BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

Our inquiry in the first paper of this series led us to follow the emigration of the Aryan, or Indo-European, peoples from their original seat in Central Asia until we found them in possession of the whole of Europe;—the whole, from Siberia to the western shore of Ireland, from the Arctic Sea to the Mediterranean. The people who were there before them, they seem to have totally displaced, with the exception of a small remnant in the Pyrenees, now and long known as the Basques. That there were people in Europe before the Aryans has been clearly established by inquiries which here need only be thus referred to. Neither the inquiries nor the people are anything to our present purpose. As the Aryans began their westward march more than four thousand years ago, this fact of preËxisting European peoples is strong confirmatory evidence of the truth of a quaint line in a little song in “Twelfth Night” (not written by Shakspere, however),

That the Aryans killed all their predecessors in Europe is hardly credible, even if possible; but that they were very thorough in the performance of this function, is also more than probable. The improving of other people off the face of the earth is by no means an original American invention. It is a process which long antedates the introduction of the arts of civilization; and looking at the subject from the cold heights of history and social science, it seems to have been a necessity, preliminary to the introduction of those arts. The civilization which now fills the best part of the earth, although not the largest, and which seems destined to fill the whole, is in its origin and development altogether Aryan. Probably much the greater part of the primitive European peoples—primitive, if they indeed had not also predecessors—were destroyed. Certainly by the two processes of destruction and absorption they were extinguished. The Aryans, however, were not mere bands of armed men, armies large or small; they were emigrating nations. The men were accompanied by their women and children; and the probability therefore is that there was little mingling of the blood of the superior and conquering race with the blood of the inferior race, or races, whom they conquered and displaced. At least, of such an intermingling no appreciable traces have been discovered. There is in the language of any of the Aryan peoples now in possession of Europe no remnant, either verbal or constructive, of a language like that of the Basques. The consequences in this respect of the Aryan immigration into Europe were probably much like the consequences of the entrance of that people into this country. The American races have disappeared here before the European, and have not in the slightest degree affected, in the United States, at least, the blood, or the civilization or the speech of the latter. “Indians,” as we strangely call them (the real Indians being in Asia, and the “Indians” of America having been so called because America on its discovery was supposed to be the eastern part of Asia)—“Indians” should be treated with justice and with all the humanity that can be shown them; but it is a narrow and really an inhuman sentimentality which mourns their displacement from the great country which they once occupied as a savage hunting-ground.

We have now to inquire what English is; what is the substance and the structure of the language which within only two hundred and fifty years has choked and stilled even the echoes of the speech of Sitting Bull, Squatting Bear, and their forefathers and kindred. But before we go directly into this inquiry it may be instructive, and I hope interesting, to glance briefly at a few of the evidences which the discovery of Sanskrit, and the consequent development of the science of comparative philology, have revealed of the original identity of all the Aryan peoples (those in Europe and those in Asia—that is in Persia and India) and to make a rudimentary acquaintance with the modes and processes by which this identity was discovered.

No single word is so good an example of the testimony of language to the common origin of the Indo-European peoples as one of the commonest that we use, one which expresses the first, or at least the second, thought that enters the human mind—me. An infant, a worm, if it can think, has awakened in it on its first touch of another object the consciousness of something else and of itself:—that is not me, this is me. Now the expression in sound of this first perception of the human mind is the most widely diffused, and one of the most ancient, of existing words. In English, Frisian, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, MÆso-Gothic, German, Irish, GÆlic, Welsh, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, the word expressing the objective recognition of self-hood is either absolutely the same, or like with so little difference that the slightness of the variation is remarkable. When we get to the Latin and the Greek me (the accusative case—so-called—of ego, I, which is common to both languages) we have gone back more than two thousand years; and when we reach the Sanskrit mahyam, with its dative me and its accusative mÁ, we are four thousand years in the past, and as many thousand miles in Central Asia.

