CERK '^Y
Li;^RARY
V ...r, TY OF 1
CALIFORNIA^
^THROPOLOGY LIBRARY
PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES
ARYAN PEOPLES.
PKEHISTOKIC ANTIQUITIES
AEYAN PEOPLES:
A MANUAL OF COMPAKAIITE PHILOLOGY AND THE
EARLIEST CULTURE.
BEING THE
"SPEACHYEKGLEICHUNG UND UEGESCHICHTE
Dr 0. SCHKADER
TRANSLATED BY
FRANK BYRON JEVONS, M.A,
TUTOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM; AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE'
" DEVELOPMENT OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY."
From the Second Revised and Enlarged German Edition, with the
sanction and co-operation of the Author.
W UNIVERSITY
LONDON:
CHARLES GRIFFIN AND COMPANY,
EXETER STREET, STRAND.
18 90.
All Rights Reserved.
0^
-^ ^7(f-^
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH
TRANSLATION,
When the publishers of this Avork communicated to me their
jiroposal to render my work, Sprachvergleichung ^md Urgeschichte,
more accessible to the English public by means of a translation, I
felt it alike a pleasure and an honour — the more so as it seemed to
waiTant the belief that the First Edition had already made some
valued friends in England.
The Science of Language, on which the following investigations
are based, may properly be termed a daughter of the Anglo-German
world, and if we pay honour to Franz Bopp as the founder of our
science, Ave are not in danger of forgetting that it was from English
hands that he received the key to its comprehension — knoAvledge
of Sanskrit.
But out of the purely grammatical treatment which language
received at Bopp's hands, and side by side with it, in the course of
time — and again Avith the active co-operation of English scholars —
the idea AA'as more and more definitely developed that perhaps by
the aid of the same Comparative Philology, to which such startling
results were due in the domain of Avords and their forms, it might
also be possible to penetrate somewhat more deeply into the history
of the things denoted by those Avords. As the archaeologist, armed
Avith pick and shovel, descends into the depths of the earth, in
oi'der to trace the footsteps of the past in bone and stone-remains,
so the student of language might endeavour to employ the flotsam
and jetsam of language — Avashed on the shore of history from ages
immeasurably remote — to reconstruct the picture of the primeval
age. The presentiment to which Leibnitz gave utterance in the
sentence : " Nihil majorem ad antiquas populorum origines inda-
gandas lucem prsebere quam collationem linguarum," Avas fulfilled.
Tn a Avord, Linguistic Pakeology arose.
Thus, for some time past Etymology has been a sister science to
t^l^t.
IV PREFACE.
prehistoric Ai'cliseology in the investigation of primitive culture.
And now a third point of departure has been found from which to
pass beyond the bounds of history. The attempt has been made
by careful comparison of the antiquities of the individual Indo-
European peoples to distinguish between what, on the one hand,
they have jointly inherited in the way of manners and customs, of
private, public, and religious institutions, and what, on the other
hand, in this connection may be termed their recent acquisitions,
whether loans from abroad or the results of their own independent
evolution. Thus to Etymology and Archaeology a third science has
been added — that of Comparative Antiquities, which, as I am firmly
convinced, opens a new prospect, full of promise, for the history of
the individual Indo-European peoples.
It is on this triple basis that the present work is founded, being
designed as a comprehensive account of what we know at present
about the prehistoric period of the Indo-European race.
With this object, the first of the four Parts, into which the work
is divided, traces the historical development of the views and
theories that have thus far been promulgated on this subject.
This, it is hoped, will prove of service to the friends of Linguistic
Palaeontology, as the literature of the subject, whether in extensive
Avorks, tiny pamphlets, or even in the daily press, is extremely
scattered. Much that is not essential has been purposely passed
over. The views summarised are not criticised in detail in this
Part, the object of which is to state the arguments for and against
in as objective a manner as possible; indeed, they are not subjected
to any criticism, save what is necessarily implied in the order and
manner of their arrangement and statement. Only those points to
which I could not expect to return in the course of the work have
notes of correction or explanation attached.
The Second Part, however, is especially devoted to a critical and
methodical examination of the value of linguistic data for con-
clusions as to the history of culture. What the student of pre-
historic times is, and what he is not, justified in inferring from the
evidence of language are the questions mainly discussed in this
section. I venture to hope that I have in this discussion con-
tributed my share towards removing the suspicions which have
been expressed in England of late on the employment of Etymology
for purposes of history.* It will be apparent that the student of
* Cf., e.g., Abbott, History of Greece, p. 25, London, 1888: "Nothing
is so delusive as facts founded upon etymologies ;" or Tlie Saturday Review,
PREFACE. V
language is by no means blind to the difficulties which beset his
task, but on the contrary is fully conscious of the need of always
supporting the conclusions of Etymology by the observations of
History and Archaeology.
The work now turns from the historical and theoretical side of
the question to the actual investigation of the Primeval Age, and
begins with an exhaustive examination of one of the chief and
cardinal points in the primeval history of the Indo-Europeans —
the question whether the Indo-Europeans before their dispei'sion
were or were not acq uainted Avith the Metals. This inquiry, which
I am brought to answer in the negative, proves to be intimately
involved with the further question — Whence and in what way
acquaintance with the Metals, if unknown to the Primeval Period,
spread amongst the Indo-European peoples in later times ? For
the solution of this difficult problem I believe that I have collected
w^hat linguistic data there are, without losing sight of History and
Archaeology.
This seemed to give a base-line, satisfactory alike from the point
of view of theory and of facts, from which we might ventui-e to
grasp the multitude of linguistic and historic facts bearing on
prehistoric research, which are presented by the various Indo-
European peoples. The book concludes, accordingly, with an
attempt to portray the Primeval Indo-European Period as a
whole in a series of pictures representing its most important
phases — The Animal Kingdom, Cattle, The Plant- World, Agri-
culture, Computation of Time, Food and Drink, Clothing,
Dwellings, Traffic and Trade, The Culture of the Indo-Euro-
peans, and The Prehistoric Monuments of Europe (especially the
Swiss Lake-Dwellings), Family and State, Religion, The Original
Home.
The last-named chapter, that which deals with the original home
of the Indo-European race, alone requires a few further woi'ds.
It is this problem which in England has of late been the subject
of considerable discussion (c/. on this point especially Van den
Gheyn, UOrigine Europeeyme des Aryas, Paris, 1889) ; and two
further works dealing mainly with this question have appeared
p. 22, January 4, 1890 : "The philological arguments, proving from words
common to Aryan tongues, that the undivided Aryans have this or that
institution, or custom, or piece of knowledge in common, seems to us of very
slight importance. In the dark backward and abysm of time, words have
been so shifted, added to, dropped, cut, and shuffled, that real historical know-
ledge based on terms of speech is next to impossible."
VI PREFACE.
since the completion of this book.* In this discussion very great
weight, and, if I am not mistaken, too great weight, has been given
to K. Penka's two works {Origines Ariacoe, 1883, and D^ Herkunft
der Arier, 1886). I am not blind to the value of the numerous
new points of view which Penka has proposed for determining the
relation between race and language. On the other hand, T, like
Mas Midler, cannot close my eyes to the many mistakes into
which Penka has fallen, at any rate in the employment of his
philological and historical materials. The impossibility of attain-
ing to any result on the lines laid dowai by Penka, in the present
state of Anthropology, is dealt with by me on pp. 35, 82,/., of this
book.
My opinion is that the last word has not yet been spoken on
this question. Anyhow, fresh works on this subject will speedily
be forthcoming. Thus, Johannes Schmidt pointed out at the
Seventh International Congress of Orientalists, held at Stockholm,
that the numeral systems of the European languages frequently
betray indications that the decimal notation is crossed by a
duodecimal or sexagesimal system. " With much acuteness," says
the report (cf. Deutsche Rundschau, p. 227, No. 3, 1889-90), "the
speaker ti'ied to show it was probable that we have here the
influence of the Babylonian mode of measuring space and time,
which is based on the numeral 60 ; a hypothesis, the importance
of which for the question as to the prehistoric abode of the
European peoples, and consequently of the original Indo-European
home, is manifest." J. Schmidt will publish his views and the
arguments in support of them in a special treatise.
From another side, the question of the connection between the
Indo-European peoples and the Finnish peoples in prehistoric times
— a question of the highest importance for our problem — is to be
discussed anew.
I therefore beg that the attempt here made to localise the home
of the Indo-Europeans may be regarded as merely tentative, and
that it may receive an unprejudiced and careful consideration.
I cannot conclude this Preface without expressing my heart-
felt thanks to the Translator of the Avork, Mr F. B. Jevons.
Mr Jevons had already completed his translation of the First
Edition, and prepared it for the press, when the necessity for a
* The Cradle of the Aryans, by Gerald H. Rendal, Loudon, 1889, and The
Origin of the Aryans : an Account of the Prehistoric Ethnology and Civilisation
of Europe, by Canon I. Tajdor, London, 1889.
PREFACE. Vll
Second Edition presented itself, and the Second Edition lias grown
into an almost entirely new work. Mr Jevons, nevertheless, with
the greatest self-sacrifice undertook the task thus imposed of
retranslating the work. If iiny reader, therefore, lays down the
book with a feeling of satisfaction, much of his thanks will be due
to Mr Jevons.
0. SCHRADER.
Jexa, March 1890.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
Dr Schrader omits to state that he very kindly volunteered to
look through the proof-sheets of the Translation with a view to
ensuring the correctness of the many words which he cites from
all Indo-European (and sundry other) languages. Aiid although
Dr Schrader is in no way responsible for the correctness of the
Translation, still I have been able to consult him whenever I was
in doubt as to his meaning ; and as he has read all the proofs, T
do not think it likely that any mistakes have escaped our joint
efforts. ^
F. B. Jevons.
The Ukiveesitv, Dukham.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC PALiEONTOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LINGUISTIC PALiEONTOLOGY.
PAGE
Eighteenth Century Views : Adelung and Vater — Sir "VV. Jones and
Bopp — The Original Indo-European Home assumed to be in Central
Asia — The Beginnings of Scientific Etymology — Its Application to
Indo-European Antiquities by Kuhn and Grimm, ... 1
CHAPTER II.
THE RECONSTKIJCTION OF THE PRIMITIVE INDO-GERMANIC PERIOD
BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE.
Mommsen on the Grreco-Italian Period — Pictet on the Primitive
Aryans — His Method thoroughly Uncritical — Schleicher's Pedigree
Theory — Max Miiller on the Primeval Period, its Culture and its
Family Life — Whitney — Attempts to Ascertain the Fauna of the
Primitive Period — Indo-Germanic Poetrj' — A New Departure made
by Hehn — The Meaning of Indo-European Roots to be Interpreted
in Accordance with the History of Culture — Fick Fails to Profit by
Helm's Work — Benfey's Erroneous Theory of Degradation in
Culture — The Prehistoric Semites : Kremer and Hommel — The
Primeval Finns— The Primitive Culture of the Turko-Tataric
Peoples, 16
CHAPTER III.
HYPOTHETICAL DIVISIONS OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS AND THEIR IM-
PORTANCE FOR THE HISTORY OF CULTURE : WITH AN APPENDIX
ON LOAN-WORDS IN THE INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES.
The Migrations from the Original Home, according to Schleicher, accord-
ing to Max Midler, and to Fick— I. The Primitive European Period:
(a) The Grwco-Italians ; (b) The Lithu-Slavo-Teutons ; (c) The
Original Teutons ; (d) The Original Slavs; (c) The Celts— II. The
Hindu-Persian (or Indo-Iranian or Aryan) Group of Languages —
Schmidt's Undulation Theory: its Importance as explaining the
Affinities of the Indo-Germanic Languages — Its Bearing on the
.Original Language— Schmidt's Critics— Leskien's View— Brug-
mann agrees with Schmidt and Leskien — Appcndi.v : The Investi-
gation of Loan-Words in the Indo-Germanic Languages — Loan-
Words in Greek from Hebrew and Egyptian— In Latin from Greek
—In Teutonic from Latin and from Celtic, ^8
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SEARCH FOE. THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE INDO-GERMANIC
PEOPLE.
PACK
Pictet assumes Bactria — General Feeling in Favour of Asia — Latliam,
the heterodox, attacks the Asiatic Hypothesis — Is Supported by
Beufey and Geiger — Cuuo's Argument in Favour of Eui'ope — The
Lion's Witness — Helm Ridicules Latham — Kiepert — Van deu
Gheyn — The Original Semitic Home : Krenier aud Hommel — The
Anthropologists' Contribution to the Discussion : Posche, Linden-
schmit, Penka — The Finns : Tomaschek and Canon L Taylor, . 80
PART 11.
RESEARCH BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE AND HISTORY : ITS
METHOD AND PRINCIPLES OP CRITICISM.
CHAPTER L
THE KINSHIP OF THE INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES.
The Original Indo-Germanic Language — Its Differentiation into Dialects
and its Expansion — Supposed Antiquity of Zend and Sanskrit
and Inferences therefrom — The Original Indo-Germanic People —
Linguistic Affinity and Racial Difference — Mixed Peoples — The
Original Physical Type of the Indo-Germanic Race, . . . 107
CHAPTER II.
LOSSES FROM THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE.
The Probability of Considerable Losses from the Indo-Germanic Vocabu-
lary — Consequences thereof — Suspicious nature of Negative Argu-
ments about the Culture of Primitive Times — The Question of the
Original Home in this Connection — Occasionally, however, the
Uniform Absence of Names amounts to Proof : Fishes, Colours,
Flowers, 116
CHAPTER IIL
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF INDO-GERMANIC EQUATIONS.
Partial Coincidences in the Indo-Germanic Vocabulary may be due to :
(1) Accident ; (2) Differences of Dialect in the Original Language ;
(3) New Formations Common to Separate Groups of Languages —
Pedigree Theory or Transition (Undulation) Theory — The Affinities
of the Teutonic and the Greek Vocabulary — Common European
Culture — Difficulties of the Question Treated, .... 122
CHAPTER IV.
THE FORM OF WORDS.
The Phonetic Form of Equations that are Available for the History of
Culture— Limitations in the Employment of Words Identical in
Root, but differing in the Formation of their Suffixes — Caution even
against Equations which completely Correspond — Original Mean-
ing of certain Suffixes — Onomatopoeia, . . . . .133
CONTENTS. XI
• CHAPTER V.
THE MEANING OF WOIIDS,
PAGE
The Original Meaning of Words Etymologically Equivalent — Difficulty
of Establishing it — The Root of an Equation Useless for the
History of Culture — Names of Kin — Modern Meanings Foisted on
to Ancient Words — Vei'bs Expressing the Pursuit of Certain Crafts
— Names of Plants and Animals in the Original Language — Equa-
tions bearing on the History of Cults and lleligion, . . . 138
CHAPTE R VI.
LOAN-WORDS.
Original Connection and Borrowing — The Two Things Indistinguishable
in the Earliest Times — The Employment of Loan-Words for the
Purposes of the History of Culture, 143
CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSION.
Science of Language not in a Position of Itself to. Reconstruct the
Primitive Indo-Germanic Age —Summary of Considerations —
Relation of Comparative Philology to History and Palaiontology, . 147
PART III.
THE FIRST APPEARANCE OP METALS, ESPECIALLY AMONGST
THE INDO-GERMANIC PEOPLES.
CHAPTER L
INTRODUCTION.
Human Culture Revolutionised by the Discovery of Metals — A Metal
Medium of Exchange and Standard of Value, .... 150
CHAPTER n.
THE NAMES OF THE METALS IN GENERAL.
The Names of Jletals in any Language arc United by Identity of
Gender — Occur in a Fixed Order in the Oldest Monuments of the
Civilised Peoples of Europe and Asia, ...... 155
CHAPTER III.
THE SMITH IN LORE AND LANGUAGE.
The Indo-European Names of the Smith not Etymologically Con-
nected — Nor the Names of his Tools — Yet Wayland the Smith
has a Great Resemblance to Hephaestus — -But this may be due to
Borrowing — Supernatural Smiths — The Mystery of the Smitliy, . 157
XU CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
Gold in Eg3'pt — Gold known to the Indo-Iranians — Indian Fables —
Gold in Eiu-ope — Tlie Phenicians — Turko-Tataric and Ural-Altaic
Fables— Loan- Words for Gold— The Northern Tribes, . . .169
CHAPTER V.
SILVER,
Silver in Zend, Sanskrit, and Iranian — Armenia Rich in Silver — Silver
in Italian and Celtic — Electrum — Silver= " White Gold" — When
it became Known to the Indo- Europeans, . . . . .180
CHAPTER VI.
COPPER.
Known to Primitive Man — Copper in the Ural — What is meant by
Ayas and yEs? — Was Bronze Known in Pro-Ethnic Times? — A
Copper Age — XaA/ct^s— Whence it Came — Meaning of Op€ix«A.Kox, 187
CHAPTER VII.
IRON.
Iron Abundant in Persia — When and Whence the Greeks became
Acquainted with it — Steel in Greece — Ferrum of the Phenicians —
Iron amongst the Celts and Teutons, 202
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORICAL ORDER OF COPPER, BRONZE, AND IRON.
Summary of Previous Chapters — The Primeval Centre of Diffusion for
Bronze — The so-called Bronze Age, . . . . . ■ . 212
CHAPTER IX.
TIN AND LEAD.
Tin and Lead Confused— Not Indo-Germanic — The Cassiterides — The
Origin of the Word Kaa-a'mpos — Suggested Derivation for m6xv^os
— For Plumbum — Tin and Lead in Asia Minor, .... 214
CHAPTER X.
ANCIENT INDO-EUROPEAN NAMES OF WEAPONS.
Indo-Iranian Weapons of Offence — No Agreement between Greek and
Latin — Considerable Resemblance between Greek and Indo-Iraniau
— Derivation of x6yxi] — The Greek I'ttpos — The Prehistoric aop —
The Latin Sword — Defensive and Offensive Arms in the North —
Names for the Spear — The Stone Knife — Conclusions, . . . 221
CONTENTS. XUl
PAET IV.
THE PRIMEVAL PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
The Primeval Period Pre-Metallic — Comparative Philology needs the
Assistance of Comparative Antiquities — The Vedas Not the A and
of all Knowledge — Casual Coincidences in Antiquities : in
Material, Moral, and Religious Culture — Retrogression Improbable
— Contradictions between Language and Records of the Past never
occur, 240
CHAPTER II.
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
Catalogue of Indo-Germanic Mammals — Lion and Tiger — Hunting —
Indo-Germanic Names of Birds — The Dove a Bird of Deatli —
Right and Left— Hawking— The Eel— The Snake, . . .247
CHAPTER IIL
CATTLE.
Ancient Indo-Germanic Domesticated Animals : Cow, Sheep, Goat,
Dog, Pig, and Horse — Driving and Fighting Chariots — Ancient
History of the Mule, Ass, and Camel — Conclusions as to the Original
Indo-European Home — The Cat — Birds — Ape, Parrot, Peacock, . 259
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLANT-WORLD.
Indo-Germanic and European Names of Trees — The Original Home
Question — The Soul of Trees — Wood and Temple — G. vrjos and
vavs — The Oak the Tree of the Supreme God, .... 271
CHAPTER V.
AGRICULTURE.
Historical Notices of Indo-Germanic Agriculture and Settlements —
Equations in Agricultural Terminology : Indo-European, European,
and Indo-Iranian — Transition from Pastoral to Agricultural Life —
The Plough — Common Field System — Ancient European and Indo-
Iranian Cultivated Plants, ........ 281
CHAPTER VI.
COMPUTATION OF TIME.
Divisions of the Year — Originally Two — Additions — The Year- Moon
and Month — Computation of Gestation — Superstition — Lunar and
Solar Year — Names of the Months — Computation by Nights — Day
—Divisions of the Day, 300
XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
FOOD AND DRIXK.
PACK
Man and Beast — Flesh Diet — Vegetable Diet — Salt — Use of Milk in the
Primeval Period — Mead — Beer amongst the Northern Indo-Euro-
peans, Wine amongst the Southern — Sura and Soma amongst the
Indo-Iranians, .......... 314
CHAPTER VIII.
CLOTHING.
Clothing of Skins — The Renones — Tanning and Plaiting— Terminology
of Weaving and Spinning — The Materials for these Two Arts —
Comparison of the Teutonic Dress according to Tacitus, with that
of the Greeks according to Homer — Tattooing — Ornaments, . . 327
CHAPTER IX.
DWELLINGS.
Wagon-Dwellings— Terminology of Wagon -Building — Underground
Habitations — Indo-Germanic Huts — Their Materials — Their Oldest
Form— Door— Window— Hearth —Stalls, 338
CHAPTER X.
TRAFFIC AND TRADE.
Exchange — Buying and Selling — The Stranger — Origin of Guest-Friend-
ship — Dumb Barter and Sale — Barter and Exchange in Language
— Fords and Roads— Did the Indo-Europeans Dwell by the Sea ?
— Navigation, .......... 348
CHAPTER XI.
THE CULTURE OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS AND THE PREHISTORIC
MONUMENTS OF EUROPE, ESPECIALLY THE SWISS LAKE-
DWELLINGS.
General Character of the Swiss Lake-Dwellings— Oldest Stations —
Metals and Weapons — Cattle-Breeding, Domestic Animals — Agri-
culture — Food — Clothing — Dwellings — Pottery — Wagon-Building
and Ship-Building — Ethnological Conclusions, .... 355
CHAPTER XI L
FAMILY AND STATE.
Hypotheses as to the Evolution of the Family — Our Object — I. Indo-
Germanic Names of Kin : 1. Father, Mother, Son, Daughter,
Brother, Sister — 2. Paternal and Maternal Uncles and Aunts,
Nephew, Cousin, Grandparents, Grandchildren — 3. Relation by
Marriage — Explanation of the Facts Ascertained — The Indo-
Germanic Family Agnatic — II. Indo-European Marriage, Posi-
tion of the Indo-European Woman : Purchase — Capture — Marriage"
Ceremonies — Man and Wife — Sacrifices Common to the Two —
Polj'ganiy — Levirate — Adultery in the Husband and the Wife —
The Father's Right of Exposure— The Widow— III. Family and
State : The Joint Family — The Bratstvo and the Sib — Blood
Revenge — The Tribe — Regal Power — Had the Indo-Europeans a
Common Name? 369
CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER XIII.
RELIGION.
PAOE
Difficulty of the Task — I. A Short History of the Comparative Myth-
ology of the Intlo-Eiiropean Peoples: Max Miiller, A. Kuhn, W.
Schwartz, "W. Mannhanlt, E. H. Meyer, 0. Grnppe — II. Indo-
European Etymological Equations touching the Belief in the Gods
and Cults: Conclusions therefrom — III. Concluding Remarks :
Priest and Physician — Sacrifice — Human Sacrifice — Mountain- and
Forest-Cults — Question of Immortality — Ancestor Worship, . . 405
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ORIGINAL HOME.
Autochthony and Myths of Migration — The Most Ancient Abodes of
the European Members of the Indo-Germanic Family of Peoples :
Slavs, Teutons, Celts, the Balkan and Apennine Peninsulas — The
Scene of the Joint European Culture bounded by the Danube,
Carpathians, Dnieper, and Pripet — Original Home of the Indo-
Iranian Peoples in East Iran — Prehistoric Place of Union between
the Eastern and the AVestern Indo-Europeans in the South Russian
Steppe, somewhere about half-way up the Volga, the most ancient
name of which ('PS) is probably of Indo-European Origin — Life
amongst the Primitive Indo-Europeans and the Nature of the
South European Steppe — The Scythian Question — Conclusion, . 426
Index of Authors Quoted in Part I., ....... 445
Index of Words in Parts II. -IV., . 448
Corrigenda and Addenda, ......... 487
PREHISTORIC Al^TIQUITIES.
PART I.
THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC PALEONTOLOGY,
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LINGUISTIC PALEONTOLOGY.
Eighteenth century views about the linguistic and ethnological
relationship of nations can nowhere be better or more compre-
hensively studied than in the numerous writings of the most
learned and distinguished student of language of that period,
Johann Christoph Adelung. His principal work Mithridates, or the
General Science of Language I^Afithridates ocler aUgemeine Sprachen-
kunde, 1806-1816, frum the second part onwards continued by
J. S. Vater from Adelung's papers, 3 vols., Berlin), stands mid-
way between the old science of language and the new, and may
be designated as a continuation, only more thorough and more
methodical, of the idea of a universal glossary, which was suggested
by Leibnitz, and first earned into execution in the St Petersburg
Dictionary of the Czarina Katharine. The design at the bottom of
this idea, viz., to establish the mutual relations of nations by means
of a comparison of their languages, is characteristic of the position
then filled by the science of language, Avhich was little more than
that of handmaiden to ethnology. But the criterion of these
comparisons was not, as in the St Petersburg Dictionary and
elsewhere, collections of individual words, for Adelung does not
attempt to conceal his grave suspicions of them ((•/'. Preface, p. viii).
On the strength of the large number of translations in existence,*
the Lord's Prayer in nearly five hundred languages and dialects
was taken as the test of language, on the ground tliat only by
means of a continuous piece of human speech is it possible to follow
The person who first had the idea of using the Lord's Prayer as a test of
language was J. Schihlherger, about 1477. On the collections of the L. P.,
see Mithridates, i. p. 646 seq.
A
2 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the movement and spirit of a language, and, above all, to trace its
structure, external and internal (c/. Preface, p. xii).
Our interest in this work, which may be read not without profit
to this day, lies principally in the author's views of the relationship
of the European and Asiatic peoples, and particularly of those
among them which have been grouped together under the name of
Indo-Eui'opean. To begin with, the fatal error that the language
of the Bible must be regarded as the original language of mankind,
an error first energetically combated by Leibnitz, may be regarded
as vanquished. Even in his work, On the History of the German
Language {Uher die Geschichte der deutschen Sprache), &c., which
appeared at Leipzig in 1781, Adelung says, in the Introduction,
p. 10: "People have at all times given themselves a great deal
of unnecessary trouble in trying to find out what was the first
language in the w^orld, because they believed that then it must be
very easy to derive all the other laugi;ages from it Hebrew
is certainly the oldest language of which we have any considerable
remains ; but it is not therefore the most ancient," and he adds, in
the Preface to the Mithrid., p. 11 : " I do not derive all languages
from a single one ; Noah's ark to me is a closed fortress, and the
ruins of Babylon need fear no molestation from me."
Nevertheless, Adelung is firmly convinced of the Asiatic origin
of the peoples of Europe. At that time proofs were not considered
necessary for this view. "Asia," says Adelung in the introduction
to Part L of the Mithridates, " has at all times been regarded as that
portion of the world in which the human race had its origin, where
it received its first education, and from the centre of which it
poured forth its multitudes over the whole of the rest of the
world," and in the introduction to the second part of this work, he
says : " That portion of the globe which we, following the example
of the Phoenicians, call Europe, is really but the western continua-
tion of Asia Therefore, it has this quarter of the globe to
thank for its population, and especially Central Asia " (though
Paradise, according to Adelung, ih., i. p. 61, lay in Cashmere),
"that great and ancient nursery of the human race for Asia,
Europe, and America."
Adelung also had ideas .about the order and direction in which
the various peoples immigrated into Europe, cf Oldest History of
the Germans, &c. [Aelteste Geschichte der Deutschen, &c., Leipzig,
1806, p. 121). He distinguishes in Europe, from east to west, six
different races and languages, Iberians, Celts, Teutons, Thracians
(more precisely the grovip formed by the Thracian, Pelasgic, Greek,
and Latin languages), Finns, and Slavs, of which the Iberians, as
dwelling farthest west, must have migrated first. Anyhow, the
position of these races relatively to each other shows that their immi-
gration followed two main lines of march : one, that of the Celts and
Thracians (of, however, Mithrid., ii. p. 340) to the south, the other
that of the Teutons, Slavs, and Finns to the north of the Danube.
If we now inquire to what extent Adelung and his age had
recognised the etymological kinship of the Indo-Germanic Ian-
ADELUNG AND VATER. 3
guages, we have first to mention that the important resemblances
of Sanskrit to the other languages were, thanks especially to the
writing of Frater Paulinus a S. Bartholomseo,* by no means
unknown. Adelung has a chapter (Mithrid., i. p. 149) entitled
" Agreement of many words in Sanskrit with words of other ancient
languages," which begins with the following sentence: "The great
antiquity of this language is shown among other things by the
agreement of so many of its words with words of other ancient
languages, the only possible reason for which is that all these
peoples at their origin, and before their separation, belonged to a
common i*ace." Here, however, there is no recognition of the idea
of an Indo-Germanic family of nations, as is shown by the cata-
logues of words which follow, and in which Hebrew, Syrian,
Turkish, and other words are brought in for comparison with
Sanskrit.
As to the rest, in regard to the Indo-GeiTuanic peoples, there
were two cases of closer connection which were particularly asserted
and maintained at that pei'iod : the first was the close relationship y
between Latin and Greek, the second that which was supposed to
exist between Persian and German. On the latter point, especially
since the year 1597, a very extensive literature! had been amassed,
and even Leibnitz was of the opinion (cf. Mithrid., i. p. 277) that
the relation between German and Pei'sian was so close that Integri
versus Persice scribi possunt, quos Germanus intelligat.
The explanation of relations of this kind was at that period
sought exclusively in processes of mingling, which the peoples in
question were supposed to have gone through in historic or pre-
historic times. Thus Adelung and Vater {Mithrid., ii. p. 457)
explain Latin as a mixture of Celtic {Aborigines) and Greek
{Pelasgi) elements, and the German constituents in Persian are
brought into connection with the sojourn of the Goths on the Black
Sea in the neighbourhood of Persia : " for, as they were a wild, rest-
less, conquering race, ever seeking to expand at the cost of their
neighbours, they cannot have spared Persia when in its neighbour-
hood" {cf. Aelteste Geschichte der Deutschen, 1806, p. 550). Further,
"Greek, to our astonishment, contains many Teutonic roots, perhaps
one-fifth of its vocabulary, and yet we may not regard the one
language as the mother of the other. Since the Teutons came
from the east, they must have dwelt a long time in the north of
Thrace, before they penetrated still further north, and as barbaric
tribes cannot long behave as peaceful neighbours, they may have
poured over the district south of them, and made themselves
masters of it several times, and have left a part of their language
behind them as a memento." Such was Adelung's opinion on this
1798. Diss, de antiquUatc et affinilate linguae Zendicce, Saniscridamicce et
Gcrmanicm. Padua.
1802. Diss, de Latini sermonis origine et cum orientalibus Unguis connexione.
Rome.
t Given in Adelung, Aelteste Geschichte der Deutschen, &e., Leipzig, 1806,
p. 360 seq. Cf. also Th, Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, p. 228
seq.
4 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
subject in the Oldest History of the Germans, ikc. (Aelteste Geschichte
der Deutschen, ifec., p. 352), which appeared a short time before
Part I. of the Mithridates. It is, therefore, very remarkable that
the same author, in those passages of the Mithridates in whiqh he
has to speak of the same subject, reaches another view of the
matter, and one which comes very near the true state of the case.
At any rate, in the Mithridates, i. p, 279, it strikes him as very
surprising that the Teutonic elements in Persian look not like
strangers, but " as though they were closely interwwen with the
original structure of the language and its forms." For this
reason, the following explanation seems to him to be far the most
probable : " The Teutons, like all the peoples of the West, derive
their descent from Asia, and if it is now impossible to determine the
locality which they inhabited befoi-e their migrations, still there is
no reason why it should not be placed in Central Asia close to the
bounds of Persia and Thibet, a country whose unstable hordes have
sometimes populated, and more than once shaken Europe. The
Teuton, the Slav, the Thracian, the Celt, and so on, may thus
have drawn /rom one and the same linguistic source, and at the same
time as the Persian, and only have become estranged by time, climate,
and customs."
Thus, the learned German student of language had shortly before
his death, independently as it seems, reached the same conclusion
as that which the famous Englishman, Sir W. Jones, owing to his
greater knowledge of Sanskrit, had pronounced * as early as the
year 1786, — namely, that the points of agreement between this
language and especially Greek and Latin, though also ancient
German and Celtic (Persian and Slavonic are not mentioned by
Jones in the passage in question), can only be explained on the
assumption that they are derived from a common source, no2v perhaps
no longer in existence.
It was reserved for the nineteenth century to produce proof in
the scientiiic sense, of the unity of the Indo-Germanic f languages.
Thanks to the immortal Franz Bopp, the circle of Indo-European
languages begins to be drawn closer and tighter. Doubt is now
no longer possible as to the common origin of the languages dealt
with in Bopp's Comparative Grammar (1833-35) : Sanskrit, Zend,
Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonic, Gothic, and German, to
which may be added, as dealt with in separate treatises, Celtic
(1839), Old Prussian (1853), Albanian (1854-55), and in a second
edition (1856-61), Armenian. But whereas with Bopp the assump-
tion of a prehistoric unity of the Indo-Germanic peoples is but a
background for the explanation of facts of language, on the founda-
tion laid by him the idea gradually begins to be recognised as one
of pre-eminent importance for history.
Nothing, however, was more closely connected with the explana-
* Cf. Th. Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachu:isse7ischaff, p. 347.
t The expression Indo-Germanic seems to have been first used by Klaproth
in his Asia Polyglotta, 2nd ed., 1831 (and also in the first edition, 1823 ?), and
not as Spiegel [Arische Periode, vi.) thinks, by Pott for the first time.
SIR W. JONES AND BOPP. 5
tion of the relationship of the Indo-Gcrmanic languages to each
other than the question as to the starting-point, the original home
of the Indo-Europeans. If one looked at a group of related words,
such saj, as Goth, fadar, Lat. pater, G. Trarrjp, Sans. 2nta, Zend.
pita, there were a priori two possible ways of explaining their
relation : either one of the forms enumerated must be regarded as
the parent of the rest, or they are all derived from some one j
original form now no longer existing, and only recoverable by the '
comparison of languages. It was necessary to decide this question
one way or the other before the position of the original Indo-Ger-
manic home could be determined ; and although Sir W. Jones had
divined the truth, there were not wanting people to claim one or
other of the Indo-European languages as the mother of the rest.
The honour of this post was assigned either to Sanskrit, to which
was principally due the discovery of an Indo-European family of
languages, or to Zend, which had all the greater reputation for
sanctity and antiquity, because little was known about it to
inquirers at the beginning of the present century.
The derivation of the Indo-Germanic family from India was
maintained by F. von Schlegel in his epoch-making work. The
Language and Wisdom of the Hindus (Sprache wid Weisheit der
huler, 1808, cf. vol. iii. ch. iii. p. 173). He explains the connec-
tion of the languages, mythology, and religion of the Indo-Germanic
peoples in an historical manner, by means of colonies, which were
sent forth in the remotest past from populous India to Asia and
Europe, and were there fused with the original inhabitants of the
land, on whom they stamped their language and customs. Indi-
viduals also, especially pi'iests, thinks Schlegel, may occasionally
have journeyed forth as missionaries, and spread their native tongue.
On the other hand, the greater antiquity of Zend, as compared
with Sanskrit, is asserted by H. F. Link in a work which also was
of very great value for that period. Antiquity and the Primeval
World explained hy Nat^iral Science {Die Urivelt unci das Altertum,
erldutert durch die Naturkunde, 2 Pts., Berlin, 1821 and 1822).
As, however, according to him, "the original Zend language," the
mother of Sanskrit, from which sprang Greek, Latin, and Slavonic —
German is still in his eyes the daughter of Persian, which again is
the outcome of a remarkable mixture of Zend and barbaric (i.e.,
Teutonic) elements — was spoken in Media and the neighbouring
districts, he has no doubt that the original abode of the Indo-
Europeans is to be looked for in the highlands of Armenia, Media,
and Georgia, a view which at the beginning of this century
generally prevailed amongst the most distinguished inquirers,
Anquetil-Duperron, Herder, Heeren, and others. Here, too, as
in Adelung's opinion also {cf. Mithrid., i. p. 5), was the home of
the domesticated animals and cultivated })lants, and generally of
all "the improvements in man's condition, which were transmitted
to us " {cf p. 243).
However, these purely hypothetical conjectures as to the original
Indo-European home lost every shred of support the moment the
6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
conviction spread that all the Indo-European languages, and there-
fore Sanskrit and Zend, stood in the relation of sisters to one
another. India alone was for some time longer, and by A. Curzon
last of all {On the Oricjincd Extension of the Sanskrit Language over
certain Portions of Asia and Europe, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, xvi. p. 172, 1856), treated as the starting-point of the Indo-
Europeans (c/. J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, ii. 2, p. 301 seq.).
The iirst to tiy to obtain some firm ground for determining the
position of the original Indo-Germanic home, without falling a victim
to the erroneous idea that some one of the Indo-Germanic peoples
was to be regarded as the parent of the rest, was J. G. Rhode in.
his book The Sacred Stories of the Zend People {Die heilige Sage
des Zendvolkes, Frankfurt, 1820 {cf F. Spiegel in Ausland, 1871,
p. 55). He also first pointed to that portion of the interior of
Asia which is still regarded by numerous scholars as the original
home of the Indo-Europeans.
Rhode begins by endeavouring to discover the geographical
starting-point of the Zend people, in which he comprehends
Bactrians, Medes, and Persians ; and with this view he employs
the celebrated first Fargard of the Vendidad, in which, as is
known, sixteen districts occur as the creation of Ormuzd, and as
many plagues as sent in opposition by Ahriman. Now, in the
enumeration of the districts Rhode sees traces of the gradual
expansion of the Zend people, whose starting-point he considers to
be the Airyana Vaejanh, first mentioned in that passage. As this
Airyana Vaejanh is followed next by Sugdha, which is undoubtedly
the Greek ItoyZiavq (O.P. Suguda, modem Samarkand), " Eeriene
{sic) and Sogdiana must have bordered directly on each other,
and it must have been possible for the nation to move directly
from the first to the second. Eeriene Veedjo {sic), therefore, is to
be looked for nowhere else than on the mountains of Asia, w^hence,
as far as history goes back, peoples have perpetually migrated ;
that is, on the cold and lofty plateaux and the summits of the
mountains, covered with perpetual snow, at the sources of the
Jaxartes and the Oxus" (p. 86). Now, as the evidence of
langviage shows that Zend and Sanskrit are related to each other
"as two sisters born of the same mother," once upon a time the
Brahmins must have migrated from the elevated plateavix or the
skirts of the mountains of Central Asia to the banks of the
Ganges and the Indus (p. 96). Nay ! Rhode believes that he has
even found in the Avesta the cause of the original people's sudden
departure from the original home. A sudden lowering of the
previously warm temperature of Central Asia compelled them to
abandon their cold mountain home for the warmer districts of
Sogdiana, Bactria, Persia, &c.
In the same sense as Rhode, and abovit the same time, A. W.
von Schlegel delivered himself in the Latin preface to a great
work, which he designed, but never published, Etymologicum
novum sive synopsis linguarum {cf. Indische Bihliothek, i. p. 274).
"Quid igitur?" he says on p. 291, ^^num origines linguarum Pelasgi-
THE ORIGINAL INDO-EUROPEAN HOME. 7
carum et Germanicarurn ah Indo et Gange repetere molimur ?
Minime quidem. Nullam harum ah altera derivatam did posse
censeo, sed omnes deductis in contraria rivulis ah eodem fonte
Jluxisse." And further, p. 293, ^^ Neque tamen Germanos indi-
genas cum Tacito crediderim, sed olim in Asia interiore, unde et
Pelasgi stint profecti, vicinas his sedes incoluisse." More precisely,
A. W. V. Schlegel decides for the district between the Caspian ,
Sea and the mountains of Central Asia, in a later paper, De \
Vorigine des Hindus (cf. Transactions of the Roycd Society of Litera-
ture, London, 1834, and Essais Litteraires et Historique^, Bonn,
1842).
An observation of the estimable Julius v. Klaproth deserves to
be mentioned here, inasmuch as it is the first attempt to ascertain
anything about the original home of the Indo-Europeans by mean
of Comparative Philology and the geography of plants. As early
as the year 1830 (cf Nouveau Journal Asiat., v. p. 112) this scholar,
from the fact that the name of the birch was the only name of a
tree in Sanskrit which reciured in the other Indo-Germanic
languages (Sans, hhurja = lii\ss. bereza, &c.), drew the conclusion
that the Sanskrit population of India must have come from the
north. " These peoples did not find in their new home the trees
which they had known in the old, with the exception of the birch,
which grows on the southern slopes of the Himalayas." Further,
according to Klaproth (Asia Polyglotta, 1831, p. 42) the Indo-
Europeans had descended into the plains partly from the Himalayas,
partly from the Caucasus, perhaps even "before the Noachian
flood."
Next, F. A. Pott delivered himself as to the geographical and
ethnological area of the Indo-Europeans, both in the prefaces to his
Etymological Researches {Etymologischen Forschungen, 1833 and
1836) and in his later treatise Indo-Germanic Family of Languages
{Indogermanischer Sprachstamm, in the Allg. Encyclop., v. Ersch u.
Griiber, 1840, ii. pp. 1-112). Indubitably, in Pott's opinion (Encyc,
p. 19), the cradle of the Indo-Germanic family was in Asia, for v
"ex oriente lujc, and the course of civilisation has always, on the
whole, follow^ed the sun. The people of Europe once lay on the
breast of Asia, and like children played around her, their mother ;
for this we now no longer need to rely on confused and almost for-
gotten memories, we have actual and historical proof before us in
the languages of Europe and Asia. There or nowhere must we
look for the playground, the gymnasium in which man first
developed the powers of his body and his mind " (Etym. Forsch.,
i. p. xxi). In Asia, he decides for the district on the Oxus and
Jaxartes, from the northern slopes of the Himalaya to the Caspian "**
Sea. Here we may most safely imagine the parting-place to have
been, from which the two main streams of the Indo-Germanic
peoples seem to have moved in divergent directions {Encyc, p. 19).
While Pott then maintained the Central Asiatic origin of the
Indo-Europeans on the strength of general considerations, much
the same as those to which Adelung had already given utterance,
5 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Ch. Lassen endeavoured in his Indian Antiquity {Indische Alter-
tumskunde, 1847, i. pp. 511-31) to support Rhode's view by new
combinations. The way, indeed, in which India is distributed
between the different peoples that inhabit it, is held to indicate
that the " Aryans," whose complexion distinguishes them from the
original inhabitants, must have come into the land from the north-
west.* In this case, however, their journey from the land of the
Oxiis must have led them through the western passes of the Hindu-
Kush, through Cabul to the Punjaub. That, further, the Airyana
Vaejahh of the Avesta was really situated where Rhode thought,
in the north of Sogdiana, on the cold highland of the western
slopes of Belurtagf and Mustag, and that it is here we must look
for the original country, not only of the ancient Persians, but of
the whole Indo-Germanic family (c/. Altertumsk., i. p. 527), is further
shown, Lassen thinks, by the fact that the Tadschiks, who speak
Persian, the old original inhabitants of Khasgar, Jarkand, Khoten,
Aksu, &c., dwell on both sides of that lofty mountain, and spread
thence over Central Asia. And to these peoples Klaproth in his Asia
Polyglotta, p. 243, and Ritter, by whom the hypothesis of the Central
Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans was introdviced into geography,
(c/. Erdkunde, ii. p. 435, f.), had explicitly alluded as belonging to
the Persian division of the Indo-Germanic family. Moreover, in
several tribes, the Yueti, Yuetsihi, Yeta, the Szu, Se, Sai, and
especially in the blue-eyed, fair-haired Usun (cf. Ritter, Erdkunde,
ii. and vii., in the passages given in the Index under Usun and
Yueti), which were first referred to by Abel Remusat on the strength
of Chinese authorities, and which appear about the second century
before Christ as coming from the East, and as in hostile
relations with the northern kingdoms of Persia, the last waves of
the Central Asiatic Indo-Europeans were seen ; nay ! people did not
* In the year 1850, A. "Weber {Indische Stud., i. p. 161) thought he had
discovered a fresh argument — it was subsequently adopted by Lassen {cf.
Indische Altertumsk umle, 1. 2, p. 638) and others — to show that the Hindus
came from the land beyond the Himalayas. He points, to begin with, to the
ancient story of the flood in the ^atapatJmbrdhmana, I. 8, 1. 1, in which it is
narrated how a fish advised Manu to build a boat because the flood would
come. " When the flood rose, he (Manu) went on board. The fish swam up,
and to its horn he fastened the boat's rope, and so he crossed this northern
mountain" (the Himalaya). Manu descends thence into India and begets
children. On the other hand, see Zimnier, Altindisches Lehen, 1879, p. 101.
t With regard to the frequently recurring name " Belurtag," Bolortag, &c.,
a reference to H. A. Daniel, Handhuch der GeograqMe, 1880, p. 231, will set
the matter right. He says : "From the elevated plateau of Pamir, the roof of
the world, as the name signifies, Turan stretches west and north-west. Where
the older maps mark a mountain-range running north and south under the name
of Belurtag or Bolortag, — an error, since there is neither a mountain-range nor
do the names occur there, — a waste plateau, about 400 kilom. wide, separates
that portion of Central Asia which is subject to the Chinese EmjDire from the
Ai'alo- Caspian depression, and connects the mountain-systems of the Himalaya,
Mustagh, Hindu-Kush in the south with the Alai-Tagh and Thian-Schan in
the north." Cf., however. Max Midler, India: ivhat can it tmch us? p. 267,
note: "The Bolor, the very existence of which has been denied, has lately
been re-established as the real name of a real mountain by Robert Shaw.
He found that the name was applied by the Kirghis to the district of Kitral."
POTT, RHODE, AND LASSEN. 9
hesitate to identify, as did Klaproth and Ritter, the Yeta with the
(Jetce, the Se with the Sacce, the Usun with the Suiones, their
leaders Kuenmi with the Teut. ktm-ig [Erdkunde, ii. p. 432), and so
on. J. Grimm, too, in his Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, con-
tributed considerably to the spread of these ideas, by identifying
the Getce with the Goths. In the south-west of Persia, taken in its
broadest signification, we have, however, according to Lassen, to
place the original home of the second great linguistic family of the
Caucasian race, the Semitic. For the Hebrew story of Eden points
in this direction, and what the Belurtag was for the Aryans,
Ararat was for the Semites. A common place of origin, and pre-
historic contact between the Semites and the Indo-Europeans is
supposed to be proved by a resemblance between their languages
which goes beyond "grammatical structure."
Thus, indeed, everything seemed to confirm the opinion that
the Indo-Germanic peoples and languages had their roots in Asia,
and J. Grimm was right in maintaining in his History of the
German Language {Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 1848) that
this view had but few opponents. " All the peoples of Europe," he \^
says, p. 162,/., "came from Asia in the distant past; an irresist-
ible impulse, the causes of which are hidden from us, set in from
the east to the west. The further west we find a people pene-
trating, the earlier it must have begun its travels, and the deeper
the traces it may have left behind it on the way." The trifling
and ill-founded opposition offered to this opinion of the first
authorities on the subject (c/. Th. Poesche, Die Arier, 1878, p. 60)
soon ceased entirely.
If Comparative Philology at its first appearance thus raised
questions of the very greatest importance in history and ethnology,
which now seemed to be approaching a final solution, the further
growth of the science was destined to be of importance for another
branch of human knowledge, which was in urgent need of assist-
ance, the history of primitive culture.
As early as the year 1820, in a quarter apparently far removed
from the new comparative method, that is, in the Malay and
Polynesian languages, J. Crawfurd had in his comprehensive work
the History of tlie Indian Archipelago, appended a tolerably
extensive vocabulary to a general dissertation on the Polynesian
languages, in which he endeavoured to trace the relationship of the
most important terms of civilisation in this group of languages.
Indeed, on the strength of his linguistic observations, he had even
drawn a detailed description of the oldest civilisation of these
peoples.*
* Cy. ii. p. 85: " They had made .^onie advances in agricultm-e, under-
stood the use of iron, had workers in this metal and in gold, out of which tliey
probably male ornaments ; they were clothed in material woven from the
fibrous bark of plants, which they wove on a loom, but ilid not yet know how
to make cotton garments, which knowledge they only obtained later from the
Indian mainland ; they had domesticated the cow and the bnlbdo, and used
them as beasts of draught and burden, as also the pig, the fowl, and the duck,
which served them as food."
lO PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Similai" attempts were not wanting in the domain of the Indo-
Germanic languages. The first step towards arranging Indo-
Germanic equations for purposes of the history of culture was taken
by the learned and acute R. K. Rask, in a prize-essay which
appeai'ed at Copenhagen in 1818 {Undersogelse oin des gamle
Nordiske eller Islanchke S2)rogs Oj^rindehe, translated into German
by J. S. Vater in the Vergleichungstafeln der Europaischen
Stammsprachen, &c., Halle, 1882, see pp. 109-32), which contains
indeed only etymologies confined to the European languages, but
they are distinguished by what is relatively a very considerable
degree of accuracy.*
Two short papers bearing on linguistic palaeontology were
A. W. V. Schlegel's Names of Animcds and Metals (Uber Tier-
namen mid Navien der Metalle, Indische Bibliotelc, i. pp. 238-45).
which were intended to illumine important chapters in the history
of culture for the first time with the light of the science of
language. In both papers Schlegel discusses the transference of
certain names of animals and metals to other species of animals
and metals, as, for instance the relation of the Greek cAe'^as :
Goth, ulbandus, " camel," a word which he regards as " an
ancient memory of Asia ; " of Goth, vulps : Lat. vulpes ; of Sans.
dyas, Teut. eisen, Lat. aes, "copper," &c. Some of the etymologies,
such as Lat. ursus, "bear" = O.H.G. ors, "horse," G. Kdfir]Xo<s =
Lat. caballus, &c., throw a lurid light on the condition of Com-
parative Philology at that time. A universal collection of tlie
names of animals Schlegel intended to give in his Synopsis lingu-
arum (cf. above).
Equally extensive was the use made of linguistic arguments by
H. J. Link in his work mentioned above, in the sections on the
spread of mankind, language as an indication of its spread, the
home of the domesticated animals and the cultivated plants, the
discovery of metals, &c.
A further step forward was taken by F. G. Eichhoff in his work
Parallele des langues de VEuroioe et de Vlnde, 1836 (translated intoi
German by Kaltschmidt, 2nd ed,, Leipzig, 1845 ; cf. A. Hofer,
Berliner Jahrb. f. tviss. Kritik, Dec. 1836, Nos. 104-10, and F.
Pott, Hallische Jahrb. f. deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1838,
Nos. 310-12). " Philology and history," he says in the Preface,
" go hand in hand, affording each other mutual assistance, for the
life of nations discloses itself in their language, which is the true
mirror of their vicissitudes ; and where the national chronology
loses count, and the thread of tradition breaks, the pedigree of
words, which survives the fall of kingdoms, begins to throw its
light on the cradle of the race." With this view, he groups, as
indeed Rask had done before him, his comparisons of words
according to their importance for the history of culture, assigning
them to eight groups — the moon and the elements, plants and
* Similar comparative catalogues were besides framed by N. Th. Colebrooke,
the founder of Hindu philology, though not published {cf. Max Miiller, Essays,
iv. p. 466,/.).
THE BEGINNING OF SCIENTIFIC ETYMOLOGY. II
animals, the body and members, the family and society, town and
dwellings, arts and furniture, trades and occupations, qualities and
attributes. In this way he hopes to show how " this rich and
tenacious civilisation propagated itself in a thousand different
degrees, but always in similar stocks and in regular ramifications
from the banks of the Ganges, the ancient mysterious home, over
the enormous area that civilisation now covers and whose borders
are daily extending " (p. 145).
But however meritorious may be the fundamental idea of Eich-
hoff's collections of words, the collections themselves are almost
absolutely worthless, as they rest exclusively on superficial
similarities in the words compared, and are but rarely and then
accidentally correct. Again, the exaggerated estimate of the
antiquity of Sanskrit, which leads him to place the home of the
original people in India, contributes to give the work a false
direction. A truly scientific etymology, that is, a comparison of \
words on the strength of fixed phonetic laws derived from the
observation of the sounds of speech, was first laid down in the
Etymological Researches {Etymologisclie ForscKungen) of F. A. Pott — K
(1833 and 1836), which obviously had no influence on Eichhoff,
and which was followed in 1839-42 by Th. Benfey's Lexicon of
Greek Roots {Griechisches Wurzellexicon), Now for the first time
was linguistic material of a relatively reliable character placed at
the disposal of the historian of culture.
A. Kuhn, therefore, had firmer ground under his feet when, in
the year 184.5, he made a fresh attempt, in his epoch-making paper
On the History of the Indo-Gerraanic Peoples in the most Ancient
Times {Zur dltesten Geschichte der Indogermanischen Volker, Easter-
Programme of the Berlin Real-Gymnasium), to employ Comparative -^
Philology to illumine the primitive Indo-Germanic period. The
starting-point in Kuhn's discussion, which "does not pretend to be
anything more than an attempt," is the question "whether it is
not possible by means of this very Comparative Philology to proceed
from the conclusion that all these great nations are related to each
other, to a further conclusion, that is to establish the main out- *
lines of the condition of the primitive people in the period
antecedent to their dispersion " (p. 2). Here we have the concep- '-'
tion of a linguistic Palaeontology clearly expressed.
To begin with, Kuhn puts together the names for tolerably
distant degrees of kinship, such as for brother-in-law and father-
in-law, which coincide in the Indo-Germanic languages, in order
thus to demonstrate the existence in the primeval period of a
regular family life, the kernel and basis of a State, For, according
to Kuhn, the original people, when it left its original home, had
already reached a stage in the evolution of the State beyond the
patriarchal form of society (p. 7). This, he thinks, is shown by
comparisons such as Sans, rctjan, Lat. rex, Goth, reiks ; Sans.
pdti, G. TToo-ts, Goth, faths. (Sans, vigxiti = Lith. u'ieszpats), etc.
Further, he finds the pastoral life of the oldest Tndo-Europeans
amply demonstrated by the uniform terms for most of the domesti-
12 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
cated animals. Thus he reaches the conclusion " that the cattle
and poultry possessed by our original ancestors were in the main
those we have to-day " (p. 12). The domestication of the cat alone
he refuses to the primitive world, since its names show no such
agreement as point to an original connection between them ; on
the other hand, he considers it possible that our cocks and hens
were known, in spite of the fact that they have different names
amongst almost all Indo-Germanic peoples, because of the great
sanctity of the bird among Hindus, Romans, and Germans (p. 10).
The In do-Europeans, however, according to Kuhn, were not merely
pastoral, they had already made the transition to Agriculture.
Comparative Philology can, indeed, only make it probable that the
Indo-Europeans before their dispersion were acquainted with the
plough and agriculture, for the root employed in the European
languages to designate the plough — ar (G. apow, Lat. arare, &c.) —
can only be traced in Sanskrit in this sense hypothetically (p. 12) ;
for instance, according to Kuhn in drya, "ploughman" (?) ; while
the European word for plough, G. aporpov, Lat. aratrum, &c.,
which Kuhn places immediately by the side of the Sans, aritra,
in that language only means "oar." On the other hand,
language decisively proves that grain must have been known and
employed for making bread before the various peoples separated
(p. 14). The general name for grain in the primitive period was
yava (Sans, i/dva, G. ^ea, Lith, javml). With regard to the indi-
vidual varieties, Kuhn finds that expressions for different varieties
of grain agree in all languages compared, and therefore grain
must have been known to the original people ; " on the other hand,
it is impossible to decide whether we are to understand thereby the
varieties subsequently designated by those names ; barley and
wheat, as it seems, claim the highest antiquity, and the former
pre-eminently takes precedence, as it especially was used in
offerings by the Greeks, Romans, and Hindus" (p. 16). Thus the
pursuit of agriculture makes it probable a p'riori that the original
people had fixed abodes, and this is further expressly proved, Kuhn
thinks, by an abundant array of common words for house and yard,
dwelling, village, town, &c.: — " The ancestors of the Indo-European
peoples, then, were already a settled people" (p. 18).
Thus was an attempt made for the first time to draw a picture
of the culture of prehistoric Indo-Germanic times on the basis of
Comparative Philology; but Kuhn's treatise does not seem to have
become fertile in wider circles, until in the year 1850 the author
expanded it with copious additions, especially in the domain of the
Celtic and Slavonic languages, and allowed it to be published once
more. In the meantime, interest in the union of linguistic and his-
toric research had been greatly quickened by the veteran compara-
tive philologist, Jacob Grimm, who wrote his work the History of
German {Geschichte der deutschen Sprache), which appeared in 1848,
from a point of view, described by himself as follows (Preface, p.
xiii) : "In linguistic research, of which I am an adherent, and on
which I take my stand, I have never been content to remain
GRIMM ON PREHISTORIC CULTURE. 1 3
satisfied with words without proceeding to things. My object has
been not merely to build houses, but also to dwell in them. It
seemed to me worth while to try whether our national history
could not be assisted in shaking her bed by language, and
whether, as etymology often benefits by the suggestions of
those who have no special knowledge of it, history also could
not derive some profit from the unprejudiced point of view of
language."
For us the most important points in Grimm's work are the first
seven sections : Age and Language, Shepherds and Farmers, Cattle,
Hawking, Farming, Feasts and Months, Faith, Law, Customs —
" by means of which many varied features from the inexhaustible
stores of antiquity will be put in as a foregroimd for all that is to
follow" (p. 161). Grimm's object was not to give a clear and
precise picture of the original Indo-Germanic period, as Kuhn had
tried to do; he wishes to put together all the common points
which bind the peoples and languages of Europe to each other and
to those of Asia. The marvellous wealth of his historical and
linguistic knowledge is to reveal prehistoric Teutonic times to him,
and in order to detect its phases he traces its affinities with equal
interest, whether they lead him far or near. In this way, however,
questions force themselves on his notice, about the more or less
close relationship of the Indo-Germanic langviages to each other,
which could not but be of importance for the further development of
linguistic and historical studies. He himself pronounces on this
point, p. 1030, as follows: "As the result of all my research I find
that our German language is most closely connected with Slavonic
and Lithuanian, somewhat more remotely with Greek and Latin,
though in such a way that it agrees with each of them in some of
its tendencies." The work does not go so far as to draw sharp
distinctions, as was subsequently done, between definite periods of
civilisation; on the contrary, it is often difiicult to follow Grimm's
historical inferences from partial agreements of languages. We
may refer to the discussions on the Names of Metals, pp. 9-14,
and on Farming Terms, pp. 68-69, &c.
On the whole, Grimm is of the opinion that the Indo-European s,
when they moved from Asia to Europe — ch. viii. is devoted to
their migration — were stiU shepherds and warriors. "This
irresistible mai'ch of the nations from Asia into Europe," he says
on p. 15, " pre-supposes bold bands, eager for the fray, allowing
themselves but occasional rest and quietness, living, under the
pressure of advance, on their herds, on the products of the chase,
on the spoils of battle. Before devoting themselves to quiet
farming, they must have been hunters, shepherds, warriors
The migrating shepherds had still much in common, for which the
later farmers had to find special words " (p. 69). " Nevertheless,
there remain," he adds, under the influence of Kuhn's work, " as
important exceptions, yciva, jatval, ^ea; koka (Sans, 'wolf,' cf. vfka
'wolf and plough '), hoha (Goth, 'plough '), huoho {cf. Kuhn, ih., pp.
