mony. The common name by which the Indian and Iranian The Testi (or Persian) branches of this great family designated themselves was Aryas (in Zend, Airyas); a title of honor,1 which now, after thousands of years, returns, in scientific nomenclature, to justify their self-respect by the magnificent record of European civilization. The first fixed datum for our primeval people is therefore their name. It further appears from these researches that the Aryas lived in fixed habitations, kept herds, and tilled the soil. They occupied a diversified region, richly watered and wooded, and highly metalliferous; its climate, flora, and fauna corresponding with the descriptions of Bactriana which have come down to us from the Greek geographers, and which are confirmed by modern travellers. It was cold enough to stir the blood and to make them number their years by winters. Their houses were roofed, and had windows and doors. Barley, the grain of cool climates, was their commonest cereal. Their wealth was in their cattle. Names for race, tribe, family relations, property and trade, for the inn, the guest, the master, the king, were all taken from words which designated the herd. They called dawn the "mustering time of the cows;" evening, the "hour of bringing them home." They had domesticated the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. The cow was the "slow walker;" the ox, "the vigorous one;" the dog was "speed; "the wolf, "the destroyer." They used yokes and axles and probably ploughs; wrought in various metals; spun and wove; had vessels made of wood, leather, terracotta, and metal; and musical instruments of 1 Compare Greek άpɛn), valor, and German ehre, honor. 2 Pictet, I. 35-42. shells and reeds. They counted beyond a hundred. They navigated rivers in oared boats; fought with bows, clubs, bucklers, lances, and swords, in battle chariots and to the sound of trumpets and conchs. They besieged each other in towns; employed spies, and reduced their enemies to some kind of servitude, of which we know not the extent. Domestic relations rested on sentiments of affection and respect. There are no signs of polygamy. Patriarchal absolutism was tempered by natural instincts. Father meant "the protector;" mother, "the former and disposer;" brother, "the supporter;" and sister, "the careful," or "the consoling, pleasing one." The primitive names of these forms of relationship have been transmitted with slight change through most branches of the Indo-European race even to the present day. And thus the closest domestic ties not only became, as common speech, the symbols of an ethnic brotherhood, which time and space are bound to guard and expand, but were sealed also to immortal meanings for the moral nature by the oldest testimony of mankind. And the affirmations of conscience, the words of the Spirit, were not less clearly pronounced, in other directions.1 The Aryas had clear conceptions of the rights of property and definite guarantees for their protection. These guarantees were based on ownership of the soil where the family altar stood, concentrating the sentiment of piety. We see at how early a period men recognized the natural dependence of those necessary conditions of social order, the family and 1 Kuhn, in Weber's Ind. Studien, I. 321-363; Lassen, I. 813; Müller, Oxford Essays for 1856; Weber, Lecture on India (Berlin, 1854); Muller, Science of Language, 236; Pictet, II. 746. the home, on fixed and permanent ownership of land. Communistic schemes have never yet succeeded, among the Indo-Europeans, in overcoming this instinctive wisdom, which loyally maintains the Family, the Home, and private Property in Land as mutually dependent factors of civilization. And we may infer from the sacredness attached by the Hindus, Greeks, and Romans to bounds, whether by stones, or by ploughed trenches, or by vacant spaces, -each family thus marking off its real estate from its neighbors, that this reverence for property limits was also a trait of the older race of which they were the branches.1 The Aryas had formalities for transactions of exchange and sale, for payment of wages, and for the administration of oaths. All the essential elements of social order were evidently present in this primitive civilization, the cradle of historic races. Law was designated by a word which meant right. The notion of justice was associated with the straight line, suggestive of directness and impartiality. Transgression meant falling off, and oath constraint.2 Their psychological insight surprises us. They seem to have distinguished clearly the principle of spiritual existence. Soul was not merely vital breath, but thinking being. Thought was recognized as the essential characteristic of man, the same word designating both. For four thousand years man has been called "the thinker." For consciousness, will, memory, the Aryas had words that are not traceable to material symbols. They even made a distinction, it is believed, between concrete existence and abstract 1 See De Coulanges, La Cité Antique, B. 1. ch. v. 1 being; a germ of that intellectual vigor which has made the Aryan race the fathers of philosophy. Their language abounded in signs of imaginative and intuitive processes. They believed in spirits, good and evil; and their medical science consisted in exorcising the latter kind by means of herbs and magical formulas. There are no signs of an established priesthood, nor of edifices consecrated to deities. But terms relating to faith, sacrifice, and adoration, are so abundant as to prove a sincere and fervent religious sentiment. The similarity of meaning in numerous words descriptive of divine forces has seemed to "point to a primitive monotheism, more or less vaguely defined." Yet the Aryas had probably developed a rich mythology before their separation into different branches. They had also firm belief in immortality and in a happy heaven for those who should deserve it, beholding the soul pass forth at death as a shape of air, under watchful guardians, to its upper home. Some of these inferences of linguistic palæontology may require further evidence to give them scientific certainty. But there are other features in the picture of Aryan religious life which admit of no dispute. The word Div, designating at once the clear light of the sky, and whatsoever spiritual meanings these simple instincts intimately associated therewith, has endured as the root-word of worship for the whole Aryan race in all its branches the appellatives of Deity are waves of this primal sound, flowing through 1 Pictet, II. 539-546, 749. * Developed afterwards in the Yâtus and Rakshasas of the Veda, and in correspondent evil spirits of the Avesta. Pictet, I. 633. Ibid., 720, 690. • Ibid., 689. 6 Ibid., 748. all its manifold and changing religions with the serene transcendence of an eternal law. Again, it has been shown1 that the whole substance of Greek mythology is but the development, with exquisite poetic feeling, of a primitive Aryan stock of names and legends, recognizable through comparison with the Hymns of the Hindu Rig Veda, where they are found, in simpler and ruder forms. In these early yet secondary stages of their development, they represent the daily mystery of solar movement, the swift passage of dawn and twilight, the conflict of day with. night, of sunshine with cloud, of drought with fertilizing rain, the stealthy path of the breeze, the rising of the storm wind, the wonder-working of the elements, the loss of all visible forms at night only to return with fresh splendors in the morning. This old Aryan religion of intimacy with the powers of air and sky has in fact been aptly called a meteorolatry. And recent scholarship has applied much ingenuity as well as insight, in bringing all Vedic names and legends under the one title of "solar myths," using the word in the wide descriptive sense just indicated. And there can be no doubt that they all are more or less intimately related to natural phenomena, though proceeding primarily, it is none the less true, from moral and spiritual experiences in their makers, as all mythology must do. But what we have now to observe is that the amount of this mythologic lore, inherited by both the Asiatic and European branches of the Aryan race, warrants our ascribing very great productive capacity, both æsthetic and religious, 1 Especially by the recent researches of Müller. See Cox's Manual of Mythology for a popular summary of these. Also the valuable articles of Mr. John Fiske, in the Atlantic Monthly for 1871. |