Chapter VII: Preface (7)

There was originally in all the Aryan languages a case expressive of locality, which grammarians call the _locative_. In Sanskrit every substantive has its locative, as well as its genitive, dative, and accusative. Thus, _heart_ in Sanskrit is _hṛid_; in the heart, is _hṛidi_. Here, therefore, the termination of the locative is simply short _i_. This short _i_ is a demonstrative root, and in all probability the same root which in Latin produced the preposition _in_. The Sanskrit _hṛidi_ represents, therefore, an original compound, as it were, _heart-within_, which gradually became settled as one of the recognized cases of nouns ending in consonants. If we look to Chinese,(207) we find that the locative is expressed there in the same manner, but with a greater freedom in the choice of the words expressive of locality. “In the empire,” is expressed by _kûŏ ćung_; “within a year,” is expressed by _ĭ sûí ćung_. Instead of _ćung_, however, we might have employed other terms also, such as, for instance, _néi_, inside. It might be said that the formation of so primitive a case as the locative offers little difficulty, but that this process of composition fails to account for the origin of the more abstract cases, the accusative, the dative, and genitive. If we derive our notions of the cases from philosophical grammar, it is true, no doubt, that it would be difficult to convey by a simple composition the abstract relations supposed to be expressed by the terminations of the genitive, dative, and accusative. But remember that these are only general categories under which philosophers and grammarians endeavored to arrange the facts of language. The people with whom language grew up knew nothing of datives and accusatives. Everything that is abstract in language was originally concrete. If people wanted to say the King of Rome, they meant really the King at Rome, and they would readily have used what I have just described as the locative; whereas the more abstract idea of the genitive would never enter into their system of thought. But more than this, it can be proved that the locative has actually taken, in some cases, the place of the genitive. In Latin, for instance, the old genitive of nouns in _a_ was _as_. This we find still in _pater familiâs_, instead of _pater familiæ_. The Umbrian and Oscan dialects retained the _s_ throughout as the sign of the genitive after nouns in _a_. The _æ_ of the genitive was originally _ai_, that is to say, the old locative in _i_. “King of Rome,” if rendered by _Rex Romæ_, meant really “King at Rome.” And here you will see how grammar, which ought to be the most logical of all sciences, is frequently the most illogical. A boy is taught at school, that if he wants to say “I am staying at Rome,” he must use the genitive to express the locative. How a logician or grammarian can so twist and turn the meaning of the genitive as to make it express rest in a place, is not for us to inquire; but, if he succeeded, his pupil would at once use the genitive of Carthage (Carthaginis) or of Athens (Athenarum) for the same purpose, and he would then have to be told that these genitives could not be used in the same manner as the genitive of nouns in _a._ How all this is achieved by what is called philosophical grammar, we know not; but comparative grammar at once removes all difficulty. It is only in the first declension that the locative has supplanted the genitive, whereas _Carthaginis_ and _Athenarum_, being real genitives, could never be employed to express a locative. A special case, such as the locative, may be generalized into the more general genitive, but not _vice versâ_.

You see thus by one instance how what grammarians call a genitive was formed by the same process of composition which we can watch in Chinese, and which we can prove to have taken place in the original language of the Aryans. And the same applies to the dative. If a boy is told that the dative expresses a relation of one object to another, less direct than that of the accusative, he may well wonder how such a flying arch could ever have been built up with the scanty materials which language has at her disposal; but he will be still more surprised if, after having realized this grammatical abstraction, he is told that in Greek, in order to convey the very definite idea of being in a place, he has to use after certain nouns the termination of the dative. “I am staying at Salamis,” must be expressed by the dative _Salamînĭ_. If you ask why? Comparative grammar again can alone give an answer. The termination of the Greek dative in _i_, was originally the termination of the locative. The locative may well convey the meaning of the dative, but the faded features of the dative can never express the fresh distinctness of the locative. The dative _Salamînĭ_ was first a locative. “I live at Salamis,” never conveyed the meaning, “I live to Salamis.” On the contrary, the dative, in such phrases as “I give it to the father,” was originally a locative; and after expressing at first the palpable relation of “I give it unto the father,” or “I place it on or in the father,” it gradually assumed the more general, the less local, less colored aspect which logicians and grammarians ascribe to their datives.(208)

If the explanation just given of some of the cases in Greek and Latin should seem too artificial or too forced, we have only to think of French in order to see exactly the same process repeated under our eyes. The most abstract relations of the genitive, as, for instance, “The immortality of the soul” (_l’immortalité de l’âme_); or of the dative, as, for instance, “I trust myself to God” (_je me fie à Dieu_), are expressed by prepositions, such as _de_ and _ad_, which in Latin had the distinct local meanings of “down from,” and “towards.” Nay, the English _of_ and _to_, which have taken the place of the German terminations _s_ and _m_, are likewise prepositions of an originally local character. The only difference between our cases and those of the ancient languages consists in this,—that the determining element is now placed before the word, whereas, in the original language of the Aryans, it was placed at the end.

What applies to the cases of nouns, applies with equal truth to the terminations of verbs. It may seem difficult to discover in the personal terminations of Greek and Latin the exact pronouns which were added to a verbal base in order to express, _I_ love, _thou_ lovest, _he_ loves; but it stands to reason that originally these terminations must have been the same in all languages,—namely, personal pronouns. We may be puzzled by the terminations of _thou lovest_ and _he loves_, where _st_ and _s_ can hardly be identified with the modern _thou_ and _he_; but we have only to place all the Aryan dialects together, and we shall see at once that they point back to an original set of terminations which can easily be brought to tell their own story.