13-15); as also, if the remarkable analogy is competent to over-
14 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
come all doubt, aritra, aratrum, aporpov; ^^Zava (Sans, 'vessel'),
ttXolov, pliugas (Lith. ' plough ')."
Thus, by the labours of Kuhn and Grimm, the foundation of a
methodical investigation of Indo-Germanic antiquities by means of
Comparative Philology was laid for the first time. When, it was
said, a word recurs in all languages of the Indo-European family
with the same form and the same meaning (more or less of course),
this word must have existed in the original Indo-Germanic
language, and consequently the conception designated by it must
have been present in the primitive period. Because the Sans,
pcm corresponds to the Greek kvwv, Lat. canis, &c., therefore, it
was inferred, the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion must have
possessed the dog as a domesticated animal ; and because Sans.
puri, "town," can be parallelled by G. ttoAi?, they must have lived
in towns while they yet formed one people (cf. Kuhn, ih., pp. 9 and
17).
But whereas it is the reconstruction of the primitive Indo-
European period itself that Kuhn always keeps in view, Grimm
starts from the special point of view of ancient German, and
follows the track of its affinities, even if it does not lead him
beyond the limits of the European languages. This results in his
constructing transitional periods of culture, not indeed sharply
marked off from one another, inteimediate between the time known
to the history of each separate people and the period immediately
antecedent to the dispersion of the Indo-Europeans. This idea was
the more readily entertained because the purely grammatical side
of Comparative Philology, relying on linguistic arguments, had
already reached the conclusion that the Indo-Germanic peoples
could not have torn themselves from the bosom of the original
home all at once.
Bopp indeed had expressed the view, in the first edition of his
grammar, that in Asia Sanskrit and Medo-Persian were united
closely to each other, and in Europe, on the one hand, Greek and
Latin, on the other Lithuanian, Slavonic, and Teutonic.
Grimm's view on this subject we have already seen. Kaspar
Zeuss also, in 1837, expressed himself very decidedly in his work
The Germans and Neighbouring Peoples {Die Deutschen mid die
Nachharstdmme), in favour of the closer connection of German and
Slavonic, and endeavoured to strengthen the view by a series of
linguistic proofs {ih., pp. 18-20).
A new hypothesis, to which in 1853 even Bopp gave in his
adhesion (Ueber die Sprache der Alien Preussen Abh. d. Berl. Ak. d.
W.), was put forward in 1850 by A. Kuhn, in the I'eprint of his
paper, On the History of the Indo-G. Peoples {Ueber die alteste Ges-
chichte der Indog. Volker, p. 324), already mentioned : from a series
of arguments drawn from the science of language and the history
of culture, he infers " that the Slavonic language remained longer
in contact with Sanskrit, or more probably with Zend and Persian,
than with the other Indo-Germanic languages ^^- — though Bopp
dissents from Kuhn so far as to place the drfi'erentiation of the
KUHN. 15
Letto-Slavonic branch before the division of the Asiatic section into
Sanskrit and Persian.
At the same time the wildest views were rife as to the grouping
of the Indo-Germanic peoples. Even in 1853, H. Leo, for instance
(J. W. Wolf's Zeitschrift f. deuUche Mythologie und Sittenkunde,
i. p. 51), ventured to maintain that the Teutons separated from the
Hindus later than did the Persians, and that this separation
actually did not take place until after the Hindus had settled in
India (cf. A. Weber, Z. d. M. G., viii. p. 389).
Having thus given a connected account of the beginning of lin-
guistic Palreontology up to this date (about the year 1850), we
shall do well to follow the various tendencies which we have come
across in our review separately, and treat the further development
of this branch of science in separate sections ; and following an
order which will easily be understood, we shall treat of —
The Reconstruction of the Primitive Indo-European Period by
means of Language (ch. ii. ).
The Partings of the Peoples and their Importance for the
History of Culture (ch. iii.).
The Attempts to ascertain the Oi'iginal Home of the Indo-
Europeans (ch. iv.).
The few investigations in the domains of the Ural-Altaic and
Semitic languages which belong to the subject will be mentioned
at the end of chapter ii. Works exclusively mythological in their
content are as a rule excluded from this historical investigation,
because they have but little connection with "linguistic " Palaeon-
tology in the proper sense. We shall, however, subsequently (Part
4, ch. xiii.), have an opportunity of briefly doing justice to the
historical development of Comparative Mythology.
It was to be expected that Comparative Law also, which from
1878 had at its own disposal a periodical devoted to its study,
would gradually possess itself of the conception of the pro-ethnic
unity of the Indo-Germanic peoples, with a view to establishing the
Primitive Law of the Indo-Europeans by a comparison of the legal
institutions of the individual peoples. This attempt was first
stated in a clear and connected manner in a paper by F. Bernhoft
(Ueber die Grundlagen der Rechtsentwicklung hei den Indog.
Voelkern, Zeitschrift, ii. 253, ff.). This side, too, of Aryan
antiquities we shall abstain from discussing, at any rate in this
section of our enquiry, and shall wait for Ptirt IV. before returning
to the works on this subject.
CHAPTER 11.
THE RECONSTBUCTION OF THE PRIMITIVE INDO-GERMANIC PERIOD
BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE.
It was by Th. Mommsen's History of Rome (1854) that the door of
history was thi'own open to Kuhn's idea of reconstructing the pre-
historic era of the Indo-Germanic peoples by means of Comparative
Philology. The celebrated historian, who sees in history nothing
but "the development of civilisation," seized eagerly and con-
fidently on the possibility of tracing the beginnings of Italian
culture to a Grseco-Italian or Indo-Germanic period. In his material
results Mommsen agrees in the main with his predecessors. The
development of pastoral life in the primitive period he regards as
demonstrated "by the unalterably fixed names of the domestic
animals " {hos, pecus, taurus, ovis, equus, anser, anas, 1st German
ed., p. 13; Eng. trans., pop. ed., i. p. 15) ; the use of the waggon by
iugum, axis; acquaintance with metals by aes, argentum, ensis ; with
salt by sal ; the construction of huts by domus, vicus, &g. On the
other hand, he is distinguished from Kuhn by his assumption that
cereals were not yet cultivated by the Indo-Europeans. A few
remarks are devoted in the later editions (the 8th and last, 1888)
to proving this view ; and it appears from them that Mommsen
sees, in the equation G. ^€a = Sans. ydva, a proof that "at the
most, before the separation of the peoples, they gathered and ate
the grains of barley and spelt growing wild in Mesopotanaia,* not
that they already cultivated grain" (7th ed. p. 16; 2nd, p. 16;
English trans., pop. ed., p. 16). Mommsen concludes his account
of the condition of the Indo-European s by holding out a brilliant
prospect for research by means of linguistic Palaeontology.
The first thing needful was a copious and careful collection of
linguistic material for the history of culture.
A convenient storehouse was offered by the Journal for the
Comparative Philology of German, Greek, and Latin (Zeitschrift
fur vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gehiete des Deutschen,
Griechischen, und Lateinischen), which was edited by A. Kuhn, and
* This, according to Mommsen, was the most ancient home of the Indo-
Europeans [ef. 3rd ed., p. 31; 7th, p. 30). The same opinion had previously
been maintained by Vanns Kennedy in his Researches into the Origin and
Affinity of tlie Principal Languages of Asia and Europe, 1828.
KUHN AND PRIMEVAL HISTORY. 1 7
first appeared in 1851. The mere name of the editor warranted the
hope that the direction towards the investigation of history, first
imparted by him to Comparative Philology, would be followed.
And he himself did, in the 4th volume (1855), return to our subject
in a special paper, ComjMtrative Philology and the Primeval Ilidory
of the Indo-Euro2)eans {Die Sprachvergleichung und die Urgeschichte
der Indog. Viilker, art. i.). This work has a special interest because
of its introductory remarks on method, through which the attempt
plainly makes itself felt to obtain stricter laws than heretofore
for establishing historical facts by means of linguistic arguments.
Here, for the first time, attention was called, although only
in a distant manner, to the difficulties which, as will come out
more and more clearly in the course of our investigation, stand in
the way of reconstructing the original period by purely linguistic
arguments. Things are relatively simple, such is the train of
ideas in the author's mind, when the term for a concept is identical,
as regards both root and sttffix, in all Indo-Germanic languages,
or at least in those which " have been transmitted to us in a long
series of literary monuments ;" but it is only hypothetically possible
to prove the identity of formative syllables, or to establish the
existence of a given form of suftix, in the original period.
. Further, it is not the commonest of occurrences for a word to be
found in all or even the most important of the related languages.
On the one hand, this is perfectly intelligible : " on their marches
through wild mountain glens, desolate steppes and fertile land, in
their intercourse with other peoples, barbarous or civilised, their
circle of ideas expanded or contracted, according to the difference
in their circumstances, just as changes in the mode of life brought
about the loss of many manners and customs." It is therefore by
no means remarkable that Greeks, Romans, and Germans should
share names of plants and animals that are wanting among the
Hindus, who found themselves confi'onted in their new home with
such a change of nature. On the other hand, these very causes are
the reason why it is often impossible to make the existence of a
given concept in the primeval period more than pi'obable to a
certain degree. Again, the frequent difference in meaning of words
phonetically identical makes historical conclusions uncertain. We
may take as an example G. ^lyyos "oak" = Lat. fagus "beech,"
O.H.G. puohha. Did the word mean "oak" or "beech" in the
primeval period ? The only thing which can be ascertained by
means of etymology is that a tree with edible fruit (<^r/yos : t^ayeiv)
j was to be found in the original home. Indeed, occasionally ety-
>j mology leaves the investigator entirely stranded, as in the case
[l of Sans, dru "wood, twig, tree," Goth, tri^c "tree," G. 8pv<; "oak,"
|i so that the only result to be got at is that "our Indo-European
ll ancestors dwelt in a region which was not a treeless waste."
1 1 When A. Knhn had thus to a certain extent made the question as
|i to the civilisation of the primeval Indo-Germanic period the order
1 of the day in Comparative Philology, and when new affinities and
connections were being discovered almost every day in the vocabu-
B
1 8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
lary of the Indo-Germaiiic languages, it was to be expected that
the idea should occur of employing the whole of the material bear-
ing on the subject for the composition of a general picture of Indo-
Germanic civilisation. This task was undertaken in the most ample
and thoroughgoing, but unfortunately most uncritical, way by the
Genevan savant Adolphe Pictet, who had already shown his interest
in historico-linguistic studies in some shorter dissertations — Etymo-
logische Forschungen iiher die dlteste Arzneikunst hei den Indoger-
manen {Etymological Investigations into the most Ancient Form of
Medicine amongst the Indo-Europeans), K. Z., v. pp. 24-29, and
Die alien Krankheitsnamen hei den Indogermanen (Ancient Names
of Diseases amongst the Indo-Europeans), K. Z., v. pp. 321-54, etc.
His work, Les origines Indo-Europeennes ou les Aryas Primitifs,
essai de paleontologie linguistique (a term which had not been
used before), Paris, 1859-63 (2nd ed., Paris, 1877, cf. on this
point ch. iv. below), endeavoured in two large volumes to examine
the whole vocabulary of the Indo-Germanic languages, with a view
to reconstructing the primeval Indo-European period. It consists
of fiye books, of which the first contains geographical and ethno-
logical discussions ; the second deals with the natural history
(minerals, plants, animals) of the primitive Indo-Germanic period
(vol. i., 1859); the third discusses the material civilisation of the
ancient Indo-Europeai;is ; the fourth, their social relations ; and
the fifth and last, the intellectual, moral, and religious life of the
primeval period (vol. ii., 1863).
Now this arrangement of the subject-matter was a mistake.
The author, for reasons which we shall examine more closely in
our fourth chapter, having decided in favour of the ancient
Bactria as the original home of the Indo-Germanic family, makes
this geographical hypothesis the basis of his further reconstruction
of the primeval period. Whatever seems to him to correspond to
the geography or natural history of this portion of the world,
he refei's without hesitation to the primeval period, even if the
linguistic proofs, on which this paleontologie linguistique is based,
note, should be altogether wanting. This holds good especially of
what he says about the animal kingdom and the vegetable world.
Thus he says of the camel (i. p. 382) : " Although the camel is
not a European animal, and its name, camelus, is undoubtedly
borrowed from the Semitic, it is nevertheless very probable that
the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with it, as the two-humped
camel is native to Bactria." By a similar mode of argument,
the tiger (i. p. 425) is assigned to the primitive Indo-Germanic
period.
It obviously cannot be my task to examine this extensive work
in detail. I shall rather content myself with a short account of
Pictet's method, which can be better seen by the selection of an
example than from the section (§ 2, i. pp. 11-25) which he devotes
to stating it. This will be the best way of judging the results
which the author reaches (cf. the last chapter, Re'sume general et
conclusions). Such a treatment of Pictet's method is necessary
PICTET AND LINGUISTIC PALEONTOLOGY. 1 9
even now, as the importance of the author is still much overrated
— not indeed by specialists, but in wider circles {cf., e.g.^ B. Krek,
Einleitung in die slav. Litteraturgesch., pp. 52, 65, &c.).
As the fundamental principle of Pictet's researches is : " Partir
toujours du mot Sanscrit, sHl existe, soit pour arriver a la restitution
du theme 2^'>'''^nitif, soit pour en decouvrir V etymologie probable
(i. p. 23), in oi'der to show that the Indo-Europeans were, as
Pictet is convinced that they were, acquainted with agriculture, it
is above all things necessary to discover in Sanskrit tlae European
names of the cereals. But whereas the best Sanskrit scholar of
that time, Ch. Lassen, had as early as the year 1847 come to the
conclusion that " Ydca may be regarded as the oldest variety of
grain cultivated by the Indo-Euroj^eans, because this is the only
grain whose name has been preserved in all the related languages "
\lnd. Altertumskunde, i. p. 247), Pictet promises, as the result of
his comparisons, " that the ancient Indo-Europeans already
possessed most of the cultivated plants which to this day form
the basis of our agriculture." In this connection he relies, for
wheat and barley, on the following designations, which apparently
coincide in Sanskrit and the European languages : — I. Wheat (1)
G. 0-1705 = Sans, sitagimhika, sitaguka or sitya, p. 262; (2) Goth,
hvaiteis = Sans, gvetai^unga, p. 263; (3) Ir. m<:m?i = Sans. sumana,
p. 264; (4) Ir. arbha, Lat. robus = Sans. arbha(l), p. 265; (5) Trupos
= Sans, pilra, p. 266; (6) Buss, psenica = Sans. 2^sdna, p. 266. II.
Barley: (I) G. {ca = Sans. ydva, p. 267; (2) Lith. mieziei = Sans,
medhya, p. 268; (3) O.H.G. ^ers to = Sans, (/ras-^d; (4) G. Kpt6-^ =
Sans. *p-i-dhd ; (5) Koa-n'j (Hesych.) = Sans. ^as-td ; (6) Lat. hordeum
= Sans. hfdya ; (7) Cymr. haidd = Sans, sddhu, pp. 269-71.
Of these equations, the phonetic difficulties and impossibilities
of which we pass over, we must, to begin with, exclude as
absolutely meaningless for the I'econstruction of the primeval
period those which never have in Sanskrit stood for any kind of
grain, such as pil7-a (Trupos) : root, j»ar, "a kind of cake;" psdna
(pkrnica) : root, ^:>sc?, " eating " (only to be traced in Hemacandra^s
Dictionary, 12th century a. D.); grasta (gerste) : root, gras, "that
which has been eaten;" Qas-td : root, (^aiis, "laudatus;" hfdya
{hordeum), "dear to the heart, lovely;" sddhu (Cymr. haidd),
"leading straight to the end." Equally idle is the reference of
words apparently isolated to original forms, in the manufacture of
which the author has attained to a marvellous perfection.
Especial use is made of compounds. In the same way that,
according to him, KpiOrj "the wealth-giving " = *fri-fZ/id, he refers
a word like hund to *kvan-dhd, paptaver to *pdpa-vara, ^^cAtSwv to
*hari-ddna, »fcc. The numerous compounds of the primeval age,
with the pronominal syllable ka as their first element, which seems
to have meant "what!", are quite comic. "What food!" (quel
aliment!); "*ka-bhara," ejaculated the ancient Indo-Europeans
when they gave oats a name (O.H.G. habaro); "what nourishment!"
(quelle nourriture !) ; " *ka-rasa," when they named millet (O.H.G.
hirsi). These primeval compounds are supposed to have had
20 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
various fates in the separate languages. Sometimes it was only the
first element (G. o-lto'; = sita-cimbika), sometimes only the second
(Ir. viann = Sans, su-mana) that was preserved. The remarkable
thing is, that the meaning of these words, which was peculiar
only to the componnd (sita-fimbika, literally, "with white ears,"
su-mana " well-minded, charming, pretty " = wheat) should never-
theless have survived in the separate halves.
We now turn to those Sanskrit words in this collection which
do really occur as the names of kinds of grain in Sanskrit litera-
ture : sitagimbika, sitya, <^vetac^unga, stimana, medhya. Here, how-
ever, we are confronted with the defect in Pictet's method, which
makes his conclusions questionable almost from the first page to
the last. This is, the utter disregard of the historical develop-
ment which took place in Sanskrit, and especially in the meanings of
words. "Whether a word is old or modern, whether its actual
existence is ascertained and guaranteed, further, whether its
meaning is original or was only, in the course of the three thousand
years through which Sanskrit literature flourished, developed by
some process of metaphor, symbolism, or even of mythology, or
whether it is nothing but the invention of some scholiast for the
purposes of explanation — all these are things about which M. Pictet
does not bother himself" {A. Weber). Thus, none of the names
which he quotes for wheat and barley occur as such in the
language of the Vedas ; they can only be found even in late
literature in dictionaries such as that oi Hemacandra (12th century
A.D.), in the Qabdakalpadruma (not composed until the present
century), and the Amarakosha. But even if one or other of these
words should have been used in the mouth of the people as the
name of a variety of grain, this signification is so clearly a
secondary meaning (c/., e.g., mMhya) ; (a) sappy, strong, fresh, un-
injured; (b) fit for offering in sacrifice, pure, &c.; (2) amongst
other meanings, barley (in the (Qabdakalpadruma), that the idea of
employing it for the reconstruction of the primeval period cannot
possibly be entertained. That Pictet never came to see this is the
more remarkable, because the two first parts of Bohtlingk and
Roth's Sanskrit lexicon had appeared in the year 1859, and the
third in the year 1863 ; from these he might have derived a store
of the most profitable information, if not precisely on the subject
of the names of the cereals, which we have quoted, at any rate
about the history of the meanings of words in Sanskrit and the
value of the sources of our knowledge of Sanskrit. How little
profit Pictet was able to make of this work, pregnant as it was for
the whole science of language, may, to conclude, be inferred from
the sole equation which we have not yet considered (i. p. 4) :- —
Ir. arbha,* arbhas, Lat. robus (?), Sans, arbha (!).
* The Irish word is connected by Stokes {Irish Glosses, 1038) with the
Latin arvum, by the side of the Welsh erw, " acre'^ (loan-word?). This,
moreover, is satisfactorily guaranteed {cf. Windisch, Irische Tcxtc, 372, arbar,
" grain," and O'R., Suppl., arhaim, " corn"). On the other hand, I have not
found Irish Mann, "wheat," anywhere except in O'Reilly.
PICTETS METHOD. 21
To the last Sanskrit word Pictet, apparently following Wilson's
Dictionary, assigns the general meaning of grass. He remarks
that this is not given in the St Petersburg Dictionary, but never-
theless bases the most extensive combinations on it, and adds,
naively enough : " le sens des herbes en general qiC omettent, je ne
sais potirquoi, lesauteurs du dictionnaire de P6tershourg" (p. 196).
As a matter of fact, then, the only equation which can be
employed for historical inferences, is, as Lassen maintained. Sans.
ydva = G. ^€a, &c.
Pictet's method of procedure immediately provoked energetic
jDrotests in Germany, A. Weber, in two searching reviews of the
work {Beitrdge z. vergl. Sprachf., ii. and iv.), condemned very
severely, but quite justly, the uncritical way in which the author
had made employment of Sanskrit. The notice of the first volume
by A. Kuhu {Beitrdge, ii. pp. 369-82) w-as less severe, but in the
main fully agreed with Weber's. Kuhn, after some general
remarks, proceeds to an examination of details, and it is interest-
ing to note what his views are now (1862) on the varieties of
grain known to the primeval Indo-Germanic period : " But as
regards results obtained in this w^ay, the conclusion of the whole
matter seems to be that neither animals, minerals, nor plants
have names which agree in all the Indo-Germanic languages,
whereas the names of the domesticated animals do, in the main,
agree, and therefore point to the fact that these peoples wei'e still
in the nomad stage when they separated from each other. Wide-
reaching agreements are, indeed, found in the names of individual
minerals and plants ; but, on the whole, either these agreements
are confined to groups of languages, or it is often difficult to
decide whether they really were originally common property, or
have spread from one people to another by borrowing" (p. 371).
In spite of the serious suspicions which were at once raised by
specialists against Pictet's work, the views which the savant of
Geneva had pronounced on the original condition of the Indo-
Europeans soon found acceptance in a wider scientific circle ; in
particular, French antln-opologists and ethnologists frequently
treated Pictet's conclusions as a safe basis for their own investiga-
tions. I will only refer here to two distinguished French historians
of culture, F. Lenormant, in his work, The Beginnings of Culture
{Die Anfdnge der Culiur, German edition, Jena, 1875), and F. von
liougemont. The Bronze Age, or the Semites in the Occident (German
trans., Giitersloh, 1869), the works of both of whom are most
seriously influenced by Pictet's book.
The same remark applies to Alphonse de CandoUe's well-known
book, Der Ursprung der Kulturpjjianzen (translated by E. Goeze,
Leipzig, 1884), which Pictet's most erroneous statements, accejjted
as sterling coin, permeate in a most pernicious way.
But in Germany also nearly every eminent student of language
endeavoured to wox'k this newly discovered mine of Comparative
Philology in the interests of the history of culture. About the
same time as the second volume of Pictet's work^ there appeared
22 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
two German treatises dealing with linguistic palaeontology : On
the Primeval Indo-Germanic Period, by F. Justi {JJher die Urzeit der
Indorjermanen, Pawner's hist. Taschenbuch, iv. Folge, iii. Jahrgang,
1862, pp. 301-42), and Der wirthschaftliche Culttirstand des indog.
Urvolkes {The Economic Condition of the Primitive Indo- Eur 02)eans),
by A. Schleicher [Hildehrand's Jahrbilcher f. Nationalokonomie, i.,
1863, pp. 401-11). The sketch which Justi gives of the primeval
Indo-Germanic period does not differ essentially from Pictet's
account, and is obviously influenced by it. Here we have pictured
in glowing language the same simple but happy existence of a
young and vigorous people, breeding cattle and working farms,
with a developed family life and the beginning of a State organisa-
tion. A little paradise is put before our eyes. A feeling of envy
creeps over us, their sorely afflicted descendants, when we read of
these ancestors that "the only ills that threatened the lives of
these fortunate men, seem to have been the wounds received in
war, and the weakness of old age " (p. 323). For explaining the
meaning of a word, especial importance is laid by Justi on the root :
The word father means "the protector, master," the mother is
the managing, busy house-wife, who calls her spouse "lord and
master;" the son is termed "the begotten, the scion," the
daughter " the milk-maid ; " she remains by the side of her in-
dustrious mother and helps her ; therefore the brother loves her
and calls her the sister " who dwells with him," while she honours
him with the grateful title of brother, "nourisher" (p. 318). The
subject-matter is arranged with more skill than in Pictet, inasmuch
as in Justi the question as to the original home, the "paradise," of
the Indo-Europeans is not discussed until the picture of their social
relations and the Indo-Germanic fauna and flora have been disposed
of. It is interesting also to note an objection which Justi himself
raises against himself, when he contrasts his high estimate of the
I civilisation of the primeval period with the stage of culture in
^ which history shows some of the Indo-Germanic peoples to have
been, an objection of great and far-reaching importance, as we shall
see, which Justi indeed contrives to dispose of very summarily :
" If, however, it is objected," he says, p. 320, "that many members
of the Indo-European family in times known to history and
relatively much less remote from our own, were still in the hunt-
ing and fishing stage, we need only, in order to deprive the objec-
tion of all its force, put the further question : why did the whole
population of many localities in Italy consist almost exclusively of
fishers, whilst the Italians, nevertheless, rank amongst the most
civilised of peoples'?"
Much more scepticism was shown by Schleicher, who, in his
work Die deutsche Sprache {The German Language), 1860, p. 71, /.,
had not failed to touch upon the civilisation of the original Indo-
Europeans. According to Schleicher's pedigree-theory, which we
shall subsequently speak of in detail, the Slavo-Letto-German
branch was the first to detach itself from the original language,
and it was only later that the remaining portion of the original
JUSTI— MAX MULLER. 23
language subdivided into the Hindu-Persian and Graecoltalo-Celtic
branches. Accordingly, in reconstructing the primeval period, he
justly only lays weight on such words as can be traced either in
all three groups of languages, or at least in the Hindu-Persian as
well as in the Slavo-Letto-German group. Agreements limited to
the area of the European languages he does not regard as con-
clusive, because he considers that terms for civilised ideas may
have been borrowed by one nation from another to a considerable
extent, just as a similar process of borrowing can be traced in the
case of tales and Mdrchen in the most ancient times. Schleicher
is also of opinion that it is impossible to draw negative conclusions
about the civilisation of the primeval period from the absence of
given agreements ; " for in the course of thousands of years many
words may have been lost, many may have survived in one single
language alone, and therefore have lost the means of demonstrat-
ing to us their primeval character. For this reason, however, our
picture of their civilisation can contain nothing which does not
belong to it. We are safe from the danger of imputing too much
to our original people, while we may be certain that there are
many sides of its civilisation which we have not the means to
ascertain " (p. 404). The result is that there are many important
items of civilisation which Schleicher cannot bring himself to
ascribe to the primeval period, but which Pictet had imputed to
it, such as the plough, mill, gold and silvei", &c.
The end of the sixties brought further contributions to the
investigation of the primeval Indo-Germanic period, from Max
Miiller, in an essay on Comparative Philology {Essays, ii. 18-42 of
the German edition, 1869),* W. D. AVhitney {Languacje and the
Study of Language, 1867), and Th. Benfey {Einleitung zu A. Fick's
Worte7'btich cler Indog. Grundsprache in ihren Bestande vor der
Volkertrennung, 1868, and Geschichte der Sprachivissenschaft, 1869,
pp. .597-600). As we here have to do with three inquirers who
together stand at the head of their science, it will be particularly
interesting to consider side by side the views which they put
forward almost simultaneously on the same subject. A. Fick will
also have to be included, because it was on his vocabulary of the
original Indo-Germanic language that Benfey's views were based.
At the very outset of his investigations, Max Miiller declares, as
Schleicher had declared before him, that the method employed in
reconstructing the primeval period may not be reversed or used
for drawing negative conclusions. " Because each of the Romance
languages has a different name for certain objects, it does not
follow that the objects themselves Avere unknown to the ancestors
of the Romance peoples. Paper was known in Rome, yet it is
called carta in Italian, pajiier in French " (Select Essays, i. p. 320).
That does not, however, prevent him from occasionally making
use of negative proofs of this kind. On the gi'ound that the names
given to the sea by the different Indo-Germanic peoples dilfer from
* In Enfjlish this treatise had been published in the Oxford Essay in 1856.
Cf. Ma.x Miiller, Biographies of Words, p. 129, ff.
24 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
each other, or originally designated a dead stagnant water (Lat.
mare), acquaintance with the sea is denied to the primeval period,
and further geographical combinations based thereon. Whitney
also was of opinion that the country inhabited by the Indo-
Europeans did not yet extend to the sea-coast. A second negative
conclusion is drawn by Miiller from the fact that the Indo-Europeans
do not possess a common Avord for the numeral thousand (c/. also
Justi, op. cit., p. 315), whereas Th. Benfey opines more cautiously
that "of the various permissible, i.e., intelligible, names, none had
driven out the rest and established itself as the only one in
use."
As regards the character of the vocabulary employed. Max
Miiller seems not to consider the agreement of Sanskrit a conditio
sine qua non of I'econstructing the civilisation of the primeval
period. At least, he too ascribes the plough and the mill to the
Indo-Europeans. Nor is complete agreement in root and suffix
required of the civilised terms compared ; thus, acquaintance with
gold is assigned with the greatest decision to the original period,
although the formative elements in the series of words in question
(Sans, luranya, G. ;)(pucrd§, Slav, zlato, Goth, gid'^ "differ widely
from one another." Nor does A. Fick regard the agreement of
Sanskrit as absolutely indispensable in order to incorporate a word
into his index of the original Indo-Germanic language. Words such
as those for "boar" (apra), "fish" {pislc), "goat" (plinta), "tree
with edible fruit " (bhaga), and many others, are assigned to the
vocabulary of the original language, although all of them are such
as can only be proved by the agreement of some European languages.
So, too, some word-forms which can only be traced in a few or
even only in a single European language, are admitted into the
dictionary of the original language if they recur in Sanskrit.*
Great care, on the other hand, is taken about the agreement of
words brought together, in their derivative syllables ; in this way
Fick succeeds in establishing the same word with totally different
suffixes for the original language ; thus the stem vat, from which
Benfey infers that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the
division of the year, appears in three forms : vat, vatas, vatasara.
Notwithstanding, the endeavour to recover forms of words which
did once really exist in the original language, makes Fick's com-
parisons a safer basis for researches into the history of culture
than were those made by his predecessors and simply directed to
identifying a root.
Let us now turn to the civilisation itself of the ancient Indo-
Europeans : according to Max Miiller they must have lived in the
profoundest peace for a long time before their dispersion. " Hence
it is that not only Latin and Greek, but all Aiyan languages, have
* To this B. Delbriick, in his criticism of Fick's work {K. Z., xviii. p. 73),
objects: "Particularly must we pronounce against inferring Indo-Germanic
forms from Grajco-Hindu-Persian parallels. For how do we know that they
may not belong to a Graeco-Hindu- Persian period, and thus be about a couple
of thousand years younger than the real Indo-Germanic period ?"
MAX MULLER. 25
their peaceful words in common ; hence it is that all differ so
strangely in their warlike expression. Thus the domestic animals
are generally known in England and India by the same name,
while the wild beasts have mostly different names even in Greek
and Latin " {Select Essays, i. p. 343). According to Whitney, the
domestic animals that had been tamed were the horse, the ox, the
sheep, the goat, the pig, and the dog, to which Benfey further adds
the goose and the duck.
Agriculture, too, was already pursued, and wheat and barley
cultivated (Benfey and Whitjiey) ; further all three inquirers agree
that the Indo-Europeans even then possessed houses and walled
strongholds or towns (Sans, ^wri = G. ttoAis).
On the other hand, they speak with an uncertain voice on, and
at different times give diflFerent answers to the question, what
metals were known to the primeval Indo- Germanic period? Thus
Max Miiller, in his essay referred to above (1856), had spoken of
iron as a metal known to the Indo-Europeans. In his Lectures on
the Science of Language (1866 German, 1864 English edition, ii.
218), on the other hand, he endeavours to provide ample demon-
stration that iron was still wanting to the Indo-Europeans before
their dispersion.
Benfey actually comes to three diflFerent conclusions with
regard to the equation Sans, dyas, Lat. aes, Goth. aiz. Whereas
in the Preface, p. viii, he was of the opinion that it " probably "
had the meaning of " bronze," in his History of Comjxirxitive
Philology he extends its meaning to " metal generally," subse-
quently, "bronze," "iron." Finally Chr. Hostmann [Archiv f.
Anthropologic, ix. p. 192) declares: "Th. Benfey, who reserves
explanation in detail for another occasion, authorises me to state
that there is nothing in Sanskrit scholarship nor in linguistic
research in the domain of the Indo-Germanic languages, incon-
sistent with the results of my investigations, while as regards the
knowledge of iron in the primeval Indo-Germanic period, they are
rather in complete harmony." Whitney expresses himself with
the most caution : " The use of some metals was certainly known ;
whether iron was amongst them is open to question."
Special attention is devoted by Max Miiller to the family life of
the ancient Indo-Europeans. He does not indeed lay any weight
on the mere fact that the names for father, mother, brother, sister,
daughter, are identical in most Indo-Germanic languages. The
high development and elevated morality of the Indo-Germanic
family he rather sees, as we have noticed that Justi saw, in the
meaning of the roots from which the Indo-Germanic family names
are derived. " The name of milkmaid, given to the daughter of
the house, opens before our eyes a little idyll of the poetical and
pastoral life of the early Aryans. One of the few things by which
the daughter, before she was mai-ried might make herself useful in
a nomadic household, was the milking of the cattle, and it discloses
a kind of delicacy and humour even in the rudest state of society,
if we imagine a father callin<' his daughter his little milkmaid
26 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
rather than sutd, his begotten, or jilia, the suckling " {Selected
Essays, i. p. 324).*
A further proof of a well-ordered family life in the primeval
period is seen by Max Miiller in the names which had even then
been developed for i-elations springing fi'om marriage, i.e., relations
which in English are expressed by the addition of the words
" in-law." Terms such as " father-in-law " (Sans, ^vdgura, G.
€Kvp6<;, Lat. socer), " daughter-in-law " (Sans. snushd'= G. vv6<;,
Lat. minis), &c., are unknown to savages. This is supplemented
by a remark of Benfey's (Preface, p. viii), that the monogamy
of the Indo-Europeans is shown by the equations pdtni = irorvia
" mistress," and pdti = TroVts " master."
Arts of many kinds are ascribed to the Indo-Europeans by
Benfey and Whitney: " They possessed weapons, especially arrows ;
they painted and made poetry ; built waggons and boats with
oars ; they wove and made themselves clothes and
girdles. Finally, they had divided time into years and months "
{Benfey). " The art of weaving was practised ; wool and hemp,
and possibly flax, being the materials employed. The weapons of
offence and defence were those which are usual among primitive
peoples, the sword, spear, bow, and shield. Boats were manu-
ftxctured and moved by oars Mead was prepared from
honey, as a cheering and inebriating drink. The season whose
name has been most persistent is the winter " (Whitney, Language
and the Study of Language, p. 207).
Whereas, according to Benfey, the Indo-Europeans were ruled by
kings, whose wives were called " queens," and probably therefore
shared their rank, Whitney finds no traces as yet of the develop-
ment of a state organisation in the proper sense : " the people was
doubtless a congeries of petty tribes, under chiefs and leaders,
rather than kings, and with institutions of a patriarchal cast.
Their religion was already sharply defined ; they had several gods
with established names, definite religious forms and even
formulae" {Benfey).
By the side of the works of the three investigators named, who
directed their efforts to producing a general picture of Indo-
Germanic civilisation, we have now to mention a series of shorter
essays, the object of which was rather to consider single phases of
the most ancient civilisation of the Indo-Europeans.
They treat with especial frequency of the Indo-Germanic
animal kingdom. In the first place, we have to mention two
papers by C. Fcirstemann, on Language and Natural History, K. Z.,
i. pp. 491-505, and iii. pp. 43-62, the latter of which is accompanied
by notes by A. Kuhn. In these the Indo-Germanic names for
animals are brought together, according as they are identical in
all, most, or only single languages, in order to show thereby " the
* The view that Sans. duMtdr "daughter" means "milk-maid" (root,,
duh) was first put forward by J. Grimm, who even compared Lat. mulier:
7nulgere, and fcinijia : O.'E. fcm, fam, "milk." Cf. GescMchte der dcutsehen
Sprachc, p. 1001.
THE INDO-GERMANIC ANIMAL KINGDOM. 2/
possibility of producing a complete Indo-Gcrmaniclinguistichistory."
He finds that throughout the whole area of the Indo-Germanic
languages, i.e., in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic, the names
for dog, cow, sheep, horse, and pig, bear, wolf, mouse, and otter
{cf. K. Z., iii. p. 59) agree. The five animals first mentioned
must, therefore, have been brought into the service of man before
the separation of the languages. The same subject is discussed in
several papers by F. Potts in the Beitrcige zur vergleichenden
Sprachwissetischaft {Conti'ibutions to the Science of Language),
which are distinguished less by definite historical results than by
the fact that he has collected together much valuable material.
The various sections grouped together under the general title
Contrihittons to the History of Culture, treat of The Distinction of
various kinds of Cattle, Gelding (ii. pp. 195-215), The Cultivation,
of Bees (ii. pp. 265-82) — this includes a discussion on The Improve-
ment of Fruit-trees (ii. pp. 401-23) — further of Dogs (iii. pp. 289-
326), Goats (iv. pp. 68-79), Birds (iv. pp. 79-98). A. Bacmeister
deals with the Indo-Germanic animal kingdom from the side of
language, in Ausland, in a more popular manner, under the
following heads: (1) ass; (2) horse (Amhmd, 1866, pp. 924 and
997) ; (3) ape, lion, camel, elephant ; (4) domestic animals ; (5 and
6) origin of names of animals; (7) dog, wolf, fox {A%island, 1867,
pp. 91, 157, 472, 507, 1133). The same subject is discussed by
Franz Misteli {cf. Bericht iiher die Thatigkeit der St. Gallichen
naturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, 1865-66, pp. 139-69, and ib.,
1866-67, pp. 31-59). In his method of proving the acquaintance
of the Indo-Europeans with certain animals, Misteli models
himself on A. Pictet. He too moves in the vicious circle which is
conspicuous in Pictet. Since " on linguistic grounds " — what, is
not stated — the home of the Aryans must be placed north of the
Himalayas, on the boundaries of India and Persia (p. 141),
therefore, the Indo-Europeans must have been acquainted with
the tiger, as the habitat of this beast of prey extends to this
district. It is, however, w'ell known that the tiger cannot pretend
to a primeval name. The fox also, to say nothing of other animals,
is assigned in the same way to the primeval Indo-Germanic fauna.
For this animal too, when we consider his geographical distribution
and reflect that geese and poultry were known as domestic birds
to the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion (p. 157), Ave might
expect a primeval name. But " crafty Master Eeynard tricks
us even in matters of science." The only trace of the original
state of things has, according to Misteli, been preserved in
Lat. vulpes, which he compares with Lat. lupus, G. Xv'ko?, Sans.
vrkas, to show that fox and wolf received the same name in
the primeval period, viz., "robber" (root, vark). After these
remarks it is unnecessary to say anything else of the collec-
tion which he gives as the result of liis investigation (p. 58).
According to it the following animals were known to the Indo-
Europeans : —
Beasts of Prey. — Tiger, dog, wolf, fox, marten, polecat, and
28 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
weasel — without satisfactorily distinguishing the two latter — otter,
bear, hedgehog.
Rodents. — Squin-el, mouse, hare, beaver.
Solidungulous. — Horse.
Ruminants. — Camel, stag, goat, sheep, cow.
Cloven-footed. — Pig.
It is interesting to note the side-glances which Misteli casts on
the fauna of the Swiss lake-dwellings, for purposes of comparison.
As, however, he ascribes to the primeval Indo-Germauic period the
domestication of certain animals, such as the horse, pig, poultry,
which according to Riitimeyer's investigations [Die Fauna der
Pfahlhauten) were unknown to the most ancient periods of the
lake-dwellings, it is not difficult to understand that, in his opinion,
the Indo-Europeans cannot possibly be compared, as regards civi-
lisation, with the lake-dwellers of the Stone age. In the same way,
A. Schleicher (ojo. cit., p. 411), assuming that the Indo-Europeans,
before their dispersion, were acquainted with metals and metal-
lurgy, ascribes the prehistoric moiauments of the European Stone
age to non-Indo- Germanic peoples. These important questions will
engage our close attention subsequently.
An entirely new side of Indo-Germanic civilisation was brought
into prominence by R. Westphal in a paper on the comparative
metrical systems of the Indo-Germanic peoples {Zur Verghichenden
Metrik der indog. Volker, K. Z., ix. pp. 437-58). If, he inquired,
a hundred different traits in the belief about the gods, in the
structure of myths and sagas, can be traced back to the primeval
period of the Indo-Germanic peoples, ought it not also to be possible
to infer the form with which this most ancient of poetry invested
its material 1 And, in fact, Westphal believes that he has detected
this ancient form in the agreement of the three iambic verses of
the Greeks (dimeter, acatalectic, and catalectic trimeter) with the
three metres of the Vedas {Anushtubh and Gdyatri, Jagati, Virdj,
and Trishtuhh), and further with the rhythmic verse of the ancient
Persians. This ancient Indo-Germanic poetry was based neither on
accent nor quantity, but was an affair of syllables purely. It has
been preserved intact in the metres of the Avesta, and is reflected
in the Vedic hymns also, so far as the second half of the iambic
dipodia is quantitive, i.e., purely iambic. In Greek metre, also,
this primeval principle of syllable-counting occasionally still
manifests itself, e.^., in the license allowed by prosody at the
beginning of a rhythmical verse {cf. p. 440).
The scheme of the primitive Indo-European epic verse may be
represented in accordance with these investigations, as follows : —
Westphal's work has proved to be the foundation of a compara-
tive study of Indo-European metres, which has lately become of
importance for understanding the origin of the hexameter, for
which I may refer to Frederic Allen (Ueher den Ursprung des
INDO-GERMANIC POETRY. 29
homerischen Versmasses, K. Z., xxiv. p. 556, /.), and H. Usener
{Altgriechischer Versban, Bonn, 1887).
That the Indo-Europeans composed, i.e., possessed metrical songs,
is, we may remark incidentally, the opinion of all the investigators
whom we have thus far mentioned. Benfey and Fick endeavoured
to support it by linguistic arguments, the former basing his
statement that : " They (the Indo-Europeans) painted and com-
posed poetry, especially hymns" obviously on Pick's equation,
Sans, sumnd = G. v/avos ; the latter appending to his comparison of
Sans, pacld " metrical unit, quarter of a verse," with Zend padlia,
pad "word, song," ttovs "metrical foot, unit of verse," A.S. fit
" poem, song " (?) the comment : " The remarkable recurrence in
four languages of the application of ' foot ' to a portion of a verse
shows the existence of metrical composition amongst the Indo-
Europeans."
A still further step was taken by A. Kuhn in a paper in his
Zeitschrift (xiii. p. 491), for he endeavours to trace whole formulae
back to the beginning of Indo-European poetry. He distinguishes
even between two classes of remains from the most ancient poetry,
first, riddles, things celestial, the creation of the world, &c., and next,
spells for charming away diseases and evil spirits. As an example
of the latter, the well-known Merseburg charm for a lame horse :
Ben zi bena, bluot zi bluoda,
Ltd zi giliden, sose gelimida sin,
is compared with a very similar one in the Athar Veda (iv. 12) :
" Let marrow join to marrow, anil let limb to limb be joined.
Grow flesh that erst had pined away, and nov, grow every
bone also.
Marrow now unite with marrow, and let hide on hide increase."
We have still to mention, in this place, an isolated paper by
F. C. Pauli on the names given to the parts of the body by the
Indo-Europeans (JJher die Benennungen der Eorperteile hei den
Indogernmnen, Programm, Stettin, 1867, reviewed in K. Z., xvii.
p. 233). A comparison of the primeval names of the parts of the
human body, p. 27,/., shows that the Indo-Europeans possessed a
fairly thorough anatomical knowledge of their bodies.
If, before proceeding to a new work, of the very greatest
importance for linguistic and historical research, we take a brief
retrospect of our review thus far, we shall observe that all the
investigators we have mentioned agree in regarding the level of
Indo-Germanic civilisation as relatively high.
A people possessing a well-regulated family and national life,
familiar with cattle-breeding and agriculture, owning nearly all
the domesticated animals which at the present day are in the
service of man, experienced in mining, and working the most im-
portant, if not all, of the metals — such a people seemed to be the
fitting representatives of the primeval period of a race which was
destined to play so important a part in the development of civilisa-
tion. It was natural that by the side of such a picture, the state
s<
30 PREHISTOEIC ANTIQUITIES.
of things, which was revealed in the most ancient monuments of
Europe by the steady growth of anthropological and prehistoric
research, should stand in glaring and irreconcilable contrast. The
sole possible explanation seemed to lie in the assumption of a
double layer of population in Europe, a pre-Indo-Germanic, such
as might have belonged to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and
the kitchen-middens of Denmark, and an Indo-Germanic, which
appeared on European soil as the apostle of a higher culture.
The investigators show more difference among themselves in the
method of reaching the primeval pei-iod of the Indo-Germanic
peoples by the aid of Comparative Philology, and this is the more
intelligible because, strictly speaking, none of them had subjected
it to serious examination from all points of view, linguistic and
historical. Such an examination ought, indeed, to have been
suggested by the difference in opinion as to the earliest cleavage
of the original language ; for it was obvious that a totally different
linguistic basis for the investigation of the primeval period must
be given by the assumption that the original people first divided
into a Hiudu-Perso-South-European and a North European division,
fi'om what would be given by the assumj)tion that it divided into
an Asiatic and an European half. In the face of this absolutely
undecided dispute it would have been safest and most cautious
only to employ such equations for the civilisation of the primeval
period as were safely established by the agreement of the Hindu-
Persian, North, and South European branches. Yet Schleicher
and Fcirstemann alone carried out this idea. An equally careful
examination would have had to be made of the formal elements of
the comparative vocabulary. A. Kuhn had indeed insisted that
identity of root was by no means enough to establish the primeval
existence of the concept residing in the series of words, and that
agreement in the sufSx was quite as necessary as agreement in
root. Yet investigators like Pictet, Jiisti, Max Miiller, and others
paid scarcely any attention to this requisite, and consequently
Fick's book, in spite of its great defects, may be so far termed an
advance, that it endeavours to class together those words in the
Indo-European languages which agree in root and in formative
syllables, and to offer them to the historian of culture as a foundation.
On the other hand, agreement prevailed, in theory at least,
with regard to the fundamental principle that concepts which
could not be traced etymologically within the circle of the Indo-
Germanic languages, were not to be employed for drawing negative
conclusions about the primeval period, although in practice such
conclusions were not unfrequently drawn.
The last thing that investigators, so far, had troubled themselves
about was to establish the original meaning of a series of etymo-
logically-related words : in most cases they were quite content to
transfer the meaning, which the equation had in historical times,
to the primeval period without more ado. As Sans. j':)^(r^ = G.
TToAts meant "town," the Indo-Europeans must have lived in
towns ; as Sans, d^va, G. lttttos, &c., were employed of the domesti-
V. HEHN. 31
cated animal, the horse must have been used as a domesticated
animal in the primeval period, and so on.
The merit of detecting and attacking this, the weakest, side
of linguistic palasontology is due to a remarkable work, which
imparted a new direction in every respect to research based on
language and history : V. Helm's Cultivated Plants ami Domestic
Animals in theif migration from Asia to Greece atid Italy, and the
rest of Europe, Sketches from History and Language {Culturjyjianzen
und Haustiere in ihren tjbergang von Asien nach Griechenland und
Italien soivie in das iihrige Europa, Historisch-linguistische Skizzen,
Ist ed., Berlin, 1870; 2nd ed., 1874; 3rd ed., 1877, from which we
mostly quote; 4th ed., 1883; 5th ed., 1887).
V. Hehn's main object, as the title of the book indicates, was
not to reconstruct prehistoric periods of civilisation, but to show
how a considerable number of the most important cultivated plants /
and domestic animals migrated, some of them under the full light
of history, from the civilised area of the Orient to the peoples of
Europe, who were still plunged in the night of barbarism ; to act
wherever they come as the most powerful of levers for the
production of a higher civilisation. " What is Europe but the \
stock, barren in itself, on which everything had to be grafted from
the Orient, and so brought to perfection." These words of
Schelling are the motto of the book, and its real object is to prove
their truth. Only, as the author is performing his task, in the
most brilliant manner, by a combined knowledge of history,
language, and natural history, perfectly astounding in its wealth,
he cannot escape asking himself : What was the culture of the
Indo-Germanic peoples like before they came in contact with the
culture of the Oi'ieut 1 what was their civilisation at the time when
they first penetrated into the wildernesses of Europe 1 what when
they were still living with their eastern brothers in Asia ? Those
passages of the book which are devoted to answering these
questions will claim our special attention.
V. Hehn does not base his views about the primeval period of
the Indo-Europeans mainly on philological combinations : his work
is styled Sketches from History and Language, not from language
and history. But every indication of a less sunny prehistoric
period which penetrates through the brilliant veil of classical
antiquity is eagerly collected and brought into compai'ison with
the scattered notices which have been transmitted by Greek and
Latin authors, both of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, about the
manners and customs of non-classical Europe, above all about the
northern Indo-Germanic tribes, the Celts, Teutons, and Slavs.
It is but seldom that he uses language as his starting-point ; he
employs it, provided only it is adapted for the purpose, to explain,
amplify, and sti'cngthen his picture. Philology and the science of
language are here combined in a magnificent manner. It is on a
foundation of this kind that V. Helm unrolls a picture of the
primeval period, which certainly differs from that of investigators
whom we may term mere comparative philologists, as does the
32 PREHISTOEIC ANTIQUITIES.
darkness of night from the light of day. Hehu is well aware of
this contrast, nor is there wanting a sharp polemic against the
method visual up to that time of employing Comparative Philology
for inferences about the history of culture. There are, if I am not
mistaken, two charges particularly which he brings against it.
" He," says V. Hehn, p. 488 of the 3rd edition, " who puts
new civilised ideas into old words, will certainly re-discover our
modem life without difficulty in the period of the earliest begin-
nings." We have already seen that all the earlier students of
language had unsuspiciously ascribed the domestication of the
horse, for instance, to the primeval period, because the equation
of the Sans, d^va and its cognates left nothing to be desired from
the point of view of language. V. Hehn pronounces a very
different judgment on the value of this piece of evidence : the
equation quoted proves to him nothing but that the Indo-Europeans
before their separation possessed a word akva and applied it to the
horse ("the swift," root, ak). The domestication of the animal is
not even hinted at in language, and should the history of culture
succeed in proving that it was not until a relatively late i^eriod
that the domesticated animal appeared among the Indo-Germanic
peoples, the certain inference would be that the equation akva,
&c., can only have been applied to the wild horse in the primeval
Indo-Germanic period. Let us listen to V. Hehn's own words
about another animal which is usually thought to have certainly
accompanied the migrations of the Indo-Europeans, that is, the
goat : " The Greek at^ atyo5 ' goat ' recurs in Sanskrit and in
Lithuanian, and therefore goes back to a time antecedent to the
separation of the peoples. It is not, therefore, a necessary uncon-
ditional consequence that the primeval people possessed the goat
as a domestic animal ; the name may have been given to any
bounding beast of chase, and subsequently have been transferred
to the domestic goat, w'hen it became known — a possibility which
in similar cases should more often be borne in mind by those who,
on the strength of the presence of common words, draw inferences
about the state of culture of the primitive people with such
certainty" (p. 516). In the same way doubt is cast upon the
linguistic arguments for the agriculture of the Indo-Europeans.
" That they (the Indo-Europeans of Greece and Italy) cultivated
the soil, and subsisted on the fruits of Demeter, before they settled
in their respective countries, in the Grteco-Italian period, nay !
even in the heart of Asia, is an assertion often made with more or
less confidence, the proofs of which are for the most pai't scarcely
valid. Greek ^eia, spelt, ^ciSwpos apovpa, the grain-giving soil,
Lithuanian jawas, corn, pi. jawal, grain in general, as long as it is
on the stalk, jatoiena, stubble, is indeed a correct equation, but it
only shows that at the time when the Greeks and Lithuanians
were still undivided, the name was given to some variety of grass,
having perhaps edible ears (c/. Th. Mommsen above, p. 16).
The same is the case with KpiQ-q, Lat. hordemn, O.H.G. gersta; the
language of a nation whose occupation consisted in pasturing
HEHN. ^^
animals must have been peculiarly rich in names of plants and
grasses," &c. (cf. p. 58 seq.). 'Aypos, too, and its cognates originally
only meant " field." Almost against his personal view, which is
the opposite (cf. p. 487), Hehn, " in a subject which," as it seems,
"allows at the most only of hesitating conjectures," admits a kind
of half-nomad agriculture, on account of the kinship of G. dypo's,
Lat. arare, &c., which, however, owing to the variation of the
Sanskrit, proves nothing as to the primeval period ; but the hated
occupation was again given up by the Grseco-Italians, when the
new instinct to migrate began to work. The plants cultivated
may have been the millet, bean, and rape (cf. p. 59).
From the same point of view V. Hehn utters a warning against
foisting modern meanings into old verbal roots, which, agi'eeing as
they do in different Indo-European peoples, seem to prove that
certain arts were practised in the primeval period.
"As for weaving," he says, p. 497, "there seem to be pieces of
linguistic evidence which point to the practice of this art before the
dispersion of the peoples and before their migrations. If we did
but know for certain that these words were applied in the primeval
period, not to ingenious modes of twisting, plaiting, and sewing, but
to spinning the thread on the spindle and to weaving, in the proper
sense of the word, on the loom ! He who ascribes a knowledge of
weaving to the original people should not forget that, from its rude
beginnings to its perfection in historical times, this art has gone
through many stages. How ready the imagination of the com-
parative philologist is to picture a modern loom and flying shuttle,"
>tc. (cf. also Th. Mommsen, History/ of Borne, p. 17). The second
point which distinguishes V. Hehn from earlier linguistic palaeonto-
logists lies in the greater extension that he gives to the conception
of loan-words. We are not here referring to the fact that V. Hehn,
in cases where the phonetic form, as for instance in the case of the
G. olvos (cf p. 68) and G. xp^tros (cf p. 498), etc., does not point
decidedly either to original connection or to borrowing, is usually .
glad to decide in favour of the latter, on the strength of general
considerations drawn from the history of culture. What is new,
though it had been previously indicated by Kuhn (cf. above, p. 21)
and Schleicher (cf. above, p. 23), is the idea that the agreement of
certain terms of civilisation which are confined to the European
languages, and therefore hitherto had been explained by a reference
to a European primeval pex'iod and to an original European language,
might also be conceived to be due to the fact that, when the
European peoples were differentiated locally and geographically, a
root with a general meaning was specialised by one people and then
spread by boiTowing from one people to another. V. Hehn ex-
1 tresses this idea as follows (p. 487) : " We must reflect that in those
early periods languages had not yet moved far apart from one
another, and that if an art, tool, &,c., was borrowed from a neighbour-
ing people, the name which they had given it could easily and
readily 'be transposed into the dialect of the borrowing people. If,
for instance, one verb, niolere, with the meaning of grinding, break-
c
34 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
ing in pieces, and another, severe, with the meaning of scattering,
existed in all the languages of these hitherto pastoral peoples, and
if one of tliem gradually learned from another the art of sowing
and milling, it must, out of all the various stems of similar general
meaning, in order to express the new process, have specialised the
very one that had been used by its instructors. Similarity of ex-
pressions therefore only proves that, for instance, the knowledge of
the plough spread within the limits of the Indo-Germanic family in
Eui'ope from one member to another, and that one member did not
obtain it, say, from the south-east, from Asia, by the agency of the
Semites from Egypt ; another from the south-west, from the Iberi,
on the Pyrenees and the Rhone ; a third from a third unknown,
original people," <fec. Let us now endeavour, in conti'ast to the
pictui'es of Indo-Germanic civilisation with which we have previously
made acquaintance, to sketch the primeval period as V. Hehn con-
ceives it. We must premise that he does not distinguish definite
prehistoric periods, but in his delineations has in view mainly the
great " Aryan migration."
The Indo-Europeans of that pei'iod are a wandering pastoral
people, whose migration into Europe may be compared somewhat
to the military immigration of the Semitic shepherds into Palestine.
Their herds may have consisted of cattle, sheep, and pigs ; they
still lacked the horse (to the history of which a special section has
been devoted since the second edition), ass, mule, goat, poidtry of
all kinds, cat. The tribe of domestic animals is scanty. Wool is
pulled from the sheep and pressed, by stamping, not woven, into
felt cloths and covers ; on the other hand the women understood
how to plait mats and web-like stuffs, nets for fishing and hunting,
out of the bark of trees, especially of the lime-tree, and out of the
stalk-filaments of many plants, especially of the nettle famil}'^ ; as
also to stitch together the raw hides of wild and domestic animals
by means of stone or wooden needles.
The ways and habits of agriculture, which did not begin until
the end of the migrations, were not wholly unknown. The cultiva-
tion of fruit-trees belongs to a still later period.
The /ooc/ of the primeval period consisted of meat and milk, the
latter of which was not yet worked into cheese and butter (p. 138).
Meadj a drink made from honey, which was obtained from the wild
bees of the huge forests, is the oldest intoxicating drink known to
the Indo-Ei;ropeans who migrated into Europe (p. 136). Beer and
wine are unknown. Salt was not found in the original Asiatic
home, but the tribes that came to Europe made acquaintance with
it simultaneously (cf, V. Hehn, Das Salz, eine culturhistorische
Studie, Berlin, 1873, pp. 16 and 22).
Human habitations, in winter^ consisted of holes in the ground
artificially excavated and covered with a roof of turf or manure ;
in summer, of the waggon itself or, in forest regions, of slight tent-
like huts made of wood or wicker-work. The further south a tribe
was, the easier it was to winter the cattle, which in the north only
found food under the snow with difficulty during the rough winter
HEHN. 35
months, and when circumstances were unfavourable must have
perished accordingly — for making sheds for cattle and storing
dried grass for the winter are arts of later origin, which were only
discovered as a result of the development of agriculture.
The only metal known to the immigrating shepherds was copper
(p. 500), and that they did not know how to manufacture into
tools, ike. The Indo-Germanic primeval period belongs rather to
the stone age. For bows wood was furnished by the yew, for the
shaft of the spear by the ash, and also by the elder and the privet,
shields were made of a withy-work of willows ; the trees of the
primeval forest, of gigantic girth, were hollowed out by means of
fire and the stone-axe into huge boats. The property of the
wanderers, their milking-vessels, hides, &c., was conveyed on
waggons, a machine invented early, which consisted entirely of
wood, and in which wooden pegs took the place of the iron nails
used afterw^ards.
Sinister features are to be discerned in the family-life of the
primeval period. The old men, when useless for fighting, either
go voluntarily to death or are violently slain ; so too the incur-
ably sick. The chieftain is followed to his grave by his thralls,
wives, horses, which were in later times bred in half-wild herds (pp.
19 and 26, /.), and dogs ; wives were either bought or stolen ; the
new-born child was either taken up by the father or rejected and
exposed. The family bond and the authority of the patriarch,
with the increase of population, expand into the tribe which, at
first narrow, eventually becomes more comprehensive ; but it is
not until the half nomad tiller of the soil has become a settled
cultivator of trees that the idea of property in its full sense is
developed, that disputes as to rights and property arise between
neighbours, that political order is established (p. 105).
The frame of mind of a cattle-butchering, shepherd people is
ruthless and bloody, full of superstition and under the influence
of sorcery. The powers of nature have not yet become personal
or assumed human form ; the name god still means sky. The
first attempt at abstraction is seen in the formation of the decimal
system, which however, still lacks the conception of thousand.
