RELATIONSHIP OF LANGUAGES.

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THE ARYANS.

The Aryans have left no account of themselves sculptured on rocks or the walls of crumbling temples; but by careful study of the languages of Aryan origin we obtain, after the lapse of four thousand years, a glimpse of the social condition of those who spoke the mother-tongue among the mountains of Bactria. We infer that nouns similar in the various derived languages,-as father (protector), brother (helper), house, door, walls, boat, grain, etc.,—are the names of objects or notions familiar to the original family.* Thus utilizing language as a key to what would otherwise be locked up in the unknown past, we learn that the inhabitants of the fertile Bactrian valleys were devoted to agricultural pursuits. Tilling the ground was an honorable employment, the very name Aryan signifying high-born, noble. We have pictured to us law-abiding communities, grouped together in towns, ruled by chiefs and a king, recognizing family ties, entertaining exalted conceptions of woman, and a solemn regard for the marriage bond-the latter always a mark of high civilization.

Language also tells us that this interesting people preferred the arts of peace to war. With the dog for his companion, the shepherd folded his flocks of sheep; with the horse and ox for his servants, the landholder broke the soil with a plough of bronze. Pigs and fowls were raised; cattle formed the chief wealth; and the cows were milked by the daughter of the household-this name meaning milk-maid.

The Aryan drove from village to village in his wheeled car

* A thousand words have thus been traced through the sister languages of Aryan birth—a number certainly adequate to the wants of primitive man, when we remember that of more than 100,000 words which constitute our present vocabulary but 3,000 are in common use. The Old Testament was translated with the help of only 5,642 English words. While Shakespeare's genius required. 21,000 words for its expression, Milton's epic employs less than half that number.

riage, over well-constructed roads; worked the metals; plied the loom; moulded clay into pottery; and even navigated the neighboring waters in boats propelled by oars. He gave

names to numbers as far as one hundred, was familiar with the principles of decimals, and took the moon for his guide in dividing the year into months.

A Supreme Being was worshipped in Bactria, the Great Unseen, the Creator and Governor of the world. In the reference to him of controversies that were difficult to settle, we trace the origin of the later trial by ordeal. Even some of our commonest stories are derived from fables current at least two thousand years B.C. in ancient Arya.

Aryan Migrations.-Few in number at first, the Aryans long lived peaceably together. But as the population grew denser, great bodies, either compelled to search for food in other lands or moved by a thirst for exploration, broke away at different periods from the cradle of their race, in quest of new abodes.

The first to leave were the Celts, who, passing between the Caspian Sea and the Black, made their way westward into Europe, and, conquering an indigenous population of supposed Turanian origin, possessed themselves of its fairest lands.* Following them, but by a route north of the Caspian, and ever pushing them toward the west, came the Slavonian and Teutonic tribes-the former, the ancestors of the Russians and Servians, Poles and Bohemians; the latter, of the Goths, Scandinavians, and German nations. Of the Aryans who thus migrated to the northwest, Max Müller says that they "have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active

* In common with the Celts, the North American Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and other ancient nations, cherished a tradition that they had supplanted an original population—the children of the soil—of low intellectual powers, feeders on roots, hole-dwellers, serpent-eaters.

ARYAN MIGRATIONS.

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life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals. They have become, after struggles with Semitic and Turanian races, the rulers of history; and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilization, commerce, and religion.”

After the last emigration of Aryans to the west, the parent community extended its settlements southward into the Tableland of Iran (é'rahn) (modern Persia, Afghanistan, and Beloochistan; see Map), and finally, in consequence of a religious. difference, separated into two great branches. One remained on the Iranian plateau, and was ultimately known in history as the Medes and Persians. The other made its way through

the mountain-passes, crossed the upper Indus (at some uncertain date, between 2000 and 1400 B.C.), and in time effected the conquest of the rich peninsula of Hindostan. The invaders were the “fair-complexioned" Indo-Aryans, who spoke the polished Sanscrit, and among whom sprung up the institution of caste and many gross superstitions.

Aryan Languages. Similarity in the words and grammatical structure of their languages proves that the Hindoos, the Persians, the Greeks and Romans, the Celtic races, the Slavonian and Teutonic nations,-all had a common origin; that the frozen Icelander and Indian fire-worshipper, the outcast Gypsy and the plaided Highlander, the English master and his Cooley servant, are brothers of the same stock. Their tongues have been derived from the same parent—a language full of poetic grandeur, older than Greek or Sanscrit, and containing the germs of both—a language which has perished.

Spoken as we have seen from India to the west of Europe, these tongues have been called INDO-EUROPEAN. They embrace the dialects of India and Persia; the Welsh, and the Celtic of Scotland and Ireland; the Latin and its derivatives, the Romance languages, viz., Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Provençal, and Wallachian; Greek; Russian, Polish, and Bohemian; English, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (see Linguistic Map of Europe and Chart, preceding the title-page). The relationship existing among these tongues of the Indo-European race-preeminently the race of progressive civilization-has been established by the study of their several grammars.

THE SEMITES.

The Semitic Languages, in like manner, may all be traced to a common source. To this group belong the Syriac, the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Ethiopic, the ancient Phoenician, and the Carthaginian; while the cuneiform inscriptions of Bab

SEMITES AND TURANIANS.

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ylonia and Assyria are the written characters of a Semitic tongue common to those countries. (See Chart, p. 85.)

Philology has not followed the Semites to a home as limited as that of the Aryans; though tradition points to Armenia as their early domicile. It declares, however, the Semitic and the Aryan to be distinct families of speech, which, while both may be branches from a common parent stem, could not have been derived one from the other.

THE TURANIANS.

Turanian Dialects.-Here there is slighter evidence of relationship. The Turanian languages, though they seem to be members of the same original family, differ widely; for those who spoke them were nomads, wanderers over the globe, whose customs, laws, and dialects were modified with every change of habitation and condition. To this sporadic group belong the Mongolian tongues, the Turkish, Finnic, and Hungarian, together with certain Polynesian dialects; but the Chinese, Japanese, Australian, North American Indian, South African, and many others of the nine hundred languages. spoken on the earth, bear hardly enough resemblance to these to be classed in the same family.

SYSTEMS OF WRITING.

Language is either spoken or written. Spoken language we find to have been used as a medium of communication between men in the earliest periods to which history carries us back. It is the expression of reason, and as such constitutes a line of demarcation between man and the lower animals. Without it, indeed, the brute can, to a certain extent, make known his emotions and desires. The house-dog, by the distinctive character of his bark, welcomes his master or threatens the intrusive stranger. The hen warns her chicks of danger by one set of signals, and calls them to feed by another.