This one word, it should seem, was sufficient to indicate identity of origin in all the European languages, ancient and modern; and if not to produce conviction, to arouse attention and stimulate investigation. When the word was found in Sanskrit, it is not too much to say that identity of origin in all the Indo-European tongues was so clear that further investigation could discover only an accumulation of evidence. For otherwise it would be necessary to assume some inherent, intrinsic, or, as we say, some natural, relations between the idea of objective self-hood and the sound me, or that very ancient original sound of which it is a slight modification. But there is no such relation. There is no such relation between any word and any thought. If there were, then all the peoples of the world would have expressed that idea, and would now express it, by this sound, or by some modification of it. This, however, is not true. It is and it has been so used only by the peoples of the great Aryan or Indo-European family. But what a tremendous fact it is, the use of this little word by hundreds and thousands of millions of people over half the civilized world for more than four thousand years, to express this first thought that enters the mind of man!—people who were strangers, and enemies, who were slaughtering each other as they fought through the dark cycles of centuries for land, for life, for supremacy; who hated each other as foreign and alien; and who were all calling themselves, each to himself and each to the other, me, and in doing so were telling each other that they were of one blood and one speech!

It should be very distinctly remembered that the me (with its variations) of the various European peoples is not derived from the Sanskrit mahyam, mÁ, or me, but that the Sanskrit form, like the others, is derived from a root in the yet more ancient, and now wholly lost, original Aryan speech. That word, according to evidence which I believe is satisfactory to all the great comparative philologists, is the pronominal root ma, which, for reasons undiscovered, and which are probably undiscoverable, was used to express the first person. Many verbal roots have been thus satisfactorily unearthed; but in the consideration of our subject it must never be forgotten, that the Sanskrit, although it has proved to be the key that unlocks the mysteries of language, and makes them no longer mysteries, but mere successions of related facts, is not the original fact or form of Aryan or Indo-European speech. No word in Latin, Greek, in the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic, or other European tongues is derived from a Sanskrit word, although the two may seem identical. Both are derived alike from an elder word or root. The supreme importance of Sanskrit in the study of language is in the fact that it is the oldest, very much the oldest, of all the existing Aryan languages, and that it has been preserved for thousands of years with a minute accuracy and a religious devotion.

Having made this discovery about the word for that very important, that most important, individual, I, we should naturally expect that the words expressive of the first and most important relation of that individual—that to his progenitors—would be in like manner general, and in like manner preserved among the various families of the Aryan race. This proved to be the case. The word for mother, is, with very slight variation, the same in all of them. For example, English mother, Anglo-Saxon moder, Dutch moeder, Icelandic mothir, Danish moder, German mutter, Celtic mathair, Russian mat-e, Latin mater, Greek meter,[A] Sanskrit matri; and on the other side, the male, we have, English father, Anglo-Saxon fÆder, Dutch vader, Danish fader, Icelandic fathir, MÆso-Gothic fadar, German vater, Latin pater, Greek pater, Persian pedar, and Sanskrit pitri. Here again we have followed these household words through Europe and four thousand years into Central Asia. The root of mother, or mater, is assumed to be ma; although its significance is, I believe, yet unknown. That of father, or pater, is assumed by most of the best scholars (although on grounds which, with a hesitation only becoming in me, I venture to think not absolutely satisfactory) to be pa, conveying the idea of protection. In both cases, however, there can be no doubt of the radical positions of the syllables ma and pa; and thus we see a fact at once whimsically and touchingly significant; that the two childish household words ma and pa, so commonly, although not universally, used, are at least representatives of a speech of such hoary antiquity that it lies beyond the bounds of history and within the realm of conjecture. Ma and pa antedate not only mother and father, but the Sanskrit matri and pitri.