For the rest, the language forms a relatively intact, highly
evolved organism, ruled from within by living laws, and is even
now, thousands of years later, the .marvel and the joy of the
grammarian, and such as only grows and develops in the dark-
ness of a sheltered spirit and consciousness whose operations are
immediate.^
The attitude of marked opposition, taken up by Hehn's book
to the views previously put forward by Comparative Philologists
about the original Indo-Germanic period, was not made enough of,
as regards its importance for the fuither development of linguistic
palaeontology, by the critics, who confined themselves mainly to
noticing and almost unanimously recognising the solution of the
problem set forth in the title of the work. Except G. Curtius,
who blames, in the Literarisches Centralblatt, 1870, p. 553, Hehn's
36 PREHISTORIC AXTIQUITIES.
apparently frequent neglect of Sanskrit, as for instance when
talking of hemp (Sans, ^and), salt (Sans, mrd, cf. below, p. 40),
weaving (root std, oti^/awi', toros, &c.) ; and ib., 1874, p. 1751, does
not feel convinced by the author's mode of proving " that the
horse did not yet accompany our forefathers on their great travels
through the world " — the only persons who give their full atten-
tion to the aspect of Hehn's investigations described by us, are
G. Gerland in the Jenaer Litteraturzeitung, 1875, 641, and W.
Tomaschek, Z. o. G., 1875, p. 520, ff. And even they have objec-
tions to urge. The former thinks that " the author is generally
not quite just to the Indo-Europeans," and pushes too far the
undoubtedly correct idea that much which now seems general pro-
perty is really only borrowed ; and that what so easily happens
to students of language who undertake ethnological investigations,
happens occasionally to him (Hehn): they attach the most
weighty and wide-reaching ethnological conclusions to the thin
thread of a single series of words, which is by no means able to
bear the weight of such an inference.* What characterises
Tomaschek's very detailed review, on the other hand, is the
attempt to connect large portions of the Indo-European vocabulary
of words important for the history of culture not, as Hehn does by
preference, with the Semitic languages, but rather with the tongues
of northern peoples, Finns, Ugriaus, and Tatars. Thus language
is made to bear witness " to primeval contact and mutual
exchange of civilisation between northern and Indo-European
tribes" (p. 532).
Elsewhere Hehn's work seems to have exercised no influence on
subsequent works on linguistic paheontology. This can indeed
hardly be wondered at in the case of a book which appeared
almost simultaneously with the first edition of Hehn's work —
J. G. Cuno's Researches in the Department of Ancient Ethnology
{Forschungen im Gehiete der alien Volkerhmde, Teil, i., 1871), and
in which, pp. 22-27, the question is discussed whether the original
Indo-Europeans practised agriculture. Cuno answers this question
in the affirmative very confidently.
More remarkable is it that several years after Hehn's decided
attack on the whole method of linguistic palaeontology, a work
could appear in w'hich the old theme is treated in the old way,
without even devoting a word to Hehn's ideas. This work iss a
book that appeared in 1873 — Fick's The Former Lingtdstic Unity
of the European Members of the Indo-Germanic Family {Die
ehemalige Spracheinheit der Indo-Germanen Europas), in which
* An example of this msiy, perhaps, be afforded by the chronological
conclusions which Hehn (p. 289) draws, from the northern names of the
domestic fowl, about the appearance of this bird in northern Europe.
Thus, for instance, he infers from the Finnic word for hen, kana, which is
borrowed from the Teutonic (Goth, hana, O.N. hani, O.D. hano), that the
German sound-shifting had not begun when it was borrowed. As, however,
Finnic, owing to its poverty in consonants, represents the Teutonic spirants
fhyp {2}clto : field), th by t {tarvet : A. S. thearf), everything seems to indicate
that the k in kana is also but a make-shift
FICK., 37
on pp. 266-385, a tolerably detailed picture is given of the primeval
civilisation. Fick overflows with righteous indignation against
those who would sully the bi'illiance of the primeval Indo-Germanic
period. " Such attempts," he says, on p. 268, without explaining
who or what attempts are meant, " to throw as much dirt as
possible upon the origines of man, are haunted by the Darwinian
father of apes and men, a phantom which philosophising zoologists
may find useful, but which must be banished from researches into
the antiquities of Indo-Germanic man, because here everything is
seen to be penetrated with good sense and sound morality." This
good sense and sound morality the author succeeds, by the
exercise of an incomparable boldness of imagination, in discovering
in the vocabulary of the primeval period. " Father and mother,"
he says, on p. 267, " recognise in the son and daughter the future
father and master and the future mother and mistress of the
house, and accordingly sunu and dhugtar testify to the respect and
reverence wath which children were regarded and treated by
parents. Further, a good omen is conveyed in the words, viz.,
that son and daughter will attain to the position of father and
mother, and not be snatched away by a premature death." And
why all this 1 — " Because sunu and dhugtar," at any rate according
to Fick, "mean 'he who begets' and 'she who suckles.'" An
equally profound significance is conveyed in the word for grandson :
" It implies that the grandson was as near and dear to the grand-
parents as the son, that they transferred all the paternal and
maternal love, which they had shown to tlie son, to the grandson,
the rejuvenated son" (p. 276). And why? " Because 7iapdt, naptar
originally meant not only grandson but also son, descendant
generally." On the other hand, Fick's book contains a careful
collection of those words important for the history of culture
which are confined to the European languages, and has thereby,
as we shall see further on, rendered a service to primeval Indo-
European history which is not to be undervalued.
We must remark here, however, that Fick, differing from his
Dictionary of the Fundamental Indo-G. Language ( Worterhuch der
Imlog. Gr'undsprache), both in the work we are discussing, and in
his Co)npa7'ative Dictionary of the Indo-G. Languages ( Vergleichendes
WUrterbuch der Indog. Sprachen, 2nd edition, 1870-71 ; 3rd, 1874),
only allows, as valid for the primeval period, such equations as
can be established by the agreement of at least one European
and one Asiatic language.
There is much interest in making acquaintance with Th.
Benfey's moi'e recent views on comparative philology and primeval
history. Unfortunately, they can only be put togetlier from three
small works by this scholar, a review in the Gottinger Gelehrten
Anzeigen, 1875, p. 208, /. (of a paper, Der Hop fen, seine Ilerkunft
nnd Benennung, zur vergleichenden Sprachforsch^lng, 1874 ; of.
Litterarisrkes Centralhlatt, 1875, No. 12), and two articles in the
Supplement to the Allgemeine. Zeitung, 1875, which are entitled,
Kasiermesser in Indo-G ermanisrher Zcit. {The Razor in Indo-
38 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Germanic Times, No. 96), and Die Indo-Germanen hatten schon vor
Hirer Trennung soivohJ Salz ah Ackerhau (Salt as well as Agriculture
knoivn to the Indo-Eurojyeans before their Disjjersion), No. 208. In
the first place the paper on the razor in Indo-GeiTnanic times is
interesting because of its remarks on method. The occasion of
this paper was a lecture delivered in Rome by W. Helbig on A
Primitive Kind of Razor (a summary is to be found in the
Allgemeinen Zeitung, 1874, Suppl., No. 352, and the lecture
itself in Im Neuen Reich, 1875, p. 14,/.), in which, amongst other
things, the fact that in the necropolis of Alba Longa, from which
Ave may derive " an idea of the Indo-Germanic condition of the
Prisci Latini," razors are not to be found, is used to show that
they cannot have formed part of the stock of culture which
belonged to the Indo-Germanic races before their dispersion.
Now, as it was Benfey, who previously, on the strength of Fick's
equation, Sans. Icshurd = ^vpov, had ascribed the razor to the Indo-
Europeans, it was incumbent on him to undertake its defence
against attacks, as a primitive instrument for beautifying the
person. The mere fact that a word agrees, both in form and
meaning, in several Indo-Germanic languages does not incline
Benfey to therefore assign it without more ado to the primeval
period. He only claims a presumption in favour of its
originality ; but there are three possibilities, from the purely
linguistic point of view, which may show this presumption
to be erroneous or doubtful : first, if it can be shown that one
language has borrowed the word from another ; secondly, if both
have borrowed it from a third ; and finally, it may be proved doubt-
ful, if it can be shown that the words may have been formed
independently after the dispersion. This last possibility affects
all words "formed on the one hand from bases and formative
elements which, in the languages in question, have retained after
the dispersion so much vitality as to be capable of uniting ; and,
on the other, which have preserved the etymological significance of
such a union, or at least have not essentially departed from it." As
an example of such a case, Benfey quotes the equation of G. repi/'ts
(from TepTT-ri) and Sans, tfpti, which cannot be regarded as
necessarily inherited from prehistoric Indo-Germanic times,
because both the original verbal root, tarp, and the suffix -ti, for
making abstract nouns, have retained their vitality both in Greek
and in Sanskrit (rifjirw, trpnomi). None of these three possibilities
affects the equation. Sans. Icshurd = G. ^p6v ; for as regards
the third, which alone comes into consideration here, the verbal
root ksu, on which the equation is based, is only preserved in
the G. ^eo) (^e'F-w), and the suffix -ra (-pa) retains its vitality in
neither language.
But Benfey supposes another objection. "If we consider the
length of time which elapsed between the separation of the Greek
and Sanskrit peoples from the parent stem, the possibility is by
no means excluded that even after the separation, the counter-
part of the verb ^v may have survived in Sanskrit or its immediate
BENFEY. 39
predecessor, Hindu-Persian, and that botli in Greek and in Sanskrit
the suffix -ra may have for some time preserved its categorical mean-
ing, and that in this period the two words may have been formed
independently." But Benfey meets this objection by the absolute
identity in meaning of the two words ; for " the meaning ' razor,'
or perhaps originally only ' instrument for cutting the beard,' is so
far removed from the categorical or etymological meaning 'smooth'
(^£00, 'smoothe'), that it would be a most wonderful and inexplicable
accident in the two languages quite independently developed the
one from the other."*
But in spite of the arguments which speak for the acquaintance
of the Indo-Europeans with the razor, Benfey is by no means
inclined to "regard the linguistic point of view as the only one
from which questions of this kind can be finally decided." Nay !
as against his linguistic proofs, he would regard it as possible
that by some chance, e.g., "by means of historical documents, it
might be irrefragably proved that the Indo-Europeans before their
dispersion possessed no instrument for shaving the beard." But
what, his argument proceeds, are we to make of the fact that in
the excavations at Alba Longa no razors are found % Are these
remains of old Italian civilisation not separated from the distant
primeval Indo-Germanic period by a period "long enough for
Indo-Germanic cxilture to have suffered many losses, and by the
creation of a new culture to have received so many additions, that
these remains may represent anything but the condition of the
Indo-Europeans in the time of their unity % " " And would it be
impossible that the forefathers of the Prisci Latini, on their long
journey from the original Indo-Germanic abode to their new home,
a journey which certainly lasted a long time, and must have
involved great suffering, need, and privation, may have lost both
the taste and the art of removing the beard, and therefore the
instrument also ? "
Here we have come to one of Benfey's fundamental propositions,
which is of the most sinister import for the further development
of linguistic palaeontology. As his writings show, he has carefully
followed the attacks which V. Helm, relying on the low state of
civilisation in which history shows many of the Indo-Germanic
peoples to have been, directs against the assumption of a rela-
tively highly civilised primeval period maintained by Benfey and
others ; and Benfey tries to parry them by putting forward the
following proposition : — The teaching of history as to the his-
torical beginnings of the individual peoples cannot be regai'ded
as furnishing any criterion for the primeval period, which is
separated from them by hundreds, if not by thousands of years,
i.e., by a space of time, within which things may have been
* Helbig in his reply to Benfey's paper {Allgcmeine Zcitunq, 1875,
Suppl. 117) suggests, as against this argument, the possibility that the word
originally was used of a sharp instrument used for scraping — periiaps the
primitive tool with which hair was removed from hides — and was only later
transferred to the cognate idea of razor.
40 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
completely revolutionised by the loss of ancient and the acquisi-
tion of new elements of civilisation. The possibility of the loss of
ancient elements is especially insisted upon. " He who thinks,"
he says in the Gottingen Gelehrter Anzeigen, 1875, p. 210, "that
the assumption of this comparatively high civilisation for the
primeval period is opposed by the fact that at the beginning of
history we find them (the Indo-Europeans), especially the north
European branch, in a condition, relatively, anything but advanced,
should reflect through what inhospitable lands they may have had
to travel after their separation, and what struggles they may have
had to go through before they took to themselves new and
permanent abodes. That they must thus have lost many of the
elements of civilisation which they carried with them, may be
conjectured a jrriori ; of many of these losses their languages give
us reliable evidence." As examples of such a decline from a once
higher level of civilisation, Benfey produces two cases. As a
comparison of the Greek ^iXlol with the Sanskrit sa-hdsra shows
{sa in the Sanskrit word means "together," and corresponds to
the Greek k in e-Karov = cenhim), the concept " thousand " had been
developed by the original people. Those Indo-Germanic peoples,
however, which lost the word used to express that idea, had
" after their separation fallen into a condition in which they never,
or so rarely, had occasion to make use of this numeral, that the
ancient word entirely perished from memory " (cf. Benfey's earlier
opinion on this point, p. 23, siipra). Again, gold and silver, in
Benfey's opinion, were known to the original people. The former
was called gharta, the latter arg-anta or arg-ura. But from the
fact that only the Greeks and Italians have preserved the word for
silver (apyvpos, argentum), the Teutons and Slavs alone that for
gold (gidp-zlato), the only inference that can be drawn is that on
their wanderings, the former came across silver but not across
gold, while the latter, on the contrary, came across gold but not
across silver. " Thvis they lost the memory of the ancient names,
and were compelled, when the former again became more familiar
Avith gold, the latter with silver, to fashion fresh names in the
])lace of those which they had forgotten, just as happened to the
Romans and others in the case of the designation of the numeral
' thousand.'"
Amongst Benfey's other views about the original stock of culture,
special attention must be paid to his assertion that the condiment
salt was known to the Indo-Europeans, an opinion also shared by
Miiller and Schleicher, inasmuch as it shows how unsafe even the
most distinguished scholars may sometimes prove, as regards the
linguistic basis for an important proposition in the history of
culture. As we have already seen, V. Hehn had denied that the
Indo-Europeans were acquainted with salt, because the European
name for it is not echoed in the Asiatic languages. Like Curtius
(cf. above, p. 36), Benfey, in the paper already mentioned on salt
{Siip23lement to Allg. Zeitung, No. 208), finds fault with Hehn, and
points to the Sanskrit sard, which he was the first to associate with
BENFEY. 41
the European words {Grieck. Wurzellexicon, i. p. 59), and which is
guaranteed by the St Petersburg dictionary, at any rate in the
adjectival sense of "salty." But now Otto Bohtlingk, actually
one of the two editors of this work, which is fundamental for
Sanskrit etymology, states in a communication to the Jenaer
LitteraturzeiHing (1875, No. 643), that he regards this word as
absolutely unfitted to be made the foundation for inferences so
important to the history of culture, because in the meaning
given it can only be traced in the twelfth century lexicographer
Hemacandra, whom we have already mentioned (c/. above,
p. 19).
Finally, the statement that the Indo-Europeans quite certainly
practised agriculture before their dispersion, is based by Benfey
practically on the identity in meaning and form of Sans, urvdrd
and G. apovpa " cornland " (Lat. arvitm). The root ar, from which
these words proceed, designated before the dispersion a process by
which the soil was brought into order. But this does not necessarily
prove that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the plough,
the place of which might be supplied by the hand or the branch of
a tree, tfcc. Then when, after the dispersion, better methods of
agriculture became known, they were expressed in the European
languages by a verb ar-aja (Lat. arare, G. dpoco, Goth, arjan),
derived from the root already mentioned, and in the Asiatic
languages by a totally different root, karsh, which originally meant
to draw ("draw fun-ows").
In demonstrations of this kind Comparative Philologists' interest
in prehistoric questions, and, indeed, in the history of culture
generally, appeared for a considerable time likely to die away. The
nearer the seventies drew to a close, the more entii'ely all available
forces in the field of Comparative Grammar were drawn off by the
struggle kindled in Germany particularly, by the discussion of
novel questions, which though far-reaching, in the first instance,
merely affected grammar. The increase of interest in the form of
language naturally threw interest in the content of language into
the background. Fvirther, the results which gradvially began to
appear from this conflict of opinions, the assumption of a more
primitive character in the diversified vowel-system of Europe, as
compared with the more uniform one of the Hindu-Persian
languages, the continiial increase in the number of adherents to
the postulate that vocal laws know no exceptions, the discovery of
fresh fundamental sounds in the original tongue, for instance the
two K-series or the syllabic nasals and liquids, the establishment
of the law of " ablaut " or gradation even in non-Teutonic languages,
and other things, forced etymology, the base of all linguistic
palseontology into fresh paths. The dictionaries by Pott and
Benfey, indeed even those by Fick and G. Curtius {Principles of
Greeh Etymoloriy), began to get antiquated with great rapidity.
Here, as elsewhere, however, the work of destruction proceeded more
rapidly than that of construction, and even at the present day in
the case of almost every Indo-European language, we lack trust-
42 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
worthy summaries of the etymological knowledge which can be
regarded as certain accoi'ding to modern views.
In the year 1883, the present author in the first edition of this
work began by turning once more to that study of primitive
culture based on philology which had been lying fallow. On the
one hand, he undertook to dig deeper as regarded the method of
this department of knowledge ; on the othei", to call marked
attention to the history of the metals amongst the Indo-Europeans,
and so obtain a sketch of their primitive civilisation. In the
year 1886, in the next place the author presented one aspect of the
history of Indo-European culture, "The Origins of Trade and
Commerce in Europe," in the first part of his Forschungen zur
Handelsgeschichte und Warenkunde.*
Finally, a vocabulary of those w^ords which he regards as Indo-
European, and as of importance for the history of culture, has
been put together by Max Miiller in his Biograjihies of Words
(The Earliest Aryan Civilisation, pp. 128-198), London, 1888.
It is readily intelligible that the idea which had been developed
within Indo-Germanic limits, of penetrating to the primeval period
of related groups of peoples by means of Comparative Philology,
was bound to be applied to the domain of other families
of language, if only they could be shown to possess genea-
logical unity. The Semitic languages particularly must have
appeared a priori especially adapted for historico-linguistic
research. The area of distribution of the Semitic peoples is
geographically more limited and more unifoiTu than that of the
Indo-Europeans. Further, the Semitic languages, confined within
the limits of their strict triliteralism, have been less exposed to
violent changes of form and meaning. Primitive records such as
the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions and the Bible, carry us back
to the first historical beginnings of the Semitic race. Nevertheless,
it was not until the year 1875 that an attempt w^as made, in a
brilliant paper by A. v. Kremer, on Semitic culture-loans in the
I animal and A^egetable kingdomf {Semitische Culturentlehnungen
I aus den Pjlanzen und Tierreiche, Ausland, 1875, Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5),
to reconstruct the primeval Semitic period by means of language.
What Hehn had done for the Indo-Europeans, Kremer tries to do
for the Semitic peoples : he endeavours to trace their evolution
from the original home, which he supposes to have been in central
Asia, to the Arabian peninsula, the southernmost point in Asia of
the area occupied by the Semites, and thus to draw a decided
line between those cultivated plants and domesticated animals
Avhich were national and those which were imported from abroad.
The ti'eatise begins with a proof that the Semites were acquainted
with the camel, but not with the palm or the ostrich, before their
dialects had been formed The conclusions which Kremer draws
* A tolerably corapkte collection of critical reviews of these two books is
to be found in Bursians Jahresbericht (Ivi. 199, ff.).
t Published also as a separate treatise at Stuttgart, 1875 ; reviewed by
G. Weil in the Jenaer Litter aturzeitung, 1875, p. 370,/.
KREMER ON THE PREHISTORIC SEMITES. 43
from these facts, as to the geographical situation of the original
Semitic people, will demand onr attention elsewhere.
Kremer then proceeds to determine the extent of the most
ancient Semitic civilisation : " The provision, the viaticum, with
which the original Semites started from tlieir home, was but
scanty. The most precious of domestic animals, the camel, they
brought with them, and it was thanks to the endurance of this
beast of burden alone that they succeeded in crossing such
extensive and inhospitable stretches of country. The patient ass,
too, even then submitted his elastic back to the burden, for his
name is the same in all Semitic dialects (Arab, himdrun, Hebr.
hdmor), and means " the red." The original Semite was accom-
panied not only by the ass but by that trusty comrade and
faithful help to shepherd and hunter, the dog. Goats and sheep
were not unknown to him ; biit there was a complete absence of
domestic birds, ducks, hens, geese ; and the cat had not yet
become habituated to domestic life. Amongst the animals which
were absolutely unknown to the Semites, before the rise of dialects,
are " especially the stork, pelican, buffalo, and monkey." Of
cultivated plants the Semites, before the rise of dialects, knew
barley, wheat, lentils, beans, onions, and leeks ; though Kremer
doubts whether the oldest tribes who roved " as nomads and
hunters," luiderstood how to cultivate them as early as the
primeval period. Their cultivation is rather to be placed not
earlier than the immigration of the Semites into the Mesopotamian
plain. This, the low-ground of Babylon and Mesopotamia, was,
according to Kremei', the first and oldest Semitic centre of civilisa-
tion, and dates from a time when the dialects of the Semitic
peoples had not yet been differentiated. Here were evolved all
or most of the terms common to the Semitic languages for grape,
vineyard, fig, olive, almond, pomegranate, and other fruit-trees.
It is further to be noted that Kremer regards the horse also as a
tolerably late acquisition to Semitic civilisation (p. 5). Indeed,
he says, the Hebi-ew and Aramaic names of the animal, sus, point
to the Indo- Germanic, Sans, drvas, and the Arabic faras to the
Persian (Hebr. Paras) (1).
The researches begun by A. v. Kremer were continxied, at any
rate as far as regards the Semitic animal kingdom, in a very
profound work, by Fritz Hommel, on The Names of the Mammals
Amonffst the Southern Semites {Die Namen der Scmgetiere bei den
siidseniitischen Viilkern, Leipzig, 1879). According to him {cf.
p. 405) the original Semitic mammal fauna consisted of the
lion, leopard, wolf, fox, hysena, bear, wild-cat, boar, wild-ox, wild-
ass, stag, gazelle, wild-goat, hare, hedgehog, mountain-badger,
mole, field-mouse ; and of domestic animals — the horse, ass, camel,
goat, sheep, cow, dog. Hommel, therefore, differs so far from
Kremer's views as to include the horse in the list of animals
domesticated by the original Semites. From Hebr. jxlrdsh,
" rider " (denominative from a hypothetical pdrdsh, " horse ") and
Arab, sd'is, " driver of horses " ( : Arab. *siU, " horse "), he believes
44 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
that we must infer {cf. pp. 44-46) an original Semit. parasu,
with the meaning of " war-horse." This would further agree
with the military character of the original Semitic people, which
f(;llo\vs from original Semitic words such as saipu, " sword ;" kattsatu,
" bow;" runihti, "lance;" amatu, " prisoner of war."
The student of language finds himself in a more difficult
position with regard to another family of languages which owing
to its close contact with Indo-Germanic districts and its intrusion
into the limits of Europe (see above, p. 36) would be particularly
interesting — that is, the Ural-Altaic (Turanian, etc.) For, on the
one hand, science has not been able to establish satisfactorily the
spread of this family to Southern and Eastern Asia ; while, on the
other hand, in the case even of those branches of the ftimily which
arc undoubtedly closely akin to each other, the Finnic-Ugrian,
Samoyedic, and Turko-Tataric, Comparative Philology is still too
busy fixing and tabulating their individual grammars to have in
any degree completed an original grammar and an original
vocabulary of the whole family of languages.
More recently H. Winkler (Ural-altaische Voll-er und Sprachen,
Berlin, 1884) has especially distinguished himself, both on the
anthropological and on the linguistic side, in defining the
boundaries of this family of languages, amongst which he believes
he may venture to reckon Japanese. In any case, we have reason
to be grateful that an attempt has been made by the aid of
Comparative Philology to illumine at least some portions of this
tremendous family of nations and languages and the prehistoric
periods of their development. To begin with, the starting-point
from which the attempt to penetrate to the prehistoric culture of
the Finnic-Ugrians has been made is remarkable. An extraordi-
nary number of Teutonic and Lithu-Slavonic loan-words is to be
found in the West Finnic languages, in almost every department
of human culture. A portion of them, especially of the Teutonic,
go back to original forms which are more primitive than the forms
transmitted to us in the oldest Norse and Gothic sources, and
leave no doubt that the AVest Finns when they advanced from the
neighbourhood of the Ural to the coasts of the White Sea and of
the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, must have been exposed for
centuries to the civilising influence of their more advanced
neighbours. Of these loan-words the Teutonic had early engaged
the attention of men such as Bask, J Grimm, Dietrich, and others,
until at length they were put together and reviewed in a very
thorough-going investigation by W. Thomsen, On the Influence of
the Tetitonic Langtcages on the Lapponic and Finnic, translated fi'om
the Danish into Gei-man by E. Sievers, Halle, 1870. Whereas,
however, Thomsen in the work mentioned had in view" rather the
grammatical significance of those loan-words for Germanic and
Finnic forms, than their significance for the history of culture
(cf. however, pp. 114-127), the well-known Swedish philologist,
A. Ahlqvist, 1875, published in Helsingfors, a book, Terms of
Civiiisation in the West Finnic Lancjuages, a Contrib^ction to the
I
URAL-ALTAIC ANTIQUITY. 45
History of Finnic Civilisation in Ancient Times (Die Culturworter der
westjinnischen Sprachen, ein Beitrag zu der dlteren Culturgeschichte
der Finnen), in which the vocabulary of the West Finnic languages
is distributed into sections illustrating the history of culture ; and
the genuineness of the words is carefully investigated. Ahlqvist
marks off all civilised ideas which are shown by their foreign garb
to be borrowed, and collects together the genviine Finnic words,
when he finds them guaranteed by the agreement of the East
Finnic languages (Ostiak, Wogul, Syrianic, Wotiak, Mordwinic,
(tc), in order to reconstruct the original Finnic civilisation, and
tries to give a picture of the amount of civilisation which the
Finns brought with them when they migrated into the Baltic
district.
" They supported themselves," he says, pp. 254-267, " principally
on the spoils of the chase and of fishing. Their most important
domesticated animal was the dog, but the horse and cow were not
unknown to them, though they did not yet know how to make
cheese or butter from the milk of the latter. With the sheep, the
goat, and the pig, they made their first acquaintance here on the
Baltic. Agriculture seems not to have been entirely unknown to
them, but they only practised a noma,d agriculture, without clearing
the land ; of grains they only knew barley, and of bulbs only the
turnip. The dwelling of the family was a hut {koto), which
consisted of small trees or poles placed conically against a tree-
trunk, and was covered in winter with hides ; another kind of
dwelling was smina, a hole excavated in the ground, and covered
with a roof over the earth. The internal arrangements of such a
dwelling were of the simplest possible description ; thei'e was a
door-opening, a smoke-vent above, in the middle of the room a
hearth of loose stones, but no flooring and no window ; for the
light fell either through the door or through the smoke- vent.
Their clothing consisted exclusively of hides, the clothes were sewn
with bone-needles by the house-wife j the men made boats, and also
instruments for the chase and fishing. The only other craft which
seems in ancient times to have been native amongst our forefathers
was that of the smith, though it may be doubted in what stage the
art of smithying was brought from the original home. As regards the
making of stuffs, they seem to have made none, except perhaps
felt; however, by means of a spindle, they managed to spin threads
from the fibres of some kind of nettle. They made their first
acquaintance with the sheep, and the art of preparing yarn and
cloth from its wool, here (on the Baltic). On the other hand, they
knew how to tan hides, and to tint the nettle threads or tanned
hides for summer clothing with some simple colours. Towns there
were none. Family-life seems to have been tolerably developed
amongst our ancestors. The numerous designations which occur
in this department are, for the most part, genuine, and for the most
part, common to all the Finnic languages. A sort of community
with the name pitdjd seems to have existed, at least amongst some
of the Yemic peoples, as also an elective head of the community or
46 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
commauder-in-war. There were no judges, and no hereditary
chiefs, and no kind of state organisation."
Ahlqvist finds that his account of the most ancient Finnic
culture, which we have given in an extract, is confirmed by a
comparison of the condition in wliich the East Finns are at the
present day as regards civilisation — of the culture of the Woguls
in particular, the author gives a detailed description. Further,
the references to the loan-words in Hungarian as compared with
those in Finnic is instructive, and shows that the Hungariaiis,
when they immigrated into Europe at a later period from the
southern districts of the Ui'al, displayed about the same deficiencies
in civilisation as the Finns, when they made their appearance on
the Baltic.
Finally, we have in the department of the Turko-Tataric
languages, a work, similar to Ahlqvist's, by H. Vambery, The
Priviitive Culture of the Turko-Tataric People, based on Linguistic
Research, d'c, Leipzig, 1879 (Bie primitive Cultur des Turko-Tatar-
ischen Volkes auf Grund sprachlicher Forschungen, d-c). This work,
of which a small portion had already appeared in Ausland, in 1879,
satisfactorily shows thus much, that the Turko-Tataric family of
languages presents a field for research in language and culture,
which, in many respects, promises to bear more fruit than do the
Indo-Germanic and Semitic languages. The greater stability of
the Turko-Tataric languages, which makes the Jakut on the Lena
better able even at this day to understand the Turk of Anatolia
than the Swiss understands the Transylvanian (p. 15), the trans-
parency and perspicuity of the vocabulary as regards the etymo-
logical meaning of the words, above all the originality of its
civilised words, which are the creation of the unaided genus of the
language, and are only modified by a thin stream of Persian loan-
words (p. 35), make it appear not too difficult to establish with a
tolerable amount of certainty the stage of culture to which the
original Turko-Tataric people had attained, when it was still in its
conjectural home between the western spurs of the Altai and the
Caspian (p. 14). Here, too, a means of correcting inferences about
the culture of the whole family of peoples and languages in the
most ancient times is forthcoming, and is provided by the Kirgish
or Turkoman tribes which retained their original civilisation almost
in its entirety before they were subjected to Russian influence
(p. 34).
Unfortunately there is a lack of clearness about the picture
given of the primitive Turko-Tataric culture in Vambery's book.
The author's account is traversed throughout, as by a red thread,
Avith the resolve to show " that intellectual strength and power are,
and may be, as much the property of the Ural-Altaic as of the
Aryan peoples; and that, on the other hand, the temporary
prominence of certain communities in the world of thought and
ideas is due, not to ethnic, but solely and exclusively to political,
social, and occasionally also to geographical conditions " (p. 48),
and he finds the best confirmation of his view in the extremely
VAMB^RY. 47
intellectual and transparent etymologies of the words that form the
Turko-Tataric vocabulary. The largest part of the work, therefore,
is devoted to the creative power shown in language by " original,
that is, Turkish," man, which in no way adds to our knowledge of
the primitive Turko-Tataric period, i.e., the period which preceded
the separation of the Turko-Tataric peoples. It is not to the point,
to take an example, to show that temir, timir, " iron," originally
meant " the firm, stout, strong," and to explain what " the
primitive man of the Turko-Tataric race " understood by this
formation : for the history of culture, the most important thing is
to determine whether the word referred to stood for iron in the
predialectic period, and whether, therefore, this metal was already
known to the primeval Turko-Tataric period.
But even when Vambery really endeavours to establish positive
results about the nature of primitive Turko-Tataric culture, he
involves himself in the most remarkable contradictions (cf., e.g.,
sect. 5 : 16, on the cat, p. 38; 215, on grain), so that, Vambery's
book, although it is indispensable as being the only attempt at
linguistic research in the domain of Turko-Tataric culture, has but
a limited value from the scientific point of view.
Moi'e recently, in an extensive work, the Origin of the Magyars,
an Ethnological Study {Der Ursprung der Magyaren, eine ethnolo-
gische Studie, Leipzig, 1882), H. Vambery has endeavoured to
utilise language and history to determine the original culture of
the Magyars, which he regards as more closely related with the
Turko-Tataric branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages than
with the Ugro-Finnic (c/. sect. 3, Ctdturmovunte, pp. 261-391).
CHAPTER III.
HYPOTHETICAL DIVISIONS OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS, AND THEIR
IMPORTANCE FOR THE HISTORY OF CULTURE :* WITH AN
APPENDIX ON LOAN-WORDS IN THE INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES.
In our first chapter w^e have ah'eady pointed out that no sooner
was the Indo-Gernianic family of languages discovered, than it was
observed that within this family certain groups were formed by
languages which either had shown greater tenacity in preserving
old forms or had jointly created new forms. The matter received
but passing attention, and no decisive conclusion was reached with
regard to it. It was, therefore, much to be desired that this sub-
ject, important alike for the history of language and of nations,
should receive its proper attention. It was by A. Schleicher that
this task was undertaken. He published an imposing series of
treatises, of which the first appeared in 1853 in the Kieler Allge-
meinen Monatschrift fur Wissenschaft und Litteratur, pp. 786, 787.
(The first divisions of the original Indo-Germanic people.) We
must begin, therefore, by endeavouring to obtain a picture of this
investigator's views, and must devote our first attention to the
geographical and ethnological theories which are at the bottom
of Schleicher's grouping of the various peoples.
We have to notice first of all that Schleicher regards the
diff'erentiation of language as having begun as early as the primeval
Indo-Germanic period. He describes this in his short paper
entitled The Darwinian Theory and the Science of Language {Die
Darwinsche Theorie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1863, p. 1.5), as
follows: "After having been spoken for several generations,
during which time the people speaking it probably increased and
spread, it (the original language) gradually began to assume a
different character in different portions of its area, so that finally
two languages were evolved from it. It is possible that several
languages may have been evolved, of which only two continued to
live and develope further.-^' What we have to notice here is that
the development of two (or more) varieties of speech from the
* Cf. J. Jolly, Vberden Stavimhaum der Indog. SpracJicn{Zcitschriftf. VolTcer-
psych. u. Sprachw., VIII. pp. 15-39 and 190-205), and B. Delbriick {Einlei-
tung in das Sprachshidium Cap., VII.), and H. v. d. Pfordten, Die Frage nach
den Verwaiidschaftsverhdltnissen der Indog. Sprachen, Ausland. 1883, No. 3.
SCHLEICHER. 49
single origiinal language is conceived by Schlciclicr as being
solely clue to the tendancy to differentiation inherent in the nature
of speech, and that the necessity of assuming any local divisions
between the original people is dispensed with. When, but not
until, language had thus divided, the peoples also divided, in a
geographical sense. The prime causes of this are regarded by
Schleicher as being " increase of population, the deforesting and
clearing of the soil, deterioration of the climate, and the unhappy
consequences which to the present day always follow in the train
of a predatory mode of life." Then the varieties of the original
language, being carried to distant lands in consequence of the
dispersion of the peoples, diverged, by a process of gradual
differentiation (" by the continued tendency to divergency of
character " as Darwin expresses it), still further. To Avhat extent
in Schleicher's opinion linguistic differentiation in the various
languages, varieties of speech, dialects, &c., was accompanied by
migrations, lesions of geographical continuity, and so on, cannot
be determined with absolute certainty. Anyhow, according to
Schleicher, one may conceive the differentiation of, say, the
original Teutonic speech into its various forms as taking place in
much the same way as has just been described as happening in the
case of the original Indo-Germanic language (cf. Die deutsche
Sprache, p, 94,/.). In various places (cf., e.g., Com2Jendncm^, p. 4)
geographical contiguity is emphasised by Schleicher as connected
with affinity of speech ; he would not agTce to place, as Lottner
(cf. below) places, Italian, say, closer to the northern languages
than to Greek. On the contrary, he groups together Teutonic
and Lithu-Slavonic, Greek and Latin, Hindu and Persian.
The relative periods at which the various Indo-Germanic
languages and peoples divided, Schleicher endeavours to determine
by means of two fundamental principles, which he fonmdates as
follows :
(1) "The further east an Indo Germanic people dwells, the
larger the amount of ancient forms which it has preserved ; the
further west, the smaller the amount, and the larger the amount
of new formations it contains " (Com2Jendmni^, p. 6), and
(2) " The further west a language (or people) has its abode, the
earlier it parted from the original language (or people)" {Kieler
AUg. Jfonatsch^ift f. Wissenschaft u. LitteraUir, 1853, p. 787).
According to these principles therefore, the Slavo-Teutons began
their wanderings first, then the Grteco-Italians, and finally the
Hindu-Persians. As regards Celtic, Schleicher finds himself in a
critical position. The situation of this people, furthest westward
of all, compels him to assume that it was the first to leave the
original home. A more careful examination of Celtic, however,
caused him, even in 1858 (c/. Beitriige zur vergleicJienden Sprachfor-
schung, i. p. 437), to rank it closer to Italian, whereby Schleiclicr's
principles, as just quoted, were seriously infringed.
As is generally known, Schleicher has endeavoured to illustrate
his views on the divisions of the original language by means of a
D
50
PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
5.
diagram ; for this purpose he first employed the picture of a branch-
ing tree (fig. 1), and afterwards a system of simple lines (fig. 2).
In either case the ramifying branches or the lines are intended to
represent the tendency to linguistic differentiation working itself
out in A'arious directions, and do not imply anything as to the
geographical aspect of the separation of the peoples. The expres-
sion " pedigree," which came, in the course of discussion, to be used
of the theory held by Schleicher and his followers, appears for tne
first time on Schleicher's lips in the paper already mentioned, The
Darwinian Theory and the Science of Language, and seems to have
been borrowed from the terminology of the student of nature.
I take the liberty of producing both figures in the text in order
to put the results of Schleicher's investigations before the reader
Fig. 1.— Pedigree of 1853. (Kieler Allg. Monatsschrift, sc, p. 787.)
in concrete. It is to be noted that in fig. 2* the different lengths
of the lines are intended to indicate " the greater or less length of
distance between the original language and the points of develop-
ment here taken as final."
In the very same year (1853) that Schleicher published the
view set forth above as to the divisions of the original language,
Max Miiller in his essay. The Veda and the Zend-Avesta {Essays, i.
p. 60,/.), delivered an opinion on the subject of the parting of the
Indo-Germanic peoples, which was opposed alike to Schleicher's
and to that of Bopp and Kuhn, described above (p. 14), and to
which he has remained faithful in his later writings also {cf. 1859,
* To be louiul in the Compendium}, p. 7, and at the end of Die DarwiiiscJie
Theorie und Sprachioissenschaft, as well as in the Deutsche Sprache.
MAX MULLER.
51
A History of Ancient Sanslcrit Literature, p. 12,/., and 1863, Lectures
on the Science of Language, p. 176, /., and also 1872, tjber die
Eesidtate der Sj^Tachwissenschaft Strasshurger Antrittsvorlesung,
p. 18,/., and 1888 Biographies of Words, p. 85,/., 137/.).
Here throughout he assumes a primeval separation of the Indo-
Germanic people into a northern (north-western) and southern
division, the former comprising the modern European nations of
Indo-Germanic origin, the latter the Persian and Hindu. This
separation was due to " a world-wide wandering " of the European
branch of the Indo-Germanic race in a north-west direction, the
causes of which are hidden from us, but which casts a vivid streak
of light on the original characteristics of the peoples that stayed
Sch
ASIATIC-SOUTH-EUROPEAN
NORTH-EUROPEAN I I- UJ
I Z O
Asiatic (Hindu-Persian) \^ <
south-european
Slavo-Lithuanian
italo-celtic
2 D
< a
o z
z <
3-1
Original
indo-european
language.
Fig. 2.— Pedigree of 1861 (1869). (Die deutsclie Sp-rache-, p. 82.)
and the peoples that started. The principal role in the drama
of history is ascribed to the Europeans, "they represent the
Aryans in their historical character." And those who stayed
behind 1
" It requires great power of will, or a considerable degree of
indolence, to resist the impulse of such national or rather nation-
shaking movements. When all are going, few are willing to
remain. But to allow one's friends to depart and then to begin
one's journey — to strike out a path which, wherever it leads, can
certainly never reunite us with those whose language we speak,
and whose gods we honour — that is a road which only people of
marked individuality and great self-confidence can tread. It was
52 niEHISTOKIC ANTIQUITIES.
the way taken by the southern branch of the Aryan family, by the
Brahmin Aryans of India, and the Zoroastrians of Iran."*
As to further subdividing the European branch of the Indo-
Germanic race into famihes of speech, Max Miiller is very sceptical.
Interesting, because allied to a view of affinities between the
various Indo-Germanic peoples, which we shall have to deal with
subsequently, is the explanation of the special points of agreement
between, for example, the Teutonic and Slavonic languages, which
Max Miiller seeks in the hypothesis " that the forefathers of these
races retained from the beginning certain peculiarities of dialect,
which existed as well before as after the scattering of the Aryan
family" {Lectures, p. 178).
The idea of a fundamental European language thus started by
Max Miiller, was furnished with further support, in the way of
arguments drawn from language and the history of culture, to
which we shall have to return hereafter, by C. Lottner in 1858 in
ORIGINAL EUROPEAN
PEOPLE
Fig. 3.
The Position of the Italians in the Indo-Germanic Family ( Uher die
Stelhmg der Italer innerhalh des Indo-Europdischen Stammes, K. Z.,
vii. pp. 18-49 and 160-93). Lottner endeavoiirs to subdivide the
original European language still further, and in this attempt
the most noteworthy thing is that he releases the Latins for the
first time from close connection with the Greeks. His view of the
closer relations of the European languages to each other, expressed
in the fashion of Schleicher's pedigree, would be as in fig. 3 {cf. on
this point Lottner, C eltisch-Itcdisch, Beitrdge zur vergleichenden
Si^rachforscMmg, ii. p. 321,/.).
* This picture of a conscious separation of the Indo-Germanic peoples has
been ah-eady justly blamed by W. D. Whitney {Oriental and Linguistic Studies,
New York, 1873, p. 95, /.) : "Had not our author, when he wrote this
paragraph, half unconsciously in mind the famous and striking picture of
Kaulbach at Berlin, representing the scattering of tlie human race from the
foot of the ruined tower of Babylon ; where we see each separate nationaUty,
with the impress of its after character and fortunes already stamped on every
limb and feature, taking up its line of march toward the quarter of the earth
which it is destined to occupy."
THE DIFFICULTIES. 53
The theory of an original division of the Indo-Eiiropcans into two
halves, a Euroi^ean and an Asiatic, found subsecpiently its most
ardent defender in A. Fick : the view of the divisions of the Indo-
germanic peoples, which is the foundation of his Comparative Lexi-
con of the Indo-Germanic languages, is conveyed by him in the
following diagram, the geographical and ethnological grounds for
which we shall learn hereafter {cf. Worterhuch 1051):
Original People.
Europeans. Hindu-Persians.
I I
Persians. Hindus.
North Europeans. Soutli Europeans.
Teutons. Lithu-Slavs. (Celts.) Gncco-Italians.
Scandinavians. Germans. Lithuanians. Slavs. Italians. Greeks.
Thus, in spite of the labour expended on them, these questions
had received no final solution. There were only two points in
which all enquirers were agreed : in assuming a closer affinity
on the one hand between Hindu and Persian, on the other between
Slavonic and Lithuanian. The difficulties began the moment it
was undertaken to draw a sharp distinction between the languages
of Europe and Asia. As regards the north, the question was raised
whether the L|thu-Slavonic languages were to be placed nearer to
their eastern neighbours, the Hindu-Persians, or to their western,
Teutonic neighbours. As regards the south, opinions Avere divided
on the subject of Greek. Whereas A. Schleicher, F. Justi (Hist.
Taschenhuch herauag. V. F. V. Rcmmer, iv. Folge, iii. Jahrg. p.
316), and others, regarded the whole South European division as
more closely connected with the Hindu-Persians than with the
North Europeans: H. Grassman (1863, K. Z., xii. p. 119), C. Paiili
[liber die Benennung cler Korperteile hei den Indog. 1867, p. 1), W.
Sonne * (1869, Zwr ethnologischen Stellung der Griechen. Wismar,
* The way in which Sonne {ih. p. 6) conceives the separation of the Indo-
Europeans to have begun and been carried out is interesting: — " That the divi-
sions of the Indo-Germanic peoples only took place gi-adually and by degrees
has often been remarked, and it is certain that for instance the Teutons divided
into Germans and Scandinavians ; the latter into Swedes and Danes only very
gradually. But differentiation without migration, and within the limits of
one and the same area, is the silent work of time. Things may have been
different when our original people first divided.
" The original people, numerous as they were, for the development of their
language indicates that they lived together for at least a thousand years, must
have covered large tracts of central Asia, in nomad fashion, not only south but
also north of the Oxus. In historical times, however, the Turanians alone are
native to the latter lands, and as in later times Attila and Dschingiskhan
swept over the earth, so may it have been a violent irruption of Turanians
which drove the northern half of our original people westward, the first stage
54 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Programm), F. Spiegel {Eranische Altertumshmde, p. 443), aud
others, maintained a closer connection, especially in the case of Greek,
with the other languages. Within the limits of Europe, Celtic in
especial caused perplexity. It had to be classed sometimes with
the northern division, sometimes with the southern. In 1861 H.
Ebelj next to Zeuss the greatest Celtic scholar in Geraiany, summed
up his investigations {Beitrdge zur vergl. tipracliforschxmg, ii. pp.
177-94) as to the place of Celtic in the following words : — "Jufine,
then, we have found that there exist quite as important analogies
between it and German (and, to a secondary degree, Lithu-Slavonic)
as between it and Italian (and Greek); it can, therefore, hardly be
denied that it occupies a sort of intermediate position ; though it
looks as though it shared in common with German just those points
which are particularly the manifestations of the intellectual life
and the internal character of the language." How Ebel conceived
this intermediate position of the Celtic languages, to the hypothesis
of which he clung to his death {cf. Zeitschrift f. Volkerpsychologie
unci Sprachiv., viii. p. 473), to have arisen as a matter of history,
is not explained.
However opinions might differ in detail on the question which
of the Indo-Germanic languages were more closely connected
together than the others, the general conviction was firmly estab-
lished that the special agreements between any two or more
languages were to be explained in the same way, on a small scale,
as the affinities of the Indo-Germanic languages on a large scale.
There was nothing stranger in the idea of a primitive European,
Graeco-Italian, Teutonic people, than in the conception of a primitive
Indo-Germanic people itself.
Ought it not then also to be possible to illumine the culture of
these intermediate stages by means of the same comparative
philology by which the civilisation of the primitive period had
been inferred ; and ought it not to be possible in course of time to
obtain an account of a whole series of stages of prehistoric culture 1
The question suggested itself all the more readily, because
Schleicher's principle that grammatical structure should alone be
employed as the criterion of the closer affinity of two or more
of their flight being across the Volga into the Pontic steppes. In the west, too,
it is possible to live comfortably, said the Russian, there let us build ourhiits —
and westward the hordes betook themselves, the Danube showed them the way :
Germany, Gaul, and finallj^, in a southern direction over the Alps, Italy was
reached. These hordes then divided into two halves, of which the western
further individualised themselves as Celts and Italians, the eastern as Teutons
and Slavs.
"So much for one half, the northern half, of our original people ; the other,
remaining behind, established itself south of the Oxus, and although, like the
northern half, hemmed in by the Turanians, it manifested considerable power
of expansion eastwards and westwards. From Bactria, the native land of these
Aryans in particular, eastwards, the Punjaub and the valley of the Ganges was
brought into occupation, and India formed an Aryan world in itself; westwards,
Media, Persia, Armenia, Phrygia were occupied ; and finally, Thrace, Macedonia,
and Hellas were brought under the same influence. Thus we get two important
parallels : the southern (oriental) from the Adriatic to the Ganges ; the
northern (occidental) from the Volga to the Atlantic."
THE GR.ECO-ITALIANS. 55
languages had been given up since Lottnev and Ebel, and the
vocabulary was being more and more used in the investigation of
the divisions of the Indo-Germanic peoples.
I believe, however, that in the present stage of the science it is not
necessary for me to give a detailed account of these attempts to
employ Comparative Philology for discovering the state of culture
to which these hypothetical divisions of the Indo-Europeans had
attained. I shall not do more than mention the works which bear
on the question, and briefly characterise them. As they are in the
main based on the assumption that the original people began by
dividing into two halves, a European and an Asiatic, our review
also will most suitably follow the same lines.
I. The Primitive European Period.
Here we have to note C. Lottner, K. Z., vii. 18, ff., and
especially A. Fick, Die ehemalige Spracheinheit des Indogermanen
Euro23as, Gottingen, 1873 (cf. above, p. 37). Both scholars insist
upon the number of names of trees common to the European
languages, and further see the most important difference between
the primitive European and primitive Indo-European periods in the
transition of the European members " from settled cattle-breeders
to cultivators of the soil." "The Europeans, on the evidence of
language, had, at the time when they parted north and south,
from settled cattle-breeders become cultivators of the soil, whose
subsistence was in the first place derived from the produce of the
soil, and only in a secondary degree depended on their herds"
(Fick, p. 289).
The Europeans were the first to make the acquaitatance of a
great (salt) sea. Cf. Lat. sal and mare with their cognates.
(a) The Grxco-Italians.
The assumption of a closer connection between the two classical
languages, in whatever way this connection is supposed to have
originated as a matter of history, may be regarded as an inherit-
ance bequeathed to Comparative Philology from earlier times. At
any rate, the mere philological examination of the vocabulary of
Greek and Latin was adapted to lead, at an early period, to
observations as to the history of culture.
Thus B. G, Niebuhr, who considered Latin to be a mixed
language, consisting of Greek and foreign (Pelasgian) elements,
remarked {cf. Romische Geschichte, i.^ p. 93) : — " It cannot possibly
be a mere accident that the words for house, field, a plough, to
plough, wine, olive, milk, cow, pig, sheep, apple, &c., which have
to do with agriculture and the milder side of life, should agree in
Greek and Latin, whereas all that belongs to war or the chase are
uniformly designated by non-Greek words."
In connection with this remark of Niebuhr's, K. 0. Miiller,
Etrusker, i. (1828), p. 16, finds in it a proof that a rustic, pastoral
56
PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
people related to the Greeks (the Siculi) must have been sub-
jugated by a nou-Greek but more warlike people (the Aborigines),
just as in the case of a similar mixture in English, the old names
for the common objects of life persisted in the country, while they
received French names from the Normans of the ruling classes.
The first to reconstruct a Grreco-Italian period of culture by
means of the new Comparative Philology, and to contrast it with
the Indo-Germanic period, was Th. Mommsen, as early as the first
edition of his History of Rome (1854), pp. 12-21. The most
important advance in culture made by the Gra^co-Italians, according
to Mommsen, was the transition from the nomad shepherd-life of
the primeval period, in which only the wild kinds of grains were
known, to the condition of a people cultivating grain and even the
vine.
. In the later editions of his History of Rome, Mommsen does,
indeed, approximate more and more to the view that agreement as
to the words quoted as a rule extends considerably beyond the
limits of Greece and Italy, but from this he subsequently {cf.
3rd ed. i. p. 20, note) merely draAvs the inference that there can
have been no time when the Greeks of every Greek district lived
solely by cattle-breeding.
Further we should here mention a work by B. Kneisel, Ueher
den Kulturzustand der Indog. Volker vor ihrer Trenniing (" On the
Culture of the Indo-Europeans before their Dispersion") mit
besonderer Rucksicht auf die Grcico-Italiker, Programm, Naumburg,
1867, and the collection of a Grseco-Italian vocabulary in A. Pick's
Vergleichenden Worterhuch, in Lottner's paper already quoted, and
J. Schmidt's Die Verioandtschaftsverhdltnisse der Indog. Sxjraclien,
Weimar, 1872.
Owing above all to the w^eighty voice of Th. Mommsen, the
belief in the closer connection of the Greeks and Italians has
taken deeper and deeper root amongst historians and ethnologists.
Here I will only refer to the well-known works of Ernst Curtius,
Max Duncker, Friederich Miiller,* and Heinrich Kiepert, and
* In his Allgemeinen Ethnograi)hic, 1873, Fr. jMiiller sketclies an Indo-
germanic pedigree of Ills own, which if drawn after the manner of Schleicher
would be as follows : —
COMMON ORIGINAL STOCK
^•^F^>-~^_ SLAVS
Fig. 4.
THE LITHU-SLAVO-TEUTONS. 57
others. V. Hehu and W. Hclbig {Die Itcdiker in der Foe/me,
Beitrage ztir altitalischeti K^dtur vnd Ktmst(/esr/iichfe, i. 1879) also
arc convinced that the two classical peoples ai-e more closely related
to each other than to the rest of the Indo-Europcans. However,
it happens not nnfreqiiently that owing to their views as to the
primitive cnltnre of peoples, who in their historical abodes were
nomads, both investigators lay weight on those series of civilised
words in both classical langnages, which show little or no agree-
ment in their etymology (agricultural implements, fishing, metal-
lurgy, etc.).
As to this view, which is the basis of a book which we subse-
quently shall have to deal with more fully, B. W. Leist's Grdco-
Italische Rechtsgeschichte, Jena, 1884 {cf., e.g., p. 8), Comparative
Philology has become very sceptical as to the close connection of
the Greeks and Italians.* Ascoli still adheres to it, Sprachtvissen-
schaftliche Brief e, Germ., Leipzig, 1887.
The theory of a Grajco-Italian period, if logically carried out,
would, on the pedigree principle, lead to a primitive Italian and a
primitive Greek period, the description of which would have to be
based on the common vocabulary of the Italian dialects (Umbrian,
Oscan, Latin, &c.) and Greek dialects (Doric, Aeolic, and Ionic-
Attic). But the scantiness of the materials is hardly inviting for
the task. The original Italian words are to be found collected in
F. Biicheler, Lexicon Italicum, Programm, Bonn, 1881.
An adequate statement of the kinship of the Greek dialects,
which fall into two great groups, the «-dialects (Aelo-Doric, cf., e.g.,
Sa/xos) and the e-dialects (Ionic-Attic, cf., e.g., Srj/jio<s), is as yet,
owing to the scarcity of ancient material, not possible. A beginning
has been made by Collitz, Die Ve7'7i'a7idfsckc(ftsveThdlt7iisse der
Griech. Dicdekte, 1885. As regards Italy, the closer connection of
the Umbrian and Samnite dialects as compared with Latin has
never been open to doubt.
(Jj) The Lithu-Slavo-Teutcms.
Next to the Grteco-Italian, the group whose existence in Europe
has been most frequently asserted is the Lithu-Slavo-Teutonic or
Slavo-German, as we have already seen. Put forward by men like
Bopp, K. Zeuss, and J. Grimm {cf above, pp. 13, 14), and supported
with further arguments by Schleicher, this assumption of the
closer affinity of the northern races of Europe to each other has
been regarded down to the latest times by most scholars as an
established fact. A lexicon of the vocabulary of the Slavo-German
group is given again by A. Pick in his Couijim-ative Dictionary,
ii.^ pp. 289-500. The words and roots which as yet have been
traced only in the North European languages are to be found
collected in J. Schmidt, Verwandschaftverhdltnisse, tir., pp. 36-41.
* Cf. , e.g. , Dclbruck's remark {Einleitung in das Sprachstudium, 1880, p. 137):
"That for the present historians will do well to ali.staiu from employing snch
groups of languages and iieoples as the Grreco-Italiau, Slavo-German, &c."
Cf. also 2nd ed., 1884, p. 140.
58 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The stock of civilisation possessed by this Slavo-German group
was first set forth in a connected manner, if we put aside the
the scattered remarks of J. Grimm and others, by E. Forstemann
in his History of the German Family of Langiiages (G'eschickte des
deutschen Sjjrachstammes, 1874, i. p. 239,/.; cf. also Germania, xv.
p. 385,/).
He believes that in many parts of the vocabulary of words
important for the history of culture (expressions for the conception
of the community, for gold and silver, for rye, wheat and beer, for
names of fishes, the smith, harvest, the numeral "thousand," etc.)
it is possible to detect a not unimportant advance in civilisation
made by the primitive Slavo-Germaus, as contrasted with the
primeval Indo-Eui'opeans.
In contrast to this advance of civilisation in numerous depart-
ments, " man from this point of view, declines in several respects
from a certain idyllic condition mirrored in the vocabulary of
earlier periods " (p. 281). At any rate, we cannot help being struck
by the terminology which now appears for the darker sides of life,
disease, want, trouble, disgrace, treachery, hate, lies, &c. Nor are
immoral connections, which were not to be traced in the primeval
Indo-Germanic period, now wanting.
This account, which is frequently based on an extremely unsafe
philological foundation, is followed by W. Arnold in his work
Deutsche Urzeit, 1870-80; cf p. 24,. f.
After Forstemann, the unity of the Slavo-Teutonic group has
been treated of, from the point of view of the history of culture, by
R. Hassencamp in his paper Ueber den Zusammenha7i<j des letto-
slavischen und Germanischen S23rachstamines, 1876, p. 54,^. From a
purely grammatical point of view, indeed with regai-d solely to
declension, A. Leskien, finally, in Die DeMination im Slavisch-
litavischen und Germanischen, Leipzig, 1876, has discussed the
question of the relation of the languages and peoples referred to,
but without reaching any other than negative results.
(c) The Original Teutons.
A. Schleicher in his workD/e Deutsche Sprache'^, p. 94, has given
the following pedigree of the Teutonic tongues (fig. 5).
In essential agreement with this are the three stages of develop-
ment in Teutonic which Forstemann distinguishes {cf K. Z., xviii.
161,./.), viz., original Old German (all Teutonic languages together),
original Middle German (the Teutonic languages minus Gothic),
original New German (the Teutonic languages after the departure
of the Norse branch).
On the other hand, another mode of grouping the Teutonic
languages was first proposed by K. Miillenhoff, and carried out by
W. Scherer {Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 1868-78) and
H. Zimmer (Ost-7md West-germanisch, Haupts Zeitschrift, xix. p.
393,. f.), according to which the original Teutonic language separated
into a West and an East Teutonic group, the latter of which again
divided into Gothic and Norse, the former into High German
THE ORIGINAL TEUTONS — THE SLAVS.
59
and Low German, or better, into Frisian-Saxon (Anglo-Saxon)
and Franco-Upper-Saxon (Bavarian, Alemannic). However, the
assumption of a closer connection between Gothic and Norse,
has, in spite of certain important coincidences between the
two languages, not yet obtained the approval of all competent
enquirers. Gf. A. Noreen, Altnordische Grammatik, i., Halle, 1884,
Introduction.
As regards the history of culture, Forstemann {Germania, xvi.
415, and Geschichte cles deutschen Sprachstammes, i. 399, ff.)
endeavours to reconstruct the vocabulary of original Teutonic, and
thereby to establish the advances
in culture which according to
him the original Teutons had
made upon the Slavo-Teutons ;
apart from particulars, an abso-
lutely new world appears in the
Teutonic languages owing to
the intimate contrast of the
Teutonic peoples with the sea.