Let us begin with modern formations, because we have here more daylight for watching the intricate and sometimes wayward movements of language; or, better still, let us begin with an imaginary case, or with what may be called the language of the future, in order to see quite clearly how, what we should call grammatical forms, may arise. Let us suppose that the slaves in America were to rise against their masters, and, after gaining some victories, were to sail back in large numbers to some part of Central Africa, beyond the reach of their white enemies or friends. Let us suppose these men availing themselves of the lessons they had learnt in their captivity, and gradually working out a civilization of their own. It is quite possible that some centuries hence, a new Livingstone might find among the descendants of the American slaves, a language, a literature, laws, and manners, bearing a striking similitude to those of his own country. What an interesting problem for any future historian and ethnologist! Yet there are problems in the past history of the world of equal interest, which have been and are still to be solved by the student of language. Now I believe that a careful examination of the language of the descendants of those escaped slaves would suffice to determine with perfect certainty their past history, even though no documents and no tradition had preserved the story of their captivity and liberation. At first, no doubt, the threads might seem hopelessly entangled. A missionary might surprise the scholars of Europe by an account of that new African language. He might describe it at first as very imperfect—as a language, for instance, so poor that the same word had to be used to express the most heterogeneous ideas. He might point out how the same sound, without any change of accent, meant _true_, a _ceremony_, a _workman_, and was used also as a verb in the sense of literary composition. All these, he might say, are expressed in that strange dialect by the sound _rait_ (right, rite, wright, write). He might likewise observe that this dialect, as poor almost as Chinese, had hardly any grammatical inflections, and that it had no genders, except in a few words such as man-of-war, and a railway-engine, which were both conceived as feminine beings, and spoken of as _she_. He might then mention an even more extraordinary feature, namely, that although this language had no terminations for the masculine and feminine genders of nouns, it employed a masculine and feminine termination after the affirmative particle, according as it was addressed to a lady or a gentleman. Their affirmative particle being the same as the English, _Yes_, they added a final _r_ to it if addressed to a man, and a final _m_ if addressed to a lady: that is to say, instead of simply saying, _Yes_, these descendants of the escaped American slaves said _Yesr_ to a man, and _Yesm_ to a lady.

Absurd as this may sound, I can assure you that the descriptions which are given of the dialects of savage tribes, as explained for the first time by travellers or missionaries, are even more extraordinary. But let us consider now what the student of language would have to do, if such forms as _Yeśr_ and _Yeśm_ were, for the first time, brought under his notice. He would first have to trace them back historically, as far as possible to their more original types, and if he discovered their connection with _Yes Sir_ and _Yes Ma’m_, he would point out how such contractions were most likely to spring up in a vulgar dialect. After having traced back the _Yesr_ and _Yesm of_ the free African negroes to the idiom of their former American masters, the etymologist would next inquire how such phrases as _Yes Sir_ and _Yes Madam_, came to be used on the American continent.

Finding nothing analogous in the dialects of the aboriginal inhabitants of America, he would be led, by a mere comparison of words, to the languages of Europe, and here again, first to the language of England. Even if no historical documents had been preserved, the documents of language would show that the white masters, whose language the ancestors of the free Africans adopted during their servitude, came originally from England, and, within certain limits, it would even be possible to fix the time when the English language was first transplanted to America. That language must have passed, at least, the age of Chaucer before it migrated to the New World. For Chaucer has two affirmative particles, _Yea_ and _Yes_, and he distinguishes between the two. He uses _Yes_ only in answer to negative questions. For instance, in answer to “Does he not go?” he would say, _Yes_. In all other cases Chaucer uses _Yea_. To a question, “Does he go?” he would answer _Yea_. He observes the same distinction between _No_ and _Nay_, the former being used after negative, the latter after all other questions. This distinction became obsolete soon after Sir Thomas More,(209) and it must have become obsolete before phrases such as _Yes Sir_ and _Yes Madam_ could have assumed their stereotyped character.

But there is still more historical information to be gained from these phrases. The word _Yes_ is Anglo-Saxon, the same as the German _Ja_, and it therefore reveals the fact that the white masters of the American slaves who crossed the Atlantic after the time of Chaucer, had crossed the Channel at an earlier period after leaving the continental fatherland of the Angles and Saxons. The words _Sir_ and _Madam_ tell us still more. They are Norman words, and they could only have been imposed on the Anglo-Saxons of Britain by Norman conquerors. They tell us more than this. For these Normans or Northmen spoke originally a Teutonic dialect, closely allied to Anglo-Saxon, and in that dialect words such as _Sir_ and _Madam_ could never have sprung up. We may conclude therefore that, previous to the Norman conquest, the Teutonic Northmen must have made a sufficiently long stay in one of the Roman provinces to forget their own and adopt the language of the Roman Provincials.

We may now trace back the Norman _Madam_ to the French _Madame_, and we recognize in this a corruption of the Latin _Mea domina_, my mistress. _Domina_ was changed into _domna_, _donna_, and _dame_, and the same word _Dame_ was also used as a masculine in the sense of lord, as a corruption of _Domino_, _Domno_ and _Donno_. The temporal lord ruling as ecclesiastical seigneur under the bishop, was called a _vidame_, as the Vidame of Chartres, &c. The French interjection _Dame!_ has no connection with a similar exclamation in English, but it simply means Lord! _Dame-Dieu_ in old French is Lord God. A derivative of _Domina_, mistress, was _dominicella_, which became _Demoiselle_ and _Damsel_. The masculine _Dame_ for _Domino_, Lord, was afterwards replaced by the Latin _Senior_, a translation of the German _elder_. This word _elder_ was a title of honor, and we have it still both in _alderman_, and in what is originally the same, the English _Earl_, the Norse _Jarl_, a corruption of the A.-S. _ealdor_. This title _Senior_, meaning originally _older_, was but rarely(210) applied to ladies as a title of honor. _Senior_ was changed into _Seigneur_, _Seigneur_ into _Sieur_, and _Sieur_ soon dwindled down to _Sir_.