A difference between the historical forms of these two words will be remarked by the observant reader. In mother, mater, we have the initial consonant of the root preserved in all tongues, from the beginning (or as near the beginning as we can go); but in fa-ther, when we touch the Latin and the Greek, the f becomes p, pater; and this we find was the sound with which the word began in the elder speech,—Sanskrit pitri. This fact, so far from being at all inconsistent with the substantial identity of the word in its various forms, confirms that identity. The difference is the result of a phonetic change by which (according to well-established principles which can here be only thus mentioned) certain consonant sounds change to certain other sounds. The reason of this change is not known; but it is known as an observed fact, which observed fact is loosely called a law. We are in the habit of supposing that what always takes place does so because of a rule of law. But phonetic changes of this kind, which affect vowels and what are called semi-vowels, as well as consonants, take place in so regular a way that words can be traced through them with a certainty which is almost if not quite unerring. This change accounts not only for the f in father, but for the vowel difference between the Latin pater and the Sanskrit pitri. And in this word we have a good example in point as to the position of Sanskrit in relation to the other related Aryan languages. It is by no means certain, but rather the contrary, that the i in the pi of the Sanskrit pitri is older than the a in the Latin pater and the English father. The a in those words came not by any phonetic change from the i in the Sanskrit pitri and the Persian pidar. Probably, rather, it came directly down to the Teutonic, the Gothic, and the Celtic languages from that elder lost speech from which the Sanskrit as well as those others is derived.

One other family and household word is illustrative of our subject, and has a singular interest. Both son and daughter, like father and mother, are found in most of the Indo-European languages, and in Sanskrit. Son in Sanskrit is sÚnu, and is reasonably assumed to be derived from su, to beget, to bear, to bring forth. Daughter, the word just particularly referred to, is in Anglo-Saxon dohtor, Dutch dochter, Danish datter, Swedish dotter, Icelandic dÔttir, MÆso-Gothic dauhtar, Russian do-che, German tochter, Greek thugater, Sanskrit duhitri. And if the generally accepted derivation of this word (which so conforms to all the required conditions that there is no reasonable ground of doubt about it) is correct, it records an interesting fact and tells a little story. Duhitri, the Sanskrit for daughter, is from duh or dhugh, which means, to milk; and daughter means the milker, a milk-maid. The milk-maid of the rural past has been gradually yielding place, first to an Irish lad in cowhide boots, and next to a machine more or less india-rubber in its structure; but within the memory of living men, not aged, New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were filled with farmers’ daughters who performed a function which fell naturally to their share in the distribution of work, as it had done to their fore-mothers thousands of years before on the plateau of Central Asia; and every time that father or mother called one of them daughter, they heard unconsciously the name of their household place and office. Nor have these gentle milkers, these dugh-i-tri, I am glad to believe, quite disappeared before the march of Celtic emigration and machinery.

One of man’s first efforts at the orderly arrangement of things is numbering them, counting; and numeral words must have been among the earliest that were formed, and among those which, being most constantly used, would be most tenaciously preserved. So it proved. Most of the numeral words, one, two, three, etc., in all the Indo-European languages are found to be identical in origin, and some of them essentially so in form. For clearness and brevity of illustration let us take English two, which in Dutch is twe, Icelandic (in the objective) tvo, Danish to, Swedish tva, MÆso-Gothic twai, German zwei, GÆlic da, Welsh dau, Russian dva, Latin duo, French deux, Italian due, Greek duo, Sanskrit dra:—so English three is in Dutch trie, Danish and Swedish tre, Icelandic thrir, in the Celtic tongues tri, in Russian tri, MÆso-Gothic threis, German drei, Latin tres, Greek treis, Sanskrit tri. It is unnecessary to continue the illustration of this point. Other numeral words are equally remarkable in their continuity; and all are traceable to a remote antiquity and through a wide dispersion.

One more pronoun may well be examined. The first thought of the human mind, as we have already seen, on the perception of something else than its own body is “me” and “not me:” a dual thought, both elements of which come into consciousness together:—this that I feel or see is not me. The second perception is of what we call the second person, for which the word in English until recently was, and among some English-speaking people still is, thou. This word, which supplies one of the commonest needs of life in language among people of all conditions, has been preserved among all the Aryan peoples for four thousand years almost without the signs of phonetic wear and tear. In Old Frisian (the language which, next to the so-called Anglo-Saxon, is nearest of kin to English) it is thu, in Dutch (which of spoken languages is next nearest) it has strangely disappeared, but in Icelandic it is thu, Danish and Swedish du, in MÆso-Gothic thu, in German du, in the Celtic tongues tu, in Russian tui, Latin, Italian and French tu, Greek su (for tu), Persian tu, Sanskrit tuam.