This is shown not only by such
expressions as sea, gulf, wave,
cliff, strand, island, names of the
inhabitants of the North Sea,
itc, but also by a developed ter-
minology, common to all the
Teutons, of the arts of shipbuild-
ing and steering.
Cf. further the introduction to
F. 'K\vigQ'& Etymologischem Wiirter-
Mich der deutschen Sprache, Strass-
burg, 1884, 4th ed., 1888, and W.
Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit, p. 41, ff.
Of lesser linguistic works on
the primitive Teutonic period,
I may refer to an excellent Pro-
gramvi des Johannetims zu Ham-
burg, 1880 ; Spracligeschichtliche
Nachiveise zur Kimde des Genyian-
ischen Altert^ims, by E. Rauten-
berg, the object of which is to
draw conclusions from the history of the Teutonic languages as to
the oldest form of the Teutonic dwelling-house.
The vocabulary of the Teutonic group of languages is collected
in A. Fick's Compiarative Dictionary, iii.^
FUNDAMENTAL GERMAN
Fig. 5. — a, Gothic; b, German; c, Norse;
d, High German ; e, Low German in
the wider sense; f, Frisian ; g, Saxon ;
h, Anglo-Saxon, later Englisli ; i,
Old Saxon; k, Platt-deutscli (Modem
Low German) ; I, Dutch.
((/; The Original Slavs.
We leave on one side the Lithu-Slavonic group of languages,
which, except for the Lithu-Slavonic vocabulary of A. Fick
( Vergleichendes Worterhuch, ii., not to be used without A. Bruckner's
60 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Die Slavischen Fremworter im Litauischen, AVeimar, 1877), have
not been made the subject of imjiortant investigations bearing on
our purpose (cf. only Bussland, Folen unci Livland his ins
17 Jahr., by Th. Schiemann, Berlin, 1884, pp. 8-12), and proceed
at once to the primitive Slavonic period.
The first writer to endeavour to apply the method of Compara-
tive Philology to the primitive history of Slavonic was J. E. Wocel,
in his work Pravek zeine ceskev Fraze, 1868, pp. 245-60 (an extract
from it in the Sitzung^herichten der I: bohm. GeseUschaft der
W'isse7ischaften, 1864, H. 2), and also in The Impoi^tance of Stone
and Bronze Aiiticpiities for the Frimitive History of the Slavs {Die
Bedeutung der Stein-, und Bronzealtertilmer fiir die Urgeschichte der
Slaven, Prag. 1869, p. 39,/; cf Ausland, 1870, p. 541). In the
latter treatise Wocel wishes to show that : " The Slavs did not
dwell as autochthones in the north of Germany, on the Elbe,
Moldau, Sale, Sj^ree, and south of the Danvibe, in the Bronze Age,
but immigrated into those districts some centuries after Christ."
For this purposes he produces a series of Panslavonic terms for
objects such as iron, and implements made of this metal, as to
which he assumes that they cannot possibly have been known to a
people in the Bronze Age. All these words therefore must have
been formed at a time when the Slavonic peoples were still living
together within the bounds of a comparatively narroAV territory,
according to Wocel between the Vistula and the Dnieper.
Now, as in the whole district east of the Carpathians and the
Oder, as far as the Dnieper, no weapons or implements of bronze
have been found, Wocel reaches the further conclusion that the
Slavonic peoples never went through a Bronze Age at all, but
passed straight to the working of iron — thanks to the influence of
the Greek civilisation of the Black Sea — at a time Avhen the
Bronze Age still prevailed amongst the peoples on this side of the
Carpathians.
Since Wocel, Gregor Krek has endeavoured to investigate the
primitive Slavonic period " by means of linguistic Archseology " in
his Introduction to the History of Slavonic Literature {Einleitung
in die slavische Litteraturgeschiehte, Graz, 1874, pp. 33-55). He
has a pretty high opinion of primitive Slavonic civilisation, and
in the second edition of his work (Graz, 1887, pp. 208-11), which
contains far more than twice as much as the first, he remains
faithful to this view. As in the course of our investigations we
shall have to return sometimes to agree, more often to disagree
with Krek's work, Ave forbear to say more of it now. We may,
however, here call attention to the wealth of linguistic and
historic material lavished on this book by the author's extensive
learning. In particular, all Slavonic literature bearing on the
question is indicated.
The relation of the Slavonic languages to each other is usvially
explained from the standpoint of the pedigree doctrine by a
ivision of original Slavonic into a West Slavonic (Polish, Polabish,
dech, Sorbic) and a North-Eastern-Southern group (Russian,
THE CELTS. 6 1
Slavonic, Bulgarian, Servian, Ki-oat). Cf. on this, Krek, ih.
\). 2\\, ff. A vocabulary of words common to the Slavonic
languages will be found in Frank Miklosich's Etymoloffischeni
Worterbuch der Slavischen Sprachen, Vienna, 1886.
(e) The Celts.
The fact that these languages have only just begun to be studied,
not less than tlie difficulties they present in the question as to the
closer affinities of the Indo-Germanic languages, permits us to
record but few attempts to employ the Celtic vocabulary for
purposes of the history of culture in the sense meant by us.
Indeed, no attempt has as yet been made to frame a vocabulary
common to the two great branches of the Celtic group, Gaelic (in
Ireland and Scotland) and Bi'eton (Welsh, Cornish, and Ai'emoric),
and to base thereon an account of a primitive Celtic period of
culture.*
In the matter of etymology also little has as yet been done
of a comprehensive nature. Cf. the Celtic etymologies by
E. Windisch in G. Curtius's " Frinciides of Greek Etymolofjy"
4th and 5th editions.
We have hei-e to mention, as of importance, the dissertation,
already cited, by H. Ebel, The Position of Celtic {Die Stellung des
Celtischen, Beitrdge, ii. p. 157), which is valuable because it
contains a careful comparison of the Celtic vocabulary with the
other European languages. It is unnecessary to say that Ebel's
figures {cf. p. 179), according to which " the ratio of Celtic to
German and to Latin is about equal," are now, twenty years after,
no longer valid for Celtic. Next we have to refer to Adolf
Bacmeister's Celtic Letters {Celtische Brief e, edited by 0. Keller,
Strasburg, 1874), written in a popular but stimulating style, but
not to be used without E. Windisch's searching review {Beitrcige,
viii. 422,/.).
The best information about the history and transmission of
these languages, whose closer connection with the Italian than
any other languages seems to grow daily more probable {cf below
p. 72), is given by E. Windisch in the article on Celtic languages
in Ersch and Gruher's Encyclopaedia. It is manifest that the
views of those enquirers who Avere seen by us to maintain the
closer connection of one or more of tlie European languages with
the East, might have resulted in similar chapters in the history
of culture, and that the assumption of a Hindu-Perso-Slavonic
group of peoples or a Hindu-Perso-Greek, a Hindu-Perso-Pelasgian
* Still, EduarJ Lluiyd in his Archccolorfia Britannica put together, as
early as 1707 a.d., a vocabulary of the words common to the Celtic languages.
In this work, an extremely remarkable work for its time, there is also given
an Apjjcndix voces aliquot quotidiani et maximc antiqui usus plcrisque Europce
Unguis coinpledcns, wliich deals with words important in most cases for the
history of culture. The same book contains, Tit. viii., A British Etyinologicon,
or the Welsh collated icith the Greek and Latin, and smnc other European
Languages (by David Parry), &c.
62 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
group, would, considered simply in itself, stand on no different
footing from that of a primitive European or a primitive Grseco-
Italian period. As, however, even tolerably thorough investiga-
tions in this direction — en ]mssant L. Geiger, for instance, in his
Evolution of Mankind {Zur EnUvicJclwigsgeschichte der Menschheit,
p. 125,/.), endeavours on the strength of considerations drawn from
the history of culture to establish a Hindu-Perso-Hellenic period —
are not forthcoming (though the special points in which the
vocabulary of the European languages agrees with the Eastern
languages are collected in J. Schmidt's vocabularies, Verivandt-
scha/tsverdltnisse der Indog. Sjyrachen), we may proceed at once to
the Hindu-Persian group (II.) as contrasted with the European
group already dealt with under (I.).
II. The Hixdu-Persian (Aryan) Group of Languages.
Precisely because the close connection of the Hindus and
Persians (Iranians), both as regards ethnography and language (cf.
J. Muir, Original SansJcrit Texts, ii.^ p. 287,/'./ Reasons for Su2)2)os-
ing the Indians and Persians in Particular to have a Common Origin),
has never been subjected to serious doubt, but slight attempts
have been made to prove this connection by means of considera-
tions drawn from the history of culture. It was only to the points
in which the religions of the two peoples touched that attention
was paid in earlier times.
The first and only scholar who has made even a tolerably
thorough attempt to ascertain the amount of civilisation possessed
by the original Hindu-Persians, is Fr. Spiegel in his Iranian
Antiquities {Eranische Altertumslcunde, B. i., 1871, p. 423,/.). The
Hindu-Persian period, the existence of which finds not its weakest
argument in the name of Aryan, borne by Hindus and Persians
alike, is considered by Spiegel to have made an advance in the
domestication of the camel and the ass, in the art of war, and in
the development of the numerals (thousand), &c.
The agreement shown by these languages, however, is far more
important as regards the history of religion, than any other point.
Thus Sanskrit and Persian agree in their terms for priest,
sacrifice and song of praise, God and Lord, the honoured, sacred
and divine plant Soma, and of a very considerable number of
divine and mythical beings {cf. Abh. iv. Kap. xiii.).
Besides these glaring instances of agreement, it had early been
remarked that certain important words, identical as regards form
amongst the Hindus and Iranians, diverged in meaning, in as
much as one or other people turned them in vialara partem.
Thus the word which in all Indo-Germanic languages and also in
Sanskrit stood for the supreme sky-god, devd, was employed in
Zend to designate evil powers. Thus Indra, whose name in the
Rigveda is the designation of the gi-eatest and the most powerful
of the gods, is ranked in the Avesta amongst the powers of evil.
It was these and similar facts which led to the opinion, maintained
THE HINDU-PERSIANS. 63
especially by Haug and Lassen, that these difFercnces of meaning
pointed to an ancient religious and political schism in the original
Hindu-Persian people, which offered an explanation for the
separation of the Hindus and Iranians. But this combination has
proved unsatisfactory {cf. Justi in the Gottiiigischen Gel. Anzeigen,
1866, p. 1446, /.), and Spiegel (q/?. dt. p. 444) insists that these
contrasts " are due to fortuitous causes, and that the continuous
advance of one or other people, after their separation, is competent
to explain the altered position of the old deities." The idea of a
religious schism is entirely abandoned by James Dai'mesteter in
IVie Zend-Avesta, 1880, p. 406, /., as, indeed, generally by all
modern Zend and Sanskrit scholars.
As part of the capital of the original Hindu-Persian period, Fr.
Spiegel counts finally a series of geographical names, names of
rivers and places, although he is not of opinion that they always
indicated a definite spot in the common original home.
A collection of the common Hindu-Persian vocabulary again is
given by A. Fick in his Vergleichendem Wcirterhuch, i. (cf. Windisch,
K. Z., xxi. p. 386). F, Justi's Handbook to Zend {Handbuch der
Zendsi^rache), and W. Geiger's East Iranian Cidture in Antiquity
{Ostiranische Cultur im Altertum, 1882), should be mentioned here,
as in both books there are numerous excursuses into Hindu territory.
Kingship in the Asiatic branch of the Indo-Germanic race is
discussed by F. Spiegel (Deutsche Revue, edited by R. Fleischer,
1881, H. X., p. 124,./.), and Soma (haoma), by R. Roth, Z. d. M. G.,
XXXV. pp. 680-92. Cf. Max Muller, Biographies, p. 222,/.
To this literature there has been added in modern times : —
W. Geiger, La civilisation des Aryas, (1) les noms geographiques
dans VAvesta et dans le Rigveda, (2) climat et produits des pays
Museon, 1884, and an exhaustive work in Fr. Spiegel's Die Arische
Period e undihre Zustdnde, Leipzig, 1887. To both works we shall
hereafter make frequent reference.
Finally may be mentioned P. v. Bradke, Einige Bemerhmgen idjer
die arische Urzeit. Festgruss an 0. v. Biihtlingl; Stuttgart, 1888,
pp. 4-9.
The erection of groups of people, prehistoric indeed but subse-
quent in time to the primeval Indo-Germanic period, was based, as
we have seen above, on the idea that the points of agreement
peculiar to two or more languages could only be explained on the
assumption of an original language as their common basis. As a
matter of fact this view had the field to itself, until in the year
1872, one of the most discerning and learned of modern students
of language, J. Schmidt, proposed, first in a lecture to the Leipzig
Association of Philolgists (cf. their Verhandl, p. 220, f), and then
in a special dissertation, already quoted by us. The Kinship of the
Indo-Germanic Langxiages (Die Yerioandtschaftsverhdltnisse der
Indog. Sprachen ; cf. also Zur Geschichte des Indog. Vocalismus, ii.
p. 183,/!), a new hypothesis, which is so important for our subject
that we must devote the rest of this chapter to giving an account
of it.
64 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Tlie difference between J. Schmidt and his predecessors is that
he does not confine his researches to a particular group of Indo-
Germanic languages, but simultaneously includes in his survey all
cases of special agreement throughout the whole region of the Indo-
Geraianic family of speech. It is significant to begin with, that on
the pedigree theory it is impossible that all the linguistic arguments,
on the strength of which the groups of languages detailed by us
have been set up, can be valid. If the Slavo-Lithuanian languages
are really connected with the Hindu-Persian by a ^closer tie, then
the idea of a European gi'oup of languages is so far erroneous ; or
if we decide in favour of a closer relation between Greek and the
Hindu-Persian languages, in favoui-, that is, of a Hindu-Perso-
Hellenic period, then the coincidences between Greek and Latin
must be either casual or illusory. The great advantage of
Schmidt's theory to begin with is that it makes it possible to
account simultaneously for all the facts of language.
It may be put together somewhat as follows : — At various points
in the area of the Indo-Germanic languages, while that area was
yet geographically one, there appeared in the remotest primeval
times, certain phonetic changes, or new formations generally — the
first beginnings of incipient dialects — which spread in undulations
as one might say, from their starting-point, sometimes more, some-
time less extensively, over the neighbouring districts. Thus, in
what previously was a homogeneous linguistic mass, differentiations
were gradually set up, and between these differentiations relations
forming the prototypes of subsequent languages. To proceed at
once to concrete examples, at one point in the area of Indo-
Germanic speech a phonetic tendency set in, to transform the
guttural tenuis Ic into a sibilant. This phonetic tendency extended
over the district inhabited by the forefathers of the Hindu-Persians,
the Armenians, and the Slavo-Lithuanians, so that now their
languages — Sans, catd, Iran, sata, O.S. suto, Lith. szii7itas — ap-
parently form an exclusive group in contrast with G. eKarov, O.I.
ce% Lat. centum, Goth. Jnmd ( = hunt). At perhaps the same time,
however, at a different point in the linguistic area, a beginning was
made of changing the hli of the case suffixes -hhi, -hhis, -hhi/a(m)s
into m, a phonetic change which only spread over the territory of
the Slavo-Teutonic tribes. Goth, vulfa-m, O.S. vlilko-mu, Lith. iviika-
ojius, corresponds to G. evvrj-cfiLv, O.I. fera-ih, Lat. hosti-hus. At a
third point a suffix-like r, which perhaps occurred sporadically
elsewhere, began to be used for the formation of the passive voice
and deponents. Celtic and Latin were affected by this; cf. O.I.
nom berar = Ija.t. fero-r, &c. Other linguistic phenomena again,
such as the feminine use of stems in -a (o), usually masculine (17 680s,
fagus), were limited exclusively to the Grpeco-Italian region.
Finally, the languages of all the European tribes (and of one
Asiatic, the Armenians) are embraced by the change of the a,
which the Persian and Hindu tongues have apparently preserved,
faithfully, into ein many Avords — Lat. /ero, G. ^cpw, I. herini, O.H.G.
heru, O.S. herq,, Armen. herem : Hind. hhar. Cf. J. Schmidt, What
THE UNDULATION THEORY.
65
does the e of the European Languages Prove for the Existence of an
Original European Language ? ( Was heweist das e der Europdischen
Sprachen fiir die Annahme einer einheitlic/ien Eurojmischen Grund-
sprache ? K. Z., xxiii. p. 373.) If a picture is needed of the way in
■which these partial coincidences were distributed over the Indu-
Germanic region, the following diagrana may be found useful: —
r. a-e
II. k=s,c,sz
lll.bh=m
IV. r in the Passive
V. o gen. fern.
Fig. 6.
In words, however, the diagram amounts to this : — Just as it is
impossible in the diagram to pass out of any one of the spaces en-
closed by the five lines drawn therein, without at once falling into
a space surrounded by another of those lines, so in the area of the
Indo-Germanic languages it is impossible to refer a particular
group to an original language peculiar to that group, and so
detacli it from the whole, because this would necessarily break the
threads uniting and allying that group with all parts of the
linguistic area. If we wished to refer the Slavo-Lithuanian, along
with the Teutonic, languages to a special group, we should have
to ignore the points of relationship (line II.) which bind it to the
Hindu-Persian languages. If we wished to get out of this difficulty
by ranking the whole of the North European languages nearer to
Hindu-Persian, we should have to break the bond (line I.) which
embraces all the European languages (and the Armenian), and so
on.
As, then, according to J. Schmidt, the whole linguistic area of
the Indo-Europeans was originally connected together by a chain of
"continuous varieties," he has now still to answer the question:
How comes it that this state of things no longer exists at the
present day, how comes it that instead of the gradual transitions
between linguistic regions, such as the Slavonic and Teutonic, the
Celtic and Italian, &c., there are now sliarp delimitations of language;
that " the unbroken slope from Sanskrit to Celtic " has now become
"a flight of steps" {Verwandtschaftsverh., p. 28)? J. Schmidt
explains jthis by the dying-out of certain intermediate varieties.
Supposing that two dialects, A and X, in the linguistic area were
connected together by the varieties B, C, D, Sec, in a continuous
chain, it might easily happen that one family or tribe, which spoke
66 PREHISTOEIC ANTIQUITIES.
the vai-iety F, for instance, obtained, owing to religious, social, or
other circumstance, a preponderance over its immediate neighbours.
Then the varieties next to it, G, H, I, K on the one side, and E, D, C
on the other, would be crushed out and displaced by F; when this
had happened, F would border immediately on B on the one side,
and L on the other. The delimitation of the languages is effected.
As historical examples of what he advances, J. Schmidt points to
the crushing power of the Attic, Roman, and New High German
dialects as regards the other dialects of Greek, Italian, and
German,
But J. Schmidt's theory, besides its importance for our knowledge
and for the historical explanation of the affinities of the Indo-
Germanic languages, is equally important in its bearing on the
whole foundation of linguistic inferences as to the primeval period —
that is, on the reconstruction of the original language. The ques-
tion, in how many languages a word must be forthcoming in order
to establish its claim to the title of Indo-Germanic, could be
answered without much difficulty from the point of view of the
pedigree theory, if only the theory could be brought to a satisfactory
scientific conclusion. If the decision w^ere in favour of an original
division of the Indo-Europeans into a western and an eastern half,
the existence of a word in but one single European and one single
Asiatic language (e.g. Lat. ensis + Sans, asi, " sword ; " Lith. duna,
" bread " + Sans, dhdiias, "grains of corn") would be enough to
justify the ascription of the concept designated to the primeval
period. Or if the decision were that the Hindu-Persian languages
maintained a longer connection with a North European or South
European group, a word which could be established in but two
European languages, in the north and in the south of Europe {e.g.,
kttos-HO.H.G. huoha or ^coyca 4- O.H.G. hahhu, "bake"), would l3e
valid for the primeval period. Then, in both cases, all languages
which made no contribution to the equations ensis + asi, duna +
dhdnas, Kyjiro^ + huoha, (ftwyo) + hahhu, would originally have pos-
sessed the correspondiiig w'ords but have lost them subsequently,
a proceeding which in itself has nothing remarkable.
On the other hand, in presence of J. Schmidt's transition theory,
there is a complete disappearance of " the mathematical certainty
which was supposed to have been obtained for the reconstruction
of the original Indo-Germanic language." For it is obviously
impossible for adherents of this theory to show whether words
which are limited to groups of languages have been lost by the
other languages or were never possessed by them. For the rest,
J. Schmidt's undulation or transition theory, w'hich we have so
briefly sketched, is, however, based on views as to the tendency to
differentiation existing in the Indo-Germanic languages, which were
by no means entirely new or unheard of. Max Miiller (p. .52), Ebel
(p. 54), Sonne (p. ih.), nay! even A. Schleicher (p. 48), and above
all A. Pictet * and F. Spiegel (cf. ch. iv.), had developed similar
* Cf. Origincs Indo-Europ., v. p. 48 :— "Ce qui est certain, dans I'etat actual
des choses, c'est que Ton remarque, entre les peuples de la faraille arienne
PHONETIC CHANGES IN OLD HIGH GERMAN. 6/
views more or less clearly. Nevertheless it was natural that when
systematised by J. Schmidt, and applied to the Indo-Germanic
languages in the concrete, they should provoke an extremely
storm y discussion.
The most complete approval was bestowed on J. Schmidt by
those investigators wlioiiad made the relationship of modern lan-
guages to each other their special study.
Here, some time before J, Schmidt, Hugo Schuchardt in his
book Vocalismus des Vtdgdrlateins, Leipzig, 1866 (rf., particularly, ch.
iv., Die innere Geschichte der romischen Volkssprache, I. Dialelde), had
paved the way for the new view as far as the Romance languages
were concerned.
This is shown most clearly in the department of German dialects,
in the investigation of which especial service has been rendered by
W. Braunein several essays in the Zeitschrift Pcmlu. Braune Beitr.z.
Gesch. d. deutschen Sprache (cf., especially, i. p. 1, /., and iv. p. 540,/.).
To illustrate what is said, I again take the liberty of drawing a
small diagram, representing the results brought about in the
department of Old High German by the propagation, from about the
sixth or seventh century to the end of the ninth or beginning of the
tenth century, of some phonetic changes of the greatest importance for
determining the affinities of the O.H.G. dialects. The numerals
I. -IV. in the diagram indicate, in chronological order, the four
stages in which the so-called Second or Old High German sound-
shifting was propagated over the German dialects.* The numeral
commc line chaiiie continue de rapports linguistiques speciaux qui court,
pour ainsi dire, parallelement a celles de leur positions geographi([ues
Les emigrations lointaines auront ete precedees par une extension graduelle,
dans le cours de laquelle se seront formes pen a pen des dialectes distincts,
mais toujonrs en contact les uns evec les autres, et d'autaut plus analogues
qu'ils etaient plus voisins entre eux."
^ He illustrates his view by the following diagram : —
lithuano-Slavs
INDIANS
The circle in the middle of the ellipse stands for the original Indo-Germanic
language,
* The four strata of this sound-sliifting are :— .
I. t-z; p and k after vowels ;/and ck (O.H.G. zU: Eng. tide, kouffen: Eng.
keep, suohhan : Eng. seek).
II. p, initial and medial after consonants, kc.—iih, f; d-t. (Upper Saxou
68
PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
V. marks the area of the ua, as opposed to an earlier uo {inuat :
viuof) evolved from original 6; the numeral VI., the area of the
Frankish dialects as regards the complete carrying out of the umlaut
or " mutation," which in the Upper Saxon dialects was impeded by
certain consonantal combinations such as I + cons. (Frank, halgi:
helgi ; Upper ^axonpalg: palgi.)
Saxon-Low-German
IV
Bavaro-
austrian
I II III IV
Fig. 8.
Our picture does not, I believe, require any extensive commen-
tary. It shows that here, too, sharp dividing lines between the
various dialects are wholly out of the question. Thus the two
Upper Saxon dialects are apparently united into one whole by the
numeral III., yet are interwoven as closely as possible wdth certain
and East Franconian ^ac^, pfianzon, tat, tiuri : Rhenisli-Franconian, &c., pad,
plaiiz6n, dag, diuri ; iu the middle of words, also, a Rlieiiifr., &c., d-t, ddtun:
East Fr. tatun, Eng. did. )
III. k, initial and medial after consonants, &c. — ch ; h-p ; g-k. (Only
Upper Saxon chind, chiming : Frank, kmd, kuning, Upper Saxon kcpan :
Frank, gcban.)
IV. Extending over Low Frankish (Dutch) and Saxon th-d {drei : Eng.
three, dieb : Eng. thief).
J. Schmidt's critics. 69
sections of Frankish by the numerals II. and V. Again, in foce
of the operation of the sound-shiftings ilhistrated by us, they cannot
be sharply marked off from Saxon (Low German). Middle Frankish
does indeed take part in the most important stage (I.) of the sound-
shifting, which embraces Upper Saxony, the East, Rhenish, and
South Franks, though with certain important exceptions {dat, ivat,
(lit, allet); but at the same time Low Frankish (Dutch) has a
thoroughly Low German consonantal system. Finally, the IV.
stage of the sound-shifting extends equally to all the dialects.
What, however, excites our interest especially in the processes
depicted by us, is the fact that liere we really are able to establish
the starting-point, and to trace the gradual spread of some of the
phonetic transitions set forth by us. Thus, in Alemannia the
shifting, th-cl, appeared in the beginning of the eighth century.
At this period, however, the old spirant was uniformly retained, at
any rate at the beginning of words, by the whole of Frankish. It
is not until the end of the ninth century that tJi disappears from
amongst the Franks, and that d takes its place. Among the
Middle Franks, and further north, the th held out still longer.
The spread of one sound-shifting therefore, in this case from south
to north, is seen very clearly.
Finally, J. Schmidt himself, in his book Ztcr Geschichte des idg.
Vocalisnuis, ii. 199,^., endeavoured to present the relation of the
Slavonic dialects to each other from the standpoint of the " undula-
tion" or " transition " theory.
Apart from fundamental differences of opinion between the
assailants, the attacks on Schmidt's theory, which were made par-
ticulaidy by Whitney, G. Curtius, Havet, L. Meyer, Jolly, and A.
Fick, were directed particularly upon that point {cf. our diagram,
^jTSB, line II.), which J. Schmidt had made the main argument
for the intermediate position of the Lithu-Slavonic j^eoples between
Europe and Asia — that is, on the change in a great number of
words common to the Lithu-Slavonic and Hindu-Persian languages
of an original k into a sibilant (f, s, sz), cf. Sans. Iran, ddran, O.S.
des^ti, Lith. deszimtis, G. Se/ca, Lat. decern, «fec. A. Fick en-
deavoured {Die Spracheinheit der Indogermanen Uurojxis) to
depi'ive Schmidt's argument of its force, by trying, as Ascoli indeed
before him had tried, to show that there had existed from an early
time in the original Indo-Germanic language two different ^--sounds,
one with a palatal tendency, kj (k), one with a guttural tendency,
kv (q), the former of which was represented by the sibilant of the
Lithu-Slavonic and the Hindu-Persian languages, the latter, even
in the languages mentioned, by k (c), and in the remainder by
k, p, qu. From the beginning, therefore, there existed side by side,
for instance : —
kj {k), Sans, rvdn^ Lith. szu, G. Kvoiv, Lat. can is, Ir. cil.
kv (q), Sans, ka, Lith. k(h, O.S. kuto, G. Kortpos, Trorepos,
Lat. quod, O.I. ca-te.
The same holds goods of the medial g and the aspirate f/h.
Indubitable as it is that the assumption of two ^--sounds for the
70 PEEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
primeval ludo-Germanic period has now found acceptance amongst
most scholars, in spite of J. Schmidt's opposition, J. Schmidt seems
to me justified in maintaining {Jenaer Litteraturzeitung, 1875, No.
201) that the assumption of two series of gutturals is not such as
to weaken the force of his argument in support of the transition,
and against the pedigree theory. For if the decision is in favour
of a l-j and a kv, the cohesion of the Lithu-Slavonic and Hindu-
Persian languages in shifting into f, s, sz, the k which the other
languages retained as kj, remains quite untouched.
Besides, Armenian, as we have already remarked, must be ranked
in this respect along with the Hindu-Perso-Slavo-Lithuanian
languages. Cf. Arm. tasn = O.S. desett, Sans, ddgan; Arm. sun,
"dog" = Lith. szu, Sans, gvdn, &c. Relying on these and similar
grounds, H. Hiibschmann, one of the best scholars of this language,
regards Armenian as "an independent branch of language to be
placed between Iranian and Slavo-Lettish." (A^ Z., xxiii. p. 5,/.)
The same holds good, as has been shown by G. Meyer's Albanian
studies (Vienna, 1883 and 1884, B. B., viii. 186,/.), of Albanian,
which this scholar accordingly places nearer to the Lithu-Slavic
than the South European languages.
Similarly, the question has lately been raised whether the uni-
form a of the Hindu-Persian languages, as contrasted with the a,
e, of the European (Sans, aj = G. ayto, Sans, dsti = G. ia-TL, Sans.
avis = G. ois), really represents the original state of things, and the
result, owing in no small measure to a work of J. Schmidt's
{Zwei arische a-Laute unddie Palatalen, K. Z., xxv. p. 1,/.), has been
to demonstrate in the most conclusive manner the existence in
the original Indo-Germanic language of an a corresponding to the
European e. But this coiistitutes no objection to the transition
theory. In this case the European and Armenian languages must
be credited with the conservation of the old state of things; and
in the rejection of the original a and a we must see an innovation
common to the Hindu and Iranian laiaguages.*
J. Schmidt's hypothesis is dealt with from a new point of view
by A. Leskien, Declension in Slavo-Lithuanian and Teutonic [Die
Declination im Slaviscli-litauischen und Germanischen, Leipzig,
1876). Having explained (Introduction, p. 10) that he cannot
conceive how the Indo-Germanic peoples could keep on spreading
until they came to occupy their present abodes, without actual,
geographical separation, he declares his opinion that the transitional
stages which are postulated by J. Schmidt, and which presuppose
the geographical continuity of the Indo-Germanic area, can only
be understood if this continuity is supposed, before the sjDread of
the peoples, to have extended over a relatively narrow district.
This, however, opens up the possibility of combining the transition
and pedigree theories. For instance, if h represents the forefathers
* The old a is preserved by another Asiatic Indo-Germanic language besides
Armenian, — Phrygian {cf. Fick, Die Sin-acheinlicit dcr Indog. Europas, p. 416).
Hiibschmann, K. Z., xxiii. p. 49, considers it probable that this language is
most closely related to Armenian.
leskien's view. 71
of the Slavs and Lithuanians in the primeval Indo- Germanic
period, c those of the Hindu-Persians, a those of the Teutons —
then b and c may have been connected by certain peculiarities of
dialect (e.^., Hindu-Persian r. (s) = Slavo-Lith. s, sz). Subsequently
it may have happened, owing to the departure of e, or the joint
emigration of a and b, that the geographical continuity of the line
a-c may have been broken, and that a-b may have jointly
developed some new peculiarities (perhaps Teut. m + Slavo-Lith.
m = previous bh in suffixes). Thus, the peculiarities which b
(Slavo-Lithuanian) shares with c (Hindu-Persian) would admit of
explanation, and yet it would be justifiable "to enquire whether
Lithu-Slavonic could be ranked with Teutonic (b) in a separate
group, having a development of its own, distinct from the whole
or the other pai-ts "* (p. 27).
The importance of Leskien's view undoubtedly consists in the
weight which, in order to explain the existing divisions between
the Indo-Germanic languages and peoples, he throws on the
necessity of assuming that they were geographically divided — a
necessity to which J. Schmidt, for other reasons as well as the
dying out, perfectly possible in itself, of intermediate varieties,
(c/. p. 65), had not allowed sufficient weight. For the rest, the
views of the two scholars are extremely similar. J. Schmidt,
therefore, exiplains (Jenaer Litter attirzeitung, 1877, p. 272) : — "The
fact that the Slavo-Lettish languages share certain peculiarities
with the Hindu-Pereian languages alone, and certain othei'S with
the Teutonic or other European languages, that is to say, constitute
the ' organic link ' between these two groups, remains untouched
in spite of all attacks. That- all these peculiarities arose simul-
taneously, it never entered my head to assert. We know as yet
nothing about their chronology, and all probability is in favour of
their not having been simultaneous. It is, therefore, perfectly
possible that the Slavo-Lettlandcrs experienced certain phonetic
changes in common with the Hindu-Persians, say in the earliest of
periods, that later they lost their connection with the Hindu-
Persians, drew closer to the Europeans, and went through the same
linguistic changes as they. My point was to show that an original,
homogeneous European language, as contrasted with a Hindu-
Persian, never existed ; that when those characteristics which are
* Leskien's idea is applied, if I understand him aright, by P. v. Bradke,
Beitrdge zur Kentniss der vorhistorischai Etiticicklung luiscrcs Sprachslammcs,
Giessen, 1888, to the relation of certain Indo-European peoples ; he ascribes
the points of agreement between the Greek and Italian branches, in regard to
language and culture, to a Grsco-Italian epoch, from wliich he makes the
Italians detach themselves in order to unite with the Celts in a Celto-Italic
period. Cf. Literar. Centralblatt, 1888, No. 20.
72 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
specifically European developed, the languages in which they made
their appearance were no longer identical in all respects."
Finally, Karl Brugmann has dealt exhaustively with the question
of the relationship of the Indo-European languages to each other
in the Internationalen Zeitschrift fur allgemeine S2:irachwissenschaft,
i. 226,/.
Brugmann stands, as regards theory, at the point of view of
Schmidt and Leskien, as also does H. Paul in his Principien der
SprachgescJiichte^ , Halle, 1886 {cf. ch. ii.. Die Spraclupaltung).
Thus, Brugmann, in his Grundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatik der
idg. Sprachen, i. 290 (Strassburg, 1886), like J. Schmidt, regards it
as " possible and not improbable " that the often mentioned
difference between the Indo-European languages in their treatment
of the palatal ^--series " reflects a difference of articulation dating
from primitive Indo-European times, that the original checks were
modified in the direction of the spirant in one district of the
primitive Indo-European region, while elsewhere they remained
unaffected. These dialectical differences then continued to propa-
gate themselves in the individual branches." Cf. also p. 308 in
respect to the velar ^--series.
As regards the question of the relation of the Indo-European
languages in detail, however, Brugmann in the paper referred to
establishes with great acuteness an objection levelled as much
against the undulation as the pedigree theory: he points out that
the special agreements between two or more languages frequently
are due merely to chance. " The character and tendencies of the
Indo-European languages, even after the dispersion of the original
people, remained in essentials the same ; the mental and physical
organisation of those who inherited and carried on the language
remained similar on the whole ; the motives to make new forms
were often identical : from like causes then why not like effects'?"
p. 31, and ditto: — "Do we not regard it as a mere coincidence
that, for instance, the original medice have been shifted into tenues
in the same way in German and Armenian, as in Goth, tathun,
Arm. tasn, as against Sans, ddca, G. Sexa, &c. 1 Why then shall we
not regard it also as mere chance that the original Indo-European
mediae asjoiratce have been shifted into tenues aspiratce, both in
Greek and in Latin, as in G. Ov/xos, orig. It. *thilmos (fu7nus), as
against Sans, dhiimd-s ? " &g.
Under the circumstances it is, p. 253, "not some individual nor
some few linguistic phenomena, appearing simultaneously in two
or more regions, which suffice to prove close connection, but
agreement in a great number of innovations — phonetic, inflectional,
syntactical, and lexical — a number which will exclude the idea of
chance."
A close connection accordingly can only be demonstrated as
existing between the Hindus and Persians, and the Slavs and
Lithuanians. It may, perhaps, in the futm-e be demonstrated also
in the case of the Celtic and Italian languages.
In this connection we have the question : — " In how many of the
LOAN-WORDS. 73
seven principal branches must a linguistic phenomenon be estab-
lished in order to rank as primitive Indo-European?" Here, too,
all that can be said is : — " The probability that we have to do with
a primitive Indo-European form increases with the number of
languages in which a linguistic phenomenon occurs." Tlic rank
of Indo-European may also be claimed by such linguistic pheno-
mena as appear in identical form in districts geographically remote
from each other, as in this case the probability, otherwise great, of
boiTOwing, which Brugmann assumes, especially in the case of the
vocabulary, is diminished.
APPENDIX.
THE INVESTIGATION OF LOAN-WORDS IN THE INDO-GERMANIC
LANGUAGES.
Besides the direct way of reconstructing prehistoric periods of
culture by the aid of Comparative Philology, there is another
indirect way leading to the same end. In the life of every
language, as is well known, there collects round that portion of its
vocabulary, which is inherited fi'om primitive times, another
portion, imported from abroad. No language runs its course free
from loan-words. Now, since the borrowing of a word, at least as
a general rule, implies the borrowing of an idea also, it is clear
that a collection of the loan-words or foreign words in a language
must contain important hints as to what elements of civilisation
have been imported by a people from abroad, and therefore were
not inherited from primitive times. It may, therefore, not be out
of place to make brief mention here of the most important scientific
works dealing with the loan-words of the Indo-Germanic languages.
There is no continuous wox'k to mention dealing with the Hindu-
Persian languages. The vocabulary of the Rigveda (as of the
most ancient Sanskrit generally), the purest and most unadulterated
in the whole range of the Indo-Germanic peoj^les, would yield
but few results. More in quantity and in importance miglit be
afforded by the Zend Avesta, on which subject many remarks are
to be found in Justi's Handhucli der Zendsprache. The modern
Iranian dialects, naturally, are studded with Semitic, Turkish, and
other elements ; yet I have not made acquaintance with a single
even tolerably exhaustive account of them. For Armenian, Paul
de Lagarde's Armenien Studies (Artnenische Studien, Gottingen,
1877) must be refeiTcd to, in which, on pp. 166-88, a tabular
conspectus of the points in which this language agrees with Semitic
is given.*
We find a very different state of things the moment we set foot
on European territory.
To begin with, here, from the very revival of philulogical studies
* C/., further, H. Hiibschmann, Armcn. Shut. (1883), p. 7, f. Tliis scholar
in Elymologie uiid Lautlehre der ossctischen Sprachc (1887), gives a provisional
conspectus of Ossetic loan-words (pp. 118-36).
74 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
ill Germany, the relations of Hebrew to Greek had been the subject
of learned speculation. The barren attempts to explain the
various resemblances between these two languages as due to the
common origin of the two languages {cf., e.g., Ernesti, De Vestigiis
linguce Ilebraicce in lingua Grceca, Opusc. Phil., p. 177, /.) was
followed, when the science of Comparative Philology had finally
established the genealogies of the two languages, by the correct
interpretation of the Semitic elements in the older Greek voca-
bulary as loan-words due to the influence of Phoenician civilisation
on Greece. They were first collected by Gesenius, the founder of
Semitic philolog}^, in his History of the Hebrew Language, i. 18.
He was followed by E. Renan, Histoire des Langues Semitiques,
p. 192. Smaller and scattered contributions were supplied by
Benfey, Fr. Midler, Schroder, P. de Lagarde. In recent times the
first to attempt to give a connected account of the importance of
Grseco-Semitic loan-words for the history of culture was F. Lenor-
mant in an essay entitled The Cadmus Myth and Phoenician Settle-
ments in Greece (Annales de Philosophic Chretienne, 1867, then in
Die Anfdnge der Cultur, Jena, 1875). The remark must be made,
however, that Lenormant's work would furnish a very unsafe
fovmdation for further researches into the history of culture, as the
French anthropologist and orientalist employs in matters of Com-
parative Philology a method of his own, not familiar to Indo-
Germanic students ; and repeats earlier comparisons of Semitic
and Greek, and evolves new ones, with absolutely no attempt at
criticism.
It was, therefore, a most meritorious task that A, Miiller under-
took in a paper on Semitic Loan- Worxls in Older Greek (Semitische
Lehnworter im dlteren GriecMsch, Bezzenbergers Beitrdge z. Kunde
d. Indog. Sprach., i. pp. 273-301), to establish, by means of
undoubted loan-words from the Semitic, definite phonetic equiva-
lents in words borrowed by the one lang-uage from the other, which
enabled him to test the parentage of those constituents of the Greek
vocabulary which until then had been regarded as Semitic. But the
one hundred and two words whose claims to be Semitic are tested, are
reduced by this refining process to a still more manageable number
{cf. p. 299,/.). However, a number of Greek words which recur in
the Semitic languages are regarded by Miiller as foreign to Greek
soil, although he cannot decide as to their original home. For
instance, KapTracros, " fine flax," Sans, hdrpdsa, Aram, karpas, Arab.
hirhds; Krjf3o<;, k^ttos, "ape," Sans, kapi, Hebr. qof; o-ctTr^eipos,
Sans, ganijyriya, Hebr. sa2yinr; aixapaySos, Sans, marakata, Hebr.
bdreqet, and others.
A very bold and heterodox view is entertained, as to many of
the words under discvission, by F. Hommel in the work already
mentioned. The Names of the Mammals amongst the South Semitic
Peoples, pp. 290 and 414,/. He regards them, that is to say, not as
comparatively late loans from the Semitic languages, but as
primeval terms of civilisation, common to the original Semites and
the original Indo-Europeans, and the clearest proof of the proximity
LOAN-WORDS IN LATIN. 75
of the original abodes of these two peoples (c/. below, ch. iv.).
This is his opinion as to raipos (Indo-G. staura = orig. Seai. taura),
Xts, Xeojv (Indo-G. luv, laiwa = orig. Seni. lahi'atu, lib'atii), )(pvcr6<;
(IndO'G. r/ha7-ata = orig. Sem. harudu)^ oivos (Indo-G. waina = orig.
Sem. ivainv).
An important controversy on the question whether Egyptian
loan-words (such as Egypt. hari-t = G. (SapLs, "a kind of ship")
stnick root in Greek has arisen in Bezzenberger's Beitrdfje, vii.,
between Ermann and 0. Weise.
A collection of Egyptian words which occur iu classical authors
is given by A. Wiedemann (Leipzig, 1883).
Amongst the various civilisations, to the influence of which the
Italian inhabitants of the Apennine peninsula were exposed in the
course of their most ancient history, Greek alone, as being his-
torically the latest and most penetrating, has left unmistakable
marks on the Latin language. It is, indeed, extremely probable
in itself that, to say nothing of the voyages of the Phcenicians
which can only have grazed Italy (c/. Th. Mommsen, History of
Rome, i.^ p. 128; Eng. trans., pop. ed., i. p. 135), the proximity of
Etruria must have introduced to the Italian tribes, in those
departments in which Etruria appears as the mistress of Italy
(building, ceremonies of worship, popular amusements, ifec), not only
the new ideas, but also along with them their Tuscan designations ;
but these, so long as the Etruscan inscriptions remain undeciphered,
can only be conjectured, not proved. To a relatively late period
belong those words of Celtic or of North Eiiropean origin generally,
which penetrated into Latin, and which are collected by L.
Diefenbach in the Lexicon of the Linguistic Remains of the Celts and
their Neicjhhours, Especially the Teutons and Spaniards, Preserved
by the Ancients {Origines Europcece, Frankfurt, 1861).
But the importance of the Greek loan-words in Latin for deter-
mining the influence exercised by Greece through the agency of
her colonies on the development of Italian cidture, was first put in
its proper light by Th. Mommsen's History of Rome (1854, cf i.
p. 130, and i.^ p. 194, /.; Eng. trans., pop. ed., i. 206). After him,
G. Curtius called attention to the great importance of this subject
iu a lecture given to the Hamburg Association of Philologists,
1855, Hints on the Relation of Latin to Greek. Here Curtius goes
into the terminology of Roman shipbuilding especially, in which he
distinguishes three strata, which give the evolution of the Roman
marine : —
1. A primeval Indo-Germanic layer (words such as navis, remus).
2. A great layer of loan-words fx'om the Greek (e.g., guhernare,
ancora, prora, aplustre, anquina, nausea^ antenna, faseliis, coitus,
&c.).
3. A limited number of genuine Roman, but not Indo-Germauic
words (malus, velum).
The first considerable service in the collection of Greek loan-
words in Latin was rendered by A. Saalfeld in two treatises — Index
Graecwum vocahulorum in linguam latinam translatorum (Berlin,
^6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
1874), and GreeJc Loan-Worch in Latin {Griechische Lehmvorter im
Lateinischen, Programm, Wetzlar, 1877). This is followed by a
work of E. Beermann, Greek Words in Latin [Griechische Worter
im Lateinischen, Sj^rachwissensch. Ahhandl. hervorg. aus G. Ctirtius'
grammatischer GeseUschaft, Leipzig, 1874, pp. 95-110), in Avhich
there is a short summary of the Greek elements of civilisation in
Roman antiquities.
All these works, however, by the side of which we might have
also mentioned contributions by Corssen, Euge, Tuchhandler,
Vanicek, and for the department of rural economy the Haustiere
und Culturjrflanzen of V. Hehn, have been recently superseded by
the marvellously thorough and cautious work of 0. Weise, Greek
Words in Latin {Die Griechischen Worter im Latein, Preisschrift der
Fiirstlich Jahlonoivskischen GeseUschaft, Leipzig, 1882). It falls
into three parts, of the first of which the subject is specially "how
to recognise loan-words ; " the second answers the question : " In
w'hat departments can the influence of Greece be detected;" the
third gives a careful list of the words boiTowed by Latin from
Greek.
To these was added in 1884 the Tensauriis Ltalo-grcecus, a copious,
historical, and critical dictionary of Greek loan-words in Latin by
A Saalfeld, Vienna. Cf. also his Ltalo-grceca, part i. (intercourse
between Hellas and Rome from the most ancient period to the time
of the CcBsars), 1882; partii. (trade and commerce of the Romans),
1882.
A stream of culture in the opposite direction, from Italy to the
Balkan peninsula, is seen most markedly if we set aside Roumanian
in Albanian {cf. above, p. 70), which, "during the period of the
Roman empire in Illyria, was within a hair's breadth of sharing
the lot of other non-Roman languages, and of becoming completely
Latinised " {cf G. Meyer, Die kit. Elem. im Alhanesischen. Grober's
Grundriss, p. 804,/".).
In the north it might be expected beforehand that the depart-
ment of the Teutonic languages would have numerous and im-
portant foreign elements to show. The Teutonic peoples, situated
in the heart of Europe, and by nature susceptible to the advantages
of foreign culture, at the same time form a great basin in which
collect all the streams of culture in Em-ope, from whatever quarter
they may come. This state of things is faithfully mirrored in the
stock of loan-words belonging to the Teutonic languages. Here we
have only to do with the literature which treats of the oldest
elements.
There exist as yet only isolated notices of the loans obtained by
the Teutonic languages from Celtic. But as these go back to a
A'ery early period in the communication between these peoples, it
may well be difficult to distinguish in a given case between kinship
and borrowing {cf part ii. eh. vi.). Greater attention has been
paid to correspondences between Teutonic and Slavonic (words
such as Goth, stikls, O.S. stlkh, Lith. stlklas, "beaker;" Goth.
kinttis, O.S. c^ta, "small corner coin;"Teut. i:>fiug, Slav, phigu,
LOAN-WORDS IN TEUTONIC. 7/
Litli. 2)liugas ; O.H.G. choufan, O.S. kupiti, "buy;" Goth, dulgs,
O.S. diugu, "debt;" Goth. 2^f>^nsjan, O.S. jylesati, "dance," and
many others), though it has not indeed been found possible on the
one hand to distinguish what is related from what is borrowed, or
on the other to establish with certainty the starting-point of a
loan (i.e., whether it started on Slavonic or on Teutonic ground).
Cf. H. Ebel, Ueher die Lehnivorter der deutschen Sjivache, p. 9 ;
Lottner, K. Z., xi. p. 74,/.; as also the collection of Slavonic loan-
words to be mentioned hereafter
But these communications of the Teutons with their northern
neighboui'S are far inferior in importance to the influence which
the culture of southern Europe exercised on the ancient Germans,
when it came in close contact with them. Relatively insignificant,
and only to be traced in Gothic to any great extent, are the
direct points of contact between Greek and Teutonic. On the
other hand, the Roman people undertook, in the history of the
world, the task of delivering the treasures which in part it had
itself first received from abroad, to the people by whom it was
destined one day to be driven from the stage of history. And the
influence of Rome, operating from the two mighty base-lines of the
Rhine and the Danube, which embraced ancient Germany, acted
with such uniform effect on all the Teutonic tribes that, as against
it, the Germans, though separated by differences of dialect, appear
in the matter of language to form but one great homogeneous
whole. What heathen Rome began, Christian Rome completed ;
opening wide the gates to the pressure of the Latin tongue.
After these remarks I confine myself to a brief statement of the
literature of the loan-words in the Teutonic languages, so far as it
is known to me.
1845, R. V. Raumer, Die EinwirTcung des ChristenUims auf die
althochdeutsche Sprache, Stuttgart.
1856, H. Ebel, Uber die Lehnivorter der deutschen Sprache {Pro-
gramm des Erziehungs-Instituts Ostrowo bei Filehne).
1861, W. Wackernagel, Die Uvideutschung fremder Worter (at
first a Programm zu der Promotionsfeier des Pddogogiums in Basel,
then Kleinere Schriften, iii. p. 252,/.).
1874, E. Fcirstemann, Geschichte des deutschen Sprachstammes, i.
pp. 612-18.
1884, W. Franz, Die Lateinisch^Romanischen Elemente im Althoch
deutschen, Strassburg.
1888, A. Pogatscher, Zur Lautlehre der Griechischen, Lateinischen
und Romanischen Lehnivorte im Altenglischen, Strassburg.
1889, F. Kluge, Lateinische Lehnworte im AltgernianiscJien (in
Paul's Grundriss d, germ. Phil., i.).
There has been added to the well-known dictionaries by Grimm,
Schade, Weigand, and others, recently an Etymologisches WiJrter-
buch der deutschen Sprache, by F. Kluge, Strassburg, 1882, 4th ed.
1888.
If we now turn to the eastern neighbours of the Teutonic peoples,
the foreign elements of the Slavonic languages are to be found
78 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
collected by F. Miklosich, Die Fremdworter in den slavischen
Sprachen {Denhschriften der j^hiL-hint. Classe der Kaiserl. AJcademie d.
Wissenschaften, xv. pp. 71-140, Wien, 1867). As we ruu through
this imposing catalogue, alphabetically arranged, foreign influence
on Slavonic, in ancient times, is seen to have observed the following
tendencies. To begin with, the larger nvunber of these foreign
elements belong to that sphere of civilisation which, starting from
the classical soil of the Mediterranean countries, embraces the
Teuto-Slavonic (and partially Celtic) north (cf. words such as G.-Lat.
8ta/3oXos, O.H.G. tiiival, O.S. djavolu ; G. Kalarap, Lat. ccesar, O.H.G.
kaisar, O.S. cesari, &c.). Not unfreqiiently it is doubtful here
whether the loan was effected by Slavonic direct from the Grseco-
Latin or through the agency of the Teutons. In some words both
things have taken place. Thus O.S. Jialezi, "beaker," directly =
Lat. calix; while O.S. kelih, Russ. keljuchii, with their final h, come
straight fron the German (O.H.G. chelih = calix). Further, consider-
able number of Greek terms of civilisation found their way into
Slavonic direct from Byzantine soil, and are limited to the Slavonic
languages {cf. O.S. plimlta, "brick," ttAiV^os ; O.S. kositeru, "tin,"
KacrcrtTepos; O.S. izvisti, "chalk," acr/Jecrros; O.S. kadi, "jug," KaSos;
O.S. horahili, " ship," /capaySos, and others).
Sharply marked off from the class of foreign words just mentioned,
which derive their origin from the south of Europe, are words in
the Slavonic languages coiTcsponding to Teutonic and to some
degree Celtic words (O.S. hracina, O.H.G. pruoh, Lat.-Celt. hracce,
"trousers," Huss. jabedniku, " magistratus quidam," Goth, andhahts,
Celt, amhactus, &c.). The difficulties which these offer we have
already alluded to.
Finally, oriental influences, both Iranian {cf., e.g., Ptuss. Jcorda,
Pers. hard, "knife") and Turko-Tartaric {e.g., Russ. kazanii, Turk,
quazdn, "treasure;" cf. H. Vambery, Diejirimitive Cultur des turho-
tatarischen. Volkes, p. 25), on the Slavonic vocabulary are unmis-
takable.
On the latter, light is thrown by Miklosich, Die tiirMschen
Elemente in den siid-ost und osteuropdif^chen Sprachen, Vienna,
1884. Here this scholar distinguishes three periods of word-borrow-
ing : fii'st, the first century of our era, before the Slavonic peoples
were seized by the impulse to move westwards ; second, the period
which begins with the subjugation of the Slavonic inhabitants of
the right bank of the lower Danube by the Turkish Bulgarians ;
thirdly, the period of the permanent settlement of the Turks in
Europe (fourteenth century).
Since Miklosich, Ant. Matzenauer has collected the loan-words
in Slavonic, in a work Cizi slova ve slovaiishych receh v. Brne, 1870.
Unfortunately, the language in which it is written precludes me
from making use of it. • From numei'ous quotations in Krek's
Introduction to Slavonic Literature {Einleitung in die slavische Lit-
teraturgeschichte), it appears that Matzenauer regards many words
as original Slavonic which Miklosich considers to be borrowed.
The Slavonic elements of the Lithuanian vocabulary are collected
LOAN-WORDS IN CELTIC. 79
in the work of A. Bruckner's already mentioned, Slavonic Words in
Lithnenian {Die slavischen Fremdivorter im Litauischen, Weimar,
1877). Finally, to dwell for a moment on Celtic, extremely little
has been done in the way of putting together the words bor-
rowed from abroad. The most important Latin loan-words in
Old Irish ai-e put together by Ebel {Beitrdge, ii. p. 159,/.), and in
Three Irish Glosses by W. S(tokes), London, 1862, Preface, p. 20,/.
There is further to be noted Bi'uno Giiterbock, Bemerkungen iiber die
Lateinischen Lehnuvrter im Irischen, Leipzig, 1882.
For the foreign elements in the vocabulary of the Romance
languages the principal authority still is Diez's etymological dic-
tionary (.5th ed.). The standard work on Celtic influences therein is
still R. Thurneysen, Keltoromanisches, Halle, 1884 ; important for
the inter-action of the Teutons and Romans is F. Kluge in Grober's
Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, 1887, p. 383,/'., and E.Mackel,
Die Germaniscken Elemente in der franzosischen und provenzalischen
Sprache, Heilbronn, 1887. .Irabic in the Romance countries,
finally, is ti-eated of by Chr. Seybold (Grober's Grundriss, p.
398,/.).
CHAPTER IV.
THE SEAKCH FOR THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE INDO-GERMANIC
PEOPLE.*
The question as to the original home of the Indo-Germanic people
seemed, as we saw in our first chapter, to have been definitely
settled as long as thirty or forty years ago. The reasons which
led investigators to the valley of the Oxus, or the slopes of the
Mustagh or Belurtagh (c/, above, p. 8, note), as the first starting-
point of the Indo-Eui'opeans, were partly of a general nature, con-
sequent upon considering Asia as the birthplace of the human
race and of human civilisation generally, and partly consisted in
the generalisation of certain indications, which the most ancient,
mythical history of the Hindu-Persian peoples seemed to contain,
touching their original homes, and in the application of them to
the other Indo-Germanic tribes.
As soon as a beginning had been made in the way of exploring
the civilisation of Indo-Germanic antiquity, by means of Compara-
tive Philology, attempts were not wanting to discover arguments
adapted to raise this hypothesis as to the origin of the Indo-Euro-
peans to the level of historical certainty. The first to make this
attempt was Adolphe Pictet, the first volume (1859) of whose
Origines Inclo-Europeennes, as we have seen, was devoted to showing
that the home of the Indo-Europeans must be looked for in ancient
Bactria, or, to be more precise, in the country between the Hindu-
Kusch, Belurtagh, the Oxus, and the Caspian Sea.t
The general considerations, on the strength of Avhich Pictet
decides in favour of this district, are in their essence identical with
those which have already been mentioned by us. Only, especial
weight is assigned by Pictet to the geographical distribution of the
Indo-Europeans, in historical time, as showing of itself that Bactria
was the common starting-point of the scattered tribes. We have
* Sketches of the history of the original home question have recently fre-
quently been given : G. Krek, Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte'-^,
1887, p. ^,ff-; by F. v. Spiegel, Die Slavische Periodc, 1887, p. 1, /., and others.
t Pictet allows only branches of the Hindu-Persian stock to climb the lofty
valleys of the Belurtagh and Mustagh, whence they descended again into more
favourable climes, when room had been made for them by the emigration of
other members of the Aryan I'ace {cf. p. 37).
PICTET ON THE ORIGINAL HOME. 8 1
seen above, p. 30, what is his theory of the original connection
and gradual separation of the Indo-Germanic peo])les. , If this is
applied to the geography of Bactria, and the neighbouring countries,
the abode of the forefathers of the Iranians would, according to
Pictet {cf. p. 51, /.), be in the north-east, as far as the boundaries
of Sogdiana, towards the Belurtagh ; of the forefiithers of the
Hindus, again, in the south-east as far as the slopes of the Hindu
Kusch. This situation of the two tribes, surrounded by lofty
mountain ranges, is made, " since the movements of nations depend
on their environment," to explain why they continued together
undivided longer than the other Indo-Europeans. In the south-
west of the district before mentioned, Pictet conceives the Grseco-
Italians to have been situated, and their line of march was over
Herat, through Chorassan, Masenderan towards Asia Minor, and
the Hellespont. Furthest west, even in the original home, dwelt'
the Celts, who moved round the south of the Caspian in the
direction of the Caucasus, made a long halt here, in the fertile
districts of Iberia and Albania,* then burst through the Caucasus
and swept northwards round the Black Sea, in the direction of the
Danube and Europe. Finally, the north of the original home must ■
have been occupied by the forefathers of the Teutons and Slavo- -
Lithuanians, whose abode extended along the Oxus. They took -
their way to Europe, across the broad plains of Scythia to the
Euxine.
Our author, having thus been led by considerations of a general
description to Bacti'ia as the starting-point of the Indo-Europeans,
finds his view further confirmed "in the most brilliant manner".
by a whole string of other arguments, which he derives from the
evidence of language as to the life and culture of the Indo-
Europeans.
To begin with, as determining the general latitude, in which
the original home of the Indo-Europeans is to be looked for, great
weight is assigned by Pictet to the names which the original people
had already given to the seasons of the year, and everything con-
nected with those seasons. Now, as he assumes that the original
Indo-Europeans divided the year into three parts: the winter (hiems),'
with its snow (nix) and ice (O.H.G. is = Iran, isi), spring (ver), and
summer (O.H.G. sumar, Cymr. ham, Iran, hama, Sans, sdmd), he is
led, in accoi-dai:ice with an observation made by Jacob Grimm in his
German Mythology, to the effect that as we go north the year divides-
itself into two seasons, summer and winter, and as we go further
south into thi-ee, four, or even five, to infer a moderate climate and
an intermediate latitude. This, however, agrees most excellently
with the climatic condition of ancient Bactria, which although
situate under the same latitude as Greece and Italy, yet owing to
its elevation above the level of the sea corresponds in climate with
* The similarity in sound of the Caucasian Iberia, Spanish Iberia, Irish
Ivemia (Upvri, O.I. ^riii, ^rend?), and also of the Caucasian Albania and the
British "A\/3(oy, on which the above hypothesis is ha.sed, is undoubtedly casual.