Thus we see how in two short phrases, such as _Yesr_ and _Yesm_, long chapters of history might be read. If a general destruction of books, such as took place in China under the Emperor Thsin-chi-hoang-ti (213 B. C.), should sweep away all historical documents, language, even in its most depraved state, would preserve the secrets of the past, and would tell future generations of the home and migrations of their ancestors from the East to the West Indies.

It may seem startling at first to find the same name, _the East Indies_ and _the West Indies_, at the two extremities of the Aryan migrations; but these very names are full of historical meaning. They tell us how the Teutonic race, the most vigorous and enterprising of all the members of the Aryan family, gave the name of _West Indies_ to the country which in their world-compassing migrations they imagined to be India itself; how they discovered their mistake and then distinguished between the East Indies and West Indies; how they planted new states in the west, and regenerated the effete kingdoms in the east; how they preached Christianity, and at last practised it by abolishing slavery of body and mind among the slaves of West-Indian landholders, and the slaves of Brahmanical soulholders, till they greeted at last the very homes from which the Aryan family had started when setting out on their discovery of the world. All this, and even more, may be read in the vast archives of language. The very name of India has a story to tell, for India is not a native name. We have it from the Romans, the Romans from the Greeks, the Greeks from the Persians. And why from the Persians? Because it is only in Persian that an initial s is changed into _h_, which initial _h_ was as usual dropped in Greek. It is only in Persian that the country of the _Sindhu_ (_sindhu_ is the Sanskrit name for _river_), or of the _seven sindhus_, could have been called _Hindia_ or _India_ instead of _Sindia_. Unless the followers of Zoroaster had pronounced every _s_ like _h_, we should never have heard of the West Indies!

We have thus seen by an imaginary instance what we must be prepared for in the growth of language, and we shall now better understand why it must be laid down as a fundamental principle in Comparative Grammar to look upon nothing in language as merely formal, till every attempt has been made to trace the formal elements of language back to their original and substantial prototypes. We are accustomed to the idea of grammatical terminations modifying the meaning of words. But words can be modified by words only; and though in the present state of our science it would be too much to say that all grammatical terminations have been traced back to original independent words, so many of them have, even in cases where only a single letter was left, that we may well lay it down as a rule that all formal elements of language were originally substantial. Suppose English had never been written down before the time of Piers Ploughman. What should we make of such a form as _nadistou_,(211) instead of _ne hadst thou_? _Ne rechi_ instead of _I reck not_? _Al ô’m_ in Dorsetshire is _all of them_. _I midden_ is _I may not_; _I cooden_, _I could not_. Yet the changes which Sanskrit had undergone before it was reduced to writing, must have been more considerable by far than what we see in these dialects.

Let us now look to modern classical languages such as French and Italian. Most of the grammatical terminations are the same as in Latin, only changed by phonetic corruption. Thus _j’aime_ is _ego amo_, _tu aimes_, _tu amas_, _il aime_, _ille amat_. There was originally a final _t_ in French _il aime_, and it comes out again in such phrases as _aime-t-il?_ Thus the French imperfect corresponds to the Latin imperfect, the Parfait défini to the Latin perfect. But what about the French future? There is no similarity between _amabo_ and _j’aimerai_. Here then we have a new grammatical form, sprung up, as it were, within the recollection of men; or, at least, in the broad daylight of history. Now, did the termination _rai_ bud forth like a blossom in spring? or did some wise people meet together to invent this new termination, and pledge themselves to use it instead of the old termination _bo_? Certainly not. We see first of all that in all the Romance languages the terminations of the future are identical with the auxiliary verb _to have_.(212) In French you find—

j’ai and je chanter-ai nous avons and nous chanterons. tu as and tu chanter-as vous avez and vous chanterez. il a and il chanter-a ils ont and ils chanteront.

But besides this, we actually find in Spanish and Provençal the apparent termination of the future used as an independent word and not yet joined to the infinitive. We find in Spanish, instead of “_lo hare_,” I shall do it, the more primitive form _hacer lo he_; _i.e._, _facere id habeo_. We find in Provençal, _dir vos ai_ instead of _je vous dirai_; _dir vos em_ instead of _nous vous dirons_. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the Romance future was originally a compound of the auxiliary verb _to have_ with an infinitive; and _I have to say_, easily took the meaning of _I shall say_.

Here, then, we see clearly how grammatical forms arise. A Frenchman looks upon his futures as merely grammatical forms. He has no idea, unless he is a scholar, that the terminations of his futures are identical with the auxiliary verb _avoir_. The Roman had no suspicion that _amabo_ was a compound; but it can be proved to contain an auxiliary verb as clearly as the French future. The Latin future was destroyed by means of phonetic corruption. When the final letters lost their distinct pronunciation it became impossible to keep the imperfect _amabam_ separate from the future _amabo_. The future was then replaced by dialectical regeneration, for the use of _habeo_ with an infinitive is found in Latin, in such expressions as _habeo dicere_, I have to say, which would imperceptibly glide into I shall say.(213) In fact, wherever we look we see that, the future is expressed by means of composition. We have in English _I shall_ and _thou wilt_, which mean originally _I am bound_ and _thou intendest_. In German we use _werden_, the Gothic _vairthan_, which means originally to go, to turn towards. In modern Greek we find thelō, I will, in thelō dōsei, I shall give. In Roumansch we meet with _vegnir_, to come, forming the future _veng a vegnir_, I shall come; whereas in French _je viens de dire_, I come from saying, is equivalent to “I have just said.” The French _je vais dire_ is almost a future, though originally it is _vado dicere_, I go to say. The Dorsetshire, “I be gwâin to goo a-pickèn stuones,” is another case in point. Nor is there any doubt that in the Latin _bo_ of _amabo_ we have the old auxiliary _bhû_, to be, and in the Greek future in σω, the old auxiliary _as_, to be.(214)