As the intelligent reader considers these lists of common words which are identical, or almost identical, in so many languages spoken through forty centuries, from a period extending far beyond historical records, the thought must arise that it was strange, almost unaccountable, that the close connection, the affiliation, of these languages was left to be clearly proved within only about fifty years. But it must be remembered that this affiliation in regard to some of them was as well known before that time as it is now. That the Scandinavian tongues were closely related, that English was connected with the Scandinavian and the Teutonic languages, that French, Spanish and Italian were close cousins, and were all direct descendants (with some mixture by inter-marriage) from Latin, was well known to all students of language. But beyond this line they were all abroad. Of the connection of the Celtic tongues—Welsh, GÆlic, Erse (Irish) and Cornish—with the Teutonic and the Scandinavian, or even with the Latin and Greek (with which they are more nearly allied) there was no knowledge. Nor was it supposed that Greek and Latin had any other connection with English than that which existed through Greek words and Latin words transplanted into English. Latin was supposed to be derived from Greek, and indeed to be a debased form of that language; and as to the Sclavonic tongues, Russian, Polish, etc., they were the gabble of outside barbarians.

Besides all this, the influence of theology upon narrow and uninformed minds was felt in philology—if we can call the linguistic studies of those days philological. As the proclamation of the One God was made to the world in Hebrew, and as the grand generalities of the Mosaic record of creation were recorded in that language, it was assumed by many worthy and really learned men, at whose fond fancy we may smile but should not sneer, that Hebrew was the original speech of the human race; that it was bestowed upon man directly by divine beneficence; and that all the languages of the earth were derived from that in which the ten commandments were first written. Infinite labor, years of toilsome study, almost endless efforts of perverted ingenuity were given to the mistaken effort to establish this point, which was regarded by these in-the-dark-working linguists as one, almost if not quite, of religious importance. Now we know that the Hebrew language is totally, radically different from all the Indo-European languages; that they have no kinship whatever, and are as unlike as if they were spoken on two separate planets by creatures of different species. And besides, we know that Hebrew is not even in the position of a parent speech, but is one of a small, although very important family, the Semitic, and that in this family its position is that of a cadet.

The consequence in linguistic study of the discovery of Sanskrit, which was chief in importance, was not so much the establishment of kindred among all the languages of Europe, although that was very important, as the proof that they were not (with notable exceptions) derived the one from the other, but that they all were sprung from a common stock, to which the principal of them must be traced, not through one another, but directly. Thus the Danes and the Germans lie close together, and there is some likeness in substance between their languages, and a little in form; but it will not do to attempt to trace the Danish and the other Scandinavian languages to the German, or through the German to an older tongue. It is found that of the Scandinavian languages and the German, neither is derived from the other, but that both are the offspring of a lost elder speech, Teutonic or Gothic, of which the MÆso-Gothic is the oldest representative of which there are any remains. It is also found that the Latin language is not derived from the Greek, did not come through it, but that both Latin and Greek come independently from either a common branch of the old Aryan tongue, or directly from that tongue itself. Moreover it is now pretty well established to the total subversion of previous theories, that the Latin represents, or at least retains, older forms of the parent language than are to be found in Greek. This, however, is not true as to syntax, grammar, in which Latin diverges much more than Greek does from that approximation to the original language which we find in Sanskrit.

Let us glance at this subject of grammar; in doing which, without going into dry detail, or even into the niceties of construction, we may by the examination of one or two salient facts trace very clearly the connection of some of the most important and divergent branches of Indo-European speech. Every educated boy who has passed through a classical grammar school will remember his surprise, not to say his disgust, at finding, after mastering toilfully a little Latin, that when he entered upon the study of Greek, he found the Greek verb very unlike the Latin in its conjugation, and much more complicated. It has a middle voice which is reflective in its signification. For example, etupsa means I struck, etuphthen, I was struck, but etupsamen, I struck myself. It has in tenses not only present, perfect, future, and so forth, but a first perfect and a second perfect, a first plu-perfect and a second plu-perfect, a first future and a second future, and, moreover, two pestilential contrivances called the first and second aorists. Besides this, every tense has not only a singular and a plural number, but a dual number, by which the action or the being, or the suffering, is confined to two persons—a sort of grammatical buggy. The nouns, the pronouns, the adjectives, the very articles, have also this dual number. This is a fact, an oppressive, mysterious, unrelated fact with which the young student is brought face to face, and into conflict with which he enters, wondering at the cause of this bountiful dispensation of grammar. When Sanskrit was discovered, it was found that this middle voice, these first and second perfects, and futures, and first and second aorists, these dual numbers of verbs, nouns, and what not, were Sanskrit as well as Greek, and were nearly two thousand years older than any Greek writing that exists. But they are found not only in Sanskrit and in Greek. In the MÆso-Gothic, which, as we have seen is our earliest representative of one of the two great European divisions of Aryan speech, to the other of which the Greek belongs—it, the Greek, having separated itself at a time long before the historical period—in this MÆso-Gothic we have also the middle voice, the dual number, and tenses and inflections multitudinous. These grammatical facts bind, and without other evidence would bind, the Greek, the Teutonic or Gothic, and the Sanskrit languages in a bond of kinship.