Cf. H. Kiepert, Lchrbuch d. alien Geographic, pp. 86, 481, 528.
F
82 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
central Europe, and has a "winter cold enough to frequently freeze
the Oxus over from bank to bank (pp. 89-109).
A further confirmation of his view, Pictet believes, is afforded
by those series of words which ai'e significant for the topography
of the original Indo-Germanic country. The numerous instances
in which the Indo-Germanic languages agree in the names they
have for hill and valley, river and stream, &c., would, indeed, only
prove that the home of the Indo-Europeans was not destitute of
mountains and water. Of greater importance, however, in his
eyes, is the fact that before their dispersion the Indo-Europeans
were acquainted with the sea, an inference which Pictet draws
from the comparison of Lat. mare, Irish muir, Goth, marei, Lith.
mares, O.S. morje, with Sans, mira, " sea, ocean." Nay ! by
referring this stock of words to the root mr (mar, cf. mors), " to
die," and placing it by the side of the Sans, maru, " waste, wilder-
ness," he believes he is in a position to show that the sea which
lay on the Indo-Europeans' horizon must have been the Caspian.
This sea, separated from the cultivated districts of Bactria by wide
plains of sand, might, to the minds of the original people, easily
concur with the idea of " the waste " {mira, maru).
There next follows the discussion of the three kingdoms of
nature — the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms — always with
especial reference to the points adapted to support the hypothesis
of the Bactrian origin of the Indo-Europeans. Now, since, as we
have seen above, Pictet credits the original Indo-Germanic period
with a knowledge of the most important metals, gold, silver, iron,
copper, and even tin and lead, it follows, in his opinion, that the
original Indo-Germanic country must have been very mountainous
and rich in minerals. But of all the districts of Asia, at any rate
of those which come under consideration as possible starting-points
for the Indo-Europeans, Bactria, watered by the gold-bearing-
stream of the Oxus, and traversed by the metalliferous heights of
the Hindu Kusch and Belurtagh, alone, according to Pictet, is
capable of satisfying the conditions required of the original Indo-
Germanic country by Comparative Philology (pp. 149-87).
In the plant-world, the only forest-tree, the name of which
recurs in Sanskrit, is the birch (Sans. bhUrja = Russ. hereza). But
other equations and the abundance of common names for timber,
tree, forest, &c., show that the native land of the Indo-Europeans
was no treeless waste, but was rich in extensive forests (pp.
188-237).
Of greater importance, on the other hand, are the cultivated
plants. Sanskrit, indeed, varies again in names for fruit-trees ;
nevertheless Pictet considers himself justified by the agreement of
the other Indo-Germanic languages {cf. Teut. apfel, Lith. dhulas, I.
uhall, referred by him to an imaginary d-phala, Sans, phala, " fruit,"
&c.), in ascribing the cultivation of certain kinds of fruit-trees
such as apple, pear, plum, and also the vine, which is discussed in
this connection, to the primeval Indo-Germanic period. Now,
since the naturalists, and principally A. de Candolles in his
PICTET — MUIR, 83
Geographic Botanique, place the home of fruit-trees, as well as of
the vine, in the neighbourhood of Bactria, while Quintus Curtius
praises Bactria's wealth in vines and fruit-trees, and is corroborated,
as regards the districts of Balkh and Bokhara, by modern travellers,
Pictet here gets a fresh confirmation of his Bactrian hypothesis
(pp. 237-57).
The same conclusions are now drawn, in the department of the
cereals and other cultivated plants, of which, as we have seen, by
far the most numerous and most important are ascribed to the
original Indo-Germanic world by^Pictet. Thus, wheat and barley,
the linguistic arguments for the culture of which in the primeval
period have already been examined by us, are, also according to
A. de CandoUes, indigenous to the neighbourhood of Bactria, the
former between the mountain ranges of Cetitral Asia and the
Mediterranean, the latter south of the Caucasus, on the shores of
the Caspian Sea, and perhaps to Persia ; so that again the Indo-
Europeans must be classed amongst the earliest cultivators of these
kinds of grain, and so on (pp. 257-327).
Finally, the animal kingdom is discussed. With reference to
the fauna of the primeval Indo-Germanic period also, Pictet decides
that in general it corresponds to a moderate climate, and parti-
cularly to that of ancient Bactria. The bear, wolf, fox, wild-pig,
badger, hare, marten, pole-cat, weasel, marmot, hedgehog, mouse,
&c., which still have their habitat in Bokhara and the neigh-
bouring districts, our author succeeds in discovering en bloc in the
vocabulary of the primeval Indo-Germanic period. He also credits
it with an acquaintance with the great Asiatic beasts of prey, the
lion and tiger, the former both because the European members of
the Indo-Germanic family agree in the name they give to it (Lat.
leo, &c.), and because its presence in Sogdiana is testified to by
Quintus Curtius, viii, 2 ; the latter without any linguistic evidence
(c/. above, p. 18).
Finally, Pictet finds with regard to the animals domesticated by
man, the number of which, according to him, was, with the excep-
tion perhaps of the ass and the cat, complete even in the primeval
period, that their centre of propagation was in the neighbourhood
of ancient Bactria.
Pictet's methods are unreservedly followed by F. Justi in the
work which we have spoken of above (p. 22), The Primeval
Period of the Tndo-Euro2)eans ( Uber die Urzeit der Indogermanen).
Nor do the investigators who followed Pictet speak less decidedly
in favour of Asia as the starting-point of the Tndo-Eui'opeans, while
they approximate more or less to the locality defined by Pictet.
So A. Schleicher, so F. Misteli, who, however, docs not reckon liona
amongst the primeval Indo-Germanic fauna;* so Max Miiller, who
* " We assume, therefore, that the Arj-ans were not acquainted with the
lion. We are not, however, therefore compelled to shift the southern limit of
the original home of the Aiyans further north, nor to go too far away from India
and Persia. Within the above-mentioned latitudes (40 and 41) we can place
them east of Sogdiana, the most elevated part of Central Asia, whither Curtius'
84 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
nevertheless draws the opposite conclusion to Pictet, from mare
and its cognates, viz., that the Indo-Europeans before their disper-
sion were not acquainted with the sea (cf. Essays, ii. p. 41,/.); so
W. Sonne, who makes the Indo-Europeans while they were yet in
their original country spread far to the north of the Oxus {cf.
above, p. 53), and many others.
After Pictet, the question as to the original home of the Indo-
y Europeans was most thoroughly discussed by J. Muir in the third
chapter of the second volume of his Original Sanskrit Texts, 1860;
second edition, 1871 [Affimties of the Indians tvith the Persians,
Greeks, and Romans, and derivation of all these nations from
Central Asia). However, the contributions of this scholar, after
• an ample refutation in section vi. of Curzon's view (mentioned above,
p. 6), that the Indo-Europeans were of Hindu origin, consist
entirely of extracts from the works of other scholars who had
written in favour of Central Asia {cf section vii.. Central Asia the
Cradle of the Aryans), and Muir, though he adopts the hypothesis,
produces no new arguments in support of it. On the other hand, our
attention is claimed by section viii. of Muir's work {On the National
Traditions of the Indians regarding their oivn Original Country),
for here the points are collected and reviewed which seem to favour
the immigration of the Hindus from a land beyond the Himalayas.
As proofs that the Hindus still preserved the ti'adition of a northern
home he finds : first, the part played in the seasons, in the oldest
hymns of the Rigveda, by the winter, which is gradually displaced
by the autumn ; next, the story to which Lassen, indeed, had called
attention (cf Zeitschrift fur die Kunde d. M., ii. p. 62,/.), the story
of the blessed people of the Uttarakuravah * (the 'OrrapoKopat of
Ptolemy), w'hom tradition places in the remotest north ; third, a
passage in the Atharveda, according to which the simple kushla
(/coo-Tos) grows on the other (the northern) side of the Himalayas ;
and fourth, a passage of the Kaushttaki-brdhmana, which speaks of
the greater purity of the northern tongue. The story of the flood,
in the Q atapatha-brdhmana, which we have mentioned above (p.
8, note), Muir, in the second edition of his book, no longer regards
as conclusive — mainly on grounds of scholarship — the reading
atidudrdva, "he crossed over," sc. this northern mountain, being-
doubtful {cf p. 32.3, note 96).
Section ix. of Muir's work ( Whether any Tradition regarding the
Earliest Abodes of the Aryan Race is contained in the first Fargard of
the Vendidad) discusses, again in the way of extracts, the question
whether the well-known enumeration of sixteen districts, in the
section of the Zend Avesta alluded to, warrants conclusions as to the
lions would not venture. Thus, the European tribes as they moved west would
be confronted by lions for the first time in the plains, not having seen them
in the highlands, as would also be the Persians, who went south-west, and
the Hindus, who went south" {Bericht iiber die Thdtigkeit der St. Gallischen
natunc. Ges., 1866, p. 149).
* Recently placed by H. Zimmer {Altiiid. Lehen, p. 101,/.) rather in the
neighbourhood of Cashmere. Cf, on the other hand, W. Geiger, Ostiran.
Cultur, p. 41.
LATHAM ATTACKS THE ASIATIC HYPOTHESIS. 85
spread of the most ancient Indo-Europcans in general, and of the
Iranians in particular. We see that since the time of Rhode and
Lassen (cf. above, pp. 6 and 8), the views of enquirers had materially
altered on this point. As early as the year 1856, H. Kicpert (in
the Monatsherichten der Berliner Akademie d. W., pp. 621-47) had
seriously shaken the view, which had its warmest defender in M.
Haug, that the first Fargard of the Vendidad was good evidence for
the expansion of the Indo-Europeans (cf The First Chapter of the
Vendidad translated and explained in Bunsen's Agyptens Stelle in
der Weltgeschichte, last volume, pp. 104-.37). Kiepert points out that
however important for history and geography the enumeration of
the sixteen districts may be otherwise, it only represents the extent
of the geographical knowledge of the author of the Zend Avesta, and
that it has absolutely no pretensions to be an account of the
wanderings or gradual expansion of the Iranians, or of the Hindu-
Persians, or of the Indo-Europeans. This interpretation of the
passage, which is undoubtedly the correct one, is shared by other
distinguished orientalists such as Max Miiller and M. Breal (Muir,
op. cit., pp. 314 and 334); indeed, even Spiegel himself, who in the
first volume of his Avesta, p. 5, had decided in favour of the view
of Rhode and Lassen, in the second volume of his work, p. 109, goes
over to the enemy.
However, this one argument could be of but little importance to
the Central Asia hypothesis of the origin of the Indo-Europeans.
Apart from it, a host of ethnographical, historical, and linguistic
arguments seemed to constitute a crushing mass of evidence in its
favour. This was the state of things, when suddenly in England,
the first doubt was cast on the Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans
— on this hypothesis which had almost attained to historical
certainty. R. G. Latham was the man who, in a work abounding
in heterodox views {Elements of Comparative Philology, London,
1862), repeated and supported with further arguments a view
which he had indeed enunciated before (cf The Native Races of the
Russian Umpire, London, 1854; and still earlier, Latham's edition of
Germania, 1851, Ixvii. p. cxxxvii.), "that the original abode of the
Indo-Europeans is rather to be looked for in Europe " (cf , loc. cit,
611,/.).
Latham starts from the assumption that Sanskrit is closely
connected with the Lithu-Slavonic languages, an assumption which
he considers proved, as regards sound-lore in particular, by the
facts, which we have already given, with I'espect to the Indo-
Germanic guttui'als. Consequently the original position of Sanskrit
must have been in contact with that of the Slavo-Lithuanians,
and either Sanskrit must have reached India from Europe, or else
Lithuanian, Slavonic, Latin, Greek, and German must have reached
Eui'ope from Asia. For a decision between these two possibilities,
both equally probable in themselves, there is not the least shred of
evidence forthcoming. " What I have found in its stead is a tacit
assumption that as the East is the probable quarter in which cither
the human species, or the greater part of our civilisation, originated,
86 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
everything came from it. But surely in this there is a confusion
between the primary diffusion of mankind over the world at large,
and those secondary movements by which, according to even the
ordinary hypothesis, the Lithuania, &c., came from Asia into
Europe" (p. 612). The matter reduces itself therefore to a con-
sideration of general probabilities. Now, since Latham proceeds to
argue, a priori it is probable that the smaller class proceeds from
the area of distribution of the greater, and since in natural science
it is usual to derive the species from the area of the genus and not
the genus from the area of the species, and further, since Teutonic is
not derived from English, nor Finnic from Magyar, but the reverse,
therefore the starting-point of Sanskrit also must be sougrht in
Europe and on the eastern or south-eastern borders of Lithuanian.
Or, as it is put in the edition of Germania mentioned above :
"When we have two branches, which belong to the same family
and are separated from each other, one of which covers a larger
area and shows the greater number of varieties, while the other
possesses a narrower range and greater homogeneity, it is to be
assumed that the latter is derived from the former and not the
reverse. To derive the Indo-Europeans of Europe from the Indo-
Europeans of Asia is the same thing in ethnology as if in her-
petology one were to derive the reptiles of Great Britain from
those of Ireland."
Equally serious doubts as to the force of the arguments put
forward in fovour of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans were
expressed in the year 1867 by W. D. Whitney {Language and the
Sttidy of Language, p. 20,/.; cf., also, 1876, Life and Growth of
Language, translated by A. Leskien, p. 203). He is of opinion
that neither myth, history, nor language, warrant any conclusions
whatever as to the situation of the original Indo-Germanic home.
Specially incomprehensible is it to him, how anybody could have
regarded the geographical reminiscences of the Zend Avesta {cf.
above, p. 85) as indicating the direction of the Indo-Germanic
migrations.*
The ranks of the doubters were joined in the following year by
Th. Benfey, who, however, does not share Whitney's sceptical point
of view, but takes his stand with decision in favour of deriving the
Indo-Europeans from Europe. {Cf. Preface to the Worterh. der
indog. Grundspradie, by A. Fick, 1868, p. viii. /., and Geschichte der
SjJrachwissenschaft, 1869, pp. 597-600). " Since geological investi-
gations," he says, on p. ix. of the Preface, "have made it certain
that Europe has been the abode of man for inconceivable ages, all
the reasons which have hitherto been regarded as proving that
the Indo-Europeans came from Asia, and which really have their
basis in the prejudices instilled into us with our earliest education,
* The translator and editor, J. Jolly (1874), on the other hand, expresses
himself decidedly in favour of the East as the original home of the Indo-
Europeans, especially because of "the ever increasing probability of an original
connection between the Indo-Europeans and the Semites" {cf. p. 304,/., of
the German edition).
BENFEY AND GEIGER SUPPORT LATHAM.
)87
fall to the ground." A decisive argument against Asia and for
Europe, however, is afforded by certain facts of language : names
for the great Asiatic beasts of prey, the lion and tiger, are as con-
spicuous by tlieir absence from the original Indo-Germanic fauna
as is that of the Asiatic beast of transport, the camel. " From the
fact," it is added in the History of the Science of Language
{Geschichte der Sprachivissenschaft, p. 600, note), that the Hindus
designate the hon by a word which {sirhha) is not formed from an
Indo-Germanic root,* and the Greeks by an undoubted loan-word
(Xis, Xewv, from Hebr. laish, &c.), it may be inferred that in the
original language the lion was known to neither, but that both
nations made their acquaintance with it after their separation, and
in all probability continued to use the name which had been given
to it by the non-Indo-Germauic peoples amongst whom they first
became acquainted with it. Benfey holds out the promise of a
thorough investigation of the question as to the original home of
the Indo-Europeans, but has not yet accomplished it. All that
we can learn more precisely from later indications is that (cf.
Allgemeine Zeitung, 1875, p. 3270) Benfey lays the scene of Indo-
Germanic evolution close to the boundaries of Asia, in the country
north of the Black Sea, from the mouths of the Danube to the
Caspian. In this way the " swamps rich in salt," which occur on
the shores of the Aral and the Caspian, would just explain the
acquaintance with salt which Benfey ascribes to the original people
{cf. above, p. 40,/.).
Latham's and Benfey's polemic against the assumption that the
home of the Indo-Europeans is to be sought in Asia, found an
eloquent advocate in L. Geiger, who, in an essay written in 1869-
70, On the Original Abode of the Indo-Europeans {JJher die Ursitze
der Indogermanen, published in Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Menschheit, 1871, p. 113,/.), endeavours to show that Germany,
in particular Central and Western Germany, must be regarded as
the original home of the Indo-Europeans. Amongst the arguments
which Geiger produces for his hypothesis, a prominent position is
taken by the character of the vegetationf in the way of trees,
which the original land of the Indo-Europeans is shown to have
had. Besides firs, willows, ashes, alders, hazel-shrubs, there are,
according to Geiger, three forest-trees especially in the names of
which the languages show remarkable agreement : the birch (Sans.
bhUrja, Lith. ber~'as, Russ. ber-eza, Germ, birke), the beech (Lat.
fagus, G. </»7yos, "oak," Germ buche), and the oak (Sans, dru,
Goth, triu, "tree, timber," G. SpSs, "oak," O.I. daur, ditto). Now,
of these trees the beech is to be regarded as peculiarly adapted
to determine the original Indo-Germanic home. Since the home
of this tree is to be looked for in the west of the Prussian Baltic
provinces, while on the other hand, " at the beginning of the
Christian era, the beech had not yet reached Holland [cf Geiger,
op. cit., p. 136) nor England (Cajsar, B. G., v. 12), and in the
• Cf Part iv. ch. ii. t Cf Part iv. ch. iv.
88 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
primeval Iiido-Germanic period had not got anything like so fiir
north, we must go south to the region in which this tree can be
certainly si^pposed to have flourished in ancient times, -which as
regards Germany will take us to about the Thiiringerwald." Geiger
altogether leaves out of consideration in this conclusion the fact
that the name of the beech does not occur amongst the Asiatic
Indo-Europeans. The same argument, therefore, is obviously more
correctly employed by Fick merely to determine the home of the
European members of the Indo-Germanic family {cf. Worterhuch,
p. 1047,/.).
Another fact which is to bear out Geiger's hypothesis is that the
only two kinds of grain which were cultivated in the primeval
period were barley and rye. This view is based, as far as rye is
concerned, on the O.H.G. rocco, Pr. rugis, Lith. rw^m, Russ. roz, &c.,
which in accordance with Grimm and Pictet is compared with Sans.
vriM, " rice." That the original meaning, however, of this series of
w^ords was " rye," follows from the fact that the North European
languages agree as to the meaning both with each other and with
the Thracian /Spt^a {Galenus de alim. facult., i. 13). "A soil on
which rye and barley flourish but not wheat can only be looked
for in the north of Europe ; but for a very early age a more
southern zone also must undoubtedly be excluded from the cultiva-
tion of wheat" (p. 140).
Highly prized, too, in the original Indo-Germanic period, accord-
ing to Geiger, was " the genuinely European colouring plant," woad
(G. lo-ttTis, Lat. vitrtmi, Teut. waid, from tvaisd), which the Indo-
Europeans used for tattooing the body, an idea to which Geiger is
led by Caesar's notice {B. G., v. 14) of the ancient Britons : se vitro
inficnmt, quod cceruleum efficit color em*
A further argument in favour of Germany, in our author's eyes,
is what Pictet had already pointed out, viz., that the Indo-Germanic
languages possess identical names only for spring, summer, and
winter, but not for autumn. Now since, according to Tacitus, Germ.
hiems et ver et aestas intellectum ae vocahula habent, aticHimni per-
inde nomen ac bona ignorantur, the following inference is drawn :
" On the strength of this noteworthy passage, we will venture to
say : if the abode of the original Indo-Germanic people was not
Germany, then at any rate as regards temperature and the eff^ect
produced by the seasons, it must have been exactly like the
Germany of Tacitus" (p. 146).
The fauna of the primeval period, too, was of a northern character.
The sea was perhaps known to the Indo-Europeans only by hearsay,
and Geiger does not make them dwell in its neighbourhood. Their
want of familiarity with it is shown by the absence of a common
name for salt, for mussel, oysters, sails, varieties of fish (except the
names for the eel), &c.
Finally, let us mention that the light-complexioned type of
* The suViject of the tattooing of the body hy the Indo-Europeans is discussed
at greater length, both as regards the process itself and the evidence of language
for it, by Geiger in Zw Entivicklungsgeschichte der Menschheit, p. 71,/. j
CUNO. 89
man, which is claimed as the original Indo-Germanic type, and
which is seen most clearly amongst the Teutons, is supposed to
point to Germany as the original home of the Indo-Europeans.
In the same year in which Geiger's work appeared, J. G. Cuno
also offered his opposition (Forschungen ini Gehiete der alien Volker-
kunde, I. Teil : Die Srythen) to the dominant theory of the Central
Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans. Cuno starts from the assump-
tion that tlie original Indo-Germanic people must have numbered
many millions, a view to which he is led by his absolutely unique in-
terpretation of the kinship of the Indo-Germanic languages and its
causes. He does not explain it by the assumption of a common
derivation of the Indo-Germanic languages from one and the same
original language. His view is that over the whole extent of a great
and homogeneous area idioms different from each other from the
very beginning grew up, having more or less likeness to each other.
Consequently he sees in " the more deep-seated differences between
the individual members of the Indo-Germanic family," not "modi-
hcations of what was once identical," but " independent species of
the same genus" (p. 67). Under these circumstances the question
for him is "to find an extensive area, habitable throughout, as homo-
geneous as possible as regards geography and climate, containing
no "people-sheds " within its limits, and such, therefore, that in it a
homogeneous people could take its rise and have an organic growth "
(p. 31). Such an area in Cuno's opinion occurs but in one place on
our planet, and it includes the east of Europe, Northern Germany
and the north and west of France, i.e., the whole enormous tract of
land between lat. 45 and 60, extending from the Ural to the
Atlantic Ocean. If the Lithuanians, Slavs, Teutons, and Celts, in
this way, are the original inhabitants of the lands they now occupy,
the original home of the Greeks no less, as their myths and lan-
guage indicate, must be looked for in the north and in the neigh-
bourhood of tlie Lithuanians. This follows, not only from wdiat is
said by Herodotus (iv. 108), who knows of a town of the Geloni in
the; land of the Budini* possessing a Greek cult and language,
but especially from the close affinity which Cuno asserts exists
between Greek and Lithuanian (pp. 42-45 ).t
In favour of his hypothesis of the origin of the Indo-Europeans,
Cuno has another argument, which the science of language seems
to him to offer of itself. " If the original home of the jjeople and
language of the Indo-Europeans is the lowland and mountain
* Cf. Kiepert, Lehrbuch d. altcn Geographic, p. 342.
t As we shall not return to this subject, we may as well say here that the
arguments brought forward by Cuno to show the close kinship of Litluianian
and Greek, from their very nature can prove absolutely nothing. The gram-
matical points of agreement between Greek and Lithuanian, which Cuno pro-
duces, either are to be found in, or may with certainty be inferred of, other
languages also (Lith. xoHkun = \vKwv, but also Slav, vliikii and Goth, vutfi^
vluk-dm diWil vulf -dm ; Lith. da-siu-hiiaw, but also Irish fortius, tiasu :
fortiniiaim, kc). Nowhere is an attempt made to discover any new formations
peculiar to the two languages. As for what Herodotus says, the historian
himself explains the Geloni as descendants of Greek refugees from the Pontic
emporia.
90 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
spiirs of Central and Eastern Europe, if language and people had
their origin there, then there must be numerous points of contact
between the Indo-Germanic family of languages and its immediate
neighbour, the Finnic family " (p. 50). And as a matter of fact,
Cuno contrives to collect, in the way of numerals, pronouns, and
names of kin, a whole heap of Finno-Indo-Germanic equivalents,
which, according to him, cannot be due to boiTOwing, but must have
been the common property of the two languages at the time of
their origin. As, now, it follows that the Finnic and Indo-
Germanic families of language were neighbours from the beginning,
and as, on the other hand, it would be absurd to assume that the
Finns and Indo-Europeans, for instance, undertook a joint emigra-
tion from Asia, the certain inference is " that the primeval Indo-
Europeans lived then, where the main body of them are to be
found at the present day, and that the movements which took
place were from South-East Russia through the Tui-anian steppes
to Persia, and not, reversely, to South-East Russia."
AVhatever may be our opinion about the arguments alleged in
support of deriving the Indo-Europeans from Europe, the fact is
to be noted that the demurrers of the scholars mentioned gave the
most violent shock to the sway of the dominant hypothesis of the
Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans. The last twenty years,
therefore, may be justly termed a period of struggle, as between
the two conflicting views.
We now pass to those investigators who endeavoured to maintain
the older thesis, and to support it from new points of view.
Amongst them the first in point of time to mention is A. Fick,
who in the second edition of his Comparative Dictionary (1870-
71), with a tacit protest against Benfey's remarks in the first
edition, places the home of the Indo-Europeans in the wide district
of Turania, "between the Ural, Bolor, and Hindu Kusch."
A real polemic against the adherents of the new teaching was
first begun by A. Hofer (A''. Z., xx. pp. 379-84, Die Heimat des
indog. Urvolkes). The venerable scholar who helped to lay the
foundation of Comparative Philology in Germany, can only under-
stand the new teaching " as due to the endeavour of modern
science " to give a firm basis all at once to any theory " even if
only by way of experiment, and as it were for the sake of a
change." But though he passes sentence on the arguments adduced
in favour of Europe from this point of view, the solitary argu-
ment which seems to him conclusive in favour of the Asiatic
home of the Indo-Europeans is that Sanskrit and Zend, having pre-
served the purest and most primitive forms, must, therefore, have
remained in the closest proximity to the original Indo-Germanic
abode.*
To refute a single one of the reasons alleged against the deriva-
tion of the Indo-Europeans from Asia was the object of Carl
* As against this argument Whitney had even in 1867 {Language and the
Study of Language) pointed on the one hand to Armenian, and on the other
to Lithuanian and Icelandic, which are absolutely inconsistent with it.
THE LION AS A WITNESS. 9 1
Pauli in a special paper, The Name of the Lion amongst the Indo-
Ertro2^eans {Die Benennung des Loiven hei den Indogermanen, ein
Beitrag znr Losung der Streitfrage iiber die Heimat des indog.
VoUces, Miinden, 1875). Hitherto the general tendency had been
to follow Benfey's opinion (cf. Griech. Wiirzellexicon, ii. 1, and
above, p. 87), that the agreement of the European names for
the lion was due to borrowing, that the Slavo-Lithuanian forms
(^emaitic lewas, O.S. Iwu) were borrowed from the German (O.H.G.
leu'o), the German from the Latin (lea), the Latin from the Greek
(Aewi', Ats), the Greek from the Semitic (Hebr. laish). Pauli, on the
other hand, traces all these different forms of the lion's name back
to no less than seven " ethnic " fundamental forms {laivant,
laivantja, &c.), which are all supposed to have proceeded from a
"pro-ethnic" substantive root, liv, "pale yellow" (Lat. livor,
lividus). The form of this substantive root liv is given on the one
hand by the G. Xis, on the other by the Lithuanian form liutas,
" lion " (: liv as siiitas, " sewn " : siv), which disposes of the entire
theory of borrowing.*
After all, however, granting the correctness of all these assump-
tions and inferences, we can only infer, as Pauli himself recognises,
that there were lions in the original home of the Indo-Europeans.
The business of the advocates of a European home for the Indo-
Europeans would then at once be to demonstrate the existence
of lions in Europe for early ages, a task which a well-known
passage of Herodotus (vii. 125) seems to render by no means
impossible.
The difficulty of producing the lion as a witness for any
hypothesis whatever as to the home of the Indo-Europeans, is on
the whole rightly insisted on by Hans von Wolzogen (Zeitschrift
fur ViJlkeriisychologie und Sjn'achtv., viii. p. 206,/.). In its place,
however, he contrives to produce a new "demonstration" of the
Asiatic home of the Indo-Europeans, derived this time from
mythology. Wokogen starts from the well-known ancient Hindu
myth of Indra's conflict with Vritra or Ahi, the fire-breathing
dragons, which have driven off the milk-giving cows. This myth
is rightly interpreted as a conflict with the scorching heat of
summer, which holds the rain clouds captive. Now, as our author
traces the myth amongst kindred nations, especially the Greeks
and Gei'mans, he comes to the following conclusion : " I found the
idea of the fire-breathing dragon employed in the extremest north
as the mythical representation of the winter's cold, defeated by the
sun-hero (Siegfried and Fafnir, Siegfried and Brunhild, who is
surrounded by the burning bi-ake), and the same idea employed jn
the warm south as the mythical representation of the parching heat of
* Recently, however, A. Bruckner, Die slai-ischcn FrernchriJrter im Litauis-
chen, 1877, p. 105, has conjectured that Lith. luitas, "lion," which only
occurs in marchen, is borrowed from the white Russian Ijiiti/j, "the evil one '
(in marchen, Ijuta designates the dragon). Lith. levas, liavan, would be also
derived from the Polish lev, Ivica (p. 103).
See on the whole lion-question, part iv. ch. ii.
92 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the s\m, from which the earth is rescued by the god of the thunder-
storm. Obviously the latter idea being the more natural is the
earlier, while the former, which seems almost contradictory to reason,
is only a traditional idea, the thing symbolised having entirely
changed. If this was correct, it was obvious that the nations,
amongst whom this mythical idea survived, had come from the
country in which the idea did correspond exactly to the thing.
By this, however, in my opinion, the Asiatic home of the Indo-
Europeans was demonstrated." The whole tendency of this, though
not expressed, is obviously to make India the home of the Indo-
Europeans.
An extremely energetic advocate of the Asiatic hypothesis was
now found in no less a person than Victor Helm. In his short
paper. Salt {Das Salz, 1873), he defends the view which we have
seen to be well founded that the equation Lat. sal, G. a As, itc, is
by no means Indo-Germanic, but is limited to the European
languages. From this Hehn draws the conclusion, p. 16, that the
Indo-Europeans, " when they were tending their flocks in their
original abode on the crest and the slopes of the mighty Bolur-
tagh, as it stretches along the meridian," knew nothing of salt.
It was the western members of the primeval people, who marched
towards the setting sun, and, when they came to the steppes
of the Aral and the Caspian, abounding in salt swamps and half-
dry salt lakes, found a name for the hitherto unknown mineral.
Of their further wanderings Hehn also gives an attractive pictvire
which may be appended in a note.*
V. Hehn availed himself of the second edition of the Cultur-
pflanzen unci Haustiere (1874) to pour ridicule and censure on the
adherents of the European hypothesis. " So it fell out," he says, in
the Preface, p. viii., "that in England, the land of oddities, an
original took it into his head to place the primitive abode of the Indo-
Europeans in Europe ; a Gottingen professor from some Avhim or
other appropriated the discovery, an ingenious dilettante of Frank-
furt laid the cradle of the Aryan family at the foot of the Taunus,
* " Their further wanderings lecl them from the depression of the Aral and
the Caspian, by the way which has been appointed for the nations by nature
lierself — through the South Russian steppes, on the north of which began
dense forests of firs, while on the slope of the Carpathians was a luxuriant,
impenetrable growth of foliaceous trees. Here, where the mountains have
their out-posts, a division took place : along the Black Sea, and the lower
Danube, where pasture-land continues, went the bands which later became the
Pelasgo-Hellenes and Italians, Thracians, and Illyrians ; in modern Poland,
by the Baltic, tlirough the tremendous plain, which stretches as far as Holland,
spread the subsequent Celts, who also crossed the Channel to the British
Islands, the subsequent Teutons who reached Scandinavia by the Belt and
the Sound, and finally, the Lithuanians and Slavs, the last stragglers, who
remained in closest pi'oximity to the point of separation. In the rear of
the emigrants, on the immeasurable plains which they had evacuated, poured
the Persian stream, from the Massagetai and SaciB to the Sarmatse and Scyths,
the JazygiB, and Alanse ; while south of the Caspian, as far as Asia Minor,
another arm of this Persian flood divided the compact mass of the Semites,
and sent its larger half south, while some of its advanced posts even reached
the Propontis and the Aegean." Das Salz, pp. 21 and 22.
HEHN AND KIEPERT. 93
and painted in the scenery." He then gives the reasons for this
dogmatic deliverance. They are, it must be confessed, the very
identical reasons which we have frequently met in the older
investigators who argued for Asia, from Pott (c/. above, p. 7),
nay ! even from Adelung, onwards. " According to this, therefore,
Asia, that enormous quarter of the globe, the officina gentium,
i-eceived a great part of its population from one of its own projec-
tions, niggardly endowed by nature, a small peninsula, jutting out
into the ocean. All (?) other movements of which history knows
are from east to west, and brought new forms of life, though
also destruction, to the west; only this, the oldest and the
greatest, went in the opposite direction and inundated steppes
and wildernesses, mountains and sunny lands, to an enormous
extent. And the scene of our first origines, to wdiich we are
carried back by dim memories, as to the childhood of our
race, the scene of the first stirrings, and yet uncertain steps of
human activity, where as we instinctively feel, Aryans and Semites
dwelt side by side, nay! perhaps were one, lay, not at the sources
of the Oxus, by the Asiatic Taurus or the Indian Caucasus, but in
the swampy, pathless, trackless forests of Germany, traversed but
by the eland and the aurochs. And the oldest form of speech we
are no longer to look for in the monuments of India and Bactria —
since the nations only arrived here after a long and demoralising
journey — we hear its jangle in the mouths of the Celts and the
Teutons, who remained inert and impassive in the place of their
birth."
We ought, however, to mention that the preface containing
these remarks is not to be found in the last editions of Hehn's
work.
The greatest historian of culture was followed in his decision in
favour of the Asiatic derivation of the Indo-Europeans by the most
distinguished representative of historical geography in Germany,
H. Kiepert. In the extraordinary length of the area occupied by
the Indo-Europeans, especially before the expansion of the Teutons
and Slavs northwards, Kiepert (cf Lehrhuch der alten Geographiey
1878, p. 23,/) sees an indication that the expansion of the Indo-
Europeans probably followed the direction of the length of this
area. That this expansion took place from east to west and not
in the opposite direction, is supported in his opinion by " the
general analogy " of other movements. The dividing point of the
Hindu-Persians, at any rate, was certainly at the eastern end of
the Indo-Europeans' historical area of distribution in the valleys of
the Indus and Oxus.
As regards the rest of the movement, Kiepert is of opinion that
the mass of the Indo-Europeans followed the direction of the
Taurus range, and separated for the first time in Western Asia,
into a half north of the Caucasus and another south of it. He also
considers it probable that the Eiu-opean branch dwelt as a compact
mass in Central Europe for a time, "since even in the most ancient
times they had much more complete possession of the centre and.
94 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
in the west, of the north of this quarter of the globe than they
had of the southern peninsulas." The extension of the Italian and
Greek tribes from the north to the south can be traced in periods
of which we have historical knowledge. The first tribes to migrate
from Central to Southern Europe were the Illyrians (the last remains
of whom are the modern Albanians) and Ligurians, the former of
whom were subsequently broken through by the Greeks, the latter
by the Italians.
A revival of interest in the investigation of the original Indo-
European home seems to have been provoked in France by the
second edition of the Origines Indo-Etiropeennes of A. Pictet, 2 vols.,
1877. The author's views and arguments to prove Bactria to be the
original country of the Indo-Europeans, remain still the same as we
have already set them forth above {cf. p. 80).* We need not there-
fore dwell on it. In the year 1879 the Paris Anthropological Society
took up the question of the original home and original physical type
of the Indo-Europeans, without, however, establishing any definite
results. There resulted, however, from these proceedings f a work
by C. A. Pietrement, Les Aryas et leur premiere patrie [Revtie de
linguUtique et de philologie comparee, April 1879, and published
separately, Orleans and Paris), for whom it was reserved to refer
our forefathers to a place, their departure from which certainly
calls for no explanation — that is Siberia. Pietrement starts from
the Airyana Vaejahh of the Vendidad, to which (quite arbitrarily^)
he refers a passage in the Bundehesh {cf. xxv.), in which it is
said : — " There the longest summer day is equal to the two
shortest days of winter, the longest winter night is equal to two
summer nights." Now the only latitude which suits this descrip-
tion is lat. 49' 20", which in Central Asia would take us to the
district of Alatau, in Russian Turkestan. This original idea is
then supported by an argument taken from A. Pictet, who, as we
* Throughout the second edition, I will here remark, Pictet in almost all
points stands by his main conclusions, as a simple glance at the chapter Hesume
general et Conclusions, suffices to show, for it is word for word identical in the
two editions. This, however, cannot excite surprise, for Pictet remains pre-
cisely the same as regards his methods. Unfortunately the author died too
soon to defend and justify in an ample preface his standpoint against the
wicked savants d'outre Rliin, vrais gladiateurs de la repuhlique des lettres — to
bon'ow the flattering appellations used by the editors of the posthumous work.
But in the second edition also, Pictet assigns far too little weight to the agree-
ment of equations in their grammatical form ; and we still meet at almost every
step the uncritical employment of Sanskrit which we have characterised above.
"What difficulty Pictet has in parting from the unsafest of Sanskrit words is
shown, for example, by the fact that on i.^ p. 331, he still continues to hope
that the supplement to the St Petersburg dictionary will produce the alleged
Sans, arhha, "grass," alluded to above (p. 20), all in vain.
Nevertheless, it must not be defiied that Pictet has purified his work in
many points. Warm recognition is deserved not only by many a happy stroke
in etymology, but also by the extraordinarily wide reading which Pictet shows
in the literature of his subject. On the whole, it may be said of the second
edition of the Origines as of the first, that the professed student of language
cannot read it without being frequently stimulated, but the anthropologist and
historian of culture may be led into gruesome errors by it.
t On which see Penka, Origines Ariacae, pp. 9, 11.
VAN DEN GHEYN. 95
have seen above, endeavours to show that the Indo-Europeans were
acquainted with the sea, and that a sea to the west of them, only
this western sea is not as Pictet made out, the Caspian, but the
Balkach in Sibei'ia. Finally, the Hara Berezaiti of the Avesta is
to represent the summit of the Alatau range.
Howe vol", this hypothesis of Pietrement's obtained no recognition
whatever in France : on the contrary, it was vigorously combated
in two special essays, first by Arcelin in LOrigine des Aryas
(Bevue des Questions Scientifiques, Janvier, 1880, p. 331), secondly
by De Harlez {Les Aryas et leur premiere 2}(i'trie. Refutation de
M. Pietreynent). " L' Avesta," the well-known Zend scholar, con-
cludes by very jxistly saying, " ne pent fournir aucune renseigne-
ment precis relativement a la patrie primitive des Aryas. Tout y
est erenian ou eranise ; tout meme y est approprie au zoroastisme ;
c'est k dire au dualisme mazdeen. On pourrait y decouvrir peut-etre
I'indication de I'Eran primitif ; mais on y chercherait en vain celle
de la patrie des premiers Aryas asiatiques, bien plus vainement
encore celle des Aryas primitifs."
The three works last mentioned I have not seen for myself.
They are known to me only from the analysis given of them by
J. van den Gheyn, in a careful little paper, Le herceau des Aryas,
etude de geographique historique, Bruxelles, 1881. Van den Gheyn
in this paper, which falls into five chapters (I. Hypotheses tire'es des
traditions avestiques; II. Systemes fondes sur les traditions indiennes;
III. La philologie comparee et U opinion de Pictet; IV. Theorie de
Vorigine europeenne des Aryas; V. Explorations geographiques dans
I'Asie centrale), treats almost exclusively of the history of the
question as to the original home of the Indo-Europeans (with
extracts), without concealing his own inclination for Central
Asia and Bactria, to the latter of which he sees himself drawn by
A. Pictet, whose importance and method he much overrates (p. 65).
The final solution of the question in dispute, Van den Gheyn hopes
for from a more careful investigation of the ethnology and geography
of Central Asia. The information on these points constitutes the
most valuable portion of the little work, which is continued in
two papers : Les Aligrations des Aryas (Extrait des Bulletins de la
Soci^t4 royale de Geographie d'Anvers, 1882), and Le sejour de
I'humanite postdiluvienne {Extrait de la Revue des Questions Scien-
tifiques, 1883).
The attempts to demonstrate the Asiatic origin of the Indo-
Europeans, which we have reviewed thus far, are based essentially
on the culture, languages, and i*elations of the Iudo-p]uropean
peoples themselves. We have now to make mention of a mode of
argument which appears to lead to the same conclusion by
establishing apparently a closer connection between the Indo-
Europeans and another family of languages and peoples.
In researches as to the original home of the Indo-Europeans, wo
have frequently {cf. pp. 9, 86) come across the idea that the Indo-
Europcans must have migrated from Asia into Europe, and not
the other way, because affinity of language connects them with
g6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the other main branch of the white race, whose original abode,
however, nobody would think of looking for in Europe — the
Semites.
This assumption of an original connection and kinship between
the Semites and the Indo-Europeans must, however, in spite of
F. Delitzch {Studien iiber indogermanisch-semitische Wurzelver-
wandfsc/iaft, Leipzig, 1873, where, pp. 3-21, a summary of the
history of this important controversy is given), still be designated
as baseless, or at least, as pi'emature * at the present day, and so
the state of the primitive Semites would have little interest for
Indo-European studies, were it not that attempts have recently
been made to bring the original homes of the Semites and the
Indo-Europeans together in another way. Whereas, according to
the views of distinguished Semitic scholars (E. Schrader and
Sprenger), the starting-point of the Semitic peoples was to be
placed to the south of their historical area of distribution, in the
direction of Arabia, A. V. Kremer tries, in the essay already
quoted. The Loans of Semitic Culture in the Plant ami Animal
Kingdoms (Sejnitische Culturentlehnu7igen aus dem Tier- undPjianzen-
reiche), by combining Comparative JPhilology with investigations
into the geography of animals and plants, to make out that the
migration of the Semites into the lands they now occupy must
have been from the north. A comparison of the Semitic languages,
as regards the names of their flora and fauna, shows (1) that the
Semites were acquainted with the camel before their dispersion,
and (2) that at this time the palm and the ostrich were unknown
to them, which yet, on the assumption that Arabia was the
original home of the Semites, could not fail to have been known
to them. " The land, how^ever," he proceeds, " in which the palm
and the ostrich are wanting, but the camel has been native since
primeval times, can only be looked for in the immeasurable
plateaux of Central Asia, which lie west of the Pamir terrace, between
the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and have been designated by a com-
pletely unprejudiced naturalist (Schmarda, Geograjjh. Verbreitung
der Tiere) as the centre from which the Species equina was pro-
pagated." Here began the migration of the Semites, which at first
followed the course of the Oxus in a south-west direction, skirted
the southern shores of the Caspian, proceeded into Media by one
of the passes of the Elburz, and thence "through the gorge
of Holwan, the passage of all peoples to and from Media," into
the deep basin of the Assyrian and Mesopotamian depression,
where the differentiation of the Semitic peoples was gradually
effected.
Kremer's arguments are followed, with corrections and additions,
by Fritz Hommel, both in his essay. The Original Abode of the
Semites {Die urspriinglichen Wohnsitze der Semiten, Beilage z. AUg.
* What Ascoli [Kritische Studien zur Sprachivissensclmft, Weimar, 1878,
xxxxv., note 11) says on the morphological analysis of the Semitic roots, the
triliteral character of which is the greatest obstacle to their comparison with
Indo-European roots, is very remarkable.
THE ORIGINAL SEMITIC HOME. 97
Zeitung, 1878, No. 263), and in his work. The Names of the
Mammals amongst the Southei'n Semites (Die Namen der Sdugetiere
hei deii sikhemitischen Vulkern., 1879, p. 406,/.).
His object above all is " to show, in the original Semitic fauna,
the existence of animals which either have never been in Arabia, or
at least only occur in quite isolated instances." In this class he
ranks the original Semitic names for the bear (duhbti), the wild-ox
{ri'mti), the panther {namiru). He allows only a secondary
weight to the absence, from the original Semitic fauna, of, the
names of such auimals as are peculiar to the fauna of Arabia, such
as the ostrich, jerboa, and lynx of the desert, for " it may be only
accident that the word in question survives in some Semitic
languages, but has been lost in others and then replaced, usually
by new words, the work of other tribes."
The way in which the various Semitic peoples branched off from
the original stock is conceived by F. Hommel (cf. Die Sprachge-
schichtliche Stellung des Bahylonisch Assyrischen S. A.) as follows : —
From original Semitic (I.) in very early times the Babylonian-
Assyrian detached itself, while Syrian, Phenician, and Arabic
(original Semitic, II.) I'emained united for some considerable time.
This follows not only from a consideration of the Semitic perfect
tense, but also fx'om the names of the vine, olive and fig trees,
date-palm and camel, which coincide only in original Semitic (II.).
Finally, the Syro-Phenician-Arabians, still undistinguished, settled
in Mesopotamia. Here the domestication of the date-palm, hitherto
only known as a wild variety, took place.
Although, therefore, Hommel will only go as for as Mesopotamia,
by this route, for the last halt of the original Semites before their
dispersion, still he adopts Kremer's views as to the prehistoric
migration of the Semites from Central Asia into the land of the
two rivers, mainly because he regards primeval contact between the
Indo-Europeaus and Semites, whom, however, he does not think to
be connected by affinity of language, as demonstrated by a series
of civilised terms common to both families of speech and peoples
(cf. above, p. 75). These civilised concepts, common to the
original Semites and original Indo-Europeans, in the sense that they
were borrowed by one from the other, Hommel has discussed more
thoroughly in a very interesting essay, Aryayis and Semites {Arier
uml Semiten, Correspondenz Blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir
Anthropologic, Ethnologic, und Urgeschichte, 1879, Nos. 7 and 8).
They are in his opinion as follow : —
1. and 2.
Grig. Indo-G.
Grig. Semit.
Meaning.
staura
tauru
steer
karna
karmc
the steer'
's weapon, the horn
laiwa, liw
labi'atu
lib'atu
lion
gharata
harUdu
gold
sirpara
iarpic
silver
waina
wainu
vine
To this view Hommel still holds in all essentials (Netie Werke
gB PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
iiber die Urheimat der Indogermanen, Archiv f. Anthrop., xv. Suppl,
163, _^.). He lays especial weight on the agreement between the
original Semitic (II.) wainu with the G. Fotvos, Lat. vinum, Alb. vene.
This word was leanit from a common source by the western Indo-
Enropeans, as on their journey from the interior of Asia, they passed
to the north of the Caucasus, a land of wine from of old, and by
the Semites when they, also on the road from the interior of Asia,
settled after the departure of the Babylonians to the south of those
mountains.
Against these hypotheses of Kremer and Hommel, which would
place the original home of the Semites to the north, it must be
remarked that other scholars have by no means given up the belief
in the Arabian origin of this race. Cf., e.g., E. Meyer, Geschichte
des Alfertwns, i. 208.
Thus, though there was an imposing list of savants, who adhered
to the hypothesis of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans, still
serious doubts continued to exist as to it; and as well as the
*' English original," the " whimsical professor," and " the ingenious
dilettante," there were some investigators, of good repute, who
either desired to see the original Indo-Germanic home absolutely
placed in Europe, or who at least endeavoured to show the nullity
of the arguments adduced in favour of Asia.
Anthropological research, again, which was steadily extending its
borders, supported the new theory with much enthusiasm, as we
shall see.
Let us here first name the well-known ethnologist and student
of language, Friedrich Miiller (cf. E. Behm, Geographisches Jahrhuch,
iv., 1872 ; Prohleme der linguistischen Ethnographie und Allgemeine
Ethnographic, 1873, p. 69). Miiller fully agrees with the reasons
which, as we have seen, were given by Benfey and Geiger in favour
of Europe as the original home of the Indo-Europeans; and, with
Benfey, lays the scene of the parting of the Indo-Germanic peoples
in South-Eastern Europe. Only he will not allow the Indo-
Europeans to pass as autochthones even of this country. Rather,
they migrated hither at an inconceivably early period from the high
lands of Armenia. This assumption is necessarily required by the
racial identity of the Indo-Europeans with the Hamo-Semites and
the Caucasians.*
The grounds on which the Asiatic hypothesis rests have been
most thoroughly illumined by Friederich Spiegel (cf Ausland,
1869, p. 282,/.; Ausland, 1871, p. 553,/.; Das Uriand der Indo-
germanen, Ausland, 1872, p. 961,/.; Eranische Altertumshunde, i.
1871, p. 426,/.). To bring out only what is most important in
these instructive essays, Spiegel also, as we have seen above, is of
* Armenia's claims to be the original home of the Indo-Europeans, were
later supported by H. V>v\mrA\okr {Uehcr den Ursitz der Indog., Basel, 1884).
He starts particularly from the names for rivers, Kur and Araxes, which are
so widelj' distributed over Indo-European territory : their origin can only be
looked for in Armenia, where the two rivers appear in brotherly unity. Cf.
Vf. Lit. Centr., 1885, No. 18.
I
SPIEGEL — POSCHE. 99
opinion that in the first chapter of the Vendidad there is absolutely
no question of migration, and that in the Yima (Dschemschid) of
the second chapter we have a purely mythical personage. The
Airy ana Vaejanh Spiegel would rather look for in the north of
Atropatana. With especial thoroughness our author illumines the
raid on the Grseco-Bactrian kingdom, made in the second century
before Christ by the Ytceti, who ai'c mentioned in Chinese authorities,
and whose movements were construed by earlier students (c/. above,
p. 9), as the last waves of the flood of Indo-Europeans from
Central Asia, while their later name of Yeta was interpreted as
Gete or Goths. Against this, attention is rightly called to the fact
that the Yiieti were regarded as Thibetans by the Chinese them-
selves, and that the Usiui, whose blue eyes and fair beards, accord-
ing to the Chinese accounts, gave the first occasion to the hypothesis,
had nothing to do with the destruction of the Grseco-Bactrian
kingdom, but remained quiet in their abodes in Dsungarei.
Equally little can the Tadschiks of Khashgar and Jarkand, who
speak Persian, and practise agriculture, prove, accoixiing to Spiegel,
in favour of the Central Asiatic hypothesis ; for everything
indicates that these Tadschiks have spread from Persia north-
wards.
The argument derived from the more primitive character of
ancient Sanskrit and Persian, with regard to the home of the
Indo-Europeans, is rejected by Spiegel on the same grounds as by
Whitney.
What is, however, especially insisted upon is that the elevated
plateau of Pamir, which has lately been claimed, particularly by
Monier Williams {Nineteenth Century^ 1881; cf. Van den Gheyn,
op. cit., p. 26), as the original home of the Indo-Europeans, being
elevated 15,000 above the sea level, and being surrounded by
mountains about 7000 higher still, is no fitting place of abode for
a primitive people. "And how could that district have contrived
to hold the countless hosts which we must suppose to have existed,
if we assume that this mass of Indo-Europeans not only wrested
Iran, together with a large portion of India and of Europe, from
their original inhabitants, but also settled these tremendous tracts
of land, and assimilated the subjugated natives so thoroughly that
scai'ce a trace of their nationality is left behind?"* Now, though,
on the other hand, Spiegel will only allow the derivation of the
Indo-Europeans from Europe to be a hypothesis, he is of opinion
that Southern Europe between lat. 45 and lat. 60 appears to be
fit for a primitive people. In this low-lying country, traversed
only by inconsiderable hills, wheat and rye flourish excellently, in
* Cf. also Van den Gheyn, Lc Berccau des Aryas, p. 28: "Nous pouvons
bien accorder que les Aryas primitifs etaient repandus dans les contrees avoisi-
nant le Pamir ; raais il nous sera toujours difficile d'admettre que sur ce
plateau si desherite une race ait pue developper. Cette maniere de voir est
confirniue par les reeits de tous les voyageurs modernes." And by the same
author: — Nouvclles Reclierches sur le Berccau des Ari/as {Exirait dc la JRcvue
Pr6cis historiques, 1882), and Le Plateau de Pamir d'aprls les ricentes cxploiu-
tions {Extrait de la Revue des Questions Scientifiques, 1883).
lOO PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
a climate which on the whole is unifoi-m. From this centre, too, it
is easiest to conceive the expansion of the Indo-Europeans east and
west, in which migrations, in the proper sense of the term, played
a relatively unimportant part. "As the original Indo-Germanic
people," he says, in Audand, 1871, p. 557, "expanded more and
more, and not only absorbed other peoples at various points on its
borders, but also appropriated their ways of looking at things,
differences could not but arise, which first showed themselves in
the formation of dialects; in the course of time these dialects
achieved an independent existence, which, in the absence of a
written language, and owing to the limited intercourse with the
other branches, especially the more remote, took ever deeper root,
and finally completely dissevered the separate members from the
original mother."
Theodor Pcische in his book, The Aryans [Die Arier, ein Beitrag
zur historischen Anthropologic, Jena, 1878, pp. 58-74), tries to point
out a precise and definite spot as the home of the Indo-Europeans,
and like Cuno, finds it in East Europe. The place of their origin
is located by him to the south of the West Russian ridge of land,
in a district traversed by the Pripet, the Beresina, and the Dnieper,
in the enormous wide-spreading marshes of Pinsk. This marvel-
lous hypothesis is based essentially on a physiological argument.
In this district, according to the communications of a Russian
savant* (c/. p. 67), the phenomenon of depigmentation or albinism
is of extremely common occurrence, and is clearly marked in
men, animals, and plants. Only in such a locality, however, is it
possible to conceive the origin of the great blonde race of mankind,
that is, according to Posche, of the Indo-Europeans. This pre-
historic sojourn in the swamps would also explain the tendency
which occurs amongst the most ancient Indo-Europeans in
Switzerland, Italy, &c., to erect their huts on piles, even when the
nature of the soil did not require it. A north-eastern rather than
a south-eastern locality in Europe seems to him to be indicated as
the original abode of the Indo-Europeans, not only by the fact
that of all living Indo-European languages Lithuanian possesses
"the greatest antiquity," but also by the circumstance that the
art of riding is demonstrably of relatively late date amongst the
Indo-Europeans. " If, now, we push the original home nearer
to the steppes of the south-east, acquaintance must early have
been made with the Mongol Turkish tribes, the oldest riders
* Mainow at the International Congress of Geographers at Paris, 1875
(Arckiv fiir Anthropologie, viii. p. 3). It deserves to be noted that V.
Fischer, whose thorough account of the Pinsk swamps {Mitteil. dernaturf.
Oesellsch. in Bern, 1843-44) is given by Posche, knows nothing of albinism
in this neighbourhood. He only speaks of the frequency of "plica."
Naturally, Posche hastens to conjecture a connection between albinism and
"plica." [Plica is a disease peculiar to Poland and district ; it is a kind of
matting of the hair (zopf), which becomes so much part of the head that
when cut it produces bleeding : the nerves of the head grow into the hair.
It arises from dust and neglect. — Note communicated by Mr H. de B.
Gibbing.— Tr.]
LINDENSCHMIT — PEXKA. 1 01
known, and then riding would date much further back amongst
the Aryans than it does" (p. 73).
Posche's work met with very various verdicts from the press.
Whereas the extreme and undeniable defects of the work in its
philology, which showed an acquaintance with nothing further than
Grimm, were criticised very unfavourably by philologists (cf. Lit-
terar. Centralhlatt, 1878, p. 1221, /.), by the anthropologists
Posche's views were welcomed with joy. In this sense, A. Ecker
expresses himself {Archiv fur AntrojMlogie, i. p. 365,/:). He does
not conceal his suspicion of the plica-plagued, cockroach race of
Indo-Europeans, and their origin in the swamps of Pinsk, but he
is of opinion that the following two propositions in Posche's book
mark a great advance in science.
1. That the blondes, whether called Aryans (as by Posche) or
simply, as I (Ecker) should prefer, blondes {Xanthochroi), form a
distinct, well-marked race of man ; and
2. That the home of this race is to be sought not in Asia but
in East Europe.
Lindenschmit also {Handhuch der deutschen Altertumshunde, i.,
1880, Introduction), one of the most respected anthropologists and
antiquaries of Germany, expressed himself to the effect that the
original type of the Indo-European race was certainly not to be
looked for amongst Asiatic peoples. "Even in the present un-
developed stage of research as to the races and families of man we
may regai'd this much as certain: that if an original connection
between the peoples of the east and of the west, whose languages
are related, necessarily implies agreement in physical development,
the original type is certainly not to be looked for amongst the
Hindus and Tadschiks, Buchars and Beloochees, Parsees and
Ossetes." For the rest, Lindenschmit agrees with Benfey that
the Indo-Germanic vocabulary, because of the absence of a common
name for the elephant, the camel, the lion, and the tiger, is marked
by "no unconditionally oriental character." Further, whereas the
supposed migration of the Indo-Europeans to the west lacks all
historical support, the prime impact in the migrations of the Indo-
Europeans is shown by indubitable facts of history to have been
eastwards and southwards. Among these facts he reckons the raid
of western peoples against Egypt in the fourteenth century,
mentioned in the Karnak inscription ; the migration of the Celts
in the direction of Germany, Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor ; the
raids of the Scyths on Asia Minor and Persia {cf. Spiegel, Ausland,
1871, p. 557); the Goths' story of their migrations from the Baltic
countries to those of the Euxine, and many others. This power of
expansion, moreover, has persisted among the Indo-Europeans of
Europe to the present day, whereas the tribes " pushed into Asia
and India " have amalgamated with other tribes until they are past
recognition. " Such length of life, such indestructible vitality, are
so little to be found in Asiatic peoples of kindred speech, that in
the question where to look for the strongest, oldest, and deepest
roots of the common stock, the weight of facts cannot but give an
102 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
unconditional decision in favour of the western qiiarter of the
globe."
So, too, R. Virchow, who, in his lecture " On the Original
Population of Europe" {Die Urbevolkerung Europas, 1874), had
insisted very decidedly "that all European races, sprung from
Aryan roots, came hither from the East" (p. 17), appears lately to
have come round more and more to the view that "a sort of
antochthony in the north must be ascribed to peoples built on the
Teutonic type " ( Verh. d. Berl. Gesellschaft f. Anthropologic, Ethno-
graphie, unci Urgesckichte, 1884, p. 210).
Th. Posche imagined that he had discovered the leading charac-
teristic of the Indo-European type in its light complexion.* Karl
Penka, in two comprehensive works, Origines Ariacce, 1883, and
Die Herkunft der Arier, 1886, added on the strength of recent
craniological research, that the type of the primitive race was
characterised by being dolichocephalous ; and at the same time he
undertook to show that the home of the Indo-Europeans was only
to be looked for where the blonde and the dolichocephalous type is
at present most purely and distinctively developed, that is in Scan-
dinavia.