We now go back another step, and ask the question which we asked many times before, How can a mere _d_ produce so momentous a change as that from _I love_ to _I loved_? As we have learnt in the meantime that English goes back to Anglo-Saxon, and is closely related to continental Saxon and Gothic, we look at once to the Gothic imperfect in order to see whether it has preserved any traces of the original compound; for, after what we have seen in the previous cases, we are no doubt prepared to find here, too, grammatical terminations mere remnants of independent words.

In Gothic there is a verb _nasjan_, to nourish. Its preterite is as follows:—

Singular. Dual. Plural. nas-i-da nas-i-dêdu nas-i-dêdum. nas-i-dês nas-i-dêtuts nas-i-dêduþ. nas-i-da —— nas-i-dedun.

The subjunctive of the preterite:

Singular. Dual. Plural. nas-i-dêdjau nas-i-dêdeiva nas-i-dêdeima. nas-i-dêdeis nas-i-dêdeits nas-i-dêdeiþ. nas-i-dêdi —— nas-i-dêdeina.

This is reduced in Anglo-Saxon to:

Singular. Plural. ner-ë-de ner-ë-don. ner-ë-dest ner-ë-don. ner-ë-de ner-ë-don.

Subjunctive:

ner-ë-de ner-ë-don. ner-ë-de ner-ë-don. ner-ë-de ner-ë-don.

Let us now look to the auxiliary verb _to do_, in Anglo-Saxon:

Singular. Plural. dide didon. didest didon. dide didon.

If we had only the Anglo-Saxon preterite _nerëde_ and the Anglo-Saxon _dide_, the identity of the _de_ in _nerëde_ with _dide_ would not be very apparent. But here you will perceive the advantage which Gothic has over all other Teutonic dialects for the purposes of grammatical comparison and analysis. It is in Gothic, and in Gothic in the plural only, that the full auxiliary _dêdum_, _dêduþ_, _dêdun_ has been preserved. In the Gothic singular _nasida_, _nasidês_, _nasida_ stand for _nasideda_, _nasidedês_, _nasideda_. The same contraction has taken place in Anglo-Saxon, not only in the singular but in the plural also. Yet, such is the similarity between Gothic and Anglo-Saxon that we cannot doubt their preterites having been formed on the same last. If there be any truth in inductive reasoning, there must have been an original Anglo-Saxon preterite,(215)

Singular. Plural. ner-ë-dide ner-ë-didon. ner-ë-didest ner-ë-didon. ner-ë-dide ner-ë-didon.

And as _ner-ë-dide_ dwindled down to _nerëde_, so _nerëde_ would, in modern English, become _nered_. The _d_ of the preterite, therefore, which changes _I love_ into _I loved_ is originally the auxiliary verb _to do_, and _I loved_ is the same as _I love did_, or _I did love_. In English dialects, as, for instance, in the Dorset dialect, every preterite, if it expresses a lasting or repeated action, is formed by _I did_,(216) and a distinction is thus established between “’e died eesterdae,” and “the vo’ke did die by scores;” though originally _died_ is the same as _die did_.

It might be asked, however, very properly, how _did_ itself, or the Anglo-Saxon _dide_, was formed, and how it received the meaning of a preterite. In _dide_ the final _de_ is not termination, but it is the root, and the first syllable _di_ is a reduplication of the root, the fact being that all preterites of old, or, as they are called, strong verbs, were formed as in Greek and Sanskrit by means of reduplication, reduplication being one of the principal means by which roots were invested with a verbal character.(217) The root _do_ in Anglo-Saxon is the same as the root _thē_ in _tithēmi_ in Greek, and the Sanskrit root _dhâ_ in _dadâdmi_. Anglo-Saxon _dide_ would therefore correspond to Sanskrit _dadhau_, I placed.