It had been supposed by classical scholars, and the supposition yet lingers among them, that these Greek double perfects and futures, these aorists, and these middle voices and dual numbers, were the fruit of a great genius for language and literary expression, that they had been elaborated and painfully produced in the successive development of the Greek intellect—which indeed was one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the world. But the discovery of Sanskrit has shown us that these grammatical excrescencies were mere relics of a past; things that the Greek poets and philosophers found made to their hands, and which they must use whether they would or no. Nor are we relieved from the necessity of this inference and its consequences by the fact that Sanskrit is a highly elaborated language, and has been the object of religious care and veneration on the part of profound grammarians for many centuries. Its grammar has been thus solicitously preserved and minutely studied because it was involved with the Brahminical religion. Its origin dates back in the darkness of savagery. The MÆso-Goths, who had no Greek intellect or refinement, had in their language also the dual number, the middle voice, and the swarming inflections. Nor only so. In a corner of Scythian Europe, in Cimmerian darkness, were, and are, a rude people, the Lithuanians, who lie between the Prussians and the Russians, who had no literature, whose language was not even written until it was furnished with characters by strangers so late as the sixteenth century, who had not advanced intellectually beyond the making of folk-songs and ballads, whose very national existence was hardly more important than that of Comanches or Piutes; and yet these people had the dual number, the variety of inflection, and the complicated grammar of the old speech. It had merely come down to them as it had come to the MÆso-Goths, and to the Greeks, and to the Brahmins, from the early days of the Aryan people and their language. Simply this, and nothing more.

The fact upon this subject is that as we look backward through history we find that grammar increases as civilization and culture diminish; or, to put it conversely, that as culture increases and civilization becomes more elaborate and complex, grammar diminishes and simplifies, and gradually passes away. The traits once regarded as special and distinguishing excellencies of the Greek language, its dual number, its middle voice, its double tenses, and to the horror of some of the classical scholars among my readers, if I am honored by any such—I add, even the aorists, are not signs of a high development of language, but mere relics of barbarism. They are so in the Greek, just as they are so in the MÆso-Gothic and in the Lithuanian languages. They had no relation whatever to the power, the subtlety and the loftiness of the Greek intellect; they were not a necessary means nor even a happily adapted tool for the work of that intellect in literature, in art, and in philosophy; although it is not to be denied that the Greek intellect did leave its impress upon the Greek language. The Greeks were the great people that they were simply because they were Greeks; we know not why; just as the Lithuanians were and remained Lithuanians, we know not why. In the one case the complicated instrument of expression had no more to do with the splendid achievements of which it was the medium than in the other it had to do with the rudeness which it did not help to refine, or the obscurity to which it lent no luster.

It is proper that I should say to my readers that in proclaiming this I am teaching heresy. This is not orthodoxy, but my doxy. I am willing to confess, like one who went long before me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose, that I speak as a fool; but I shall be content with the final verdict that shall be passed upon me, whatever it may be.

Emphasizing for the moment the fact that this grammar which increases with barbarism and which diminishes with civilization, coexists only with inflection and depends upon it, and that its diminution in the Latin development of Aryan speech as compared with the Greek, was a purely rational, although perhaps an unconsciously rational, movement, let us defer the further consideration of this subject until another occasion.