The views laid down in these two books may be put together as
follows : —
The sole origin of the whole of the human race is to be looked
for in Central Europe during the Meiocene period. At that time
the Ice Age was approaching, and as glaciers gradually invaded
the whole of the north and centre of our quarter of the globe, all
the other races of man retreated to more attractive abodes in
Africa, Asia, and America. Only the original ancestors of the
Aryans remained, nor had they cause to rue it; for it is the
climate of the Ice Age, and the struggle with their environment
that they have to thank for their blonde hair, blue eyes, gigantic
limbs, and dolichocephalous skull. But the Ice Age, too, came to
an end, and as the climate became milder, the animals which the
ancient Aryans hunted retreated, especially the reindeer, to the
north. They were followed by the Aryans themselves, for on
what were they else to live? In Scandinavia a new home opened
out before them, and here they evolved the stage of culture which,
by the aid of Comparative Philology we can establish as primitive
Aryan, and which coincides marvellously with what the geo-
graphical conditions and the fauna and flora of Scandinavia would
lead us to expect. Here alone, in the kitchen-middens, it is
* An acute objection to this is raised by W. Tomascliek, Z. f. bstr. G.,
xxix. 859 : " For our part, we regard blondes with their deficiency of
colouring-matter in skin, hair, and eyes, as an abnormal human type, which is
capable of being developed in the course of time at different and widely distant
spots of the earth, under suitable climatic conditions and certain conditions of
life yet to be fully investigated ; but this does not imply a special, intimate
connection in point of race and descent between all blonde races. Linnaeus'
caution nimium ne crede colori applies to men also ; the colour of the eyes
also can only make the very slightest claim to be regarded as a race charac-
teristic."
PENKA — TOMASCHEK AND THE FINNS. IO3
possible to detect a transition from palccolithic culture (say that
of the cave-dwellers of Belgium) to neolithic culture (say that of
the Swiss lake-dwellers), whereas everywhere else in Europe a
" hiatus " yawns between them.
Whilst this was happening in the north, two great iiTuptions of
newcomers had taken place in depopulated Cental Europe : the
immigi-ation from the soutli-west of the dolichocephalous, but
dark peoples of the Cro-Magnon type, to which belong the original
inhabitants of the Pyreusean peninsula, Italy, Sicily, Greece, and
also the Semites and the population of North Africa; and the
irruption from the east of a brachycephalous, dark Mongoloid race.
On French and Belgian temtory these two races met, and there
" crossed " with each other.
Thus stood things when from the north began the victorious
mai'ch of the White Race (the meaning of Arya). Everywhere
they appear as lords and masters, built strongholds, and forced
their language and culture on the subjugated peoples. But the
further the Aryan element travelled from its starting-point in the
north, the more its characteristic peculiarities disappeared in the
process of being crossed with peoples of another origin. This was
the origin of the cross-bred population which by the unity of its
language has so long deceived the world as to its heterogeneity of
physique. The Slavs are naught but Aryanised Mongols ; the
Greeks only Pelasgian-Hamito-Semites who have leamt Aryan, &.c.
On the other hand, there are Aryans who have given up their
language, but retained their physical characteristics, e.g.^ the blonde
and dolichocephalous Finns.
So far Penka on the Origin of the Aryans.
Can any one, even but moderately acquainted with the poverty
of the material from which these over-bold inferences are drawn,
help feeling that here we have to do with a poetic rather than
scientific solution of the problem proposed ? Can any one, however,
deny that this way of attempting an explanation of the relations
of the Indo-European languages and peoples contains much that
is right in principle, and in any case must have a stimulating
effect on the pui-ely philological method of dealing with these
things ? *
We shall return subsequently to these questions, and so turn
now to a series of attempts to fix the original Indo-European home
in Europe, on much the same principle as that on which others
{cf. above, p. 36), ti'usting to an apparent connection between the
Semites and the Indo-Europeans, have tried to place it in Asia.
* Amongst important reviews of Penka's Origiiies Ariacce, I may mention
those by A. Bezzenberger [Deutsche Lz., 1883, No. 44), by A. H. Sayce
{Aeackmy, 1883, No. 605), by W. TomaLSc\\e\i{Literaturhl.f. Orkrit. Phil.,L
133), by F. Hommel [Archivf. Anthrop., xv. Suppl. 163), by Van den Gheyn
{Revue dcs Questions Scientifiqucs, 1884), by A. Kiichotf (Zi<crar. Ccntr., 1884,
p. 457).
The only person almost to approve of the Scandinavian hypothesis is F.
Justi {Berl. Phil. W., 1884, p. 36; 1887, p. 562). Cf. on his earlier view
above, p. 83.
104 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The well-known ethnographer and linguistic student, W. Toma-
schek, was and is very warm in support of the view, that the
home of the Indo-Europeans must be placed in the east of Europe,
and that this is shown by the primeval vicinity of the Indo-
Europeans to the Finns ; this again is demonstrated by the
numerous prehistoric loans made from Indo-European to Finnic-
Ugrian. We have already come across this view in Tomaschek's
criticism of Hehn's book, mentioned on page 36. It comes out
still more clearly in the review Just mentioned of Posche's work,
where, on p. 862, we have : " I trust to show, from the language of
the Mordwas on the middle Volga especially, that immediately to
the south of this Finnic population most Aryans, and in particular
the Lithuanians, and the people that spoke Sanskrit, had their
abode."
Finally, Tomaschek remains true to this view in a very in-
structive paper, " Ethnological and Linguistic Researches on the
East of Europe " {^Ethnologisch-linguistische Forschungen iiber den
Osten Europas, Ansland, 1883, No. 36). The service he has
rendered in proving numerous loans, important for the history of
culture, from the Persian vocabulary to the Finnic-Ugrian
languages, is undoubted. But when he says [Ausland, p. 706) :
" We can go still further and establish the fact that there exist in
the great Ural family of languages elements, important and inalien-
able possessions, which came there in inconceivably remote prehis-
toric times as the result of intimate contact with the original Aryan
people, and demonstrate that it was in the vicinity of that northern
stock that the placenta of the Aryan social organism was developed,"
then we must note that proof of this assertion has not yet been
produced. And it must be all the more difficult to produce, because
it will be difficult to distinguish loans from the original Indo-
Europeans from loans from those individual Indo-European
peoples who have been in contact with the domain of the Ugro-
Finns from of old, the Slavo-Lithuanians, Teutons, and Iranians.
A very bold step in this line of argument for proving the East
European origin of the Indo-Europeans, though one which Cuno
(c/. above, p. 90) had previovisly tried to make, is taken by the
English anthropologist, Canan Isaac Taylor, in a paper on The Origin
and Primitive Seat of the Aryans {Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, February 1888), in which he propounds the hypothesis
of an original kinship between the Finns and the Indo-Europeans,
both from an anthropological and a linguistic point of view. He
is led to this assumption on the one hand by the agreement of the
physique of the Finns, Livonians, and Esthonians with the blonde,
dolichocephalic type of the Indo-Europeans, which Taylor then
recognises as the original type ; and on the other by the attempts
of various au.thors, especially Donner (Vergleichendes Worterhtich
der Finnischen Sprachen), to establish an affinity between Finnic
and Indo-European languages. This affinity is shown, according
to Taylor, in word-building (Finnic juo, "to drink;" juo-via,
" drink " = Sans, dhtl-md, " smoke;" dhil, " to kindle "), in formative
CANON I. TAYLOR AND THE FINNS. IO5
suffixes (Lapp, die-vi, "I live" = Sans, d-hharam, "I bore"), but
above all in pronominal and verbal roots {cf. p. 259, ff.). Unfortu-
nately the celebrated anthropologist conceives the comparison of
two fiimilies of language as being much easier and simpler than it
really is. If what Canon Taylor wishes to prove is to be proved,
it would be necessary to attempt to compare only the fundamental
forms of the original Indo-European language with those of the
original Ugro-Fiiniic language, and that subject to regular, definite
laws of phonetic equivalence. What can be proved by compar-
ing the Finn, hepo, "horse," with G. itttto (fund, form *ek-vo),
Finn, ^w/f/, "son," with G. Trats (*7raFt), ttc? Further, the
probabilites of borrowing {e.g., Y\i\\\. paivien, "hind," from Lith.
piem'li), and the possibility of casual coincidence are vuaderrated.
Finally, the comparisons of roots, based on Fick and Donner, are
extremely unsafe.
So the linguistic affinity of the Finns and the Indo- Europeans
we must still style a dream, without, however, denying that in the
course of deeper research, especially in the region of Finnic, it may
possibly prove to be true. But it must be insisted on again and
again that exact linguistic science at present knows and can know
much less of the relations between Indo-Germanic and other
families of speech than the undisciplined philologist usually
imagines.
That the north and east of our quarter of the globe have been
claimed in our time as the original home of the Indo-Europeans
we have already seen. Herr v. Loher, Ueher Alter, Herkunft, und
Verwandtschaft der Germanen {Sitzungsh. philos.-2)hil.-hist.-Kl. der
h. b. Akad. d. W., Munchen, 1883, p. 593, ff.), makes right for the
heart of it, for Germany {cf. above, p. 87). The Teutons, accord-
ing to him, were settled in Germany from primeval times, and all
the arguments used of late for the European origin of the Indo-
Europeans agree best with the view that the point whence all
Indo-Europeans radiated was in the centre of our quarter of the
globe.
It remains to mention the works of three scholars who agree in
rejecting the arguments hitherto urged in favour of the European
origin of the Indo-Europeans.
They are. Max Miiller, in the w^ork we have often mentioned.
Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, London, 1888;
Ch. de Ujfalvy in Le Berceau des Aryas d'a23res des ouvrages recents,
Paris, 1884 {extrait des h. de la societe d^anthropologie); and Van de
Gheyn in L'origine europ^enne des Aryas, Anvers, 1885 (Paris, 1889).
Max Miiller concludes his performance, which is directed mainly
against Penka's book, with the words : " I cannot bring myself to
say more than non liquet. But if an answer must be given as to
the place where our Aryan ancestors dwelt before their separation,
whether in large swarms of millions, or in a few scattered tents
and huts, I should still say, as I said forty years ago, * somewhere
in Asia,' and no more."
So, too, Ujfalvy regards the question of the original home of the
I06 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Indo-Europeans as still an open one. The special service of this
scholar consists in his having obtained us a trustworthy knowledge
of the North Persian lands and peoples, in the vicinity of the Pamir,
by his own travels in those regions. Amongst the tribes speaking
Aryan tongues he finds, p. 13, two perfectly distinct races: "Ce
peuple irano-hindou etait avant sa separation une race melangee de
deux types bien distincts : un type chatain, petit (ou moyen) et
brachycephalique et un type brun, grand et dolichocephalique.
Les brachycephales sont encore aujourd'hui au nord de I'Hindou-
Kouch, tandis que les dolichocephales occupent les vallees au sud
de ce massif montagneux." In confutation of the view of Linden-
schmit (given above, p. 101), who in his arguments for a western
origin for the Indo-Europeans had appealed to the considerable
mixture of population which we find amongst the Hindus,
Tadschiks, Parsees, Ossetes, &c., and had pronounced the North
European physical type original as compared with that of these
peoples, Ujfalvy points to the chestnut-brown, brachycephalous
Saltschas * of the Pamir who " occupent depuis une haute antiquite
leur patrie actuelle, le depart en tout cas des Irano-Indiens." For
the rest he regards, p. 11, the valleys in the vicinity of the Pamir
as satisfying all the conditions which linguistic palaeontology
requires of the original Indo-European home.
J. van den Gheyn adheres stoutly and with great warmth even
now to Pictet's hypothesis, sketched above on p. 80, as to the
original country.
* Cf. also Quelqices observations sur les Tadjiks des montagues appeles aussi
Saltschas par Ch. E. de Ujfalvy {Extrait des h. de la socidte d' anthropologie).
PART II.
RESEARCH BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE AND HIS-
TORY: ITS METHOD AND PRINCIPLES OF
CRITICISM.
Est quadam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra.
CHAPTER L
THE KINSHIP OF THE INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES.
The original Indo-Germanic language — Its differentiation into dialects and its
expansion — Supposed antiquities of Zend and Sanskrit, and inferences
therefrom — The original Indo-Germanic people — Linguistic affinity and
racial difference — Mixed peoples — The original type of Indo-Germanic
race.
In the previous pages our task was to depict with as much truth
and objectivity as possible the historical development of linguistic
research into primeval history. In the following pages we shall
endeavour to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to peel off
the husks of uncertainty and falsehood from the kernel of Lin-
guistic Palaeontology. Above all, it will be our business to
establish the standpoints from ^which alone we can proceed to
employ the materials afforded by Comparative Philology in draw-
ing conclusions about the history of civilisation.
We shall do well to stai-t from the two fundamental propositions
on which rests the whole structure of Linguistic Palaeontology.
They are : —
1. That the affinity of the Indo-Germanic languages can only
be explained on the assumption of a single primitive Indo-Germanic
tongue ; and
2. That the assumption of such a primitive Indo-Germanic
tongue necessarily implies the existence of a primitive Indo-
Germanic people.
I08 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The first of these two propositions can in theory hardly be
opposed by any student of language. It is, in fact, postulated
by every application of the Comparative Method to philology ;
when, for instance, we define a set of words such as Sans, pita,
Lat. ^jafer, Goth, fadar, tfec, or Sans, rndta, Lat. mater, O.H.G.
muoter, &c., as related, we can only explain this relation on the
analogy of human beings ; viz., by assuming that the existing
multiplicity of those forms may be traced back to a primitive
unity. Whereas, however, the inference of this pro-ethnic unity
is and will continue to be nothing but a scientific hypothesis for
the grammarian, we here are compelled to treat the primitive
Indo-Germanic tongue as a living reality. It consequently follows
that the conceptions we form of it must adapt themselves to
the laws observed to regulate the origin and growth of language
generally.
Now, at the outset, it woiild contradict these laws to imagine
that the original language was completely uniform and knew no
dialects, for our observation shows us that every linguistic com-
munity, great or small, contains internal differences ; just as it is
a fundamental fact of human nature that no two individuals are
precisely identical either in their pronunciation or in the use of
their vocabulary. We have already seen (p. 63) that the theory
expounded by J. Schmidt tended to the conclusion that certain
partial agreements among the Indo-European languages already
existed as differences of dialect in the primeval period ; and I
confess that this view made my mental picture of it much more
lively and concrete. Indeed, sometimes, the comparison of
languages does not carry us beyond the establishment of
differences of dialect, for which a common ancestral form may
be sought in vain. This is the case, for instance, with a string of
old nouns which in the European languages have to be referred
to one ancestor, and in Sanskrit and Zend to quite another. For
example, the primitive European forms genu (yews, Lat. gena, O.I.
gen, Goth, kinnus) = jawbone, dhver (6vpa, Lat. fores, O.I. dorus,
Goth. daUr) = door, are quite irreconcileable with Sans, hdnu and
dvdHra, Zend dvara, and so on. Armenian, in most of the cases
alluded to, ranges itself on the side of the European languages
(Arm. tsnot, "jawbone" = Europ. genu; Arm. dur'n, "door" = Europ.
dhver)*
General considerations and special observations point to the
conclusion that the original Indo-European tongue contained
differences of dialect. In close connection with this conclusion is
* Cf. J. Schmidt, VerwandtschaffsverhdUnisse, p. 29 ; A. Fick, Spracheinheit,
p. 170,/.; A. Hiibschmann, K. Z., xxiii. p. 35, /. In recent thnes identical
fundamental forms in the equations employed have once more been aimed at.
Thus, cases such as G. yews = Sans, hdnu, are referred, as regards the initial
letter, to a new fundamental Indo-Germanic form, a sonant palatal spirant y
{cf. Fierlinger, K. Z., xxvii. 478); the media for the media asp. in Sans. du7;
dvctr is explained by means of the case-endings beginning with bh. These ex-
planations, however, are by no means certain. Cf. also Brugmann, Grdr. i.
349.
DIALECTS IN THE ORIGINAL TONGUE. IO9
the question which has often been discussed, whether the range of
the Indo-Germauic language in the primeval period — and according
to our view, the primeval period can only be the period in which
the individual members of the Indo-Gcrmanic family were still
miited by the consciousness of a common tongue or the possibility
of mutually understanding each other — was, geographically speak-
ing, relatively broad/'an^^ narrow.
Here, obviously, conjectures alone are possible. Let us, how-
ever, reflect that in the individual branches of the oi'iginal
language (on which their respective twigs must have continued
to live a life of many centuries before language was stereotyped
by writing), frequently the subtlest shades of the original tongue
have quite recently been detected, and forms recovered all but
identical with the forms postulated for the original tongue ;* and
we can hardly reject the conclusion that the development of
divergences in language was a slower process in prehistoric than
in historic times. This, however, is to grant the possibility that
the oi'iginal Indo-Germanic tongue, though differentiated into
dialects, may have been used over a relatively large area, and
that yet the consciousness of linguistic unity may not thereby
have been rendered impossible. The most instructive example of
stability of this kind is offered, according to H. Vambery, by the
languages of the Turko-Tataric peoples, which as yet fill so little
space in history; for, "in spite of a wide geographical distribution
from the icy North to the furthest South, from the Lob-nor to the
Adriatic — yea, in spite of a distance in time of 1500 years known
to history," it is only possible to speak of "dialects — not of
languages" — in this linguistic ai-ea, and "the Turk of Anatolia
underg^nds the Jakut on the Lena better than the Swiss does the
Transylvania\i of Saxon^" (cf. Primitive Cultur, p. 14, ff.) For
the correctness of this -statement we must make the author
responsible ; but the case may have been somewhat similar in
the primeval Indo-European pei'iod.
If we pause for a moment on the last-named, the Celtic languages,
whose weather-worn aspect (according to Schleicher's view, still
often quoted) shows that they have travelled furthest from the
original starting-point, we find at the very outset that their face
has been scarred by a series of deep-cutting laws as to final sounds.
In Old Irish, for instance, if we restore the language to the con-
dition in which it was before these laws began to operate — and
this we can do by means of the traces left by the lost syllables on
the syllable of the stem which preceded them — we immediately light
upon forms standing on almost the same level as the coiresponding
words in Latin and Greek {cf., eg., I. coic = prehistoric Irish quenqu-e:
* Consider, e.g., that it has recently been proved that the original Indo-
European accent was in operation on Teutonic ground even during and after
the first sound-shifting ; that we have hrSthar, but mfiddr, faddr; tehan, but
schcin; hdit, \>\\thit(i.m, &c. {cf. Karl Verner, K. Z., xxiii. p. 97,/.). Or call to
mind Greek dialect-forms such as Cyprian S6F(vai (5ov»'ai) = Sans. ddvdiie,
Doric ^s (^i') = Sans. ds, and many others.
no PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Lat. quinque; I. fer, " man " = prehistoric Irish vira-s: G. Xvko-s,
Lat. lujju-s ; I. asbiur, " say " = prehistoric Irish ber-u: Lat. fero,
G. <f)£p(D, tfec). That these prehistoric Irish forms prevailed on
Celtic gromid also, is proved by the remains of ancient Gallic pre-
served on inscriptions (Stokes, B.B. xi. 112). Similarly, the most
ancient Norse Rune inscriptions show a state of the language which,
in certain cases, affords almost a complete parallel to Sanskrit (cf.
vulfa-r, Goth, vulf-s, O.N. ulfr-, Sans. vfJca-s). So, too, Teutonic
proper names transmitted by the Romans reveal a stage of phonetics
antecedent to all other record.
It is, therefore, not improbable that the Indo-European languages
preserved a very archaic character, even on the soil on w'hich they
make their appearance in historic times ; and, consequently, the •
conjecture seems to me to be suggested that the original Indo-
Germanic language may have spread over a relatively wide area
(like the Turkish languages mentioned above), without on the
whole losing its homogeneity, in spite of dialectic differences in
detail.
Individual Indo-Germanic languages have been credited with a
special capacity for retaining old linguistic forms. Especially was
this frequently conjectured in early days to be the case with the
Hindu-Persian languages (Sanskrit and Iranian) — whence the
further conclusion was drawn, that these languages must have
remained in closest proximity to the original home {cf. above,
p. 91). This view, however, must from our present knowledge
be pronounced entirely erroneous. A comparison of the Indo-
Germanic languages, with respect to their antiquity, could only be
rendered fertile by establishing a uniform limit of time ; and that,
as is well-known, could only be done by taking at the earliest, the
middle of the ninth, or if we include Lithuanian, then, at the earliest,
the middle of the sixteenth century of our era. How Teutonic,
Slavonic, Celtic, &c., would have looked if they had been transmitted
to us as they were in the age of the Rigveda, we obviously do not
know ; but there is nothing to contradict the assumption that the
former would look just as ancient as Sanskrit, if they had been
transmitted to us from the same period. That the European
languages have actually in many respects preserved to the present
day a more ancient phase of language than the Hindu-Persian,
has already several times been insisted on {cf. above, pp. 41
and 70).
The second proposition, deducing the unity of the Indo-European
people from the unity of the Indo-European languages, leads us
into the domain of pure ethnology, in which the philologist cannot
claim such unconditional faith in his ideas as in that of philology.
Language obviously is only one of the tests to be employed in
deciding racial affinities, and it cannot be denied that none of the
classifications based on physiological characteristics coincides with
the conception "Indo-European." They are either too wide, in
that elements such as the Basques and Caucasians, quite hetero-
geneous linguistically, are united with the Indo-Europeans into a
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE A REAL PEOPLE. Ill
single (Mediterranean, Caucasian, Arabo-European, &c.) race; and,
consequently, it has been necessary to cai-ry this unity back to the
notorious homo alalus (cf. F. Miiller, Prohleme der linguistiscJien
Ethnologie; E. Behm's Geograpliisdies Jahrhuch, iv. p. 302); or they
are too nari'ow, as is the case, e.g., with lletzius' system, in which
Slavs, Livonians, and Albanians, as being gentes hrachycephaloe
M'thognatce, are severed from the other Indo-Europeans who are
designated gentes dolichocephalcB orthognatce. It cannot be denied
that even within the limits of individual Indo-Germanic peoples
and linguistic areas, the most marked physical contrasts show
themselves. The population of Germany is divided into fair and
dark. The same holds of the Slavs, of the Iranians {cf. above,
p. 106), even of the Finns relatively to the Lapps. In Northern
Germany, the mesocephalic type, with a tendency to the dolicho-
cephalic, predominates ; in Southern Germany, the brachycephalic.
The same antithesis may be found amongst the French, and again
in the Finns compared with the Lapps, and so on (Virchow,
Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesellschaft f. Anthropologie, <fec., 1881,
p. 68, ff.). Now, are these facts to shake our faith, founded on the
kinship of the Indo-Germanic languages, in the prehistoi'ic unity
of the Indo-Germanic peoples 1 I believe that some very simple
considerations show that they are not.
We speak Gei'man because we are descended from German
ancestors, and our kin in foi'eign lands in the same way speak
German, because they or their forbeai's came from Germany. In
England, a Teutonic tongue prevails because it was brought to that
island by a Teutonic race.
These examples show, however, the limits within which we must
speak of the unity of the Indo-Europeans. Just as the Anglo-
Saxon invasion shows without fiurther proof that the sti'ucture of
English is Teutonic, while it is impossible to understand the
nationality of England without taking into account the Celtic,
Roman, and Norman elements amalgamated with the Anglo-
Saxons ; so, too. Comparative Philology does not demand that the
Indo-Eui'opeans should be traced en masse to a single and identical
origin : it only requires the assumption that in the individual
Indo-European peoples there was a homogeneous nucleus from
which the Indo-European language could spread to heterogeneous
populations amalgamating with them.
That tribes speaking Indo-Germanic tongues did on reaching
their new homes effect amalgamations with the inhabitants already
settled there, is beyond the possibility of doubt, for in some cases
the full light of history beats about the process. Let us look, e.g.,
at the Hindu-Aryans whose advance south and south-east from
the upper banks of the Indus is repi'esented by the Vedic Hymns
as a continuous conflict with the aborigines {cf. Zimmer, Altind.
Lehen, p. 100,/.). The Aryan tribes, whose complexion is expressly
designated white (Rg. i. 100, 18), face the aboriginal Indians, " the
black-skinned Dasyu," with their foreign tongue, foreign customs,
foreign gods, in a life and death struggle, which has its tormina-
112 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
tiou in the subjugation of the barbarians and their incorporation
as a fourth class, Qiidra, in the Hindu polity. The ludo-Germanic
element is victorious, but " it cannot be doubted that in the long
period that preceded this event Aryan blood was often crossed with
that of the native inhabitants. Dasyu maids and women came
into the house of the Aiyan men as slaves ; no doubt one or two
here and there rose to the position of wedded wife and mistress of
the household" (Zimmer, loc. cit., p. 117). To the degeneracy
consequent upon these crossings, and increased still further by
the subsequent admixture of Scythian, Mongolian, and European
elements of all kinds, must further be added the effects of the
ti'opical climate of India which works such tremendous modifica-
tions on the physical organism of man : with the result that,
at the present day, only the Brahmin families of certain dis-
tricts are said to have preserved the nobler characteristics of
the "Mediterranean race" (cf. F. Miiller, Allg. Ut/mogirqjhie,
p. 457, /.)•* Quite as frequently in the Avesta occur ancient
accounts of the struggle of the Iranian population with a native
non-Aryan race {anairydo danhdvo); and here, too, in the houses
of the worshippers of Mazda dwell the daughters of unbelieving
tribes as servants and concubines (W. Geiger, Ostiran. Gultur, p.
176,/.).
Similar conditions probably prevailed in Europe, though we have
no direct memorials thereof. Thus, in ancient Italy, quite apart
from the Phenician, Greek, and Celtic imigrations, we find by
the side of the Indo-Germanic Middle-Italian race of Latins,
Umbrians, Osci, &c., no fewer than four different peoples whose
connection with one another, or with the Indo-Europeans, there is
as yet nothing to prove : — the Etrurians, Ligurians, lapyges, and
Ibei'i (of the islands and Sicily). All these foreign populations,
whose peculiarities, even as regards their physiological character-
istics, are mentioned by Latin writers {cf. on the Etruscans, L.
Diefenbach, Origines E^iropmcB, p. 109 ; on the Ligurians, »'&., p.
121), in the course of centuries, yielded in tongue and customs
to the nucleus of Indo-Europeans in ancient Italy. Is it possible
that the latter were not profoundly influenced by them physio-
logically."
The instructive example of a shifting of physical characteristics is
afforded in Western Europe by the Celts. The ancient Gauls, like
the ancient Germans, are depicted in the accounts of antiquity as
a fair-haired, bright-eyed race of unusual stature, a description
Avhich no longer suits the modei-n Celts of Brittany, Wales, Ireland,
and Scotland.! The causes of this difference we do not know.
* The ethnological exploration of India entered on a new stage with
The Ethnological Survey of India, undertaken under the auspices of the
English government by H. Risley. Cf. M. Miiller, Biographies of Words,
App. iv.
t Cf. L. Diefenbach, ib., p. 16Q(,/., and A. Holtzmann, Gcr7nanische Alter-
turner, ed., A. Holder, 1873. The information on p. 123 is interesting:
"When Niebuhr wrpte his description of the Gauls of Brennus after the
"MIXED LANGUAGE." II3
Nevertheless, the ethnological affinity of the peoples who now
speak Celtic with those who formerly spoke it, will be denied at
the present day by nobody.
In all these cases, then, the Indo-Germanic element has been
victorious as regards language over the assimilated populations.
Why this should have happened cannot be made out with com-
plete certainty. Generally, on the strength of modern analogies,
it may be said that the language of the more highly civilised
people, especially when it is the dominant and more numerous
people, most readily spreads over a foreign area ; though, under
certain circumstances, even the victors accept the language of their
more civilised captives, as, e.g.^ has been the case with the Ui'al-
Altaic Bulgarians and the subjugated Slavs. It is an easy inference
from these considerations that the Indo-Germanic population of
Europe and Asia must have possessed a developed civilisation
relatively to the previous population ; and the possibility of thus
explaining the wide expansion of the Indo-European family of
languages is obvious. Possibly direct indications that this is the
correct view will be forthcoming subsequently. As, then, it is
indubitable that there has been a strong admixture of hetero-
geneous elements with the Indo-Germanic peoples, the further
question is raised whether the Indo-Germanic languages brought
by the immigrants into their new abodes, have not also suffered
considerable changes on the lips of the original inhabitants.
No one who admits the probability of a considerable admixture
of populations in the case of the Indo-Europeans will hesitate to
admit the possibility a priori that in all Indo-European languages
there is present a certain stock of words in Indo-European clothing
Avhich it will never be possible to trace back to the primeval Indo-
European period, siuiply because they are descended from non-
and pre-Indo-European tongues. To detect such words to any
extent will, of course, owing to our almost entire ignorance of
those pre-Indo-European idioms, alwa^'s be impossible. Further,
in phonetics, word-building, and inflections, recent investigations,
in the first rank of which must be mentioned Hugo Schuchardt's
peuetratiug researches (Kreoli&che Stvdien, Sitzu7igsherichte cler
Wie7ier Akademie, Slavo-Deutsches iind Slavo-Italienisches, Graz,
1885), have made it clearer and clearer that the notion of a " mixed
language " must have much more weight assigned to it than has
heretofore been allowed. It is, therefore, theoretically possible
that in these departments of the grammars of the Indo-Germanic
languages, non-Indo-Germanic elements or phonetic phenomena due
to the influence of non-Indo-Germanic languages may be present.
account of the ancients, he received a communication from Brittany that he
hail described no Gauls but Germans : the Gauls, the Bretons, are short and
dark, black or brown." It is Frequently assumed at the present day that the
state of thintjs with ref];ard to the ancient Celtic populations is explained by
theabsorpti(ui of an Indo-Germanic people (the Galatians), correspondinf,' to the
description of the ancients, in a short, dark, brachyceplialous original popula-
tion (the Celts)— a view, however, which lacks liistorical evidence.
H
114 PKEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
It must also, however, be pointed out that as yet no one has
succeeded in detecting with any certainty cases of such influence,
exercised by the h\nguages of the original inhabitants on the more
ancient stages of the life either of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, or any
other Indo-Germanic language.*
In any case, from what we have already seen, the question as
to the original physical type of the Indo-Europeans must be re-
duced to the question : What was the original type of that nucleus
of Indo-European population from which the Indo-European lan-
guage was communicated to the non-Indo-European element in the
varioiis individual peoples ?
But this way of putting the question also is possibly false, in
as far as it proceeds on the assumption that the physical character
of the original Indo-Germanic people at large must necessarily
have been uniform. As a matter of fact, many anthropologists and
ethnologists do proceed, tacitly or avowedly, on this assumption.
Penka says, in Der Herkunft der Arier, p. 20, word for word : "To
assume a primitive people, consisting of two different races, is to
credit nature with developing at the same time, and in the same
environment, one and the same original form in different directions
— an assumption the absurdity of which is patent." In reality,
however, the case is otherwise. As a matter of chronology, the
origin of the Indo-Europeans and the origin of man are not to be
confounded. If we reflect that our earliest historical knowledge
,of the European branch of the Indo-Germanic family does not yet
go back so far as B.C. 1000, and that the Indo-Germanic peoples
of Europe are not, when they make their first appearance, yet
closely united to the soil of their homes (c/. Part iv. chs. 5 and 12),
I do not see what there is to confute the idea that the Indo-
Europeans of Europe were yet dwelling together, when, perhaps,
already on the banks of the Nile, the first pyramids had heralded
the dawn of history. And why could not non-Indo-Germanic
elements be taken up into the common tongue and culture of the
Indo-Europeans at that time 1
When Indo-European peoples meet us in history, they present
us at any rate with no uniform physical type. Even the old
Teutons, who at present are readily accepted as the progenitors
of the whole Indo-European race, are regarded by Virchow, on p.
1-56 of the lecture already mentioned (Die Deutschen unci die Ger-
manen, Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie,
&c., 1881), as probably already differentiated physically. Indeed,
the same student, whose caution and circumspection one is most
inclined to trust in these questions, has subsequently {Korrespondenz-
Blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 1883, p. 144)
flatly denied a uniform Indo-Germanic type, and has assumed two
* Cf. also Ascoli, Ueier die ethnolocjischcn Grilnde der Umgestaltung der
SprcKhen {Verh. d. V. inter. O.-Kongr., ii. 279, ./f.), and M. Gaster, Die
nichlateinischen Elonente im Rumdnischen {Grober's Grundriss, p. 406, ff.).
Ibidem, G. Meyer describes Albanian {cf. above, p. 76) as a "half-Romance
mixed language " (p. 805).
THE PHYSICAL TYPE. II5
streams, a dolichocephalous and a brachycephalous, flowing side by
side together from the beginning.
Be this as it may, thus much is certain : that all these questions
at present need so much light thrown upon them, and are so far
from being capable of decision, that an attempt such as that
undertaken by Penka (above, p. 102, ff.), to determine the origin of
the Indo-Europeans by means of craniology and other anatomical
indications, must be designated as premature a limine.
From these ethnologico-linguistic considerations we may now
turn to the employment of Comparative Philology for the purposes
of the history of culture.
CHAPTER II.
LOSSES FROM THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE.
The probability of considerable losses from tlie Indo-Germanic vocabulary —
Consequences thereof — Suspicious nature of negative arguments about
the culture of primitive times — Tlie question of the original home in
this connection — Occasionally, however, the uniform absence of names
amounts to proof: fishes, colours, flowers.
An instance in which an etymological equation can be carried
through all the Indo-Germanic languages or groups of languages
which have been transmitted to us is, as everybody knows,
extremely rare. Even in the case of extremely tenacious and
wide-spreading groups of cognate words, it not unfrequently
happens that one language or other is found wanting in the
primitive word. In the Slav languages the Indo-Germanic name
for "father" is wanting, in Greek that for "sister," in Latin that
for " daughter," and so on. No one will doubt, that in all these
cases, the words did once exist in those languages, and that in the
course of time they have been displaced by others.
For, to lose what it once possessed, is one of the commonest
occurrences in the life of a language. Whoever turns over any
single page of a Middle-High German text, finds there a whole
string of words, which at the present day are no longer used, or no
longer used independently. Since, however, in the relatively short
time which separates us from the Middle Ages, a not inconsider-
able part of the vocabulary of that period can fall into desuetude,
must not the losses from the original language have been tremen-
dous, when we consider the local variations and revolutions in
culture to which the Indo-Europeans were exposed when they had
left their original home ? This high probability of very extensive
losses from the original vocabulary necessitates the greatest caution
in two different directions in the employment of linguistic argu-
ments for the investigation of primitive culture. It is in the first
place extremely precarious to infer, from the absence of cognate
words, a want of acquaintance on the part of the Indo-Europeans
with certain ideas or objects of civilisation — an axiom which in
principle is admitted by everybody, but is frequently neglected in
detail.
NEGATIVE ARGUMENTS NOT ALWAYS CONCLUSIVE. II 7
A. H. Sayce, The Principles of Comparative PJiilology, is right
then in saying, p. 203 : " Just as the modern geologist insists on
the imperfection of the geological record, so ought the glottologist
to remember that only the wrecks and fi'agments of ancient speech
have been preserved to us by happy accident. Countless words
and forms have perished altogether, and though Pictet can show
that an object designated by the same name in both Eastern and
Western Aryan dialects must have been known to our remote
ancestors of the prehistoi-ic period yet the converse of this
does not hold good."
Specially important, however, is this standpoint for the question
of the original Tndo-Etirojxan home, so far as there has been a
tendency to infer it from apjDarent deficiencies of the Indo-Germanic
vocabulary in the designation of certain plants and animals.
The Indo-Germanic family extends, according to A. Grisebach,'
over three areas of vegetation, the zone of the Monsoons, the
steppes of Europe and Asia, and the forests of the East Continent,
each possessing its peculiar fauna and flora. Now, place the
original starting-point of the Indo-Europeans where you will, it is
wholly inconceivable that the original names for plants and animals
should have persisted throughout the gradual expansion of the
Indo-Germanic peoples. How could the names for the things persist
when the things themselves had disappeared from view for perhaps
thousands of years? Look, for instance, at Sanskrit and Iranian,
which differ little more than dialects : out of the whole plant- world,
the Soma, the gift of the gods, for which a representative on earth
can only be found with difficulty (cf Z. d. 21. G., xxxv. pp. 680-
92), is almost the only plant to which both nations give the same
name ; and yet no one thinks of explaining this fact otherwise than
by the complete separation, in the geography of plants, of the
historical homes of the two peoples. A very simple act of reflection
is therefore enough to show that facts, such as that original Indo-
Germanic names for lion, tiger, camel, &c., cannot be ascertained
with certainty, cannot turn the scale either in favour of or against
the European or the Asiatic hypothesis of the original home.
Accordingly, F. Hommel {cf. above, p. 97) has riglitly laid no
particular weight on such arguments in determining the original
locality of the Semites.
Although, then, the greatest caution is necessary when we are
dealing with particular cases, this does not amount to saying that
the absence of identical names (when it extends to whole categories
of conceptions, and can be explained by observation of a historical
kind) possesses no demonstrative force, and here 1 venture to enter
into some of these cases more closely.
The absence in the Indo-Germanic group of cognate names for
fishes is striking. In the terms employed to designate the whole
class we only find partial conformities (as Sans, mdtsya, Zend
masya ; Lat. piscis, I. iasc, Goth, fis^ks ; Lith. zuicih, O.P. zukans,
Ar. dzul-n, zoukn). As for the various kinds of fish, a common
name for eel seems to run through the European languages (Lat.
Il8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
anguilla, G. eyxf^i^?? Lith. ungurps, Ch. Slav, agoristi), unless, indeed,
these words too were first evolved in the separate languages out of
a common name for snake (Lat. anguis, G. exLS, Lith. angls, Sans.
dhi, &c.), and were employed to designate the eel as "a little
snake " just as in Old Irish this fish is called esc-ung (-wig = anguis),
i.e., "swamp-snake." Other instances such as O.H.G. lacks, Russ.
losost, Lith. laszisza, O.N. sild: O.S. seildi, Lith. sUke, Lat. attilus :
G, iTeXL<;, are confined to a limited linguistic area, and are, at any
rate in the last cases, probably due to borrowing. As a matter of
fact, it is only after their separation that the Indo-Germanic peoples
seem to have turned their attention to fishing, and to have acquired
a taste for fish as food. In the hymns of the Rigveda, fishing is still
wholly unknown (cf. Zimmer, Altindisches Lehen, p. 26) ; and so,
too, in the Homeric period it is only in times of extremity that
fish is used by the heroes as food (Od. xii. 330; iv. 368) : the only
species named is the eel, which, however, by Homer himself is
scarcely counted a fish {iyx^Xves re Kal IxOves ; cf. E. Buchholtz, Die
Homerischen Realien, i. 2, p. 104,/.). 'lx6vo(f>dyoi, "fish-eaters,"
is a name which occurs in Herodotus for barbarians on the Arabian
sea, and is constructed on the same principle as (3ovTvpo(f>dyot,
"butter- eaters."* The diversity of Greek and Latin in all fishing
terms has been remarked ere now by W. Helbig (cf. p. 75). In the
lake-dwellings of the Po, also, no fishing tackle whatever, or hooks,
&c., have been found, so that their ancient inhabitants, who, accord-
ing to Helbig's investigations, belonged to the Italian race, cannot
in spite of their favourable opportunities have been in the habit
of fishing the teeming waters of the Po.f
A second example of the force of linguistic arguments, even in
a negative direction, may be taken from the Indo-Gei'manic
nomenclature of colours. Recent researches into the designations
* Cf. 0. Weise, Die griech Worter im Latein, p. Ill, who regards as
European the names for eel, pike {lupus, \vkus, lucius), ray (Lat. raja, Sw.
rockal), perch (Lat. acus, O.H.G. ag^), as Graeco-Italian the equations mtigil
= fj.v^os, attilus =er€\is, squatus^Kfjros, murex = tj.va^. The two latter alone
seem to have a primeval connection with each other. The former may have
signified any kind of sea-beast — the sea was known to the European branch
of the Indo-Germanic family (Part iv. ch. x. ) — the latter any kind of slug.
t It has been objected to me privately "that it is scarcely conceivable that
the Greeks, a maritime nation par excellence, should not have eaten fish from
the earliest times." The occurrence of the fish-hook in Homer, also points to
the existence of fishing as a craft. In this connection reference may be made to
Wilamowitz's investigations {Homerisclie Untersuchungen, p. 292) : according
to him, relatively to the time at which the epic (which does not allow the heroes
to ride, to write, to make soup, eat fish, &c.) is fixed, the age of our Homer
is a comparatively recent one, in which a different state of culture prevailed.
The value, however, of such features in the old epic style as demonstrating the
existence of a period when heroes really did not ride, write, make soup, and
eat fish (precisely because in that period they were not a maritime nation par
excellence), is no more impaired thereby than is the value of the primeval
linguistic forms which occur in the epic style, and were made use of by the
bards. The fishing-hook {ayKiarpov), besides, is only mentioned in the above
two passages of the Odyssey, iv. 368, and xii. 330, of which the latter, more-
over, is generally acknowledged as having the former in view.
NEGATIVE ARGUMENTS SOMETIMES CONCLUSIVE. II 9
and sense for colours amongst savages of the most opposite
descriptions {cf. H. Magnus, Untersuchungen iiber den Farhensinn
der Naturvolker, 1880), have led to the result that terms for the
two long-wave colours, red and yellow, are most clearly developed.
Further, the simultaneous action of all the rays on the retina of
the eye, and the total absence of the sensation of light, i.e., light
and darkness, white and black, are, generally speaking, clearly
marked in languaga On the other hand, the nomenclature of
colours is wretchedly defective when it comes to the short-wave
colours, green and blue.
With this circumstance, which after Magnus' investigations may
be regarded as normal amongst primitive peoples, the actual
facts of language in the primitive Indo-Germanic period most com-
pletely correspond. The whole of our family of languages agrees ^
in Sans, rudkird, G. ipvOpo';, Lat. rvher, Ch. SI. rudru, Lith.
raudiinas I. ruad, Goth, ravds.
There is no other linguistic equation equally extensive with this,
though the colours yellow, white, and black can be shown to have
been recognised and named in the original language, or at least in
parts of the area covered by it.
Yelloiv. — For the designation of this colour the tw'o roots ghel ^
and gkel are used, the derivatives from which cannot always be
sharply distinguished. To them belong Sans, kdri, harind, /larit,
hdrita, "yellow, yellowish, also greenish;" Zend zairita, zairina,
"yellowish, green;" G. X'^wpos, "yellow-green ;" Lat. helvtis, fuhms,
Jfdvus (ffvo); O.H.G. gelo; Lith. zelti, "green" (geitas, "yellow");
O.S. zelenu, "green" {zluci, "gall"), (fee. It is manifest that these
roots have a tendency to pass into the meaning of green, especially
the green of the young crops (G. yXo-q) ; nevertheless, yellow seems
to have been the starting-point, as is indicated by ancient suffix-
like formations such as Lat. Ae/wMS = O.H.G. gelo,* Sans, hiranya
= Zend zaranya, O.S. zlato = Goth., gulp, "gold" (cf. Part. iii.
ch. iv.).
White. — Sans rajatd, &c., has for the most part passed into the
meaning of silver. Of its fundamental meaning only traces can
be discovered (Part iii. ch. v.) : Sans, cvetd (rt. <;vit / r^vid), Zend
spaeta, Goth, koeits, G. Xcvkos, Lith. lauks, Ir. lauch ; G. <^avo9=Ir.
hdn. These four series regard white as the shining colour. To
them must be added : O.H.G. /a^o = O.S. plavu, " white ; " G. dA«^ds
= Lat. alhus.
Black. — Sans, krshnd, O.S. crmil, O.Pr. kirsna. Sans, vialina:
mala, "dirt," G. fte'Xa?, Lett, nulna (cf. N.H.G. schivarz, Lat.
sordes, "dirt," O.H.G. salo, "black, dirty").
\\\ no case can similar series or groups be detected for green,
still less for blue.
* This word ghel-vo has been the starting-point whence by analogy the
suffix -vo has spread through Teutonic and Latin names of colours : O.H.G.
faro, "coloured," salo, "black;" A. S. haso, "purple;" O.H.G. grdo, bldo,
&c. ; Lat. rdvo-, furvo-, &c. Kluge, Nomin-Stamvibildungsl. , p. 81; Brug-
mann, Gruiidriss, ii. i. p. 128.
I20 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
In the same way a word for "colour" cannot be discovered
in the original Indo-Germanic tongue, a fact which does not
seem to be accidental [rf. Magnus, ih., p. 14, /.; Der Begriff
der Farhe hei den NaturviJlkern). The later expressions for
this conception conceive colour as the covering of the skin
(Sans, vdrna : var, " cover ; " Lat. color : occulere ; G. XP^I^"- '• XP^^'
"skin"). '"-■'-■ ,
Now, whether from all this it follows that the most ancient
Indo-Europeans were deficient physiologically in the capacity for
discriminating the short-wave colours, is a question which, as it
has lately been proved that the power of apprehending and the
power of naming colours do not absolutely coincide {cf. Magnus, ib.,
p. 34), I gladly leave open. To me it seems that the poverty or
wealth of a language in colour-names much rather depends on the
general cultiire of a people. Of various pastoral tribes of Africa
we learn that the examination of their colour-names "met with
absolutely no difficulties, as long as it dealt with colours which
occur in animals, wild and domesticated, black, grey, white, yellow,
(including the red of the cow), and confusion first began with the
colours, which are not observed in animals, green and blue " (cf.
Magnus, ib., p. 18). So, too, amongst the Finns, who absolutely
call colour karva, " hair," such colours as are not met with in furry-
animals, as yellow, green, blue, have partially borrowed names
(cf. A. Ahlqvist, Die Culturwoerter in den ivestf. Sprachen, p. 91).
Much the same may the state of things have been with the nomad
Indo-Europeans.*
* Cf. 0. Weise, Die Farhenhezeichnungen der Indogermaiten B. Beitr. z. Kunde
der indog. S2'>r., ii. p. 273,/. Other philological literature on this point will
be found in L. Geiger, Ucber den Farbensimi der Urzeit imd seiner EntivicJchmg
{Zur Entivickhmgsgesch. d. Menschheit, 1871, p. 45,/.); A. Bacmeister, Celtische
Briefe, 1874, p. 112,/.y Pole, "Colour Blindness in Relation to the Homeric Ex-
pressions for Colour," Nature, 1878, p. 676 ; H. Vambery, Die primitive Cidtur
des turko-tatarischen Volkcs, 1879, p. 224,/.; Grant Allen, Der Farbensinn. Sein
Ur sprung und seine Entwickhcng, Ein Beitrag ziir vcrgleichenden Psyclwlogie,
Mit einer Einleitung von Dr E. Krause, Leipzig, 1880.
The remarks are quite erroneous which are made against Comparative
Philologists, and particularly against the conclusions of the first edition of
this work, by Edm. Veckenstedt, Geschichte der gricchischen Farhcnlehre, 1888,
p. 53, where he endeavours to show that the Greeks of the most ancient times
distinguished colours just as much as Greeks of the latest period.
What I maintained, and still maintain, is, first, that the name for red is the
most uniform and most widely spread equation in the way of names of colour
in the Indo-Germanic languages ; next, that groups of languages agree as to
the names of yellow, white and black also ; third, that equations for green,
and particularly for blue, are absolutely wanting. Inasmuch as this lack of
terms for gi-een and blue occurs amongst numerous uncivilised peoples, that it
should also occur amongst the Indo-Europeans is, perhaps, not a mere accident
— and in this connection alone is this subject at all touched upon.
How this lack of terms is to be explained I have not undertaken to decide.
I have, however, expressed myself very sceptically with regard to the assump-
tion that an evolution of the colour sense can be traced in language. How,
then, as far as I am cencerned, can Veckenstedt talk of "linguistic Darwinism"
and ' 'A ugendarwinisten ?"
How small his acquaintance is with what constitutes linguistic evidence is
shown by his attempt to make out a series of primevally connected words for
NAMES OF COLOURS AND PLANTS. 121
In this connection, the almost entire deficiency in the Indo-
Germanic languages of common names for flowers should perhaps
be observed. The few coincidences, e.g., between Latin and Greek
{pohov : rosa, Xetpiov : lilium, lov : viola, fiaXax^ : malva, &c.), are
either due to borrowing (cf., however, 0. Weise, ih., p. 127), or
certainly at any rate indicate the wild plants. Of the Hindus of
the Veda the words of R. Roths hold good {Z. d. D. M. G., xxxv.
p. 84) : " Generally speaking, it may be said that flowers have
scarcely a place in the Veda. Wreaths of flowers, of course, are
used as decorations, but the separate flowers and their beauty are
not yet appreciated. That lesson was first learnt later by the
Hindu, when surrounded by another flora." Amongst the
Homeric Greeks, too, in spite of their extensive gardening and
their different names for different flowers (Acipioj/ in Aetpioets,
KpoK09, vdiavOo<;, lov, poSov in poSoSctKToAo?,* and poSdeis), not a
trace of floriculture is yet to be found (cf., E. Buchholz, Die
homerischen Realien, ii. p. 111,/.).
So, too, in the Turko-Tartaric laiiguages common names for the
different kinds of flowers are wanting (cf. H. Vambery, Die
primitive Kultur, p. 223), so that in reality it is only at an
advanced period of culture that delight in the dainty gems of
mead and wood seems to awake.
A remarkably instructive example of the validity of the argu-
ment e silentio linguarum will meet us in Part iv. ch. xii., where
we hope to show, with regard to the terminology of names of kin,
no terms for the affinity of the husband with the wife's relatives
were or could be formed.
blue, which he finds in G. 'lov = hdit. viola, and in Lat. vitrum, G. Iffdns,
N.H.G. waid, &c., as though it followed that because these plants were
known therefore the colour blue was recognised and named in the primeval
times. What, too, is said about Kvavos is altogether false, and not in accord-
ance with our present etymological knowledge. There is much else that is
remarkable in the book.
* The rose is first unmistakably mentioned in Archilochus (fr. 29), and
that along with the myrtle, whicli is quite unknown to Homer :
e^ovca OaWhv fivpaivTiS inpTrero
fioSrjs T€ KaAhv auBos. r) 5e' ol KSfj.7]
wfioiis KareffKlaCe Kal fJ.eToi^pei'a.
'pSSov (FpoSov), as is well known, is a loan from the Persian (Arm. vard,
N. Pers. gul ; cf. Aram, varddh).
CHAPTER III.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OP INDO-GERMANIC EQUATIONS.
Partial coincidences in the Indo-Germanic vocabulary may be due either to :
(1) Accident, (2) differences of dialect in the original language, (3) new
formations common to separate groups of languages — Pedigree theory
or Transition theory — The afBnities of the Teutonic and the Greek
vocabulary — Common European culture — DiflBculty of the questions
treated.
The probability of tremendous gaps in the transmission of the
ancient vocabulary makes prudence in another direction extremely
necessary in the employment of linguistic materials for the history of
culture. It has been fully explained in the first part of our work how
coincidences between groups of Indo-Germanic languages have been
used in the same way as the vocabulary of the original language for
depicting epochs of culture, which should seem to fairly well bridge
over the chasm between the dim and distant j)rimeval period, and our
first historical knowledge of the separate peoples. The thought of
the possibility of tracing back the primeval history of the Teutonic
people, for example, through an original Teutonic, a Slavo-Teutonic,
a European epoch, right back to the primeval Indo-European period,
could not but lend a new and special charm to Linguistic Palaeonto-
logy. Unfortunately, very simple considerations are enough to
show that in this investigation of the prehistoric strata of culture,
the Science of Language has as yet attained but few indisputable
results.
Obviously, to begin with, it is, from a purely linguistic point of
view, an extremely useful beginning to establish, as Fick, Schmidt,
and others have done in careful catalogues of words, the geographi-
cal extension of etymological equations in the bounds of the Indo-
European family. But now to use catalogues of this kind, solely
in such a way as to predicate, with regard to the amount of culture
contained in them, that, e.g., a Grfeco-Italian period was richer than
a European, a European than an Indo-European, and so on — a
method of proceeding such as this is from the outset hampered by
the incapacity of science to decide with certainty in individual
cases whether it was or Avas not by accident that the series of
words in question was limited to a certain group of languages.
EQUATIONS PARTIALLY COINCIDENT. 1 23
Recent etymological research has frequently extended the area of
sets of words which have an importance for the history of culture.
Hitherto, for example, it was held that the equation Lat. hordeum,
corresponding to the Teutonic gerste, was limited to European
ground. From this the further conclusion was drawn that this
species of grain was not cultivated before the European period.
Recently, however, it has been shown that that word reaches a
considerable distance in the direction of Asia, as is shown by the
Armenian gan, Pehlevi jurd-dk, Balu6i zurtli-dni. So, too, equa-
tions such as Lat. gi-us, G. yepavos, O.I. gen. griuin, A.S. cran,
Lith. gerve (gersze), O.S. zeravi, "crane;" Lat. glans, G. ySaAavos,
O.S. zelq.di, "acorn," were regarded as exclusively European until
they were established in Asiatic territory as well (Arm. kroUnkn =
yepavos ; Arm. kalin = /3aXavos).
It is then by no means permissible to refuse any word you like,
along with the concept indicated by it, to the primeval period, and
to assign it to a later epoch, simply on the ground that it has only
been handed down by a single group of related languages. Are we
to assume that the Indo-Europeans of Europe were the first to ex-
perience the need of a word for their beards (Lat. barha, Lith.
harzda, O.S. brada, N.H.G. hart), while their forefathers before
them had perhaps a name for razor {kshurd — $vp6v) ? Or is it
probable that the bird had a designation in the primitive period
(Sans, vi, Zend vi, Lat. avis, G. oiwvo's, *6-Ft-wv6s), and that the
bird's egg did not get one until the European epoch (G. w6v, Lat.
ovum, O.H.G. ei, plur. eigi?; O.I. og, O.S.Jaje)'} Indeed, have not
words of a primitive formation which have been transmitted by
only a single language, much like the Teutonic substantives horse, cwt*
balk ( = beams, rafter), boat, and a hundred others, a right at least
in theory to be regarded as Indo-Germanic productions ?
Now, it certainly is not possible that every partial coincidence
between the Indo-European languages can be due to the loss of
linguistic property by the languages which do not share in parti-
cular equations. Else we should have to assume for the original
Indo-Germanic tongue an exuberance of homonymous and synony-
mous expressions such as would be inconceivable in the language of
even the most civilised peoples. It is, therefore, extremely probable
that a large part of the equations in question are really, locally or
chronologically, perfectly distinct acts of creation performed by
the instinct for language ; and this brings us face to face with the
question, how it is possible to conceive their production in particular
instances.
We have already mentioned that the original Indo-Germanic
language, the moment it is conceived, not as a philological abstrac-
tion, but as something complete in itself, as the actual spoken
language of an actually existing people, must after every analogy of
language have been diflierentiated into dialects ; and as there has
been a tendency lately (of. above, p. 108) to refer certain coincidences
between Indo-Germanic languages, as regards form, to these difter-
ences of dialect in the original language, it might conceivably be
124 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
possible to explain in the same way the exclusive possession of cer-
tain verbal signs of culture by certain groups of peoples. When one
considers that the Indo-Europeans were above all things a^attle-
breeding people, it might appear striking that with scarcely an ex-
ception, it is only the generic names for cattle that coincide in most
of the Indo-Germanic languages. The explanation of this may
perhaps be that these generic names held throughout the whole
area of the original language, and that by the side of them special
names existed in the separate dialects for domesticated animals
according to their sex and age — e.g., Sans, dhenu = Zendi daenu:
Sans, vagd, Lat. vacca, for cow, the mother animal ; Sans, meshd =
Zend maesha : Sans, 'drana = G. aprjv, for ram, he-goat ; Zend
huza — K.'&. bucca, Ir. bocc: (G. /cdtTrpos, "boar"); Lat. C(jrper = O.N.
hafr, for she-goat, and many others. Or if one thinks of the
endless names for milk in the the German dialects (J. Grimm,
Geschichte d. deufschen Sprache, p. 997), one might similarly
explain its different names in Indo-Germanic languages (Sans.
pdi/as = Zend 2M2/anh : G. yaAa = Lat. lac: Goth. 7niluks=l. melg
(Windisch Ir. T., p. 685); Sans, dddhi = 0.'P. ace. dada-n (here
observe the agreement of geographical groups).
Although, as regards the history of language and culture, there
is a probability that some of the partial agreements in the Indo-
Germanic vocabulary derive from differences in dialect in the original
tongue, yet, obviously still more owe their existence to the further
evolution of Indo-Germanic language and civilisation. Now, in what
way soever, whether by the pedigree theory, or by means of the wave
theory (cf. above, p. 64,/.), we conceive the expansion of the Indo-
Germanic peoples, thus much is beyond doubt : that the Indo-
Germanic tribes in the course of time encountered an ever increas-
ing quantity of ideas and objects of civilisation for Avhich the ancient
language of the original home no longer offered any sufficient ter-
minology. In order, however, to understand how this deficiency
was supplied we must be extremely careful not to confound this pro-
cess with the origin of langviage. We must exclude the creation,
unless by onomatopoesis, of new roots and words; and it follows that
languages so far as they did not, along with foreign objects of civilisa-
tion imported from abroad, also adopt the foreign words and sounds
for them — a point with which we shall have to deal subsequently —
must have drawn from the founts of their own possession for the
expression of the new ideas which crowded in upon them. The
course followed was in the main the same as that adopted at the
present day in presence of the same problem ; it was that of
narrowing and specialising a wider and more general term, in order
to provide a designation for the new objects of civilisation.* We
understand well enough now what is meant by a train, steamer,
&c., and yet, after a little reflection we must admit that these
words contain but a very general description of the objects in-
tended. A similar linguistic process can still be observed
* Cf. the author's Ueber den GedanJcen einer KulhirgescMchte der Indo-
germancn mcf Sjyrachw. Gnmdlage, Jena, 1887, p. 8,^.
HOW NEW WORDS WERE FORMED FOR NEW IDEAS. 1 25
and traced in the partial coincidences of the Indo-European
vocabulary.
This is the case when the European languages give a series of
equations such as G. fivWw, Lat. molere, Goth, malan, I. melim,
O.S. meljq,, Lith. malii, or G. apota, Lat. arare, J. airim, Goth.
arjan, Lith. drti, O.S. orati, a special meaning, applied to corn and
fanning, which they did not originally possess (cf. Sans, mar^,
B.R. " to pulverise," and Sans, ar, in the meaning of " move,
excite "). This is the case when the Celto-Teutons express the
conception of heritage (L orbe, Goth, arhi-mimja) as "orphaned
property" (Lat. orhus, G. op^avos), or obtained a common
name for butter (I. imb, O.H.G. anche) from a stem which origin-
ally only had the general signification of "ointment" (Sans.
ai>ju7ia, Lat. unguentum). This, too, when the Lithu-Slavo-
Teutons indicated the conception of the hand-mill (Lith. girnos,
O.S. zriiny, Goth, -qairnus*) by a stem (*gerno), the original
meaning of which was " grinding " or " grinder " (Sans, jar ^, trans-
feiTcd " to be worn out by use "), or when they unite in using for
the designation of thousand (Lith. tukstaniis, O.S. ti/sgsta, Goth.
])icsimcU), a word whose first meaning was " many hundreds " (cf.
IxvptoL, F. Kluge, Pauls Grundriss d. germ. Phil., i.), &c.