Now, in this manner, the whole, or nearly the whole, grammatical framework of the Aryan or Indo-European languages has been traced back to original independent words, and even the slightest changes which at first sight seem so mysterious, such as _foot_ into _feet_, or _I find_ into _I found_, have been fully accounted for. This is what is called comparative grammar, or a scientific analysis of all the formal elements of a language preceded by a comparison of all the varieties which one and the same form has assumed in the numerous dialects of the Aryan family. The most important dialects for this purpose are Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic; but in many cases Zend, or Celtic, or Slavonic dialects come in to throw an unexpected light on forms unintelligible in any of the four principal dialects. The result of such a work as Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar” of the Aryan languages may be summed up in a few words. The whole framework of grammar—the elements of derivation, declension, and conjugation—had become settled before the separation of the Aryan family. Hence the broad outlines of grammar, in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and the rest, are in reality the same; and the apparent differences can be explained by phonetic corruption, which is determined by the phonetic peculiarities of each nation. On the whole, the history of all the Aryan languages is nothing but a gradual process of decay. After the grammatical terminations of all these languages have been traced back to their most primitive form, it is possible, in many instances, to determine their original meaning. This, however, can be done by means of induction only; and the period during which, as in the Provençal _dir vos ai_, the component elements of the old Aryan grammar maintained a separate existence in the language and the mind of the Aryans had closed, before Sanskrit was Sanskrit or Greek Greek. That there was such a period we can doubt as little as we can doubt the real existence of fern forests previous to the formation of our coal fields. We can do even more. Suppose we had no remnants of Latin; suppose the very existence of Rome and of Latin were unknown to us; we might still prove, on the evidence of the six Romance dialects, that there must have been a time when these dialects formed the language of a small settlement; nay, by collecting the words which all these dialects share in common, we might, to a certain extent, reconstruct the original language, and draw a sketch of the state of civilization, as reflected by these common words. The same can be done if we compare Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Slavonic. The words which have as nearly as possible the same form and meaning in all the languages must have existed before the people, who afterwards formed the prominent nationalities of the Aryan family, separated; and, if carefully interpreted, they, too, will serve as evidence as to the state of civilization attained by the Aryans before they left their common home. It can be proved, by the evidence of language, that before their separation the Aryans led the life of agricultural nomads,—a life such as Tacitus describes that of the ancient Germans. They knew the arts of ploughing, of making roads, of building ships, of weaving and sewing, of erecting houses; they had counted at least as far as one hundred. They had domesticated the most important animals, the cow, the horse, the sheep, the dog; they were acquainted with the most useful metals, and armed with iron hatchets, whether for peaceful or warlike purposes. They had recognized the bonds of blood and the bonds of marriage; they followed their leaders and kings, and the distinction between right and wrong was fixed by laws and customs. They were impressed with the idea of a divine Being, and they invoked it by various names. All this, as I said, can be proved by the evidence of language. For if you find that languages like Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, or Slavonic, which, after their first separation, have had but little contact with Sanskrit, have the same word, for instance, for _iron_ which exists in Sanskrit, this is proof absolute that iron was known previous to the Aryan separation. Now, _iron_ is _ais_ in Gothic, and _ayas_ in Sanskrit, a word which, as it could not have been borrowed by the Indians from the Germans or by the Germans from the Indians, must have existed previous to their separation. We could not find the same name for house in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Celtic,(218) unless houses had been known before the separation of these dialects. In this manner a history of Aryan civilization has been written from the archives of language, stretching back to times far beyond the reach of any documentary history.(219)

The very name of _Arya_ belongs to this history, and I shall devote the rest of this lecture to tracing the origin and gradual spreading of this old word. I had intended to include, in to-day’s lecture, a short account of _comparative mythology_, a branch of our science which restores the original form and meaning of decayed words by the same means by which comparative grammar recovers the original form and meaning of terminations. But my time is too limited; and, as I have been asked repeatedly why I applied the name of _Aryan_ to that family of language which we have just examined, I feel that I am bound to give an answer.

_Ârya_ is a Sanskrit word, and in the later Sanskrit it means _noble_, _of a good family_. It was, however, originally a national name, and we see traces of it as late as the Law-book of the Mânavas, where India is still called _Ârya-âvarta_, the abode of the _Âryas_.(220) In the old Sanskrit, in the hymns of the Veda, _ârya_ occurs frequently as a national name and as a name of honor, comprising the worshippers of the gods of the Brahmans, as opposed to their enemies, who are called in the Veda _Dasyus_. Thus one of the gods, _Indra_, who, in some respects, answers to the Greek Zeus, is invoked in the following words (Rigveda, i. 57, 8): “Know thou the Âryas, O Indra, and they who are Dasyus; punish the lawless, and deliver them unto thy servant! Be thou the mighty helper of the worshippers, and I will praise all these thy deeds at the festivals.”

In the later dogmatic literature of the Vedic age, the name of Ârya is distinctly appropriated to the three first castes—the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaiśyas—as opposed to the fourth, or the Śûdras. In the Śatapatha-Brâhmaņa it is laid down distinctly: “Âryas are only the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, and Vaiśyas, for they are admitted to the sacrifices. They shall not speak with everybody, but only with the Brahman, the Kshatriya, and the Vaiśya. If they should fall into a conversation with a Śûdra, let them say to another man, ‘Tell this Śûdra so.’ This is the law.”

In the Atharva-veda (iv. 20, 4; xix. 62, 1) expressions occur such as, “seeing all things, whether Śûdra or Ârya,” where Śûdra and Ârya are meant to express the whole of mankind.

This word _ârya_ with a long _â_ is derived from _arya_ with a short _a_, and this name _arya_ is applied in the later Sanskrit to a Vaiśya, or a member of the third caste.(221) What is called the third class must originally have constituted the large majority of the Brahmanic society, for all who were not soldiers or priests, were Vaiśyas. We may well understand, therefore, how a name, originally applied to the cultivators of the soil and householders, should in time have become a general name for all Aryans.(222) Why the householders were called _arya_ is a question which would carry us too far at present. I can only state that the etymological signification of Arya seems to be “one who ploughs or tills,” and that it is connected with the root of _arare_. The Aryans would seem to have chosen this name for themselves as opposed to the nomadic races, _the Turanians_, whose original name _Tura_ implies the swiftness of the horseman.

