European languages. But the old situation, in which all Indo-Europeans understood one another, gradually broke down and disappeared and a new set of circumstances arose in which there came about a splitting of the language, of the common national awareness, the common language, into various languages, beliefs, attitudes, traditions, etc. ”

“ As the allied sciences are not prepared with an answer, it is necessary to fall back upon the Indo-European languages themselves. The attempt has often been made to ascertain both the position of the original home and the stage of civilization which the original community had reached from a consideration of the vocabulary for plants and animals common to the various languages of the Indo-European family. ”

“ As the Indo-European family of language is that one of which the unity, accompanying a not inconsiderable variety of physical type in the peoples who speak its dialects, is most firmly established, and as therefore it may naturally be regarded as furnishing a prominent illustration of the bearing of linguistic conditions on physical inquiries into the history of man, it is perhaps worth our while to refer to a theory respecting Indo-European speech which has found of late a few supporters of some note and authority, and which, if accepted, would altogether deprive it of ethnological value. ”

“ We partly know and partly conjecture that there was once a race of men whom we may conveniently call Indo-Europeans who spoke the parent-speech of the modern languages of Europe, Armenia, Persia, and northern India. Probably the Panjāb in very early times was occupied by several immigrations of Indo-European folk, for in the earliest days of which we have any knowledge, the land of the Five Rivers is already the home of many Indo-Aryan tribes, who live at enmity with one another, and have a fraternal habit of speaking of one another as unintelligible barbarians. ”

“ At any rate, we ought fully to acknowledge that linguistic science, as such, does not presume to decide whether the Indo-European home was in Europe or in Asia: the utmost that she does is to set up certain faint and general probabilities, which, combined with the natural conditions of soil and climate, the traditions of other races, and the direction of the grand movements of population in later times, point to the East rather than the West as the starting-point of migration. ”

“ There seems to be a wide-spread opinion that the rise of the Indo-Europeans was the first dawn of day in a benighted world. Their migrations were a missionary movement on a grand scale. They dispelled darkness, ignorance, and superstitions, broke the crust of a stagnant conservatism, overthrew outworn customs, brought an entirely new culture, and revolutionized life and the world. ”

“ Sometimes they are called the Indo-Germanic or Indo-European race, to show how widely they extend; and sometimes they are called the Aryan race, from a word which is found in their language, and which comes from the root "ar," to plough, and is supposed to mean noble, or of a good family.
But how do we know that there were any such people, and that we in England are descended from them, or that they were the forefathers of the other nations of Europe, and of the Hindus, and of the old Greeks and Romans? ”

“ A modified form of the hypothesis of mutual borrowing is put forth by some who are indisposed to admit the essential oneness of Indo-European speech. Some tribe or race, they say, of higher endowments and culture, has leavened with its material and usages the tongues of all these scattered peoples, engrafting upon their original diversity an element of agreement and unity. ”

“ It is true enough that in a comparison of modern Indo-European languages, without any knowledge of their previous history, it might be very difficult to prove relationship let us say, between Armenian and English and we might be compelled to adopt a similar conclusion as the one suggested here. Partially this inference would be correct, because our modern Indo-European languages contain much material that is not Indo-European by origin. ”

“ The labours of ethnologists have associated together in one great family, at first called Indo-Germanic, and then Indo-European, but threatening to expand even beyond the scope of that comprehensive name, a mass of leading languages from the Celtic regions in the west to the plains of India in the east. ”

“ This fact has led some good authorities to declare that the Germans received their Indo-European language from the Celts.
The homeland of the Indo-Europeans must have supported a large population to send out all the tribes which went out from it. Only such a region can satisfy our requirements, and such was Germany, an Officina gentium, some 2,000 years later. But we notice that the migrations of peoples have always set westward into Europe, not in the reverse direction. Similarly the new discovery or idea has come westward or northward from western Asia or from the Mediterranean region. ”

“ Simply by the publication of the Veda, and by the works of European scholars, such as Stevenson, Mill, Rosen, Wilson, and others, who showed to the natives what the Veda really was, and made them see the folly of their way.5,B Thus the religion, the literature, the whole character of the people of India are becoming more and more Indo-European. They work for us, as we work for them. Many a letter have I received from native scholars in which they express their admiration for the wonderful achievements of European ingenuity, for railways, and telegraphs, and all the rest ”

“ How far soever any such institution may have undergone change among the branch of the Indo-European family which has been settled for ages in India, it will seldom be found to have entirely cast aside the shell in which it was originally reared. ”

“ In that disordered condition we have to leave, for the time being, the story of the Yellow Race in the Farthest East, and pass to the story of India previous to the epoch-making voyage of da Gama.
In a former volume we noticed the "Indo-European" as one of the great human families. It is a word which indicates an immigration of a people from Central Asia into India and also into Europe. The kinship of Indians with Europeans is testified by the likeness of many words in the languages of both. ”