Another species of change of meaning, which in opposition to
that just described (determinative) may be called associative,
occurs when, for instance, in Teutonic-Slavonic a word for gold
(Goth, gulp, O.S. zlato) is obtained from an adjective, *ghol-to-m,
" yellow " (associated with the previously existing Goth, aiz), or in
Hindu-Persian the same concept (Sans, hir-anya, Zend zaranya) is
designated by a derivative, *gher-enjo {cf. O.S. zel-enu, "greenish
yellow ") formed from the same root, which is also related to the
previously existing Sans, dyas, Zend ayauh (cf. Part iii. ch. ii.).
Now, as regards the origin of these coincidences between groups
of languages, obviously the only way in which we can conceive it
is that at a certain point in the Lido-European area, a new con-
ception, due to an advance in culture, fixed itself in the language
and spread from that spot more or less widely through the
neighbourhood, just as it was through groups that new formations
in language, according to J. Schmidt's view (cf above, p. 64),
spread over the Indo-European area.
We are not hereby compelled to assume absolute identity of
language between the peoples who applied a common name to a
new advance in culture. No one will imagine that dialects had
not been differentiated among the Teutonic peoples at tlie time
when they came in contact with the Romans ; and yet the names
of various important features of civilisation spi'ead throughout all
the tribes, and, what is more, they spread in the forms appro-
priate to the separate idioms (cf, e.g., Lat. caseus = O.H.G. chdsi,
O.S. kdsi, A.S. cyse, Eng. cheese), so that if the existence of the
Latin original were not too manifest one might at times be
* I. hr6, " mill " = Sans, grd'-van, "stone for squeezing soma," may be con-
nected as regards root.
126 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
tempted to believe in a primeval connection between the words.
On the other hand, we must assume geographical continuity
between the languages which partake in the equations quoted
above, unless there are reasons to show that their coincidence in
a given stage of the meaning of a word is due to a freak of chance.
Tliat chance does here too play a part not to be overlooked is
shown, e.g., by the coincidence of the name for silver in Latin and
the Hindu-Persian languages (Lat. argentum = Sans, rajatd, Zend
crezata, Arm. artsath). For we shall show in detail further on that
this metal cannot have been known in the primeval Indo-Germauic
period. If this is so, it follows that the equation is so far due to
chance that the Hindu-Persians and Italians, without communica-
tion with each other, employed to designate silver an adjective
which existed in all their languages with the meaning " bright,"
" whitish ; " and in this there is nothing at all astonishing, for the
Semitic kesef, &c., and the Egyptian hat, Copt, chat, " silver," like
the G. apyvpos {cf. Xa[xvp6?, (ttco/xvXos) : dpyo's, originally mean
" bright," " grey-white." We shall return to this point in ch. v.
(Meaning of Words).
Different decisions will be reached as to the history and chron-
ology of agreements which are important for the history of culture,
and are exhibited only by groups of Indo-Germanic languages,
according as the expansion of the Indo-Europeans is conceived from
the point of view of the pedigree or the transition theory. From
the standpoint of the former, for instance, the mill will have
received its name in the North European and South European
languages (G. fjLvXrj, L. mola) at a time when the populations of
North and South Europe, bound together in groups having a close
linguistic connection with each other, had in the course of their
migrations from the original home arrived at abodes geographically
separated from one another. From the point of view of the con-
tinuity theory, however, the formation of a term for the mill,
wdiether simultaneous or not in the north and the south, will
have taken place at a time when the whole Indo-Germanic linguistic
area was still connected together by a series of continuous, gradual
transitions ; for in this w^ay alone is it possible to explain the points
of contact which the North European languages have with the
South European, and those which some European languages have
with the Hindu-Persian even in that portion of the vocabulary
important for the history of culture. Cf., e.g., A.S. earh, "arrow " =
Lat. arcus, "bow;" O.H.G. bahhan — G. ^wyw ; Goth. ot«Asa = Sans.
ukshdn; G. arpa/cros = Sans, tarkii; Lith. diina = Sans. dhdnd, "corn,
bread."
Finally, Leskien's intermediary theory (above, p. 71) might be
applied here. In the original home the Greeks may have been
neighbours of the Hindu-Persians, with w^hom they may have dis-
covered and named the concept thousand (G. x^Xioi, Sans, sahdsra,
Zend, hazanra); then they tore away from the Hindo-Persians and
drew up to the other Europeans w^ho had separated from the Indo-
European community some time before. The formation of expres-
THE PEDIGREE AND TRANSITION THEORIES. 12/
sions such as dpow, fxv\Xu>, a/xeXyo), belongs to this period. Then —
and this time in company with the Itahans — they broke tliis bond
also, and went through a Graeco-Italian period, during which
equations like Vesta = ia-ria arose.
But in discussing these possibilities, which show how insecurely
we are still groping about in these matters, the question will be
put : Cannot language itself be made to demonstrate that — apai't
from the close connection universally admitted to exist between
the Hindus and Persians on the one hand, and the Slavs and
Lettlanders on the other — two or more Indo-Germanic languages
are connected together by such a large and significant number of
instances, peculiar to themselves, of the possession of words
important for the history of culture, that they are thereby drawn
closer to each other than to the rest of the Indo-Germanic
languages ?
I am of opinion that in the present condition of our science no
decisive answer can be given to the question. In order to answer
it, it would first be necessary to ascertain the peculiar points of
agreement which each Indo-Germanic language has with each other
Indo-Germanic language, and which are confined to each pair of
languages respectively. A beginning has been made in this direc-
tion by Fick and J. Schmidt, but it is not enough to regard
Lithuanian, for instance, only in its relation to Hindu-Persian,
Slavonic, Teutonic : the relations of Lithuanian to the vocabulary
of Greek and of Latin would have to be carefully investigated.
Only when the complete materials, digested in this manner, are
before us, would it be possible to return to the question stated
above ; and then, perhaps, we should have some clearer cases of con-
nection, as regards culture, between the various Indo-Germanic
languages than we have now.
Let us dwell for a short time, for instance, on the closer connec-
tions on the one hand of Teutonic, and on the other of Greek, with
the rest of the Indo-Germanic languages : the former has been
dealt with fx*om the above point of view by F. Kluge (in Fends
Grundnss d. german. Phil., i.), and there can be no doubt that our
stock of languages has the most intimate connection, in the first
place, with its two neighbours, the Celtic and Slavonic branches;
though as regards both it is often difiicult, indeed impossible, to
distinguish cleai-ly between Avhat was early borrowed and what is
primevally related. C/., on this point, ch. vi. below, and p. 77
above.
But as regards now the relation of Teutonic to the South Euro-
pean languages, it can hardly be doubted that, whether alone or
along with Celtic, it has much closer relations as regards culture
with Latin than with Greek, as Lottner, K. Z., vii. 163,^., has
rightly recognised. In confirmation we may call to mind such
equations as, in the matter of agriculture : Lat. hordeum, O.H.G.
gersta, Lat. far, Goth, hariz-, Lat. ador, Goth, atisl; Lat. Jlos,
O.H.G. hluoma (Ir. bldth), Lat. porca, O.H.G. fttrh (It. rech),
Lat. sulcus, A.S. sulk. In the animal kingdom : Lat. piscis, Goth.
128 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
fisJcs (Ir. iasc), Lat. hcedus, Goth, gaits, Lat. caper, O.N. hafr (G.
Karrpos, "boar"), Lat. sturnus, O.H.G. stara, Lat. picus, O.H.G.
sjjecht, Lat. merula (*viisula), O.H.G. meisa (or O.H.G. amsala).
Trees : Lat. ulmus, O.N. dlvir (Ir. lem), Lat. corulus, O.H.G.
hasala (Ir. coll), Lat. quercus, O.H.G. ferha, Lat. sa/i.r, O.H.G.
salahha (Ir. saiV, though also G. iXiKf]), Lat. acer, O.H.G. dhorn
(though also G. aKao-ros). Water and sailing : Lat. lacus,A..^. lago
(Ir. loch), Lat. ag«a, Goth, ahoa (Celt, -apa), Lat. mdlits, O.H.G.
mas^ (Ir. matan, maite, " club, stick "). Political and constitu-
tional : Osc. tovto, Umbr. tutu, Goth, yiucla (Ir. tuath, though cf.
also Lith. Tauta, " highlands "), Lat. civis, Teut. *hiwa-, Lat.
tribus (Cymr, t7rf), O.H.G. do^jf, Lat. lex, O.N. fo'^ {-.legen, as
OifXLs = TLOrjfji.L), Lat. vianus (in manum venire), O.H.G. m«?i^ (Mid.
Lat. mundium). Weapons, implements, kc: Lat. arcus, A.S. earA,
Lat. hasta, Goth, gazds, Lat. cornu, Goth, haiirn (Kapvov r-qv
a-dXTTLyya, VaXdrai Hes.), Lat. /errMJ/i, Eng. brass (?)_, Lat. cribrum,
O.H.G. ritara (Ir. criathar). Miscellaneous : Lat. annus, Goth.
a]m (or asa?is), Lat. va^es, A.S. woSf (Ir. faith), Lat. sows, O.H.G.
s^mta (but, perhaps, also G. arr] ; cf. A''. ^., ]\^,F.,x. 467), hsit.gelu,
Goth, kalds, Umbr. nertro, "left," O.H.G. ?io?-c/ (though also G.
vepTepo<;), Lat. verus, O.H.G. war (Ir. fir), Lat. ccecus, Goth, hdihs
(Ir. ccech), Lat. helvus, O.ILG. ^eZo. Some verbs peculiar to Latin
and Teutonic are : Lat.7iffl6eo, Goth, haban, Lat. sileo, O.H.G. silan,
Lat. taceo, Goth, \ahan, Lat. erro, Goth, airzjan, Lat. tongere, Goth.
pagkjan, Lat. vinco, vici, Goth. 'ye^Aa (Ir. fichim).
These equations, which might be considerably increased in
number — we have not aimed at completeness here — especially if
we added the Slavo-Teutonic-Italic equations, are undoubtedly
opposed by points of contact peculiar to Teutonic and the Hindu-
Persian languages {cf., e.g., Goth. ««Asa = Sans. ukshdn; Goth.
AaM^M = Sans. gdru, "weapon," "missile;" O.N. ferr = Sans, card;
Ir. coir, "kettle," <fec.), and to Teutonic and Greek {cf., e.g., G.
K^7ro9 = O.H.G. huoba; G. <^wya) = O.H.G. bahhan ; G. /AeA.Sco =
O.H.G. smelzan, &c.). Such equations will be perhaps increased
in number by future research ; but it is extremely improbable
that they will equal in number or importance the equations
peculiar to Latin and German given above.
If, then, in this way Latin is brought nearer to Teutonic, or rather
Celto-Teutonic, this is quite in harmony with the fact that the
agreements peculiar to the vocabularies of Greek and Latin are of
a more subordinate kind than is generally assumed. Indeed, long-
ago the divergence of the two languages in important departments of
their vocabulary has been noticed. 0. Miiller in his Etruscans
{cf. above, p. 35) remarked that the Latin words for grain and
weapons are " non-Greek ; " V. Hehn brought out the differences
between the two languages in their weaving and agricultural
terms ; W. Helbig in fishing and metallurgy ; Osthoff {Qucestio)ies
mythological.) and 0. Weise {Griech. Worter im Lat, p. 314) call
attention to the divergence in the mythological names of the two
peoples.
GR^CO-ITALIAN EQUATIONS. 1 29
As a matter of fact there are not many equations — and those are
not very important — to be thrown into the scales in faA'^our of the
assumption of a Grteco-ItaUan period. There arc to be noted some
names of animals, especially of birds : (G. Orjp, Lat. ferus), G. x^p,
Lat. herinaceus, G. /c^tos, Lat. squdtics, G. ipap, Lat. pdrus, G. eiroij/,
Lat. upupa, G. cpwStos, Lat. ardea, G. oKkvijw, Lat. alcedo (all very
unsafe or else onomatopoetic). Some names of plants : (G. vX-q,
Lat. silva, G. pd^, Lat. frdguvi), G. a^tv* iXdr-qv (Hes., but with no
ethnicon), Lat. ahies, G. Kpdvo<;, Lat. cornus, G. i^d?, Lat. viscum.
Miscellaneous : G. vim, Lat. neo ("to spin," though cf. Ir. snimaire,
" spindle "), G. a-r^fjLwv, Lat. stdmen (though cf. Lith. stdkle, Sans.
sthavi), G. o-Koid?, Lat. sccBvns, G. dX<^ds, Lat. a/6«s (though c/. O.H.G,
a/i^2, O.S. lebedi, "swan"), G. ims, Lat. ■yi'^MS, G. ttoAtos, Lat. puis
(though cf. G. TratTraXr;, Sans, pdldva), G. t/Aa\ta, Lat. simila (?),
G. Tcpfxwv, Lat. termo (though rf. Sans, tdrman), G. Te/xevo^, Lat.
templum (roots alone related), G. ^wp, Lat. /i?r, G. IXkos, Lat. ulcus,
G. KXrji<;, Lat. cldvis, G. piyos, Lat. frigus (or r^'^or ?), G. yaXa/cr-,
Lat. (g)lact-, G. iXevOepo<;, Lat. loebertas, liber. It is to be further
noted that in many cases, indeed even in some of those just cited,
in consequence of the early and intimate historical relations of the
Romans to the Greeks, the question whether an equation is due to
primeval affinity or to borrowing cannot be decided with certainty,
as G. Seif/eiv = Lat. depsere, G. /xrjXov = Lat. mdlum, G. lov = Lat. viola,
and many others. Even with the important Xd^civ = libare, which
I cannot absolutely regard as borrowed (because of delibiltus), the
case may be that the ceremonial meaning of the Latin word was
determined by Greek influence. So too, possibly, with G. o-TreVSco =
Lat. spondeo (to conclude a treaty).
There is a complete want of certainty also about the mythological
equations which are confined to Latin and Greek. Passing by the
extremely dubious Jdnus = Zav (J. Schmidt, Verivandtschaftsv., p. 54;
cf. G. Meyer, Griech. G.'^, § 324) and Liber = A€L/3rjro<; (Hesych. with-
out an ethnicon; cf. Gruppe, Griech. Kulte nnd Mythen, p. 82), as
well as Di{v)d)ia = Atwrr;, the roots alone of which are related, we
will only briefly discuss the equation alluded to above, 'EaTia =
Vesta, which in quite recent times has again been put forward as
an argument for the close kinship of the Greeks and Italians {cf, e.g.,
B. Leist, Grdco-ital. Rechtsgeschichte, p. 181). The ancients them-
selves, however, derived the name of the goddess from Greece
(Cicero, De nat. deor., ii. 27, 67), and therein are followed by modern
students such as Grassmann and Osthoff" (loc. cit., p. 7). On the
probability that the cultus of Vesta was borrowed from Greece, see
Gruppe, loc. cit., p. 84, jf.
But even if we adhere to the primeval affinity of the two words,
it will be well not to over-estimate the force of this equation. 'la~rir)
is not, in the mouth of Homer, by any means a goddess; she is only
the sacred fire of the hearth, which is used in adjurations, just as
is the table of the guest : —
terra} vvv Zeus vpwra Oewv ^evirj tc Tpdire^a
lo-Tu; t'OSuo^os. Od. xiv. 158.
I
I30 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The sanctity, however, of fire in general, and of the fire of the
hearth in particidar, is an idea which must be regarded as common
to all Indo-Europeans {cf. Part iv. ch. xiii.).
Things are very different when we tnni from the comparison of
the Greek and Roman vocabularies to that of the Greek and Hindu-
Persian. I should be inclined to believe that the satisfactory
equations of these two languages are in importance about comparable
with the agreements confined to Latin and Teutonic, or Celto-
Teutonic, which have been discussed above.
With especial frequency, the closer connection of Greek wdth
Hindu-Persian displays itself in names of weapons, which we have
collected elsewhere (Part iii. ch. x.), and therefore may omit here.
To them may be added in the matter of agriculture : G. xeAo-ov,
Sans, karshu, Zend karsha, "furrow," Lac. cvAa/ca, G. ai!Xaf, Sans.
vfka, " plough," G. apovpa, Sans, urvdrd, " ploughland " (?). Of
habitations : G. ttoAc?, Sans. pw\ G. aa-rv, Sans, vastu, G. /xdi'Spa,
Sans. 7na7idurd, "stall." Of the family: G. S€(nr6Tr]<;,8sins. ddiiipati,
G. TTOTvta, Sans, pdtnt, G. Trev^epos, Sans, hdndhu, "relation." Of
crime and punishment : G. ayos. Sans, agas, G. rtVo/tai, ttolvtJ, Sans.
ci, Zend ci (Jcaend). Of implements : G. arpaKTos, Sans, tarku,
" spindle," G. ^vpov, Sans, kshurd. Of animals : G. opTv^, Sans.
vartaka, "quail," G. iktivo?, Sans, gyend, Zend saena (though Armen.
Qin), G. KVKvos, Sans, raktind, G. TTefuppyjSi'oVjS-Ans.hcwibkara, "bee" (?),
G, apprjv, Sans, rshabd, "male animal;" cf., fiu'ther, G. e'^pts, Sans.
vddhri, "gelded," G. Koyxq, Sans, gankhd, "mussel." Miscellaneous:
G. yiXioi, Sans, sakdsra, Zend hazanra, G. avOos, Sans, dndhas,
G. Kvpo<;, Sans. gu7'a, G. reKTwv, Sans, tdkshan, G. pe^w, Sans. I'aiij,
"to colour," G. x^^j Sans, hu, G. ayios, Sans. 7/aj, Zend yaz, G. ^pa
ij/ip€Lv, Sans, vara bhar, G. rjv<;, Sans, di/ii* (Collitz, K.Z., xxvii. 183).
Finall}', there must be added a string of mythological proper names,
which, for reasons to be stated later (Part iv. ch. xiii.), we do not
regard as generally very conclusive, and sometimes not as altogether
certain phonetically, but which have an advantage in that the
suspicion of borrowing is excluded in their case. They are :
Oiipavos, Sans, vdruna, G. ^Aeyues, Sans, bhfgu, G. Tptro- in
TptTwv, TpiToyeveia, Sans. tritd, G. 'Ep/A'^s, Sans, sardmd, sdrameyd,
G. 'Epivijs, Sans, saranyu, G. "Ak/awj/, Zend asman, " heaven,"
G. 'AttoAXcdv, Cypr. 'AttciAwv, Sans, saparyenya, "Vedic epithet of
Agni" {cf. L. V. Schroder, K. Z., xxix. 193), G. Kevravpoi, Sans.
gandharvd, &c.
Incidentally we may remark that in isolated cases Greek also
has equations peculiar to itself and various other Indo-Germanic
languages, with Lithuanian (G. paTrrw, "stitch," Lith. tverpu, "spin"),
with Lithu-Slavonic (G. ^a\/cos, "bronze," Lith. gelezis, O.S. Mho,
"iron"), and Celtic (G. hrjpLo<;, "people," Ir. dam, "followers").
Looking, however, at the above facts as a whole, one cannot help
saying at least that the two classical languages, as far as our present
* If, as used to be thought, Sans, vdsu is rather the corresponding word,
Ir. fiu, "worth}'," must be brought in, and consequently we shall not have a
Grseco-Hindu-Persian equation.
COMMON CULTURE AND IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE. I3I
knowledge extends, cannot, as regards equations which are important
for the history of culture, and which are peculiar to those two
languages, be compared with the equations confined on the one
hand to Latin and Celto-Teutonic, and on the other to Greek and
East-Indo-Germaiiic.
A more certain, and, as we shall subsequently see, a more im-
portant point for the right comprehension of primeval Indo-
Germanic history is the fact long known and recognised, that the
Indo-Europeans of Europe, tlie Western Indo-Europeans as a whole,
in contradistinction to the Hindu-Persians, are bound together by
such important and such numerous points of agreement between
their vocabularies, in manj" departments of the history of culture,
that we have a right to speak of a common European culture. The
first to call attention to this were Lottner and Fick {sujjva, p. 55) ;
their only mistake was that they explained this common European
culture as being the same thing as a common European language.
It is, however, at the present day beyond a doubt that new foi'ma-
tions common and peculiar to the European languages, the safest
criterion of close linguistic affinity, have not yet been discovered,
and probably will not be discovered.
A j;-nmmon (^nH-nrf- and identity of language are two ideas. which
may but do not necessax'ily coincide { cf. above^ p. 72). When the
Western Indo-Ev:ropeans evolved such wTirds as d/rxjw, /avAAw, d/Aaw,
uypos, <^77yd?, dX?, Arc, the Slavo-Lithiumians and Albanians may
have been distinguished in the pronunciation of the palatal ^--scries,
which they shared with the Hindu-Persians, from the Teutons,
Celts, Italians, and Greeks ; so, too, even at that period the Greeks
agreeing with the Hindu-Persians may have given a different tone
to the nasal vowels (», m) from the rest of the Western Indo-
Europeans. Again, as the result of previous local contact with the
Hindu-Persians, the Greeks may have brought to the common
European culture elements of civilisation, which are jjerhaps
partially mirrored in the above collection of Grseco-Hindu-Persian
equations.
A striking parallel to this may be borrowed from the affinities
to each other of the Finnic-Ugrian languages, treated of by
J. Budenz in B. B., iv. 192, ff. In this family of speech the
largest number of points of contact occur between the vocabularies
of Finnic and Lapponic, which two languages accordingly in earlier
days were classed together as being closely connected. Budenz
now shows by means of phonetic tests that this was a mistake,
that the two languages in question rather belong to two different
branches of the fundamental Ugrian tongue — Finnic to the South
Ugrian, Lapponic to the North Ugrian. The undeniably great
affinity of the vocabularies of the two languages arose, during the
period of geograpliical contact between the two linguistic areas,
from loans on both sides, especially on the part of Lapponic
(p. 243), in a word from the assimilation of the vocabularies of
the two languages which were originally two distinct dialects.
We may imagine a similar process going on in the area of the
132 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
common European culture. In what quai-ters it shows itself
conspicuously we shall see subsequently. Here we will do
nothing more than refer to the likewise indubitable fact that one
Asiatic language, Armenian (c/. above, p. 70), must originally
have been included in that area.
As regards the chronology of this connection of the Western
Indo-Europeans with one another in the history of culture, nothing
naturally can be said ; nor can it be dated relatively to the period
when the Eastern Indo-Europeans dwelt together. The idea of
ploughing may have been expressed by the former in their verb,
G. dpoco, at the same time as by the latter in their verb. Sans.
harsh: but the two linguistic actions may belong to totally
different periods.
Remains the question, in how many languages must an equation
be established to be regarded as being primevally Indo-Germanic %
From all that we have said, it is clear that it is as yet impossible
to lay down any hard and fast rule which will apply to all cases.
Words which can be established as existing in all or nearly all
Indo-European languages, such, for instance, as the Indo-Germanic
expressions for winter, moon, night, red, for many kinds of animals,
many terms of kinship, the numerals up to 100, &c., will always
be amongst the most certain constituents of the primeval vocabu-
lary. For the rest, it follows from the previovis remarks, that a
series which on one hand is native to the Hindu-Persian tongues,
and on the other is deep-seated in the European languages
(especially in those which do not lie under the suspicion of
having any close connection with the Eastern Indo-Europeans),
a series such as Ir. crenim, G. Trpta/Aai, Sans. Icrinami, " buy," or
Goth, aiz, Lat. ces, Sans, di/as, Zend ayaiih^ &c., has a well-
founded claim to the highest Indo-European antiquity.
In all questions as to the affinities of the Indo-Germanic
languages, however, we must never forget that we are working
with materials which do not allow of the complete solution of all
difficulties : from the chain of Indo-Germanic languages whole
sets of links, such as Macedonian, Thracian, Illyrian, the connect-
ing link between north and south, Phrygian and Scythian, the
transition for east to west, are almost totally and irretrievably
lost.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FORM OF WORDS.
The phonetic form of equations that are available for the histoiy of culture —
Limitations in the employment of words identical in root, but differing
in the formation of their suffixes — Caution even against equations which
completely correspond — Original meaning of certain suffixes — Onomato-
poesis.
So far we have devoted our attention exclusively to the geo-
graphical distribution of equations, important for the history
of culture, and to the conclusions which one is or is not justi-
fied in drawing from them ; now we must proceed to consider
somewhat more closely the phonetic foi'm of the material avail-
We have seen that A. Kuhn {cf. above, p. (3p9 had alreadyl j ^
laid it down that a series of words, in order to show the existence \
of a civilised concept in the pi'imeval Indo-Germanic period, must be
etymologically connected, not only in their root, but also in their
suffix syllables ; and no one will deny that, as a matter of ^fact,
equations such as Sans, drva, Lat. equus, &c. (Indo-G. *elc-vo),
Zend kaend, G. ttoiv?;, tfec. (Indo-G. ^quoi-nd), Sans, djra, G. dypos,
&c. (Indo-G. ag-ro), which agree most completely down to the
stem- and suffix-syllables, are amongst the most undeniable con-
stituents of the Indo-Germanic vocabulary. Every one knows, how-
ever, that instances of this kind are not of the commonest, and
the question now arises, whether absolutely every series of words,
which are etymologically connected, but show differences in the
root -syllable or in the formation of their suffixes, or in both, is
valueless for inferences as to the primeval Indo-Germanic period. In
the first place no one will wish to assert this of equations, in which
the points of difference are so far regular in that they are due
exclusively to the fiict that the individual languages have
generalised modifications of the stem wliich figured in an Indo-
Germanic paradigm. Thus, in individual languages these stems —
Goth, fotit,-, G. 7roS-(7ro'S-a), Lat. ped- (peJ-em) — occur side by side, and
require no other explanation than that in the Indo-Germanic counter-
part of this word, the stems pod-, pod-, ped- were the modifications
which appeared in the regular declension of the word. The same
134 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
holds of Goth, hairto by the side of G. KapSta,* Lat. cord- (Indo-G.
kerd- : krd-).
The same explanation may account for Goth. ffid]> {^yhlto) and
O.S. zlato {*gholto). The original paradigm may have been
declined *gh6lto-in (O.S. zlato), ghlt-eso (Goth. gul]>is), &c.
As regards the formation of their suffixes, O.S. jelen, " hart," and
G. eA-a^os seem to be widely separate. But if the latter is referred
to a fundamental form, *el-7i-bho, it is evident that a stem, *el-en :
*el-n, must have been present in Greek, which was then expanded
by the addition of the animal suffix -cfio. In the same way the
different forms of the Indo-Germanic w^ord for "winter" can be
brought into an Indo-Germanic paradigm, the " gradations "
{AblautsUifen) or "variations in the radical vowel" of which were
probably *ghi-om- (G. x'-'^^)^ *ghi-€m- (Lat. hiems), *ghei-m- (Sans.
heman), and *ghi-m- (O.S. zima), &c. (cf. Brugmann, Grundriss,
ii. 453).
Nor, again, need the historian of culture harbour any suspicion
about cases of such daily occurrence in the life of language as, e.g.,
a mere change from one gender to another or from one declension
to another, or things of that kind — e.^.,Lith. szirdl-, fem. : Lat. cordi-,
neut. "heart;" G. stem wkt- : Sans, ndkti- (and nakt-), Lat. nocti-,
"night;" G. stem d^ov- : Sans, dksha-, Lat. axi-, "axle," &c. Or, if
in another instance one looks through the different forms of the
stem in, e.g., the name for dog which runs through all Indo-
Germanic languages — Sans, ^vd, st. ^van and ^im ; G. Kvuiv, st. kvov
and Kvv : Lat. cani- : Teut. hun-d — one cannot doubt that these words
derive from an identical and primitive formation, and that Teutonic
(by the addition of -d) and Italian (by the transition of the stem cvan
(kvn 1) into the -i declension; cf., however, can-um) have departed
from the original form of the stem preserved in Greek and Sanskrit.
All these instances then are beyond a doubt available for the
history of culture, and though it is often possible to dispute which
form is to be imputed to the original language, and though indeed
this point may never be settled in certain equations as Lith.
ozys : Sans, ajd-, "goat, he-goat," or G. x^v, Sans, hansd-s, Lat.
anser, &c., this cannot possibly deter the historian of primitive
culture from assuming that in the original Indo-European language
words did exist for heart, night, axle-tree, dog, and for a goat-like
and a goose-like creature (cf. ch. v.).
Now, how stands the case with those equations in which, quite
apart from the etymological identity of the root-syllable, there is
no correspondence whatever in the formative syllables, but rather
wide and irreconcilable difference? One will at first be inclined to
exclude instances of this kind as not suitable for exact inferences
about Indo-Germanic language and culture ; for if one reflects on
the exuberant growth of suffixes that continues to confront us even
* The modification ^erd in my opinion is represented in Greek by Kep^os,
which originally meant not "profit" but "cleverness." Cf. <pp4ves and
TrpaTTiSey, "midriff'" and "intelligence," x^'^os, "gall" and "auger," &c.
In KepSoiVw {KfpSav-jco) the 7i-stem of the Teutonic (Goth, hairton-) reappears.
EQUATIONS AGREEING IN ROOT ONLY. 1 35
in the historic periods of language, there is something extremely
precarious in ascribing a given civilised concept to the original
language on the strength of an equation which not a single trace
of etymological connection in the formation of the stem and suffix
stamps with the mark of Indo-European coinage. Numerous
Indo-Germanic terms for bed may derive from a common root,
stca\ "to spread out," or kei, "to rest," and countless terms for
chair from one and the same root, sed, "to sit" (c/. A. Pictet,
Orif/incii'-, iL p. 346,/.); but these facts have something so natural
about them that it is impossible to infer from them the existence
of those objects in the original language. Nevertheless, I think,
here too we must distinguish. In each particular case it will be
necessary to decide whether it is probable that it is a mere
coincidence that two or more languages have selected the same
root for the designation of a given idea.
Though the nurse is called in Greek TL-d-q-vrj, and in Sanskrit
dhd-trt, the living presence of the verbs Orj-a-acrOaL and dhd in the
two languages will prevent anyone from assuming an Indo-
Germanic prototype for these words. Somewhat different is the
case with two equations such as G. Trev-Oepos, " father-in-law "
(also "son-in-law") : Sans, bdndhu, "kinsman," and G. rdXavTov,
" scales " : Sans, tula, ditto. The roots are in the one case our
bind = Sans, handh, " to fetter " (he who is bound by the bond of
kinship), in the other probably Sans, tul {toldyati), Lat. Udi, "to
lift up on high," as lifting a thing was the first way of trying to
weigh it. Now, of these two verbs the former has left in Greek
nothing but traces (Treicr/Lta, *7rev^-o-/ta, "cord "), and the latter only
occurs in a transferred meaning (xA^vat, "to endure"). In any
case, then, the formation of words such as 7revO€p6<s, raXaj/Tov must
belong to a prehistoric period, in which the roots *-ir€v6- and *TaX-
(in the sense of "carry") still possessed in Greek a generative
power. The relative)}' greatest claim to being considered primeval
is naturally enjoyed by those equations with divergent suffixes for
which no stem-verb can be discovered in Indo-Germanic at all,
such as G. (3d\-avo<;, Lat. glandi-, Lith. gile, "acorn," Goth, azgo,
"ashes," G. icrx-dpr], "hearth," and many others.
Then, as regards etymologies which rest solely on the identity
of the root-syllable, and differ in the formation of their suffixes, it
is well to use a certain amoiuit of caution in employing them for
the history of culture. Caution, as Th. Benfey has justly pointed
out (ef. above, p. 38, /".), is not wholly superfluous in the case of
equations which are able to show absolute identity of structure both
in the root-syllable and the suffix.
The suffixes of a language, as is well known, fall into two
classes : those which having been inherited from the primeval
period have in historical times become torpid, and those which
have still retained life and formative force. Now, if the same
suffix happens to have retained its vital force in two or more
languages it may easily occur, assuming the presence of roots
etymologically identical, that in relatively late times words were
136 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
formed by means of this suffix, which being absolutely identical
in sound and syllables have all the appearance of Indo-Germanic or
primeval formations. Reviewing Fick's catalogue of the original
language from this point of view, one clearly sees that a whole
heap of the words he brings forward, and many of them important
for the history of culture, must be rejected. Thus an equation
such as Sa,ns. jjaktdr, "cook" : rt. pac = hat. coctor : coquo — might
lead to the conclusion that chefs de cuisine formed a professional class
in primeval times. When, however, we reflect that both verbs as
well as the suffixes -tar and -tor still retained a fresh and vigorous
life in Sanskrit and Latin times, we cannot doubt that we have
here to do with a chance coincidence ; and this is further indicated
in this instance by the relatively late occurrence of the word, at
least in Latin. The same reflection applies to such a series of
words as Sans. jiicUdr : jiid, yvwo-Tjyp : yiyi'wa-Kw, Lat. notor : nosco,
"one who knows, a surety," which, if it held water, would impute
an important legal conception to primeval times. In another legal
expression, too. Sans. d2)aciti, " recompense " — rt. ci = G. dTrdno-ts :
Ttvw — it is probable that in both languages we have a casual agree-
ment produced by the still living suffix -ti, -o-i.*
In other cases it is very difficult to determine whether an
equation is or is not casual as regards agreement in the formation
of the suffix. Are we, for example, on the strength of an equation
such as Sans. tdhha7i = reKTOiv, "carpenter," to ascribe this idea to
the period of primitive culture, and consequently to assume the
existence of a definite class of artisans in the most ancient stage of
Indo-European evolution? The verbal root icd'sA, tekt- (in Te/<Tatvo)u,at),
still exists in both languages ; while, on the other hand, the suffix
-d7i, -an = -oiv, -ov (cf. Bopp, Vgl. Grammatik^, iii. p. 287), as a means
of forming noviina agentis directly from the verb, can hardly be
said to live either in Greek or in Sanskrit. But is it then utterly
impossible that the suffix in question may have possessed formative
force in a period of the separate history of Greek and Sanskrit of
which we have no record 1 Or was the meaning of the suffix -an =
-(av in primeval times such that in conjunction with a verb it
indicated not so much those who do something permanently and
professionally as those who occasionally employ themselves on a
thiug, as in Homer the epithet i^vtoxos, "reinholder," is applied
even to Hector, when he for once takes the reins in hand, and as
those who on a single occasion are ordered to hew wood are called
vXoTOfjiOL, " hewers of wood ? " So, too, the G. Troijxrjv = Lith. 2nemu,
may originally have meant not shepherds by occupation, but those
who on some single occasion pastured the herds.
* In the case of some equations with the suffix -ti the casual nature of the
correspondence may also be shown by the phonetic history of the words. If,
e.g., the G. rep}\iis (Tepir-a-t) corresponded directly to the Sans, tfjj-ti, then,
since there is in this case no reason for the change of t into <r, the Greek
word must have been *Tep7r-Tis or *TapTr-Tis ; rep^is was then obviously first
formed on Greek gi'ound, after the analogy of numerous nouns in -a-i, from
repTToi, TepTTo/xai { — trp).
ONOMATOPOIESIS. 1 37
This scepticism, which is such as to cast suspicion on almost
every etymological equation, is perhaps pushed too far. For all
that, it is useful to keep every linguistic possibility before our
eyes in order to guard against hasty conclusions.
Finally, we have here to mention equations which owe their
existence probably or possibly to accidental coincidences due to
onomatopoiesis. In this class we must first of all rank a series of
birds' names such as Lat. uliccus : Sans. tUuka, "owl," Sans, kolcild :
G. /coKKvf, Lat. cucuhis, O.S. ktikavica, Lith. ktikuti, I. coi, and
others, which may well have been formed for the first time in the
separate languages by imitation of the cry (cf. Part iv. ch. ii.).
Perhaps the equivalent names for the domestic fowl, which can
hardly have been known in primitive times {cf. above, p. 36), such
as krka-vcihu, " he who says krka " (the Vedic name for the
domestic fowl) : G. Kipnos (Hesych.) or kukkutd (also Vedic) : 0.
SI. kokotu, may have arisen in the same way. This does not
exclude the possibility that a form originally onomatopoetic may
be framed by the action of phonetic laws into the shape of a
regular substantive, Cf. Goth. hmtk, "cock-crow" : KepKos; I. cercdce,
gaUinaceus, &c.; O.H.G. hehara ; G. Kiao-a {*kikja) : Sans, kikidvvi,
"blue woodpecker," &c. So, too, with a series of onomatopoetic
formations in the way of names of kin, to which likewise we shall
subsequently return (Part iv. ch. xii.).
CHAPTER V.
THE MEANINGS OF WORDS.
The original meaning of words etymclogicallj' equivalent — DiiBculty of
establishing it — The root of an equation useless for the history of culture
— Names of kin — Modern meanings foisted on to ancient words — Verbs
expressing the pursuit of certain crafts — Names of plantsand animals in the
original language — Equations bearing on the history of cults and religion.
Before an etymological equation can be employed as the corner
stone on which to build a history of Indo-Germanic culture, we have
carefully to examine its geographical distribution and the antiquity
of its grammatical structure. But this examination b}' no means
suffices to eliminate all the errors to which the historian of culture
is exposed in his use of linguistic material. Etymological research
into the Indo-Germanic vocabulary is nearly exclusively content to
establish the origiiaal grammatical form of a woi'd : the question as to
its original meaning receives but superficial treatment as a rule. And
yet all will admit that for the history of culture it is on this point
that everything turns.
A. Kuhn has already {cf. above, p. 18) set forth the difficulties
which arise when the individvial links in an etymological chain
have different meanings in diflferent languages. That G. 8p{)s,
"oak," 0.1. daur, "oak" : Sans, dru, "tree," Goth, to^iu, "tree," &c.,
are related is certain, and yet the question whether the original
meaning was " oak " or " tree " hardly admits of solution. So, too,
G. o/Dvi?, "bird," and Goth, ara, "eagle," A.S. earn {cf. O.S. orilu,
'L\th..erelis and eri-s, "eagle") correspond; but,again, whether "bird"
or " eagle " was the original meaning can hardly be ascertained.
In other instances it is i:)0ssible to attain a certain amount of
probability, as we shall see is the case with G. <f>r]y6s, "oak": Lat.
fagus, German buche (cf. Part iv. ch. iv.). So, too, the meaning
of a family of words such as G. wpa, " summer " (in oTr-wpa), Zend
2/dre, "year," Goth, jer, Bohem. jaro, "spring," may be fixed with
some certainty as being that of the German lefiz, " spring " (cf.
Part iv. ch. vi.). In both cases, however, the decisive considera-
tions were furnished not by philology but by the general history
of culture, or rather by the geography of plants.
But even series in which all the words have the same meaning
may not be used for the history of ciilture without criticism.
MERE ROOTS USELESS. 1 39
To begin with, we must make an end of a px'actice which Justi
{cf. above, p. 22), Max Miillei- {cf. above, p. 25), and especially
A. Fick {cf. above, p. 36), have carried to the greatest lengths,
the practice of borrowing touches for our picture of primitive
civilisation and culture from the meaning of the root of an eqiuition.
Names of kin have afforded the favourite field for those exercises
of the imagination which have converted the father into the
" protector," the mother into the " managing housewife," the
daughter into the " little milker," the brother into the " suppoiler,"
the brother-in-law (Bdyjp) into the "playfellow" (as the younger
brother of the husband), the sister into " she who dwells with him"
(the brother), and so on. People should remember how extremely
uncertain such idyllic interpretations are as a rule. Whether mdtdr
means the "managing housewife " or the "maker" (of the child),
whether duhitdi- means the "milker," " the suckling," or " she who
gives suck," undsumi "the begetter "or the "begotten," and so on, all
these questions are more than uncertain and will never be answered.
In the next place, a simple consideration is enough to show that
these forms, even if rightly interpreted, afford no criterion whatever
for ludo-Germanic culture at the time which interests us here, i.e., at
the period immediately preceding the dispersion of the Indo-European
languages. For instance, if hhrdtar really belongs to the root hhar,
and means the " supporter " (sc. of the sister), this view of the
relation of brother to sister must appertain to a period when the
language was just emerging from the stage of bare roots, and was
beginning to become inflectional. This period, however, may have
been many thousand years more remote than that which we under-
stand by the "prehistoric unity of the Indo-European peoples;"
and there is nothing whatever to show that the Indo-Europeans
before the dispersion were not quite as ignorant of the connection
in grammar and meaning between the name brother and the root
hhar, as the Greeks were of the relation ^prjTrjp, <^€pw, or the
Romans o( f rater, fero, or the Germans of hriuler, (ge)hdre)}, &c.
Besides, there is a much more attractive explanation of the names
father and mother indicated by 0. Bohtlingk in his Jakutic
grammar (1851), p. vii. If one takes into consideration the pi'oba-
bility that names for father and mother existed in all stages of
language, and reflects on the extraordinary accordance of the
sonorous and significant Indo-Germanic^:>(e)-</r and ma-ter with the
more onomatopoetic papa and viamvia of nearly every language
of the globe, it is hard to suppress the suspicion that the Indo-
Germanic words are only fuller and more developed forms of
immeasurably earlier names for father and mother.*
Another error common in employing the evidence of langxiage
for the history of culture consists in reading modern meanings into
ancient words, in pouring new wine into old l^ottlcs. An example
from the historj^ of a modern language will show my meaning.
* Cf. the St Petersburg Sanskrit Dictionary, s.v. ^J?Wr, and H. Sayce,
The Principles of Comparative Philology', 1875, p. 224. Cf, also, Sir John
Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation, 1875, p. 360.
I40 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
O.
The English verb write is, of course, identical with the A.S. vritan,
O.N. rita, O.H.G. rizan, "to make clefts or cuts," and there is no
doubt that this verb mainly was used to designate the process
described by Tacitus in ch. x. of the Germania, where he speaks of
cutting certain signs (runes) on small pieces of wood for the
purpose of casting lots. But every one will admit that it would
be mere folly on the strength of the modern meaning of the English
verb to impute the art of writing to the primeval Teutonic period.
Yet Indo-Germanic equations are often misinterpreted in this
very way. G. ttoAis, " town " = Sans, pw, pu7-i, para (post-Vedic),
" town," has given rise to the idea that the Indo-Europeans before
the dispersion lived in towns with streets, fortified with wall and
ditch ; and yet, than this, nothing could be more preposterous. In the
Vedic hymns, as H.Zimmer has conclusively shown, ^/fmcZ^sc/^esZeiew,
p. 142,/., \h% 'pur-a& are nothing more than " strongholds situated
on high ground and strengthened by earthworks and ditches,
whither in time of danger (of war or floods — the only occasions on
Avhich these places were occupied) the inhabitants betook them-
selves with their goods and chattels." Towns are never mentioned
in the Vedas. The same remark applies to the age of the Avesta
(W. Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 412,/.), and the Greek ttoXcs in all
probability was originally used in the sense solely of a/cpoTroXis.
Tliat the Teutons and Slavs were entirely unacquainted with
towns, and indeed with stone-buildings of any kind, is proved to
demonstration by indisputable arguments from language, history,
and archaeology. At the very most, then, all that we could infer
from the equation ttoXis = pur would be that the Indo-Europeans
(or, strictly speaking, the Hindu-Persians and Greeks) before theirdis-
persion had learned to protect themselves by earthworks after the
fashion of the Vedic puras, nothing more. There is more difficulty
in ascertaining the original meaning of another series of equations,
which are important for the political constitution of the Indo-
Europeans, such as Sans, vefd, "house," G. o?kos, ditto, Lat. vtcus,
"quarter, village," Goth, veihs, "hamlet," O.S. vlsi, "estate," Umbr.
Osc. touta, "town," O.I. tiiath, "people," Goth, piuda, "people," Celt.
dunum (in proper names), " town," Eng. town, O.N. ttm, " enclosure,"
I. treb, " dwelling, tribe," 0. Sax. thorp, " village," Goth. ]>aicrp,
"tilth" (c/. Curtius' Grundz.^, p. 227), &c. {cf. Part iv. ch. xii.).
Another equation which has been made to imply a great deal
more than it really means is Sans, pdtni = G. Trorvta, " lady, wife,
exalted one." A. Fick, Spracheinheit, p. 226, remarks: " As Benfey
{cf. Preface to the Worterh. d. Indog. Grunds,pr., by A. Fick, jd. viii.)
first perceived, this designation enunciates the complete equality of
woman ; polygamy and the servitude of the wife are consequently
absolutely foreign to the Indo-Europeans," and so on. Now,
granted that this Hindu-Persian-Hellenic equation is evidence for
the primeval Indo-Germanic period, granted also that the word did
really at that time, as it does in Sanskrit, mean lady and wife,*
* In Greek the only meanings which can be established are "mistress," e.g.,
''Aprefits vdrvia 6ripwy, ii. xxi. 470 ; and " the exalted," ■ir6TPia''}ip7], &c., not
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES. I4I
we have no ai'gument against the existence of polygamy in the
primeval Indo-Germanic period ; whereas, as we shall sec furtlicr on,
history affords many considerations in favour of its existence.
Admitting that pdtnt in the age of the Vedas does beyond all
possibility of doubt mean "lady, wife," yet, for all that, polygamy
can be demonstrated to have existed at this period. So if potnia
was a complimentary term in the primeval period, and was not
like the Lith. patl •.2')cits, " wedded wife," " wedded husband," a mere
feminine : potis, meaning nothing more than " she who has a master "
((■/■. Sans, mpdtnt, "having the same master, concubine," B. R.), for
ail that, in a polygamous society the word may very well have
meant the head or fiivourite wife of her lord. The Kigveda, x.
159, for instance (Zimmer, AHind. Leben, p. 159), contains an
incantation in Avhich a king's wife endeavours to make a concubine
innoxious and find less favour than herself in the eyes of their lord.
Equally hazardous is it in my opinion to inferthat because the Sans.
2mdd, Zend padha, and G. irov? agree in meaning a metrical foot, there-
fore metre existed amongst the Indo- Europeans. Cf. above, p. 28.
Two classes of words there are, however, which above all others
ai"e liable to have a modern meaning substituted for their ancient
sense. The first consists of a number of names of actions, which
seem indeed to have been names for arts practised in the primeval
period, such as Sans, pac, Slav, pekq, G. Treo-crw, Lat. coquo, " cook ; "
Sans, vahh {vap), G. v(f>aivw, O.H.G. weban, "weave;" Sans, siv,
Lat. stco, Slav, sija, Goth, sittja, " sew." That the arts designated
by these roots were practised in primeval times is obvious ; but
surely it is pertinent to inquire. How ? The chef who prepares an
elaborate rnemi by the aid of the latest range " cooks " indeed ; but
the dirty Eskimo also "cooks" when he puts hot stones into
•water until it boils, because his vessels of wood or stone will not
stand the heat of the fire (cf. Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times,
ii. p. 195). Now, what test can language produce to fix the pi'e-
cise point between these two extremes, to which our ancestors had
attained, before the dispersion. We shall, I hope, in the course of our
investigation, have opportunities of putting most of these equations
on their proper footing as regards the primeval period.
The second class of words, which we have to mention here, con-
sists of a nvimber of names of animals and plants, which by their
identity in the separate languages are shown to have existed in
the primeval period, but as to which Comparative Philology, as
V. Hehn has most forcibly pointed out, is quite incapable of
proving that they were known to the Indo-Europeans as domesti-
cated. As, however, we shall have to return to this point and
discuss it more fully hereafter, we shall content ourselves here
with stating that it is only the history of culture, not Comparative
Philology, which can attain appi'oximate certainty on these points.
So far we have drawn our examples on the whole from the
history of the material culture of the Indo-Europeans. But the
"wife." Cf., however, Stariroiva, " housewife, lady," in Homer, and Sitrirlvas'
yvvalnas QicrffaKoi, Hesych.
142 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
danger of modernising the original meaning of a word is equally
great in the case of equations which seem to refer to a moral,
legal, or religious civilisation amongst the original people.
The Hindu dhtuaaii and G. ^e/x,is have this in common, that they
are both derived, though in totally different ways, from the root
dhe (Tidrjixi), and that the Hindu word occasionally (Institutes of
Mitra-Varuna), the Greek word usually, means the divine law
(Lat. fas) which is above human law. But to use this fact as an
argument for ascribing the notion oi fas to the primeval period, as
Leist does {Groico-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 205), is to put too
much confidence in linguistic arguments. With much too light a
heart also have gods been imputed to the primeval period on the
strength of equations such as Sans, dyads, G. Zevs, hat. Jov-evi, O.H.G.
Zio. In this connection I agree with 0. Gruppe's objection ( Wocheyi-
schriftf. Id. Phil., 1884, p. 487; Die griechischen Kulte und Mythe7i, p.
1^,ff.) that — as a matter of language merely — such an equation may
originally just as well have meant nothing more than the vault of
heaven above the earth. Though cf further. Part iv. eh. xiii.
So, too, with many terms apparently having to do with the
cultus of the Indo-Europeans. G. ^^eco, "pour" (also used for
libations), does indeed belong to Sans, hu, "to pour into the fire, to
offer," but also to Lat. fimdo and Goth, giutan. Whether, however,
this root was a ceremonial term in the primeval period is quite
another question, the answer to which is by no means to be pre-
judged owing to the linguistic equation. Again, Lat. cmZo (from
*cred-do) is certainly identical with Sans, r^raddha, "trust, con-
fidence, belief, truth, uprightness." But it is a wholly arbitrary
assumption that this word was an expression of religio in the
primeval period. So, too, the Lat. pitrus, " pure," is undoubtedly
derived from Sans, pu, "to purify." But how Leist [Alt-arisches jus
gentium, p. 258) can infer from this that the " historical connection "
of the Hindu and Italian doctrine of purification is " linguistically "
hereby " made certain "* I cannot see.
* The case is the same when Leist, Grceco-italischc Reclitsgescliichte, p. 214,
says: "That as regards Italy also we have to do with a primeval institution
{i.e., guest-friendship), is shown by language There is no possibility
of doubting that the Lat. liostifi is the same word as the German gast." But all
that this equation shows is that the fundamental meaning of both words is
" stranger," and that in a hostile sense. The ideas associated with this word
by the Teutonic and the Italian tribes were not, as Leist says, " similar," but in
the highest degree dissimilar, and mirror two different stages of evolution in the
history of culture, as Ihering, Deutsche Rundschau, 1886-87, iii. 364, very
justly insists. (7/. , further. Part iv. ch. x.
The same scholar says, Alt-arisches jus cjcntmrn, p. 3: "The core of the
demonstration in all researches into the connection of the Hindus, Greeks, and
Italians must always be language. When we are dealing, e.g., with the
institution of name-giving (to the new-born child), that the ceremonial
custom was common to Hindus, Greeks, and Italians may be inferred from
the fact that the feast is called numadheya {nominis datio) in the Sutras {cf.
below, § 36 (?) rather 42, note 2)." For our part, we can only infer, as far as
language is concerned, that there was an Indo-Germanic word for "name."
We call attention here to cases of this kind because, as we shall see subse-
quently, Leist is led by them to assume a very high moral culture for the Indo-
EuropeanS — in which we cannot follow him. Cf. Part. iv. chs. i. x. xii. xiii.
CHAPTER VI.
LOAN-WORDS.
Original connection and borrowing— The two things indistinguishable in the
earliest times — The emploj-ment of loan-words for the history of culture.
There remains a last difficulty to mention, which stands in the
way of attempts to reconstruct ludo-Germanic culture by means
of Comparative Philology. It is the difficulty of deciding with
certainty between words inherited from of old and words borrowed ^
at an early pei'iod. Our only safe criterion is the regularity or .
irregularity with which the sounds correspond to each other. We '
opine that Slav. chUhu, "bread," is a loan-word from the Teutonic
(Goth, klaifs), because from all that we know of the laws which
regulate the relation of Slavonic sounds to Teutonic, a Slav, ch
and a Goth, h cannot be descended from one and the same
primitive sound (k). Again, we regard the Teutonic words pfunt, J
pferd, pfeil, as not originally connected with the Lat. pondus,
paraveredus, pilum, because in High German the sound which
corresponds to an ancient p is / {fetter, naTrjp), not pf, and so on.
But, now, is it inconceivable that in the early history of language
a word may have been borrowed by one language from another at
a time when the borrowing language had begun, or at any rate
had not ceased, to be exposed to the transforming action of im-
portant phonetic laws such as the German sound-shifting, the loss
of the p in Irish, or of the cr in Gi'eek, etc.? If this is conceivable,
then does it not follow that the imported word must soon have
lost its foreign air under the action of the native phonetic laws?
These questions make themselves felt very cleai-ly in the case of j
Indo-Germanic peoples that were early and long exposed to the
civilising influence of some other Indo-Germanic people, as in
Europe the Italians to that of the Greeks, the Teutons to that o:
the Celts.
In Italy at the time of the Samnite war the important phonetic
law by which s between two vowels was transformed into r had com-
pleted its work. Greek words, therefore, containing an intervocalic
.s which were taken into Latin after this time are not aflected by
this phonetic change (cf. milsa, phasclus, carlasus, ttc). Greek
144 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
words, however, which found their way into Latin before this
period, and therefore submitted to rhotacism, may easily look as
though they were native and not borrowed. Thus Ms, tilr-is,
" incense " : dvos, ^i.'e(o-)os as vetus, veter-is : FeVos, P^eT€(o-)os ; and,
consequently, we should have no means of testing whether tih was
a loan-word from the Greek if it were not for the correspondence
of the other consonants (Lat. t = G. 6) in this case.
Not unfrequently, however, such tests are altogether wanting —
e.g., Lat. malum, G. /AiyXov, Lat. moi'um, G. fjiopov, fx-wpov, Lat. cvpa,
G. KVTrr], &G., which accordingly are claimed by some as borrowed,
and by others as primevally related. Cf. above, p. 129.
An important means for deciding the relation of Celto-Teutonic
words to each other is afforded by the first Teutonic sound-shifting.
Teutonic woi'ds which show it (A.S. tun = Gallic -dununi) may be
primevally connected with the corresponding Celtic. Words which
do not show it (O.H.G. charro, Ir. carr) are certainly borrowed.
It is, however, by no means impossible that Gallic words were
taken into Teutonic before the effects of the first soimd-shifting
began to make themselves felt, as is the case, as a matter of fact,
with Goth, reiks, " king," which on account of its i is undoubtedly
borrowed from the Celtic (Ir. rig-); Osthoff, Perfektum, p. 10. Other
words, too, may belong to the same period of borrowing, though
we cannot detect them.
Very frequently considerations draw^i from the history of culture
will decide in a given case whether we have to do with borrowing
or primeval aifinity : though often this path also fails to bring us
to the desired end. Thus, really {cf. V. Hehn, 216, 527), it is
extremely probable that the Eomans got their rosa through the
Greeks ; but the phonetic change by wdiich a G. poSov, pohrj (above,
p. 121) becomes a Lat. rosa has as yet nothing to give it proba-
bility.
The reason of this phenomenon may occasionally be found in
the fact that of two words not one but both may be borrowed from a
third as yet unknown to us, as may be conjectured to be the case
say w'ith Lat. asinus : G. ovos, and with Goth, siluhr : O.S. strebro.
Again, the circumstance that in one language a word displays
the most luxuriant fertility of forms and meanings, does not
exclude the possibility that it may be borrowed from a word which
in its ow^l language stands in apparent isolation ; for it often
happens that loan-words have a richer life than words native to
the language. This is the case, e.g., with the far-spreading stock
of Goth, haupon, -which I regard after what I have shown in my
Handelsgeschichte und Warenkunde, i. 89, as distinctly borrowed
from Lat. caupo.
Indeed, the nearer we approach to the oldest periods of langiiage,
the more the ideas of borrowing and of primeval affinity tend to
coalesce.
Let us suppose, as above, that the way in which the equivalent
names for plough arose in the European languages was that, at a
time when the peoples who now occupy Europe were still geo-
LOAN-WORDS. 145
graphically united, the root ar established itself at some point of
this linguistic area as the designation for plough, and thence
gradually spread and spread through the neighbouring peoples :
here we obviously have a process of borrowing which must have
required a considerable time for its completion.
This possibility, however, that woi'ds which appear to have an
original connection with each other, may have spread from tribe
to tribe at a later period, sometimes has its importance for history.
Thus, as yet, silver has not been traced in the lake- dwellings of
the plain of the Po {cf. Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebne, p. 21),
whereas, according to the common view, this metal must have been
known to the original Italians, as is indicated by the comparison
of Osc. aragetud = Lat. argentum. This might be interpreted as
an argument against believing that these lake-dwellers were
Italians, were it not for the possibility that centuries, perhaps,
may have elapsed between the time when those dwellings were
inhabited and the time when the knowledge of silver spread
through the still closely connected dialects of Italy. At anyrate,
Greek words like 0rjcravp6<; (Osc. thesavrom, thesavrei, Lat. thesaurus),
(Pep(r€i]y6v7j (Pelign. Fey-seponas, Lat. Frosepnais), rvppts (Osc. tiurri,
Lat. turris ; cf. 0. Weise, Die griech. Worterin der lat. Sprache, pp.
34, 195), spread through the tribes and dialects of Italy so early
that they might seem to be originally connected.
We have now to make some general remarks on the employment
of loan-words for the history of culture.
We have said above (cf. p. 73) that the occurrence of a loan-
word in a language as a rule justifies the conclusion that the idea
conveyed by it was, like the word, borrowed from abroad ; and on
the whole this is perfectly correct. Just as we see from our words
tobacco, potato, champagne, &c., the source from which or the
agency by which these important elements of civilisation have
come to us, so too the loan-words : Irish mur, O.H.G. milra, muri,
N. Slav, mir, Ukraine-Russ.-Pol. mur, Lith. micras, Alb. mur,
&c., borrowed from the Lat. murus, show who taught North
Europe to build walls and stone structures. Again, the Lat. mina
takes us back through the G. /x,va, not only to the Hebraic-Assyrian
maneh, mana, the source of the Egyptian mn, but even to the
pre-Semitic language of Babylon, the Sumerian mana, thus point-
ing the way by which in the dim and distant past the discovery
of weights and measures travelled from nation to nation.
Nevertheless we must remember that the presence of a loan-
word does not always imply that the idea also was borrowed, and
that the borrowing of an idea does not always imply the presence
of a loan-word. As regards the first point, when one nation
exercises a strong civilising influence over another neighbouring
nation, names are usually borrowed for things with which the
borrowing nation had long been familiar. The wealth of the
English vocabulary, as is well known, is partially due to the
existence side by side of " classical " and " Teutonic " synonyms.
But we must keep an eye open for similar cases in the early
K
146 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
history of language. When one nation or civilisation is brought
into close contact with another, it usually happens that certain
terms for immoral persons or proceedings are borrowed by the less
civilised people from the vocabulary of the other : the Phenician-
Hebraic jMlegesh, " courtesan," peneti'ated into Greek (7raXA.a/<ts),
and thence into Latin [jyekx), the Greek TropvtKos into the Armenian
pornik (Lagarde, Arvien. Stud.,]). 130), the hsitm meret7'ix into the
Irish mertrech (Windisch, /. T., p. 687), and 0. Eng. miltestre ;
the White-Russian kurva into the Lith. klirwa (Briickner, Die Slav.