One minute but very largely significant fact connected with the Latin and Greek languages, which will be appreciated to a certain degree at least by every schoolboy who has studied those languages, may here properly be set forth and considered. In Latin, the name of the supreme god, whose name in Greek is Zeus, is Jupiter. Now Jupiter is no form of Zeus. It can not “come from” Zeus by any mode of phonetic modification or decay. Moreover, the declension of Jupiter through the various substantive cases is notably irregular. It is:

Now, Jovis, Jovi, Jovem and Jove can not be formed from Jupiter. Jovis is no more a real case of Jupiter than ours is a real case of we. How came the simple name of this god, used absolutely or in the way of invocation, to be Jupiter, and yet when used possessively to be Jovis, datively Jovi, etc.? To the young student of Latin this is a barren, brutal fact with which he is confronted, and which he is obliged to accept and to remember. It has no relation to any other fact. So at least it was forty years ago, as I and my contemporaries can testify.[B] But Jovis, although it can not be derived from Jupiter may be derived from or at least connected with Zeus. In fact it is so derived or connected. The supreme god of the Latin and the Greek mythology was the same god, and he had originally the same name, which was Dyus, or some like form. But the Latins did not derive this personage of their mythology from the Greeks, nor take his name from them, as it was once assumed they did. This is shown by the name they gave him, Jupiter; yet that very name, unlike as it is to Zeus, and impossible to be derived from it, has in it the witness of identity of origin. The fact is that the Latins and the Greeks derived both their conception of the supreme god and his name from a common source; a fact which has been revealed by the discovery of Sanskrit.

In the mythology of the Vedas, the sacred books of the Brahmins, which are written in Sanskrit, the supreme god, the primum mobile of divine power is Dyaus, which is from the root dyu, meaning to beam, to emit light. Dyaus is therefore the sky god, a record and an expression of the recognition of divinity in the heavens.[C] So both to the Greeks and the Latins the supreme divinity was originally the sky god. Now, Dyaus and Zeus are the same word with little phonetic modification. But whence comes Jupiter? Hence. We have seen above that the Sanskrit word for father is pitri, which seems to be corrupted from pÀtri, a protector,[D] and the simple union of these two words gives us, Dyaus-patri, which, as an earlier, if not an original form, of Zeus-pater, or Ju-piter, would be an unexceptional etymology. We are however not left to conjecture nor to etymological construction for the origin of this name; for, according to Max MÜller, in the Veda Dyaushpitar or Dyupitar become almost as much one word as Jupiter in Latin. Here we have the otherwise anomalous Latin Jupiter completely accounted for, not only in accordance with etymology and reason, but by positive historical evidence. To the Latins Jupiter was merely a name, coming to them they knew not whence nor how; but they had received it in a direct line of communication from their Aryan forefathers, who were also the forefathers of the writers of the Sanskrit Vedas. Yet more; when the Roman said Jupiter he merely called his supreme god the Heavenly Father. So near, in the very idea of divinity, does the evidence found in the history of language bring the modern Christian to the primitive pagan.

This name Dyaus, or Zeus, is also regarded by some of the most eminent philologists as identical with the name of the Eddic god Tyr and the Saxon word Tiw, and as present in our Tues-day or Tiws-daeg. It may be so; but specialists who may claim submissive deference as to matters of fact within their specialty are often led by enthusiasm into theory and speculation which respect for their learning does not oblige us to accept.

But space fails me, and with a brief exposition of a very few points of my previous paper this one must be closed.

The records of possession left in the names of places by advancing tribes of Aryans may be well illustrated by two names more widely known, perhaps, than any other two in the world—Thames and Avon. Now, both these names mean merely river, running water. Why, then, do we say the river Thames and the river Avon; which is merely to say in each case the river River. Simply because our English (or Anglo-Saxon) forefathers going to England and conquering it, found those streams so called by the natives. In the old Welsh (Celtic) which was spoken in ancient Britain both tam or tama and afon mean a river, and the rude and simple people naturally called the running water nearest them merely the river. When there was but one theater in London, and when there was but one in New York, in each case it was called merely the theater, without any other name, which indeed was needless. But when the Anglo-Saxons heard the stream on which London stands called tam, and that on which Stratford stands called afon, those words did not mean running water to them; they were mere names; and names they have remained. There are no less than nine rivers in England called Avon (merely because they were the river to the old Britons in their neighborhood); and tam is found in composition in names of places (Tamworth, Tamarton) with the same meaning. The Celts have left these name-traces upon hills, forests, and streams, not only in England, but all over southern and western Europe. Other families have left similar vestiges. A moderate illustration of this one point would require a paper by itself. In this way the march and the dwelling places of the principal divisions of the great race can be discovered.

