English
But to let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves — to take a road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again who speak our language tmd worship our gods — is a course which only men of strong individuality and great self-de- pendence are capable of pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of Iran. At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes migrating across the snow of the Him&laya southward toward the "Seven Rivers" (the Indus, the five rivers of the Panj&b and the Sarasvati), and ever since India has been called their THE ABYAN FAAQLT. 13 home. That before that time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavo- nians, Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly esta- blished as that the Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors, whether Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus ? Yet these are the times of which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors were the same as those of King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins and in the veins of the dark Bengalese ? And yet there is not an English jury now a days, which, after examining the hoary documents of lan- guage, would reject the claim of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in India and in England, that have witnessed the first separation of the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be shaken by cross-examination* The terms for God, for house, for father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and whether he 14 THE ARYAN FAMILY. answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his head, though the physio- logist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and Italians, the Persians, and Hindus, were living together with- in the same fences, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races. It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to differ from all the rest, and as no other lan- guage has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom — whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends — it is natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family. The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art THE ABYAN FAMILT. 15 the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, com- merce, and religion. In a word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character. But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow passes of the Hindukush or the Himalaya, they conquered (N* drove before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Trans-Hima- layan countries. They took for their guides the prin- cipal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity — Sesostris, Semiramis, Ne- buchadnezzar, or Cyrus, who waged a kind of half- nomadic war&re over Asia, Africa, and Europe, and whose names, traced in characters of blood, are still legible on the threshold of history^, disturbed the 1 Thus Strabo sajs^ zv. 1. 6. : 'H^ly he Hq ay hiKaia yivoiro viirric vepi tAv ^IvhKuv U rijt roiavnic orpaTeiaQ tov Kvpov rj tjjq 2!e- utpdfu^Q ; XvyaTofaiverai 3e niac ical Meyatrdivric Tf \6yf rovTff geXewy &iriorc7y race iip^alais irepc ^ly^Qy iaropiaiQ' ovre yap trap ^IrvZAy c£w OToKiiyai irore arpartay ovr ktctKBeiy eCci0ey tcac Kparfiaai^ w\ny rnQ fuff 'HpaJcXeovc col £kioyv<roVf icai r^c yvy /icra McucE^ovcav. 16 OBEBCE AND INDIA. peaceful seats of these Aryan settlers. Left to them* selves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also. Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of rain has passed over it ; his cha- racter remained the same, passive, meditative, quiet, and full of faith. The chief elements of discord amongst the peaceful inhabitants of this rich country were, the struggle for supremacy between the different classes of so- ciety, the subjugation of the uncivilised inhabitants, particularly in the south of India, and the pressure of the latest comers in the north upon the possessors of the more fertile countries in the south. These three struggles took place in India at an early period, and were sufficiently important to have called forth the active faculties of any but the Indian Ka/roc ^aiampiy fiey Toy Atyvirriov Koi TeapKuva toy Aidlora ewe £vf>itfirf}c irpoiXOely, 'HafioKodpdaopoy Zi roy trapa XaXBatotc ^^^ ioKi^riaayra 'HpaicXeovc fiaXKoy koI ewe ^rriXwy iXatrai* iiixpi fiey ^i| ievpo Kai TtapKwya a^iKiirOat * Ueiyoy dc xal Ik r$c *iPfiplaQ etc ri^y Op^Kfiy Kai Toy USyroy kyaytiy ri^y orpariiLy* *liay&vpiroy Ze roy ^Kvdriy iiri^pafjLeiy r$c *A<rlac ficXP* Aiyvvrov* rijs 2e *Iy2iinfc fifiiiya TOVTwy &\//ao'0a(. Kai l&e/xipafAiy d* airoOaveiy trpo rfj^ iirij(eip{i(retac nipaaQ 3c fiiadofopovQ fiey Ik r^c 'ly^iKfJQ fiEravifxyl^affOai'^dpaKaQ* eifel Be fxrl orpareDdrai, AXX* eyyif^ iXdeiy /xoyor, ffyiica Kvpoc ^Xavvev M Ma^^ayeVac. With regard to the expeditioDS of Herakles and DionjBOS, Strabo adds: Kai ra inpl *HpaicXeovc Be koI Atoyverov MeyairOivrjc fJ^f-y fJttr* oXlyuy xiora ^yecrac* r&y B* AXXw ol vXelovCf iiy koTi Koi *'EparoirOiyrjQf Airiara icai ^vOwBi;, Kadainp ku) ra irapa ro'ic 'EXXriaiy, ic.r.X. Cf. Megasthenis Indica, ed. Schwanbeck. Bonns, 1846. GREECE AND INDIA. 17 nation. In these struggles we may recognise almost the same elements by which the Greek character was perfected and matured.