In India, as we saw, the name of Ârya, as a national name, fell into oblivion in later times, and was preserved only in the term Âryâvarta, the abode of the Aryans. But it was more faithfully preserved by the Zoroastrians who migrated from India to the north-west, and whose religion has been preserved to us in the Zend-avesta, though in fragments only. Now _Airya_ in Zend means venerable, and is at the same time the name of the people.(223) In the first chapter of the Vendidád, where Ahuramazda explains to Zarathustra the order in which he created the earth, sixteen countries are mentioned, each, when created by Ahuramazda, being pure and perfect; but each being tainted in turn by Angro mainyus or Ahriman. Now the first of these countries is called _Airyanem vaêjô_, _Arianum semen_, the Aryan seed, and its position must have been as far east as the western slopes of the Belurtag and Mustag, near the sources of the Oxus and Yaxartes, the highest elevation of Central Asia.(224) From this country, which is called their seed, the Aryans advanced towards the south and west, and in the Zend-avesta the whole extent of country occupied by the Aryans is likewise called _Airyâ_. A line drawn from India along the Paropamisus and Caucasus Indicus in the east, following in the north the direction between the Oxus and Yaxartes,(225) then running along the Caspian Sea, so as to include Hyrcania and Râgha, then turning south-east on the borders of Nisaea, Aria (_i.e._ Haria), and the countries washed by the Etymandrus and Arachotus, would indicate the general horizon of the Zoroastrian world. It would be what is called in the fourth cardé of the Yasht of Mithra, “the whole space of Aria,” _vîśpem airyô-śayanem_ (totum Ariæ situm).(226) Opposed to the Aryan we find in the Zend-avesta the non-Aryan countries (anairyâo dainhâvô),(227) and traces of this name are found in the Ἀναριάκαι, a people and town on the frontiers of Hyrcania.(228) Greek geographers use the name of Ariana in a wider sense even than the Zend-avesta. All the country between the Indian Ocean in the south and the Indus in the east, the Hindu-kush and Paropamisus in the north, the Caspian gates, Karamania, and the mouth of the Persian gulf in the west, is included by Strabo (xv. 2) under the name of Ariana; and Bactria is thus called(229) by him “the ornament of the whole of Ariana.” As the Zoroastrian religion spread westward, Persia, Elymais, and Media all claimed for themselves the Aryan title. Hellanicus, who wrote before Herodotus, knows of Aria as a name of Persia.(230) Herodotus (vii. 62) attests that the Medians called themselves Arii; and even for Atropatene, the northernmost part of Media, the name of Ariania (not Aria) has been preserved by Stephanus Byzantinus. As to Elymais its name has been derived from _Ailama_, a supposed corruption of _Airyama_.(231) The Persians, Medians, Bactrians, and Sogdians all spoke, as late as the time of Strabo,(232) nearly the same language, and we may well understand, therefore, that they should have claimed for themselves one common name, in opposition to the hostile tribes of Turan.

That _Aryan_ was used as a title of honor in the Persian empire is clearly shown by the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius. He calls himself _Ariya_ and _Ariya-chitra_, an Aryan and of Aryan descent; and Ahuramazda, or, as he is called by Darius, Auramazda, is rendered in the Turanian translation of the inscription of Behistun, “the god of the Aryans.” Many historical names of the Persians contain the same element. The great-grandfather of Darius is called in the inscriptions Ariyârâmna, the Greek _Ariaramnēs_ (Herod, vii. 90). Ariobarzanēs (_i.e._ Euergetēs), Ariomanes (_i.e._ Eumenēs), Ariomardos, all show the same origin.(233)

About the same time as these inscriptions, Eudemos, a pupil of Aristotle, as quoted by Damascius, speaks of “the Magi and the whole Aryan race,”(234) evidently using Aryan in the same sense in which the Zend-avesta spoke of “the whole country of Aria.”

And when, after years of foreign invasion and occupation, Persia rose again under the sceptre of the Sassanians to be a national kingdom, we find the new national kings the worshippers of Masdanes, calling themselves, in the inscriptions deciphered by De Sacy,(235) “Kings of the Aryan and un-Aryan races;” in Pehlevi, _Irân va Anirân_; in Greek, Ἀριάνων καὶ Ἀναριάνων.

The modern name of Irán for Persia still keeps up the memory of this ancient title.

In the name of _Armenia_ the same element of _Arya_ has been supposed to exist.(236) The name of Armenia, however, does not occur in Zend, and the name _Armina_, which is used for Armenia in the cuneiform inscriptions, is of doubtful etymology.(237) In the language of Armenia, _ari_ is used in the widest sense for Aryan or Iranian; it means also brave, and is applied more especially to the Medians.(238) The word _arya_, therefore, though not contained in the name of Armenia, can be proved to have existed in the Armenian language as a national and honorable name.

West of Armenia, on the borders of the Caspian Sea, we find the ancient name of _Albania_. The Armenians call the Albanians _Aghovan_, and as _gh_ in Armenian stands for _r_ or _l_, it has been conjectured by Boré, that in _Aghovan_ also the name of Aria is contained. This seems doubtful. But in the valleys of the Caucasus we meet with an Aryan race speaking an Aryan language, the _Os_ of _Ossethi_, and they call themselves _Iron_.(239)

Along the Caspian, and in the country washed by the Oxus and Yaxartes, Aryan and non-Aryan tribes were mingled together for centuries. Though the relation between Aryans and Turanians is hostile, and though there were continual wars between them, as we learn from the great Persian epic, the Shahnámeh, it does not follow that all the nomad races who infested the settlements of the Aryans, were of Tatar blood and speech. Turvaśa and his descendants, who represent the Turanians, are described in the later epic poems of India as cursed and deprived of their inheritance in India. But in the Vedas Turvaśa is represented as worshipping Aryan gods. Even in the Shahnámeh, Persian heroes go over to the Turanians and lead them against Iran, very much as Coriolanus led the Samnites against Rome. We may thus understand why so many Turanian or Scythian names, mentioned by Greek writers, should show evident traces of Aryan origin. _Aspa_ was the Persian name for _horse_, and in the Scythian names _Aspabota_, _Aspakara_, and _Asparatha_,(240) we can hardly fail to recognize the same element. Even the name of the Aspasian mountains, placed by Ptolemy in Scythia, indicates a similar origin. Nor is the word Arya unknown beyond the Oxus. There is a people called _Ariacœ_,(241) another called _Antariani_.(242) A king of the Scythians, at the time of Darius, was called _Ariantes_. A cotemporary of Xerxes is known by the name of _Aripithes_ (_i.e._ Sanskrit, _aryapati_; Zend, _airyapaiti_); and _Spargapithes_ seems to have some connection with the Sanskrit _svargapati_, lord of heaven.