It was said in the foregoing paper that the development and the various stages of knowledge attained by the Aryans had left traces in the history of their language; and it was remarked that the facts that words for boat and oars are common to all the languages of the race, while those which pertain to navigation are radically unlike, shows that before the great separation took place, the Aryans had rowed small boats on rivers, but knew nothing of ships and deep-sea sailing. From similar evidence we infer that they never saw salt water before the separation; for at that time they did not know the oyster, which is found in the Caspian Sea. The name oyster is common to all the European peoples, ancient as well as modern (Latin ostrea, Greek ostreon, with the meaning bone, shell); but in Sanskrit the word for the much eaten bivalve is pushtika. Plainly the southeastern moving and the northwestern moving Aryans severally named the oyster after they had parted. It is also remarkable that the only tree of which the name is common to all the Indo-European peoples, Asiatic as well as European, is the birch; the name of which in Sanskrit is bhÚrja (observe how like in sound the two words are); and that this tree is the most widely dispersed of all the forest flora, and is found in great variety and large quantity in Central Asia.

In most of the examples of etymology given in this paper the likeness between the recent and the remote has been more or less apparent to eye or ear on slight examination. It must not however be supposed that the history of a word is limited by such palpable bounds. On the contrary etymology, which when trustworthy proceeds step by step accounting for, but accepting every clearly established change, leads the inquirer in numberless instances into regions at first far beyond his ken. One illustrative instance must suffice: The French word for water is O. It is spelled eau; but that is not to the purpose; a word is a sound, not the name of an assemblage of signs called letters. Now this sound O, or eau, comes directly from the Latin aqua, in which there is no trace of it; and in which, moreover, there are, as will be seen, sounds of a marked character which have been wholly swept away. The course of derivation or degradation was this: Aqua by the common change of u to v, became aqva, which passed by phonetic decay into ava, and this by a common vowel change become eve, which in turn, by a common diphthongal extension, broadened into eave, the v in which changing back again into u gave eaue, of which the body, au, came to represent the whole word, which at last reached the simple vowel sound o. In like manner the Greek pente, the French cinq, the English five, and the Sanskrit pancan may all be traced to the same root, pani, the hand, with its five fingers; the English tooth and the Latin dens are from the same root (indeed it has been extracted), and so are coucher and locus, and even galaxy and lettuce. That I may not seem to tantalize my reader I will give the easy explanation of the last paradox-like assertion. The bond between the two words is in the Latin word for milk, lac, and the kindred Greek word for the same fluid, gala; the old forms having been severally lact and galact. The galaxy is the milky-way, and lettuce is the juicy, milky plant; the Old French name of which (from which ours comes) was laictuce, which itself represented the Latin lactuca.

The reader having now seen some few characteristic illustrations of the methods, the course, and the revelations of philology in regard to the language of the Aryan peoples, we are ready to examine the history and the structure of English.

[A] Here and elsewhere I use italic letters to spell a Greek word; doing so because it is quite possible that many intelligent and inquiring readers who may look to me, as to a fellow-student, for a little help, may be unacquainted with the Greek alphabet, and the force of its various characters. We are obliged to use this letter in Russian and Sanskrit; why not in Greek? As to that however there is one notable and often recurring difficulty in the use of an alien alphabet: the short e is one letter, epsilon, and the long e another, eta (pronounced aytah). The sound and value of the latter is that of the French or Italian e; that is the name sound of English a, without the slight e sound, with which we close it. This sound—the long e (or a)—I have endeavored to indicate by using for it a Roman letter. Strictness would demand other like indications of sound which must be passed by with this allusion.