Indo-Europeans

“ As is known, the Indo-Europeans are subdivided into eight groups, viz., Indians, Iranians, Thracian-Illyrians—whose fragments may be identified with the modern Arnauts, Albanians, or Skipetars—Greeks, Italians, Celts, Slaves, and Germans ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we regard the Indo-Europeans as neighbors of the Upper Asiatics, and the Semitic and Hamitic peoples next to them, we can understand how in consequence of a pressure of the Upper Asiatics on the Indo-Europeans these must again impinge upon the Semitic and Hamitic race. Whereas the latter were pushed toward Africa, where they imparted their migratory motion to the autochthonous races, as described above, the Semitic pressed into the seats occupied before by the Hamites, and allowed the Indo-Europeans room to expand unhindered east and west. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence Europe may have been inhabited by only two races before the entrance of the Indo-Europeans, which latter is coincident with the appearance of the Etruscans and Celts, viz., by the Basques and Ligurians—a people of unknown ethnological character in the south, and the Upper Asiatic stems in the north. This settlement of the Upper Asiatic race in Europe, long before the immigration of the Indo-Europeans, presumes a migration of the former in the earliest dawn of antiquity.
In our opinion, it was this race which first gave the migratory impulse to the men inhabiting the Old World. ”

“ The descendants of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest "caste," the class of warriors and nobles. Next came the caste of the priests. Below these followed the peasants and the business men. The ancient natives, however, who were called Pariahs, formed a class of despised and miserable slaves and never could hope to be anything else.
Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The old Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of wandering, had met with many strange adventures. ”

“ Force of character, warlike prowess, superiority of inherent mental capacity, undeveloped or partially developed, the Indo-Europeans may probably have possessed, as compared with the more aboriginal races of Europe; but these are not the forces which enable the language of a small minority to stifle that of the masses of a people and to take its place; if it were so, southern Europe would now be talking Germanic instead of Romanic dialects. The rude beginnings of a higher civilization, as metals, instruments, seeds, domestic animals, arts, may possibly have been theirs ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Eastern Africa was influenced, largely through the medium of Arab sea trade. Towards the north and northeast as far as Mongolia and Japan, India has been a dispenser of culture content and has taken little in return. Toward the southeast, Indian influence has been the largest component in the civilization of Indo-China and the East Indian archipelago, which as regards their higher attainments may be regarded as cultural dependencies or extensions of India. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Assuming for our present argument the unity of the human race, not in the ambiguous sense of a common typical structure, but literally, as descendants of one stock: in the primitive scattering of infant nations, the Mongol and the American went eastward, while the Indo-European began his still uncompleted wanderings towards the far west. The Mongol and the Indo-European have repeatedly met and mingled. They now share, unequally, the Indian peninsula and the continent of Europe. ”

“ Although I had had the opportunity, for some years past, of studying the contrast between European and Asiatic modes of life, and the critical position in which I found myself made it incumbent upon me ever to be strictly on my guard, nevertheless, I could not avoid committing many glaring mistakes. The difference between Eastern and Western society does not consist merely in language, physiognomy, and dress. We Europeans eat, drink, sleep, sit, and stand, nay, I feel inclined to say, laugh, weep, sigh, and gesticulate otherwise than Eastern people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These are all things which you should manage for yourselves without interference from Europeans, for you only can manage them well. All that the European can do is to point out where improvements can be made, where, for example, the graceful usages of one part of India may supersede with advantage the ungraceful usages of another, and so all advance by a process of indigenous growth, different from, but by no means necessarily inferior, nay often distinctly superior, to European works and ways. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the Greeks, towards the end of the fourth century B.C., invaded the North-West, the Indians had already fully worked out a national culture of their own, unaffected by foreign influences. And, in spite of successive waves of invasion and conquest by Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Muhammadans, the national development of the life and literature of the Indo-Aryan race remained practically unchecked and unmodified from without down to the era of British occupation. ”

“ From the whole of Asia we strike out at once, by the common consent of ethnologists, its eastern third, comprising China, Japan, and Thibet, and along with it, by like consent, the three great southern peninsulas, the Indo-Chinese, the Indian, and the Arabian. ”

“ The people of Indo-China, whom we consider to belong to the Yellow Race, have a darker complexion than the Chinese and the Japanese. Their stature is smaller, and their civilization is less developed. ”

“ It is easier for the Indo-Germanic peoples to learn each other's languages—e.g. for an Englishman to learn Swedish or Russian—than it is for a speaker of one of any of the other families of languages to learn any Indo-Germanic tongue; so that some idea may be formed of the magnitude of the task imposed upon the newer converts to Western civilization by the Indo-Germanic world, in making them learn one or more of its national languages. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Thinks the influence of European manners is gradually making changes in India. The natives, so far as their religion will allow them, are become fond of Europeans, and invite them to their great festivals. ”

“ Farther India or Indo-China, the great southeastern peninsula of Asia, falls somewhat short of India and China in area, is less densely inhabited, and contains a population which is of definitely Mongolian type except for some scattered fragments of hill tribes. ”

“ It is only natural that Europe should have chiefly felt the influence of western Asia. Though Europeans may be indebted to China for some mechanical inventions, she was too distant to produce much direct effect, and the influence of India has been mainly directed towards Influence of Asia on other continents.the East. The resemblances between primitive Christianity and Buddhism appear to be coincidences, and though both early Greek philosophy and later Alexandrine ideas suggest Indian affinities, there is no clear connexion such as there is between certain aspects of Chinese thought and 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 ”