“ The world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phœnicia had existed almost thirty centuries and the venerable races of the Fertile Valley were getting old and tired. Their doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race, because it conquered not only Europe but also made itself the ruling class in the country which is now known as British India. ”

“ Thus with Kretschmer we must distinguish between what is common Indo-European and what is original Indo-European in language. (3) A word may exist in several of the languages, and may have existed in them for a very long time, and yet not be Indo-European. Hehn (Das Salz, ed. 2, 1901) rejects salt as an Indo-European word because it is not found in the Aryan group, though in this case he is probably wrong, (a) because, as has been shown by Professor Johannes Schmidt, its irregular declension (sal-d, genitive sal-nes) possesses characteristics of the oldest Indo-European words ”

“ Practically all the common words in use in any of the languages belonging to the Indo-European family are fair illustrations of the strong relationship existing among the eight branches, and are proofs of an original or parent tongue known to nearly all of the now widely dispersed nations of Europe. ”

“ I must again protest against the use, while compelled by want of another to use the term ‘Indo-European,’ which, applied to language, contains an unproved theory. India did not supply Europe either with speech or with population. The popular belief appears erroneous as is its appreciation of Darwinism, which did not derive man from monkey. The original Egyptian roots developed themselves into a host of dialects which flourished and perished before Pali and Sanskrit, a professor’s tongue, like mediæval Latin, never understanded of the people, assumed their present shapes. ”

“ Bands of them kept travelling always farther and farther west; and it is from their language that most of the tongues spoken in Europe are derived. These bands left their friends and relations and country, just as young men and women nowadays leave the homes of their parents to go and settle in distant countries. The Indo-European is also called the Aryan family of languages. Altogether, it embraces seven great languages— (1) The Indian or Sanskrit; (2) Persic; (3) Greek; (4) Latin; (5) Keltic; (6) Teutonic ”

“ The Classical, Gothic, and Celtic (?) stocks complete the catalogue of languages undoubtedly Indo-European, and at the same time they explain the import of the term. Indo-European is the name of a class which embraces the majority of the languages of Europe, and is extended over {95}Asia as far as India. Until the Celtic was shown by Dr. Prichard to have certain affinities with the Latin, Greek, Slavonic, Lithuanic, Gothic, Sanskrit, and Zend, as those tongues had with each other, the class in question was called Indo-Germanic ”

“ Some philologists hold that the primitive home of the Indo-European race cannot be determined, and incline to the opinion that the Asiatic representatives of the family emigrated from Europe into Asia. ”

“ A more distinctive characteristic of Indo-European language is the peculiar aptitude which it possesses for closely combining its radical and formal elements, for losing sight of their separate individuality, and applying their combination as independent conventional sign of the object indicated. ”

“ The poetry of the soul, faith, liberty, virtue, devotion, made their appearance in the world with the two great races which, in one sense have made humanity -- viz. the Indo-European and the Semitic races. The first religious intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially naturalistic. ”

“ But perhaps it is even of more importance to prove that the most highly developed of all languages—namely, the Indo-European group—still bears unmistakable evidence of having passed through this primitive phase. ”

“ About 1000 B.C. we find three areas occupied by Indo-European-speaking peoples, all widely separated from each other and apparently independent. These are (1) the Aryan groups in Asia; (2) the Balkan peninsula together with Central and Lower Italy, and the Mysians and Phrygians of Asia Minor (possibly the Thracians had already advanced across the Danube) ; and (3) Teutons, Celts and Letto-Slavs over the greater part of Germany and Scandinavia, perhaps also already in Eastern France and in Poland. ”

“ These peoples—with as different physical 124 characteristics as have Indians and Norseman, or Russians and Spaniards, who spoke Indo-European, or, as German scholars have patriotically adapted the term, Indo-Germanic languages—were regarded by ethnologists of the "philological school" as members of the one Indo-European or Aryan race or "family". Language, however, is no sure indication of race. The spread of a language over wide areas may be accounted for by trade or political influence or cultural contact. ”

“ Nothing can be more erroneous than the inference that the North American Indian dialects differ in this respect from those of Asia and Europe. In the previous comparison numerous examples present themselves in which the same words unequivocally exhibit at once both the roots and the inflections of words belonging to the languages termed Indo-European, as in Patam-awan, Patam-awos, Kis-ina, M. huk, Mok-um, Khe-cush, Nimp-amino, &c.! ”

“ When a human population once more occupied Northern Europe it is impossible to estimate in years.
The problem may be attacked from the opposite direction. How long would it have taken for the Indo-European stock to spread from its original home to its modern areas of occupation? Some recent writers say that it is unnecessary to carry the stock back farther than 2500 B.C.—a period when the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were already ancient. ”

“ About a third of humanity to-day speaks some form of Indo-European. A quarter talks some dialect of Sinitic stock. Semitic, Dravidian, Ural-Altaic, Japanese, Malayo-Polynesian, Bantu have each from about fifty to a hundred million speakers. The languages included in these eight families form the speech of approximately ninety per cent of living human beings. ”