We have thus traced the name of _Ârya_ from India to the west, from Âryâvarta to Ariana, Persia, Media, more doubtfully to Armenia and Albania, to the Iron in the Caucasus, and to some of the nomad tribes in Transoxiana. As we approach Europe the traces of this name grow fainter, yet they are not altogether lost.

Two roads were open to the Aryans of Asia in their westward migrations. One through Chorasan(243) to the north, through what is now called Russia, and thence to the shores of the Black Sea and Thrace. Another from Armenia, across the Caucasus or across the Black Sea to Northern Greece, and along the Danube to Germany. Now on the former road the Aryans left a trace of their migration in the old name of Thrace which was _Aria_;(244) on the latter we meet in the eastern part of Germany, near the Vistula, with a German tribe called _Arii_. And as in Persia we found many proper names in which _Arya_ formed an important ingredient, so we find again in German history names such as _Ariovistus_.(245)

Though we look in vain for any traces of this old national name among the Greeks and Romans, late researches have rendered it at least plausible that it has been preserved in the extreme west of the Aryan migrations, in the very name of _Ireland_. The common etymology of _Erin_ is that it means “island of the west,” _iar-innis_, or land of the west, _iar-in_. But this is clearly wrong.(246) The old name is _Ériu_ in the nominative, more recently _Éire_. It is only in the oblique cases that the final _n_ appears, as in _regio_, _regionis_. _Erin_ therefore has been explained as a derivative of _Er_ or _Eri_, said to be the ancient name of the Irish Celts as preserved in the Anglo-Saxon name of their country, _Íraland_.(247) It is maintained by O’Reilly, though denied by others, that _er_ is used in Irish in the sense of noble, like the Sanskrit _ârya_.(248)

Some of the evidence here collected in tracing the ancient name of the Aryan family, may seem doubtful, and I have pointed out myself some links of the chain uniting the earliest name of India with the modern name of Ireland, as weaker than the rest. But the principal links are safe. Names of countries, peoples, rivers, and mountains, have an extraordinary vitality, and they will remain while cities, kingdoms, and nations pass away. _Rome_ has the same name to-day, and will probably have it forever, which was given to it by the earliest Latin and Sabine settlers, and wherever we find the name of Rome, whether in Wallachia, which by the inhabitants is called Rumania, or in the dialects of the Grisons, the Romansch, or in the title of the Romance languages, we know that some threads would lead us back to the Rome of Romulus and Remus, the stronghold of the earliest warriors of Latium. The ruined city near the mouth of the Upper Zab, now usually known by the name of Nimrud, is called _Athur_ by the Arabic geographers, and in Athur we recognize the old name of Assyria, which Dio Cassius writes Atyria, remarking that the barbarians changed the Sigma into Tau. Assyria is called Athurâ, in the inscriptions of Darius.(249) We hear of battles fought on the _Sutledge_, and we hardly think that the battle field of the Sikhs was nearly the same where Alexander fought the kings of the Penjáb. But the name of the _Sutledge_ is the name of the same river as the _Hesudrus_ of Alexander, the _Śatadru_ of the Indians, and among the oldest hymns of the Veda, about 1500 B. C., we find a war-song referring to a battle fought on the two banks of the same river.

No doubt there is danger in trusting to mere similarity of names. Grimm may be right that the Arii of Tacitus were originally Harii, and that their name is not connected with Ârya. But the evidence on either side being merely conjectural, this must remain an open question. In most cases, however, a strict observation of the phonetic laws peculiar to each language will remove all uncertainty. Grimm, in his “History of the German Language” (p. 228), imagined that _Hariva_, the name of _Herat_ in the cuneiform inscriptions, is connected with Arii, the name which, as we saw, Herodotus gives to the Medes. This cannot be, for the initial aspiration in _Hariva_ points to a word which in Sanskrit begins with _s_, and not with a vowel, like _ârya_. The following remarks will make this clearer.

Herat is called _Herat_ and _Heri_,(250) and the river on which it stands is called _Heri-rud_. This river _Heri_ is called by Ptolemy Ἀρείας,(251) by other writers _Arius_; and _Aria_ is the name given to the country between Parthia (Parthuwa) in the west, Margiana (Marghush) in the north, Bactria (Bakhtrish) and Arachosia (Harauwatish) in the east, and Drangiana (Zaraka) in the south. This, however, though without the initial _h_, is not Ariana, as described by Strabo, but an independent country, forming part of it. It is supposed to be the same as the _Haraiva_ (Hariva) of the cuneiform inscriptions, though this is doubtful. But it is mentioned in the Zend-avesta, under the name of _Harôyu_,(252) as the sixth country created by Ormuzd. We can trace this name with the initial _h_ even beyond the time of Zoroaster. The Zoroastrians were a colony from northern India. They had been together for a time with the people whose sacred songs have been preserved to us in the Veda. A schism took place, and the Zoroastrians migrated westward to Arachosia and Persia. In their migrations they did what the Greeks did when they founded new colonies, what the Americans did in founding new cities. They gave to the new cities and to the rivers along which they settled, the names of cities and rivers familiar to them, and reminding them of the localities which they had left. Now, as a Persian _h_ points to a Sanskrit _s_, _Harôyu_ would be in Sanskrit _Saroyu_. One of the sacred rivers of India, a river mentioned in the Veda, and famous in the epic poems as the river of Ayodhyâ, one of the earliest capitals of India, the modern Oude, has the name of _Sarayu_, the modern _Sardju_.(253)

