G.A.
THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH.
At a period earlier than the dawn of written history
there lived somewhere among the great table-lands
and plains of Central Asia a race known to us only
by the uncertain name of Aryans. These Aryans
were a fair-skinned and well-built people, long past
the stage of aboriginal savagery, and possessed of
a considerable degree of primitive culture. Though
mainly pastoral in habit, they were acquainted with
tillage, and they grew for themselves at least one
kind of cereal grain. They spoke a language whose
existence and nature we infer from the remnants of
it which survive in the tongues of their descendants,
and from these remnants we are able to judge, in some
measure, of their civilisation and their modes of
thought. The indications thus preserved for us
show the Aryans to have been a simple and fierce community
of early warriors, farmers, and shepherds, still in
a partially nomad condition, living under a patriarchal
rule, originally ignorant of all metals save gold,
but possessing weapons and implements of stone,[1]
and worshipping as their chief god the open heaven.
We must not regard them as an idyllic and peaceable
people: on the contrary, they were the fiercest
and most conquering tribe ever known. In mental
power and in plasticity of manners, however, they
probably rose far superior to any race then living,
except only the Semitic nations of the Mediterranean
coast.
[1] Professor Boyd Dawkins has shown that the
Continental
Celts were still in
their stone age when they invaded
Europe; whence we must
conclude that the original Aryans
were unacquainted with
the use of bronze.
From the common Central Asian home, colonies of warlike
Aryans gradually dispersed themselves, still in the
pre-historic period, under pressure of population
or hostile invasion, over many districts of Europe
and Asia. Some of them moved southward, across
the passes of Afghanistan, and occupied the fertile
plains of the Indus and the Ganges, where they became
the ancestors of the Brahmans and other modern high-caste
Hindoos. The language which they took with them
to their new settlements beyond the Himalayas was
the Sanskrit, which still remains to this day the
nearest of all dialects that we now possess to the
primitive Aryan speech. From it are derived the
chief modern tongues of northern India, from the Vindhyas
to the Hindu Kush. Other Aryan tribes settled
in the mountain districts west of Hindustan; and yet
others found themselves a home in the hills of Iran
or Persia, where they still preserve an allied dialect
of the ancient mother tongue.