As Comparative Philology has thus traced the ancient name of Ârya from India to Europe, as the original title assumed by the Aryans before they left their common home, it is but natural that it should have been chosen as the technical term for the family of languages which was formerly designated as Indo-Germanic, Indo-European, Caucasian, or Japhetic.

LECTURE VII. THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE.

Our analysis of some of the nominal and verbal formations in the Aryan or Indo-European family of speech has taught us that, however mysterious and complicated these grammatical forms appear at first sight, they are in reality the result of a very simple process. It seems at first almost hopeless to ask such questions as why the addition of a mere _d_ should change love present into love past, or why the termination _ai_ in French, if added to _aimer_, should convey the idea of love to come. But, once placed under the microscope of comparative grammar, these and all other grammatical forms assume a very different and much more intelligible aspect. We saw how what we now call terminations were originally independent words. After coalescing with the words which they were intended to modify, they were gradually reduced to mere syllables and letters, unmeaning in themselves, yet manifesting their former power and independence by the modification which they continue to produce in the meaning of the words to which they are appended. The true nature of grammatical terminations was first pointed out by a philosopher, who, however wild some of his speculations may be, had certainly caught many a glimpse of the real life and growth of language, I mean _Horne Tooke_. This is what he writes of terminations:(254)—

“For though I think I have good reasons to believe that all terminations may likewise be traced to their respective origin; and that, however artificial they may now appear to us, they were not originally the effect of premeditated and deliberate _art_, but separate words by length of time corrupted and coalescing with the words of which they are now considered as the terminations. Yet this was less likely to be suspected by others. And if it had been suspected, they would have had much further to travel to their journey’s end, and through a road much more embarrassed; as the corruption in those languages is of much longer standing than in ours, and more complex.”

Horne Tooke, however, though he saw rightly what road should be followed to track the origin of grammatical terminations, was himself without the means to reach his journey’s end. Most of his explanations are quite untenable, and it is curious to observe in reading his book, the Diversions of Purley, how a man of a clear, sharp, and powerful mind, and reasoning according to sound and correct principles, may yet, owing to his defective knowledge of facts, arrive at conclusions directly opposed to truth.

When we have once seen how grammatical terminations are to be traced back in the beginning to independent words, we have learnt at the same time that the component elements of language, which remain in our crucible at the end of a complete grammatical analysis, are of two kinds, namely, _Roots predicative_ and _Roots demonstrative_.

We call _root_ or _radical_, whatever, in the words of any language or family of languages, cannot be reduced to a simpler or more original form. It may be well to illustrate this by a few examples. But, instead of taking a number of words in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and tracing them back to their common centre, it will be more instructive if we begin with a root which has been discovered, and follow it through its wanderings from language to language. I take the root AR, to which I alluded in our last Lecture as the source of the word _Arya_, and we shall thus, while examining its ramification, learn at the same time why that name was chosen by the agricultural nomads, the ancestors of the Aryan race.

This root AR(255) means _to plough_, to open the soil. From it we have the Latin _ar-are_, the Greek _ar-oun_, the Irish _ar_, the Lithuanian _ar-ti_, the Russian _ora-ti_, the Gothic _ar-jan_, the Anglo-Saxon _er-jan_, the modern English _to ear_. Shakespeare says (Richard II. III. 2), “to ear the land that has some hope to grow.”

From this we have the name of the plough, or the instrument of earing: in Latin, _ara-trum_; in Greek, _aro-tron_; in Bohemian, _oradto_; in Lithuanian, _arklas_; in Cornish, _aradar_; in Welsh, _arad_;(256) in Old Norse, _ardhr_. In Old Norse, however, _ardhr_, meaning originally the plough, came to mean earnings or wealth; the plough being, in early times, the most essential possession of the peasant. In the same manner the Latin name for money, _pecunia_, was derived from _pecus_, cattle; the word _fee_, which is now restricted to the payment made to a doctor or lawyer, was in Old English _feh_, and in Anglo-Saxon _feoh_, meaning cattle and wealth; for _feoh_, and Gothic _faihu_, are really the same word as the Latin _pecus_, the modern German _vieh_.

The act of ploughing is called _aratio_ in Latin; _arosis_ in Greek: and I believe that _arôma_, in the sense of perfume, had the same origin; for what is sweeter or more aromatic than the smell of a ploughed field? In Genesis, xxviii. 27, Jacob says “the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed.”

A more primitive formation of the root _ar_ seems to be the Greek _era_, earth, the Sanskrit _irâ_, the Old High-German _ëro_, the Gaelic _ire_, _irionn_. It meant originally the ploughed land, afterwards earth in general. Even the word _earth_, the Gothic _airtha_,(257) the Anglo-Saxon _eorthe_, must have been taken originally in the sense of ploughed or cultivated land. The derivative _ar-mentum_, formed like _ju-mentum_, would naturally have been applied to any animal fit for ploughing and other labor in the field, whether ox or horse.