Fremdwiirier, -^. 100). The Finns, indeed, have borrowed three
names for fiU^s dejoie from their neighbours (Jiuora : Swed. hora,
portto : O.N. portkona, kurva : Slav, kurvua). For all that, it seems
to me that it would be as rash to infer from this fact that the
peoples mentioned were previously unacquainted with illicit relations
as it would be to maintain that the Germans were ignorant of con-
cubines until they made the acquaintance of the French maitresse.
Often the native word continues to flourish by the side of the
foreign, as indeed is the case partially with the terms quoted above
(cf. G. TTopvyj, Lat. scortum, Lith. keksze, Teut. hure); frequently,
however, the native word is driven out by the foreign, and then there
is no possibility of ascertaining by the unaided assistance of philo-
logy whether the thing in question did or did not previously exist.
The possibility that a language may provide a name for a
borrowed object out of its own resources is not unfrequently
realised. Obviously different languages behave differently when
confronted with the same task — that of furnishing designations
for things borrowed from a foreign civilisation. The Finns when
they appeared on the Baltic, swallowed, if we may be allowed the
expression, the vocabulary of their more civilised neighbours whole :
the Indo-Germanic languages of the north of Europe can point to
entire dictionaries full of loans from the classical languages, Latin
from Greek. But the Greeks even in their dependence on the East
showed themselves individual and creative. Their language in its
older stage does not contain a hundred loan-words from the Semitic
(cf. A. Miiller, above, p. 74) ; while they, it seems, much more com-
monly than other nations, framed native names for foreign objects.
Such pure Greek expressions are mtva, "hyena "( : vs), ptvo/cepws ( : pts
and Ke'pa?), and many others, which then usually travelled through
the rest of Europe in Greek garb. The reasons of this different
demeanour of different languages, both in particular instances and
as a general rule, are manifestly various. Diiferences in the
intellectual capacity or in the stage of civilisation of the recipients,
the sudden or gradual and permanent action of the donors, the
consideration whether a new object was first seen abroad or
imported, all these things may be factors to be reckoned with.
In any case these questions, to which 0. Weise was the first to
direct his attention in his excellent Wortentlehnung und Wortschop-
fung (Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpsych. u. Sprachw., xiii. p. 223, /.),
deserve thorough investigation. ,
CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSIONS.
Science of language not in a position of itself to reconstruct the primitive
Indo-Germanic age — Summary of considerations — Relation of Compara-
tive Philology to History and Palseontology.
We have now reached a point at which we must put to ourselves
the question whether Comparative Philology of itself is in a position
really to afford a satisfactory account of the primitive Indo-European
ages 1 I believe that, after all we have set forth, the answer can
only be in the negative.
Let us briefly recapitulate the difficulties which stand in the way
of drawing inferences as to the history of culture from Comparative
Philology. The first and most serious is caused by the gaps in
the linguistic record of the Indo-Germanic vocabulary. We have
no means of deciding whether an equation which is confined to a
single set of languages is due to a close connection between those
languages^ or whether the others originally also partook in it.
Consequently we are not in a position to observe the unity of time
in our account of the primitive culture of the Indo-Eui-opeans ; for
things or ideas, from which we imagine that we can infer the
character of the primitive age, may have only become known at
periods separated from each other by hundreds or perhaps thousands
of years.
Again, our ignorance of the laws that determined the fonnation
of words in the prehistoric period of language frequently leaves us
uncertain whether a series of words identical in root and suffix do
really derive from one and the same prototype, or_ whether their
similarity is not^the result of like forces working independently in
different languages ; while contrariwise in the case of equations
based solely on the identity of the root there is always the possi-
bility that the words did proceed from one and the same original
form, and only lost their identity of structure when the languages
were separated. If, again, an equation is such that we think that
we may fairly infer from it the existence of a given word in the
original language, then the question arises what was the primitive
meaning of this word ; and to this question it is that Comparative
Philology, with especial frequency, finds itself unable to give a
148 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
satisfactory answer. Finally, we are freqiiently unable in important
K cases to settle the doubt whether an etymological equation is due
to an original connection between the words or to borrowing in
early times.
If Ave wish to convince ourselves by an actual example how
extremely uncertain inferences about the culture of the Indo-
Europeans usually are, when they rest on nothing but etymology,
we have only to put by the side of each other the verdicts given
by the most distinguished philologists, men like Pictet {cf. above,
p. 82), Schleicher {cf. p. 22), Max Miiller {cf. p. 25), L. Geiger (c/.,
loc. cit., p. 121), Hehn {cf p. 34), Benfey {cf. pp. 25, 40), and others,
on the question whether Indo-Europeans were or were not acquainted
with the metals. It will then be found that in this question only
one thing is certain, viz., that of no single metal is it certain — i.e.,
proved to the satisfaction of all or most authorities on the subject —
that it was known in the primeval period. Each and every metal
alike is both claimed for and denied to the primitive age, and that
although the linguistic evidence is the same, and although we
have here to do, not with mere dilettanti, but with passed masters
in the science of language.
If we have protested against overrating linguistic palaeontology,
we are yet very far from underrating the importance of Compara-
tive Philology for prehistoric research. However far back his-
torical evidence or ambiguous myths and sagas may carry us in the
history of a nation, every one knows how soon all clues forsake us.
Even archseological palaeontology only takes us a step further, and
then only where it is possible, with some probability, to assign the
monuments recovered by archaeology to a definite people. Unfor-
tunately this consummation as yet has been but rarely attained.
The etymologist and the historian of culture find that the scene on
which the boldest and most searching questions of palaeontology
are pvit, has no ethno-historical background, and no foundations in
chronology. Who were those neighbours of the northern shores
who in their " kitchen-middens " have left us traces of their
existence ; were they of the same flesh and blood as the modern
inhabitants of those regions, or were they a foreign race ? What
was their relation to those ancient Europeaiis who rammed their
piles in the lakes of Switzerland, and built their bai'e huts vipou
themi To judge by the fauna, the age in which the kitchen-
midden men of Denmark lived, must on the whole have been about
the same as that in which the lake-dwellers of Switzei'land lived in
Europe ; yet, between these two ancient populations there is this
great gulf : that whereas in the south the domestication of animals
was far advanced, in the north the only companion of man that
has as yet been traced is the dog.
So, then, between the furthest point to which history can trace
the sepai'ate peoples, and the time when they were still united with
other peoples, perhaps with the whole Indo-Germanic family, there is
in truth a great gulf fixed which Comparative Philology alone can
bridge, and that only at certain points. But we must always bear
COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE CULTURE. 1 49
in mind that at the very most language can only give us a
skeleton, and that to cover the dry bones with flesli and blood is
the prerogative of the Comparative History of culture. That the
Indo-Europeans did jjossess the notion of a house the philologists
shows us, for the Sans, damd, Lat. domus, G. 80/x.os, Slav, domu,
correspond ; but how these houses were constituted the historian
of primitive culture alone can ascertain. To state once more the
quintessence of our argiiment, two sentences will suffice : Com-
parative Philology of itself is not in a position to reconstruct the
primitive culture of the Indo-Europeans, and if we are to secure
our advance step by step over this difficult ground, we can only
do so on the condition that the three sisters, Linguistic Research,
Prehistoric Research, and History, unite in the common work.*
* Of. further, Part iv. ch. i.
PART III.
THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF METALS, ESPECI- i
ALLY AMONGST THE INDO-GERMANIC '
PEOPLES.
Quod superest, ces atque aurum fcrriqm repertum est
Et simul argenti pondus plumhiquc potestas.
CHAPTER L
INTRODUCTION.
If the course of the evolution of human culture may not un-
fittingly be compared to a mighty river having many sources,
some undiscovered, w-hich is rolling onwards to the ocean of the
future, those places on this stream have a special interest for the
historian of culture, where a broad tributary joins the main stream
to swell its flowing tide.
Amongst the great turning points in the history of culture may
with good reason be reckoned the epoch when man makes his first
acquaintance with the metals. For, the secret treasures of the
earth, when once they are brought to light, affect the life and
labour of man in such manifold ways, that under their influence a
new bii'th, another age seems gradually to be called into existence.
So, according to the views of the ancient natural philosophers, a
circumstance beyond the common w^as needed in order to bring
the metal bowels of the earth to the light of day. According to
Lucretius, De Kerum Natura, v. 1250, /., a mighty conflagration
once consumed woods that stood on metalliferous soil : —
" Quidquid id est, qiiaquomque ex causa flammeus ardor
Horribili sonitu silvas exederat altis
Ab radicibus, et terrain percoxerat igni ;
Manabat venis ferventibus, in loea terrse
Concava conveniens, argenti rivus et auri,
^ris item et plumbi."
According to Poseidonius, in. Strabo, c. 147, Spain's wealth in
CULTURE REVOLUTIONISED BY THE METALS. 151
gold and silver was betrayed in the same way.* In the Finnic
saga (Kalevala, ix.) the iron which dropped to the earth from the
full breasts of the three maidens fashioned by Ukko, fled before
its raging brother, the Fire, and sought refuge
In the swamps that make men stagger,
On the broad back of the swamps,
In the fountains full of water
On the mountain's sloping sides,
until it was discovered by the " eternal smith," Ilmarine, and
haled into the smithy, and so on.
Let us here try to realise the most important departments of
human culture revolutionised by the metals. It was in truth a
stiff bit of work that awaited man ere he could clear a space for
himself and his belongings on the soil of our European home.
Dense primeval forests, the beginning or end of which none of the
settlei's could boast he had ever reached, covered the interior.
German names of places, in which no idea recurs in such manifold
variety as that of " forest " and " bush," are a faithful mirror of
the superabundance of forest in bygone times. Through the
primeval forest the streams brawled unfettered, now concentrating
in furious rapidity, now loitering in broad morasses. Aut silvis
horrida aut paludibus foeda is the description of ancient Germany
from the Roman's pen. Even the shores of the Mediteri'auean in
this primeval period were not embraced by the ever green girdle,
which at the present day gives the south its peculiar stamp. The
useful olive, the fiery vine, the glorious laurel, the propitious
myrtle — none of them as yet had left their southern home in Syria
or their northern abode on the Pontus. Classic soil was still
covered by sober forests of oak and gloomy firs, and the only
harbinger of brighter times was " the soft breath that blows from
the azure sky."
The animal kingdom, like that of the plants, is wilder and more
terrifying. Gone long ago indeed are the old, giant inhabitants
of Europe — the mammoth and the rhinoceros. The reindeer, too,
has early I'etired to the north ; but the aurochs, the bison, and the
elk still continue to rove, at least as far as the valleys of the Alps.
Boai'S, wolves, and bears are to be found in plenty ; indeed, between
the Carpathians and the Balkan, the lion must have made his
dangerous incursions. Slowly man, and with him civilisation,
makes his way from the seaboard, by the arteries of the rivers,
into the interior. But how differently is the hard struggle for
existence waged with the bronze or iron axe and with the unaided
implement of stone. The foi-est is cleared quicker for man and
his settlements, the well-carpentered dwelling-house rises with more
majesty, the iron mattock digs deeper, when it is necessary to
confide the corn with its promise to the nourishment of the earth.
However, as the bronze-tipped arrow brings down the chase
* Ov yap a.iri<TTf7v t^ /uiJSy (prifflv '6ti rwv ^pvfxwv irore 4fxiTp7](T9fVTUiv f) yrj
TaKe7(Ta, are apyvp^rts kol xP^'^^'^^^j ^'* "^^^ intcpdufiai' e|«^e(Te Sia rh nav opos
Kai ■wdura &Q\ivhv v\t)v ilvai voixiainaTOS into Tivus a<pdovo\t tvxV^ <Te(Twpivfji(vriv.
152 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
more unerringly, so the iron s^yord deals a better blow to the
enemy, and the old poets not unjustifiably regard war as a birth
of the Iron Age, though others approaching more nearly to actual
fact deny the bloody fray to no epoch : —
" Arma antiqua manns ungues dentesque fuerunt,
Et lapides ct item silvarum fragniina rami."
(Lucretius, v. 1282.)
" Unguibus et pugnis, dein fnstibus, atque ita porro
Pugnabant armis, quae post fabricaverat usus."
(Horace, Sat., i. 3.)
Iron fights out the quarrels of which the auri sacra fames
(Virgil) is the cause : —
" Effodiuutur opes, irritamenta malorum.
Jamque nocens i'eirum ferroque nocentius aurum
Prodierat : prodit bellum, quod pugnat utroque."
(Ovid, Met., i. 140.)
The implements of the Stone Age are simple, and made only to
satisfy the most elementary needs, though even here man's innate
tendency to strive after the beautiful makes itself felt. With the art
of working the metals the taste for ornament and decoration awakes.
Besides axes, arrow^s, and knives, are now found also swords, lances,
sickles, earrings, armlets, needles, rings, and so on. The ornamen-
tation on these objects becomes bolder and more complicated ;
attempts are made at representing animals and plants {cf. J. Lub-
bock, Prehistoric Times, p. 14). All these objects of art, however,
postulate a developed and practised skill, and if hitherto each and
every man was in a position to make with his own hands all that was
needed for house and home, even the simple earthenware and the
unpretentious weaving of his clothes — for both are primeval arts —
now there are rumours everywhere of the greater skill of some one
man in smithying and preparing ore. The need of division of
labour comes to be more clearly appreciated. Metallurgy is the
first pillar to be erected in the growing fabric of industry.
But nature has distributed her costly metal treasures unevenly
over the earth, and the inhabitants of the poorer districts hear with
astonishment and envy of the inexhaustible and fabulous wealth
of more favoured spots. Thus, tin, which is indispensable for the
manufacture of bronze, appears to have been obtained in antiquity
from only three localities, all fairly distant from the centres of
civilisation : in Western Iberia, in the Cassiterides, named after the
metal, and the northern borders of Persia^ the modern Khorassan
{cf, K. MiillenhofF, Deutsche Altertumsknnde, p. 99, and K. E. v.
Baer, Von wo das Zinn zu den ganz alien Bremen gehommen sein
mag 1 {Archiv fUr Anthropologic, ix. p. 263, /.). Nevertheless,
bronze-work is distributed in the remotest antiquity from the banks
of the Nile to Nineveh and Babylon. Inventive man, therefore,
has learnt to fetch from distant countries the gifts which his
native land refuses him, and though greed may sit at the helm, as
A METAL STANDARD OF VALUE. 153
the frail hark cleaves the waves of the unknown and terrible sea,
from the lower passions rises the genius of progress, the beginning
of geography, navigation, trade, and commerce : —
" Yours, ye gods, is the merchant. And if his object in questing
Be but goods, there comes good in the track of his bark."
(SchUler.)
In the time of King Solomon, Phoenician fleets sail to Ophir, the
land of gold, to Tarshish, in the south of Spain, for silver. A Car-
thaginian fleet under Himilco, whilst voyaging to the Tin Islands,
discovers the European coast as far as England. In the Odyssey
tlie Tapliian Mantes (Athene) says : —
viv 8' wSe ^v vrjl KarrjXvdov rjB iTdpota-t
TrXetov evri otvoTra ttovtov eV aXkoBpoov; dv6pwTrov<;
is Te/xea-qv fxeTo. ^^clXkov, ayw 8' at6u)va a-L8rjpov.
But the metals, on their travels as precious merchandise from
sea to sea and from coast to coast, come to perform another func-
tion of immeasurable importance : as a medium of exchange they
facilitate commerce between individuals and also between nations.*
The primitive standard of value and object of barter amongst
pastoral and agricultural peoples is the most precious of their
belongings, their herds, especially cattle, cows. The Latin 2>ecunia
and 2^(^cuHu7n, as is well known, are but derivatives from 2^ectis,
"cattle;" in Gothic /cu/m, and in Anglo-Saxon /coA, mean "gold
and cattle," &g. In Homer, also, cattle are the usual medium of
exchange ; but he is also acquainted with the use of the metals,
gold as well as iron and bronze, for this purpose : —
ev6ev ap' oIvl^ovto KaprjKOfx.owvre'; A;)(atoi,
aXXoL fJLev )(a.XKw, aXXoL 8 at^oDVi aiorjpt^,
aXXoL 8e ptvois, aXXot 8 aurgtrt (SoeacrLv,
ciXXot 8' avSpa-TToSecrcri.
(11, vii. 473, /.)
Nowhere, however, can the transition from the old simple mode
of exchange to the use of a currency be better traced than among
the Romans. Here the oldest legal tines are fixed in sheep and
cattle ; gradually, however, the custom grows up of using another
measure of value as well as cattle, that is, copper (tes). It is
unshaped (ces rmle), and is weighed when sold, until eventually
the state puts an end to the arbitrary shape and iineness of the
metal, fixes a definite form for the copper bars, and stamps the new
cast metal with a mark {ces signatum), which, characteristically-
enough , usually represents a cow, sheep, or pig. It is not until
much later that {circ. 451 B.C.) copper is provided with a mark
indicating its value, is made independent of the scales, and that
thus a currency is attained (c/. F. Hultsch, Grkchischt u. Biimische
Metrologie, p. 188, /.).
* Ou the following, see for further particulars the author's Ilanclelsgcschichte
und Warenkundc, i. 111-41.
154 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The influence, thus briefly sketched, exercised by the metals on
the course of human development is, however, we must not forget,
not complete until all conditions, external and internal, are present
for enabling it to act as lever to an advance in culture ; and it not
unfre(]uently occurs that tribes, even wdien they have made their
acquaintance with the metals, fail to get beyond a very primitive
stage in their working and utilisation. Thus the Xorth American
Indians of Lake Superior were presented by nature with pure
copper in such quantities that it could scarcely escape the observa-
tion of these savages. The first Europeans, accordingly, found
that it was emploj'ed by them for making axes, armlets, &c., though
they were manufactured simply by hammering the native ore (cf. E,.
Andree, Die Metalle hei den NaHirvolliern, p. 220). The Hottentots
understood even how to melt iron ore in holes dug in the earth for
the purpose, and to manufacture iron w^eapons, though it is not
impossible that this art may have spread from the north-east
coast into the interior of Africa,* as the Peri2)lus maris Erythroii
(§ 6) speaks of an extensive trade in metals and metal objects
being done from the south-west coast of the Arabian Sea. Never-
theless, in other respects these tribes have not advanced in the
least beyond the lowest stage of savagery. But, save by these and
other tribes remote from the stream of human development, the
summons that rose from the bowels of the earth was not suffered
to go by unheeded.
Whether and how far the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion
shared in the blessings bestowed by metals and metallurgy, as we
have described them, or, if not, from what points of departvire and
in what directions a knowledge of the metals spread amongst the
Indo-Europeans — these are the questions which are to form the
substance of the following investigation, which certainly will often
enough be compelled to travel beyond the borders of the Indo-
Germanic peoples.
* In any case iron must have been known first in Southern Africa. The
Bacahapin, a Kafir tribe, take iron {tsijn) as the starting-point for all their
names of metals : thus gold is tsi2n e tscka, " yellow iron ; ' silver, tsijn e shu,
"white iron;" copper, tsipi c kuhila, "red iron." Cf. Rougemout, Die
Bronzezeit odcr die Semiten im Occident, p. 14.
CHAPTER II.
THE NAMES OF THE METALS IN GENERAL.
It is a remarkable phenomenon that the metals known and worked
by any people form an exclusive group in the linguistic conscious-
ness of that people. This is not due to the early existence of a
collective name for the metal treasures of the earth. On the
contrary, as is the case with nearly all generic names, it is not
until a late period that such a collective name begins to establish
itself. If in early times an expression is needed for the metals
collectively, the pars pro toto is used, that is, the name of the
metal, which ever it is, which happens to be the most important, is
used as the name of the genus. In this sense are used Sans. d]/as
(ces), Zend ayanh and ayoJchshusta, "liquid metal" (Parsi
ayokhsasta, N. Pers. ayolslmst), G. ;(a\Kds, H.G. erz, Slav.-Lith.
ruda, and others, whose real and original meaning will have to be
further discussed.
On the other hand, the Greek and Latin, fxeToXXov, metallwn, from
which come on the one hand Mod.G. /AeraAAov and Amien. metal,
and on the other Irish initall (Stokes, Irish Glosses, p. 96), and the
Romance words, Fr. metal, &c. (c/. Diez, Etym. WA, p. 208),
in the sense of a generic name for metals, Is comparatively recent.
In Herodotus where the word occut's for the first time, /teVaAAov
means nothing but the mine, the workings, and it is only in later
literature that it comes to mean metal. The obviously borrowed
Lat. metal lum (0. Weise, Die griech. Worter im Lat., pp. 15.3, 458)
also still means mine as well as metal. The attempts to find an
Indo-Germanic explanation for the G. /xeVaXXov (Curtiys' GntnJz/^,
p. 55; £. B., i. 335) are not successful. A derivation from
the Semitic (Kenan, Ilistoire der langues se'mit., i.*, 20G) has been
attempted also, G. fxeraXXov = Hebr. vidtal, " to smithy," m{e)iil,
being placed side by side. Improbable, as at first sight it seems,
that a word for " mine " should be developed out of a verb meaning
" to smithy," it may be that we can put the matter on its right
footing if we assume that the Phenicians, who certainly opened
up mining in Greece, at the same time that they dug mines also
. erected smelting-houses and smithies in order at once to have the
ore they obtained in a form convenient and ready both for export
156 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
and for trade with the natives. That such Phenician smelting-
houses and smithies really did exist on Greek territory is shown
clearly by the names of various Greek places.
The inner connection of the Indo-Germanic names of metals is
attested by the easily recognised rule that the names given by any
language to the metals are united by identity of gender : in
Sanskrit, Zend, Slavonic, Latin, and Teutonic the gender is the
neuter, which is what one "might have expected to designate
essentially dead and motionless matter " (J. Grimm, Dmtsche
Gravimatil; iii. p. 378); in Greek and Lithuanian masculine — the
feminine as a rule is not employed. But the remark may be
made that in the languages of North Europe, the further east
3'-ou go the more exceptions there are to the original rule. In
Teiitonic staked (Graff, vi. p. 827) varies between masciiline and
neuter, smida ("metal") is feminine; in Lithuanian n7(^a ("metal,
ore ") and gelezls (" iron ") are feminine ; in Slavonic ruda, medi
(" copper "), ocell (" steel ") are feminine, kositeru (" tin ") masculine.
The historical explanation of these facts will engage our attention
later.
The cohesion of the metals, however, comes out still more
plainly in the remarkable fact that in the oldest monuments of
the civilised peoples of Europe and Asia the metals occur in a
hxed and, on the whole, in the same order, in which the four guid-
V: ing points are gold, silver, copper, iron. This is found in the in-
scriptions of ancient Egypt, in the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria,
in the Bible, and in the Vedas ; while in the region of ancient
Greece the Foiar Ages of Hesiod, which the poet names after the
four metals just mentioned, can only be regarded as a mythological
and imaginary enumeration of stages of culture in an order commonly
cuiTent amongst the contemporaries of the poet.* We also shall
adopt this order, since real historical data for arranging the metals
in the order in which they became known will only be forthcoming
in the course of our investigation. Before, however, turning to
the individual metals we shall do well to examine somewhat closely
the handiwork of the worker whose craft first gives the metals their
greatest importance for man — the Master Smith.
* This fixed order of the metals led, apparently at an early period and in
a manner not yet wholly explained, to the parallel between it and the order
of the seven planets so important in the religious views of ancient peojiles,
and caused them both to be assigned, after many fluctuations, to certain
deities. Then from this there gradually grew up the alchemists' signs for the
metals, which were finally fixed about the thirteenth century : —
Gold.
Silver.
Quicksilver.
Copper.
' Iron.
Tin.
Lead.
©
D
9
9
(5
n
d
Sol.
Luna.
Mercurius.
Venus.
Mars.
Jupiter.
Saturn.
Cf. J. Beckmann, Chemische Bezdclmung der Metalle in the Beitr. z. Gesch.
d. Erjindimcjen, 1792, iii. p. 356,/., and Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, ii. p.
421, f.
CHAPTER III.
THE SMITH IN LORE AND LANGUAGE.
Round no calling of man has story woven brighter threads than
round the craft of the Master Smith, which is I'eferred in the
mythology and folklore of most peoples to times of the hoariest
antiquity. As in the Bible (Gen. i. 4, 22), Tubal Cain, the master
in all kinds of bronze and iron work, was born long before the
flood; so in the Rigveda, Tvashta forges the thunderbolt for the
fierce Indra. As the genius of metals the Zend A vesta knows one
of the Amesha S2JeMa Kshathra vairya. The Greek Olympus is
provided with metal works of art by the artificer Hepluostus, the
Latin by Vulcan ; even in the venerable Carmen Saliare the name of
a smith, Mamurius, found mention, and in the Voluspa song of the
Edda it is said in Str. 7 : — " The Asas built them house and shrine
in the field of Ida to arch them high over. They built forges and
smithied ore, welded tongs and lovely ornaments." If, however,
according to the ideas of the Indo-Germanic world of story, the art
of the smith mounts to the highest antiquity, a question of the
greatest importance for the whole of our investigation is at once
raised — i.e., whether the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion
were acquainted with the craft of the smith or not ? For, if
we are in a position to answer the question in the aftirmative, the
acquaintance of the Indo-Europeans with certain metals would be
a necessary consequence.
If we begin by examining the names given to the smith by the
Indo-Germanic peo})lcs, we find first that they show no etymological
connection with each other. An exception to this rule is afforded
only by O.S. viitri, " smith " = 0. Pruss. ivutris {autre, "smithy"),
on the one hand, and on the other by Teut. similar = O.S. medari;
in the latter words, however, we may have a case of independent
derivation fi'om smtf/a, "metal," and medl, " copper," the relation
of which we shall have to consider hereafter. On the other hand,
nearly all peoples have genuine native names for the smitli which
usually extend over all the dialects of a language, as in Teutonic
O.H.G. smid, A.S. smith, O.N. smidr, Goth, -.swii'p; in Celtic Ir. goha,
Bret. Corn. Cymr. gof ; in Italian Lat. fdber, Picen. fdber * {forte
* It is not impossible that the roots of the Celtic word aud the Italian
may be related. ^_^^-
'77
158 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
faber; F. Biicheler, Lex. It., p. ix.). The high antiquity of these
words is also shown by their early use as proper names. Even in
the Rigsmal, v, 21, we come across a Smidr; compare with this
Lat. Fahricius, and the Old Gallic Gohannitio (Cses., P. G., vii. 4),
Ir. Gobanus, Cymr. Gouannon.
Loans from one Indo-Germanic language to another are occa-
sionally to be found (e.g., Lith. rudininkas from Pol. riidnik, and
Alban. KofSdrif-i, O.S. kovact); from a non-Indo-Germanic language
to an Indo-Germanic language very rarely (e.g., Alban. aXbav-i from
the Turkish), On the other hand, the Indo-Germanic word for
smith often travels beyond the borders of this family of speech ;
thus the Germanic word found its way to the Lapps {smirjo, smid),
the Slavonic kovaci to the Magyars (kovdcs), the Lith. Mlwis, Lett.
kalleys to Livonia and Esthonia (kalev, kalevi). The last loan
would date back to a very ancient period if the name of the
national and eponymous hero of the Finns, Kaleva, who is also to
be regarded as the father of the eternal smith Ilmarine, is rightly
brought into this connection.*
The conclusion from all this is that names for the smith must
have grown up amongst the Indo-Germanic peoples at a very early
period, but not when they were still ethnologically united.
As regards the origin of the Indo-Germanic names for the smith,
it is threefold. They are either derivatives from words designating
metals or metal collectively, as G. ;(aA,Keu?, cnhripev<; : ■^aXKO'?, crt8rjpo<;,
O.H.G. smidar : smida, O.S. medarl : medt, and kuznici : knztit, "res
e metallo cuso factce," Pol. rudnik : ruda, &c. Formations such
as N. Pers. dhangar, Kurd, hasin-ger, "preparing iron" : dhan,
" iron," belong here. From neighbouring languages may be com-
pared Lapp. ravc?fZe = Finn, rautio, "smith": rauta, "iron," and
Turk, temirii, "iron man" : timir, "iron," &c. Or, in the second
place, the names of the smith come from verbals which designate
smithying as originally hewing, such a,s Lith. kdhvis, kdlti = Lat.
cellere, O.S. Euss., &c., kovaci, kovati, ktijq (7cm = Lat. cu-d-ere,
O.H.G. houwan, &c.). Third and last, substantives with the
general meaning of worker, artificer, are specialised down to the
narrower meaning of smith. . Thus Sans, kdrmdrd = karmdra,
(rt. kar, "make"), Lat. /(x6er (originally "artisan" in general), Ir.
cerd (cerarius; cf. Windisch, /. T., p. 420) by the side of goha = Lat.
cerdo, "artisan." This transition, however, can be most clearly traced
in the Teutonic word, Goth. S7ni]>a, O.N. smidr, &c. In the older
periods of the language it regularly has the meaning of the Latin
faber, and consequently we find as well as O.H.G. ersmid, chaltsmid,
&c., also A.S. vigsmid, O.N. Ijddasmidr, bolvasniid'r, "mischief
smith," O.S. vundersmid (Beow., 1682), O.H.G. urtaihmid, &c.
The case is precisely the same with the West Finnic names of the
smith, seppd, which cannot have had this meaning originally. In
popular language we come across Finn, runoseppd, " a master of
* So Ahlqvist, Oultunv., p. 58. Otherwise, 0. Doiiner, Vcrglcicliendcs
Worterh. der Jinnisch-ugrischen Spr., i. p. 57, who regards Kaleva, &c., as
ECemiine.
NAMES OF THE SMITH AND HIS TOOLS. 1 59
I'unes," purrenseppd, "experienced in building boats," Esth. king-
seppd, " shoemaker," rdtsepp, " tailor," and others (cf. Ahlqvist,
Culturtv., p. 57). Hence, even though certain equations such as
Ir. cerd = Lat. cerdo are to be found in the names of the smith, it
by no means follows that a word for "smith" existed in the
primitive period.
A designation for the smith, which is not without its interest,
at any rate for later times, is offered finally by the Alban. je^JLT-i
= AtyuTTTios, Mod. G. Vv(j>To^, Eng. gipsies, Span. Gitcmos, properly
" Zigenner." For the craft of brazier was practised principally by
them (O.H.G. chaltsmid, "he who smithies without fire") both in
the East and in the West. The gipsy dialects themselves {cf. A.
Pott, Die Zigeuner in Europxi xcnd Asien, i. p. 147) offer nothing of
importance. On the gipsy smiths, cf. R. Andree, loc. cit. p.
79,/.
Facts of language exactly analogous to those offered by the
names of the smith are presented by the terms for his tools and
implements. Thus, not a trace of affinity in the names for these
things can be detected between Greek (anvil, Horn. aKfiwy, bellows,
Hom. 17 (fivaa, the smith's hammer, Hom. rj paia-Trjp and rj (r(f>vpa,
the fire tongs, rj Trvpayp-q, later KapKivoi, " crabs claws," the melting-
furnace, Hom. ypavoi : ;!(£(d, later Ka/Aivos, Oepfj-acrTpa, fiavvo<i) and
the Italian words {incus formed from ctidere, as amhosz : O.H.G.
anapoz : pozcm, "fundere," and O.S. nakovalo : kovati, or Lith.
priekdlas, 0. Pruss. p)'rdcalis : kdlti, follis, malleus, forceps, fornus,
fornax).
In the oldest monuments of the Hindus and Iranians, also, in
spite of their close relationship, the only implement of metallurgy
which admits of comparison, the melting-furnace, has totally
different names. In the Piigveda the name is dhmdtd {dhmatd, " the
melter ") : dJiam, dhmd, "to blow;" cf. dhmdtds drtis, "bellows;"
in the Avesta, however, saepa {ayosaepa, erezatosaepa).*
Moreover, in the passage of the Avesta, Vend. viii. 254,/., which is
so important for ancient Persian metallurgy (c/. K. Z., xxv. p. 578,/.),
the melting-furnace is designated by a w'ord which is evidently
Semitic, Zend tanura, Hebr. tannur, and which also recurs in New
Persian and AfFghani. It would not be impossible that the pro-
montory of the ferruginous soil of Laconia, Taimpov, situate in the
immediate neighbourhood of the ancient Pheniciaia settlements in
Cythera, may derive its name from the same source, just as another
Hebrew^-Phenician term for the melting-hut {zdr{e)phat : zdraf,
" to smelt ") recurs in the name of the Greek island Seriphos (in
Phenician Sarepta) ; also cf. Kiepert, Lekrbuch der alien Geographic,
p. 252).
That the smith's tools originally were made of stone, is shown by
* A. Fick, Vergl. Worterbuch, i.^, classes here G. KifiSr], ".slag," KlfiSwv,
" mine " (?). W. Geiger, Ostiran. Caltur, p. 388, derives sa^pa from a root sip
(N. Pers. siftaii, "to harden ") and Zend jnsra, also "smith}'," from Sans.
piq, " to adorn." According to K. Geldner {K. Z., xxv. p. 585), Zm^khumba
and aoni were also smelting processes.
l6o PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the frequency with which their names are derived from the old
ludo-Germanic name for stone. To it belong in Teutonic O.N.
hamarr = O.K.G. hnmar : O.S. kamy, hameni, "stone," in Greek
aKfjiu)v, " anvil " = Sans, dpnan, "stone," KdfiLvo<;, "oven":O.S.
kament (O.S. kamiiia, "oven," &c. ; Magyar kemeny come from
Grseco-Lat. Kafjuvo's-caminus, Germ, kamin), in Sans, dgman,
" hammer " and " anvil " (later), " oven." An attempt to refer all
the words mentioned to a primitive graded paradigm is made by
Bechtel, J)/'achr. d. Ges. d. W. z. Gdttmge7i, 1888, p. 402.
Before the art of sewing hides (G. Hesych. 6aXXi<;, Lat. follis)
so as to make bellows was understood, recourse was had to the
wings of the larger birds, as we learn from the Rigveda, ix. 11 2 '2,
the oldest passage on Indo-Germanic ground which introduces us
into a smithy * : —
The smitli with bnisliwood on the hearth,
And in his hand a goose's wing,
With anvil and a blazing fire,
Awaits a wealthy customer.
In the West Finnic languages a good deal of borrowing has taken
place from Teutonic and Lithu-Slavonic {cf. Ahlqvist, Culturw.,
p. 60, /). Thus, to quote but one instructive example, Finn.
paja, Esth. paja and pada, "smithy," correspond to Teutonic ^o^to,
pott, potte, " vessel," Lith. pudas, and so called to mind the times
when the smith, as the gipsies subsequently, travelled from place
to place and was prepared to set up his workshop at any spot.f
A contrast to these smiths, but one which equally points to the
primitive beginnings of the craft, is afforded by the public smithies
open to all in the Middle Ages in Germany, where every man
did his own bit of work for himself Homer also seems to be
acquainted with them. At any rate in Od., xviii. 328, the smithy
(xaXK^tos 8o/xos) is placed on the same level with the Xiaxv (Hebr.
lish{e)kdh ?).
Although, therefore, from what has been said, it appears that
language by no means indicates that the most ancient Indo-
Europeans were acffquainted with the craft of the smith, J still
there may be an niclination to infer it from the agreement of
certain cyles of sagas, which seem to have formed round the smith
and his trade at a very early period. We refer mainly to the
striking affinity, insisted on by A.Kuhn (K. Z., iv. p. 95, /.), which
on the one hand is asserted between the classical stories of
Hephtestus and Daedalus, and the Teutonic-Norse Volundr
and Wielant stories, and which on the other hand has to be
verified.
* Cf. Geldner u. Kaegi, 70, Lieder d. Rigveda, p. 167.
t Cf. also O.H.G. ovan, G. Iwvos, "oven," Sans, uk/ia, "pot" (?).
+ I cannot see that the undoubtedly correct equation, Sans, carii, "kettle,
pot," O.N. hverr, Ir. coir, constitutes a real objection to this. Cf. E. H.
Meyer, Indog. Mythan, ii. 681. Why may not this "primitive," "sacred"
vessel have been originally made of clay ? On such inferences, cf. above,
p. 140,
WIELAND THE SMITH AXD HEPHiESTUS. l6l
To begin ^Vith we are struck by one feature wliich Vuliuidr, the
smith of the north, has in common with Hephajstus, the smith of
the south. As the former has his tendons cut by King Niductr, in
order that he may remain in Siiwarstadr, and thus is lamed, so
Hephfestus receives from Homer the epithets KvXXoTroStuyv, " wry
foot," and dyu-^iyvr/ei?, " Hmping on both legs," and appears there-
fore to have suffered some infirmity of the feet, with which
according to some he came into the world, but which according to
others was the resiilt of his fall from Olympus. It seems also to be
noteworthy that Volundr in his captivity offers violence to Bcidvildr,
the king's daughter, just as Hephaestus does to Athene, when she
wishes him to make her some weapons.
Still more palpable are the traits of affinity between the story
of Wieland and Daedalus. As Volundr is forcibly detained in
Sawarstadr by King Nidud'r, so is Dredalus by Minos. The valley
of wolves in which the former dwells, fashioning works of the
smith's art, makes a tolerable parallel to the labyrinth in which
Dsedalus devises his works of art. As Volundr soars into the air
on the wings which he has invented, so Daedalus escapes in the
same way. In the north it is Egill, the brother of Volundr, who
makes a fatal essay with the wings and falls to earth through his
brother's treachery ; in the south it is Icarus, the son of Daedalus,
who falls with his wings into the sea, though certainly through
his own cai'elessness.
In spite of the undeniable resemblance of these representations,
we must entertain a well-founded hesitation to allow straightway
that they are of Indo-Germanic origin.
To begin with, the figure of Hephaestus cannot possibly be
identified with that of Daedalus ; for though the former is called
SatSaXo? by Pindar, the meaning of the word {:Sai8d\\u>, "to fashion
with art,") is so general that it is quite out of the question to
identify the two mythological figures on the strength of it. On
the contrary, nowhere in all classical antiquity has Daedalus, the
hero of wood-carving and architecture, anything to do with
metallurgy {cf. L. Preller, Griech. MythoL, i. p. 123), and the con-
nection, probably very ancient, of his name with the Phoiniko-
Semitic Crete hints not obscurely at the oriental origin of the
stories associated with him.
On the other hand, as regards Hepheestus, whose name luifortu-
nately has not yet been interpreted,* it is impossible to doubt that
by it the simple nature-power was still designated in prehistoric
* Max Miiller identifies "H^ojo-tos with Sans, ydvishta, "the youngest," a
perpetual epithet of Agni ; A. Kulin with sahheyishta, "most connected with
the house" {cf. Vesta, iarla), K. Z., .xviii. p. 212 ; Bezzenberger in \\\% Bcitrdge,
ii. l.'iS, takes 'H-(/)ai(TTos as=*o-Fd-<f>oi(rToj, "having his own light;" Fick,
B. B., iii. 167, accjuiesces, and sees in -(paiffTos the name of the Cretan town
*o((rTJs, where TfA.x"''''^ (-^ce ne.xt note) was worshipped. The gods' poor
smith comes off worst at the hands of L. v. Schroder, Griech. Gottcr und
Hcrocn, i. 81, who makes ''H<pai(Tros = a. Sans. *inVihcnjis1ila 'yufutionis valde
cupidus," and tries to show the god to be a lecherous, Gandharva sort of
creature.
1 62 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Greek times, and, like the Agni of the Veda, was worshipped as
divine. Thus, in ii. 426, the poet can still say in this sense : —
(nr\dy)(ya 8 ap ajXTreLpavTa vTreipe^ov 'H(^ato-Toto ;
and the Italian Volcanus also contains clearly the idea of the brilliance
of fire, if it is rightly dei'ived from Sans, varc, "to be brilliant,"
vdrcas, "brilliance" (according to Grassmann, A". Z., xiv. p. 164).*
Since, further, according to Ca3sar (de B. G., vi. 21), the Teutons
adhered even in his time to the worship of fire, purely as a nature-
power {deorum numero eos solos ducunt quos cermmt et quorum aperte
opihus iuvantur, Solem et Vulcanum et Lunam), one might indeed
assume that under the personality of Wieland-HejDhsestus there
lay some mystical fire-demon, possibly conceived of, in accordance
with the nature of the element, as a knavish being. Indeed, it
might seem as though the lame Hephaestus of the Greeks was
parallelled by the Teuton Wieland, maimed of leg, in the epithet
apdUd, "footless," which, as well as agirshd, "headless," is given to
Agni in the Rigveda, though certainly only once (iv. i. 11); and
that here we have the primitive view of the unsteady, flickering
movement of fire giving expression to itself.
All this, indeed, is more than uncertain : what does seem to me
certain is that the palpable agreements between the stories of
Wieland and Daedalus point not to some primeval substructure of
myth, but much rather to direct borrowing by the Teutons from
classic ground, even though for the moment we are unable to give
irrefutable demonstration of the time and place of the spread of
the story. In a paper which has recently appeared in Gerniania
xxxiii. 449, jf., i)ie Wielandsage und die Wanderung der frdnkischen
Heldensage, W. Golther has endeavoured to show that the Teutonic
Wieland story is nothing but a conscious, poetic combination of
the ancient stories of Vulcan and Daidalus, put together not
before the sixth century, on Frankish soil, whence it spread to the
other Teutonic tribes. We will not say that we feel convinced in
all respects by his argument ; but it must be allowed that in the
present condition of Comparative Mythology (cf. further, part iv.
ch. xiii. ) it would be premature to draw inferences as to the culture
of primitive Indo-Germanic times from analogies drawn from a cycle
of stories so seriously exposed to the suspicion of being borrowed
at a late age.f
* Nevertheless Volcanus is probably not an Italian word at all. The
Hesyehian TiKx°'-^°^' ^ Zivs trapa Kprjaiv, which is also guaranteed by an
inscription (on a coin), suggests itself; cf. Voretzsch, Dial. Cret., p. 6. On
Etrurian monuments also Fdchamc occurs, which, however, is interpreted as a
proper name by Corssen, Die Sprache der Etrusker, i. p. 969.
The genuine Etruscam Vulcan is rather Sethlans. He it is who with a blow
of his hammer delivers Jupiter of Minerva ; cf. H. Blumner, De Vulcani in
vetcribus artium monumentis figura; Diss. Vratislaviae, ]870, Cf. further,
Pauli at the Philologcnvers. at Stettin, 1880.
t The mythical character of the Wieland story is stoutly maintained by
Niedner, Zeitschrift f. D. A., xxxiii. 24-26 ; L. v. Schroder, GriccMsche Goiter
und Heroen, i. (1887). Cf. also E. H. Meyer, Anzeiger, xiii. (1887) 23, and
Indogermanische Mythcn, ii. (1887) 679.
GIANT AND DWARF SMITHS, 1 63
We, therefore, devote the rest of this chapter to a compressed
account of the most striking traits of affinity which ahiiost every-
where in Europe ckister round the craft of the smith, without
further entering on any discussion of the reasons of this connection.
In the first pkice the view is widespread that smithying was
first discovered, and continued to be practised, by supernatural
beings. In the Teutonic north these are on the one hand the
giants, whose weapons are bars of iron, and in whose land is the
forest of iron. Names also, such as Jarnsaxa and Jarnglumra
(iarn, " iron ") are found amongst them {cf. K. AVeinhold, Altn.
Leben, p. 93). On the other hand, however, and more especially
they were dwarfs (O.H.G. ttverc, A.S. dveori/, O.N. dvergr), whose
other common Teutonic name (O.H.G. alp, "elf," A.S. dlf, O.N.
dlfr) A. Kuhn (X. Z., iv. p. 110) compares with the name of the
Hindu rbku, and interprets as the sjjirits of the deceased (2ntdras,
Trarepe?), and who wei'e regai'ded throughout the whole area of the
Teutonic languages as the guardians and workers of the treasures
below the earth. According to the Wilkina saga, Wieland was first
taken by his father W;ide to Mimir to be taught, but when he,
like his comrades, was ill-treated by Siegfried, to two dwarfs in the
Kallevaberge. In the Volundarkvida also, V()lundr was called
dlfa liodi, " alforxan socmis," and visi difa, " alforum princeps."*
Dwarf smiths occur in the stories in A. Kuhn, Sagen, Geb7'duche, und
Mdrchen aus Westfalen, i. Nos. 52, 53, 152, 288, <kc.
* Owing to the fact that in the prose intro<luction to the Volundarkviua,
Vijlundr is spoken of as the son of a king of Finland, M. Sjoegren, in an in-
teresting essay, De Finnis aliisquc Tschudicis gcntibus scicntia el usu mctcdlorun
antiquitus insignihus (cf. Bulletin scientifiquc public par V academic imp. de
Saint-Peter shourg, vi. p. 165,/.), is led to see a Finnic population in the Norse
Alfas. C. Hoffman {Germ., viii. p. 11) would even explain the O.N. ViJlundr
by the Finnic valaa, " to pour." Derivations of this kind, however, are incon-
sistent with the want of independence shown by the West Finnic peoples in
the terminology of the smith's art, to which we have already casually alluded.
In the course of time certainly the Finns did become famous smiths, as a
glance at the Kalevala or the Kalevipoeg (an Esthonian saga, translated into
German by Carl Reinthal, Verhandlungcn der gel. cstn. Gesellschaft zv, Dorpat,
iv. and V.) is enough to show, so that the relatively late author of the prose
introduction to the Eddas might easily be led to regard the Teutonic Vohindr
as a Finn. Cf. also FiJrstemann, Geschiclite d. d. Sjnrcchstamvies, i. p. 454.
Naturally, attempts have been made at derivations from Celtic, on which see
H. Schreiber, Taschenbuch fiir Geschiclite und AUcrtum in SiiddciUscIdand, iv.
p. 103, /. W. Golther in the paper mentioned nbove quite rightly separates
the two series of names JFalaiui {Galand) — O.N. Vblundr and A.S. Veland
— O.H.G. Wielant; they cannot be reconciled phonetically. He sees in both
ancient Teutonic proper names, which the Frankish poet employed to repre-
sent the classical names Diedalus {Veland) and Vulcan {JValand): it was the
etymology of Veland (: O.N. vcl "ars," re'xi'rj, contined indeed to this language)
which suggested it to the poet, while he chose Waland (cf. JValo) for Vulcan
because of the various mediicval attempts to interpret Vulcanus, Volicanus —
the god being regarded as per mrem volans.
Tliis last explanation will lie deemed very far-fetched. If W. Golther is
right in his hypothesis of the Frankish origin of the Wieland story, the idea
suggests itself of combining with it a conjecture made by 0. Keller {AUg.
Zeitung. 1882, No. 140, Beilage), who sees in Wieland, for which we need
only substitute Waland- Volundr, a corruption of tiie name of the Emperor
164 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
What correspond in the south to the giants of the north are the
Cyclopes, who in Homer certainly are not associated with smithying,
and of whom it is only a later story that states that in Sicily and
other volcanic localities they prepare ore for gods and men, as the
comrades of Hephaistus groaning in fire. But classical ground
does not seem to have been without its representation of the smith
as a dwarf Plastic art appears to have represented Hephaestus in
older times as a dwarf-like figure (cf. Preller, Griecli. Mythol., i.
p. 125). At any rate, the representation of Hephaestus in the
temple of Memphis, on which Cambyses wreaked his rage, resembled
a dwarf or a kobold. Cf. Hdt., iii. 37 : €o-ti yap tov '}i4>aiaTov
TinyaXixa Tois ^otvtKTytotcrt IIaTat/<oto"t e/xc^epecrrarov, tov<; ol 4'oti'iKes cv
Tfici TrpwpjjaL Twv TpLTjptuiv TTcptdyovcri TrvyfxaLov di/8/30S /xtjUT^crts
€o-Tt. Subsequently, the dwarfish figure of Hephaestus seems to
have been transferred to his assistants. Thus, a bas-relief in the
collection of the Louvre introdnces us into the workshop of
Hephaestus, where the master with some Satyrs is hard at work.
But near the furnace, from which the flame blazes out, sits a
dwarfish, beai'ded, hump-backed figure, which is bent down and is
examining with the air of a connoisseur the polish on a helmet in
front of him (cf. E. Guhl. u. W. Koner, Das Leben der Griechen u.
Romer\ p. 28)'.
Finally, it seems to me most probable that the most familiar of
the enigmatical, Graeco-Asia-Minor demons, connected with metal-
lurgy, such as the Cabiri, Telchines,* Corybantes, &c., the iSatot
AdKTvXoL, to whom we shall return hereafter, belong to this cycle
of ideas, as their names (fingerstalls, hop 0' my thumbs, pigmies)
indicate. In no case, however, will the venturesome explanations
of this word SclktvXol given by the ancients (cf. Pollux, ii. 156) be
allowed.
As the amazement of man at the marvellous art of melting the
hard metal in the fire and fashioning things of price out of it
caused its invention to be ascribed to supernatural beings, so its
exercise by mortal beings could not be conceived without the
assistance of mj^sterious and magical means. This view, again,
prevails throughout all Europe. The 'iSaiot AdKrvXoL already
mentioned, even in the oldest notice of them that has been pre-
served, in the epic fragment of Phoronis [cf. Schol. to ApoU. A., i.
VaUntianus I. " He, the contemporary and patron of the poet Ausonius, was
well known to the Germans as the conqueror of the Alemanni, Franks, and
other Teutonic tribes he frequently resided for a year at a time at
Trier. His outspoken affection for the plastic arts was remarkable ; he tried
painting with some success, modelled figures in clay and wax, actually dis-
covered new kinds of weapons, and practised mechanics and architecture,
especially military architecture, with extraordinary affection and undeniable
skill."
* An attempt has recently been made in a very attractive way by W.
Prellwitz, B. B., xv. 148, to explain the TeAxi'i'es as spirits of the smithy ; he
compares G. xa'^''0J = Lith. gelezis, O.S. zelczo (rt. ghel-gh--=G. 0e\x, reK-x)-
The form &e\y7ves is then a folk-etymology from deKyoo, "enchant" {cf.
below).
SUPERNATURAL SMITHS. l6$
1126), are called ydr^rcs, "sorcerers," a perpetual epithet, which
frequently recurs in later literature.* In Ireland, St Patrick
(cf. Windisch, /. T., i. 7, 48) invokes various virtues fri hrichta
ban ociis gohand ocus druad, " against the incantations of women,
smiths, and Druids." Again, the well-known Slavonic saints,
Kuzma and Demian, who otherwise pass as skilful physicians
(^ap/AttKeis, like the Dactyli), appear in Russian popular tales " as
holy and supernatural (yoT/res) smiths, in frequent conflict with
snakes " (cf. W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, p. 70, and The
Songs of the Btissian Peoide, p. 198). The Teutonic figure of
Wieland is an equally magical person throughout, and in the
Finnic and Esthonian north, also, a good piece of the smith's art
cannot dispense with magic. At any rate, the way in which, both
in the Wilkina saga {cf. p. 94 of Hagen's edition) and in the
Kalevipoeg (cf. Ges., vi. 399-416), the forging of famous swords is
represented shows that in the period of these monuments a skilful
smith could not be conceived as practising his craft without the
aid of hidden arts. In Greece and Germany, stories, almost
absolutely identical, were told of master smiths who worked
invisible. Even Pytheas in his y^s TrepioSoj states that invisible
smithying was carried on in the islands of Lipara and Strongyle.
You laid down the unwrought iron, and on the next day received,
ready made, the sword, or whatever it was that was wished for
(cf Schol. to Apoll. A., iv. 761). Precisely the same story is told
in England and Germany, especially in Anglo-Saxon (cf. K. Z., iv.
p. 96, /'., and A. H. Kuhn, Sar/en, Gebrduche unci Mdrchen aus West-
fcden, i. Nos. 36, 40 — of invisible water-smiths — 49, 52, 53 — in-
visible Sgiinauks — 55, 76). f
The number (three) of the mythical smiths (KeA/xts, Aa/^m/Aci/ci;?,
"A/c/xwv; cf p. 165, note) which we have met with amongst the Greeks,
and which recurs amongst the ancient Germans and Romans,
deserves to be noted. Not only has Volundr two brothers in the
Edda, an old German huoch expressly names as the most famous
* The passage of the Phoronis runs : —
I5a7oi ^pvyis &i>Spfs, opioTfpoi oIkI' fvaiov
KiXfxis AaixvafxiVfiis re fxiya.s Ka\ uTre'pjSi'Ji 'Ak/uoij',
EuTraA-a^uoi Bepanovres opelrjs ASprjo'TeiT)?,
Ot TTpaiTOi Te'x''')'' TToKvfjLrjTins K^alaTotu
T.vpov iv ovpe'iTim vdnais ioevra ffiSiipov
'Es irvp r' ijveyKav Kal 6.pnrpen(S tpyov (Sei^au.
Cf. Strabo, C. 473, &Wot &\\us ixvQiOviriv, airupois &,iropa avvaTrTOVTts
TTOLVTfs Se KoL yS-qra^ vireiAricpaai Othur iiaiiit's of the tliree
master smiths are: — Chalkon, Chrysoii, Argyron, otAvkos, KsAuiy, Aa.uca/iej/euy,
or MvKas, Avkus, KupvOos {'.). A.s to these and their meaning, cf. Prellwitz,
loc. cil.
t Exactly the same thing is related of the Veddahs of Ceylon : " When they
wanted a weapon, they took a piece of meat by the night to the worksliop of a
smith, hung up a leal cut out in the shape of the desired weapon by the side
of it, and if the work was done according to the pattern, they took it away
and brought more meat." Cf. J. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, i. 60.
1 66 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
smittemeiater (three smiths) Mime, Hertrich, and Wieland ; and, so too,
a prose conchision of the old French romance of Fierabras speaks
of three brothers, Galand (Wieland), Magnificans, and Ainsiax, who
wrought nine famous swords {cf. W. Grimm, Die deutsche Heldeiisage,
pp. 146 and 43). A. Kuhn also, loc. cit., i. No. 92, knows a story of
three smiths called Krose. It should be noted that the Hindu
rhhii appear in threes. Cf. B. R. (dictionary).
If, however, the smith is credited with the highest degree of
skill possible to man, it is not difficult to understand that other
arts were also ascribed to him. Particular mention must be made
here of the smith's skill not only in medicine, which we have
already alluded to, but also in music, poetiy, and the dance. As
the 'iSaiot AaKTuAot, although they are first and foremost the
powers that presided over the most ancient metallurgy, neverthe-
less are said to have brought the first melodies from Phrygia to
Greece, and to have invented the dactyl; so, too, the German elves
have " an irresistible tendency to music and the dance " {cf. Grimm,
Afyth.^, p. 438). To no idea are the words smith and smithying so
often applied as to that of poetry and song (O.N. Ijodasviidr, O.H.G.
leodslaho, to smithy verses, &c.), and even in the later Middle
Ages poet-smiths are known (cf. W. Wackernagel, Kleinere
Schriften, i. p. 49).
The note of mysticism, which characterises the production of
works of the smith's art, appears however in another point
common to Greek and German smith sagas : that is, the element
of treachery and fraud, which is wont to reside in the best works
particularly. The invisible bonds with which Hephaestus sur-
rounds his marriage bed, Hera's throne de^aveis Seo-/xoi;s e^wv, the
necklace of Harmonia, which brings misfortime even to the last
generation, are evidence of this on classic ground. In the same way,
on Teutoaiic ground, Vcilundr-Wielant is a deceitful fellow. When
he has killed King Nidudr's sons, it is said of him : " The skull
under the hair I set in silver and sent to Nidudr. Of the eyes I
made precious stones and sent them to Nidudr's false wife. Then
from two of the teeth I made an ornament for the breast and sent
it toBodvildr" (Simrock). Reigin and Mime again are depicted
by the German saga as wily, treacherous smiths. In the Finnic
Kalevala swords are whetted by Hiisi, the evil principle ; and it is
Hiisi's birds, the hornets {cf. ix. 230,/.), which drop the black venom
of adders, the hiss of poisonous snakes, &c., into the steel.
This conception, however, has been most characteristically
developed by the ancient Germans.
Amongst them Wieland gradually became the deceitful, treacher-
ous magician, and it was inevitable when the Christian world pro-
cured the northern countries the acquaintance of the devil that
the priests should eagerly avail themselves of the person of the
malevolent smith to illustrate the Christian idea of the Evil One to
their heathen flocks. It is beyond all doubt that the old German
conceptions of the smith and the devil have many features in
common. The devil is the swarze master of soot-begrimed hell,
THE SMITHY. 1 67
he smithies and works like Wieland, above all he is hinkebein
{diable boiteiix) like the Norse Volundr and the Greek Heplucstus,
with the latter of whom he has further in common his fall from
heaven (St Luke, x. 18, and cf. Grimm, Myth?, p. 945, and iii.*,
p. 29-i). The devil who smithies invisible {cf. above, p. 165) is
mentioned by A. Kuhn, loc.cit., i. No. 56. Butthe length of time that
traces of the idea that the smith was a magician, and in league with
the devil, continued to exist in Germany is shown by the interest-
ing tale by Parson Petersen in the seventeenth century (in Frey-
tag, Bitder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, iv. p. 50,/.) of the
" hereditary smith," who is said to knock out the eye of an
unknown thief by means of all sorts of diabolical arts.
The transference of the art of smithying from divine and super-
natural beings to men, and the gradual growth of a special guild
of smiths, are best illustrated. from Teutonic antiquity. Whereas,
as far as I know, no hero or demi-god is mentioned by name in
classical tradition as making his sword or his shield for himself ;
amongst the Germans we come across numerous heroes of noble
birth who know how to work at the smithy for themselves. I
mention hei'e Skallagrim, Kveldulf's son, in Iceland (cf. Weinhold,
Altn. Leben, p. 93), young Siegfried, Albuin, the king of the Longo-
bardi, and others {cf. Paulus Diac, i. 27). Names of other half
mythical, half historical smiths are : Mime, Hartrich, Eckenbrecht,
Mimringus, Madelger, Amilias, tfcc. Wealthy men erected smithies
in their forests, the remains of which are still to be traced in Ice-
land and in the west of Germany by the charcoal and slag. In
Ireland also the most ancient smithies were placed in the most
sequestered woods {cf. O'Curry, Manners and Ciistoms, ii. p. 246);
and so, too, in the Esthonian saga (vi. 147, /.), Kalevipoeg* after
wandering long finds hidden in the deepest depths of the wood the
only smithy in which he can obtain his magic sword : —
Then at length the doughty wanderer
Saw tlie beauteous dale before him.
Wlien he entered on the valley.
While yet distant, to his ears
Came the roar of bellows blowing,
And the beat of hammers striking,
As, to time, they smote the anvil, &c.
The Fridolin saga, which turns on a smithy of this kind, extends
to all branches of the Teutonic family (cf. Weinhold, op. cit., p. 94,/.).
Skilful smiths were held in the highest esteem. King Geiserich
even elevated one to the rank of count ; and the killing of a smith,
especially a goldsmith, is always threatened by the laws with a
* The young hero of Esthonia may be compared iu many points with
Sigurd-Siegfried. As the latter with his hammer drives m die erde the
mighty anvil of the smith Mime, so with his magic sword Kalevipoeg cleaves—
The heavy anvil,
And the block with rings surrounded
Which upheld it, to the bottom.
1 68 PEEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
much heavier fine than in the case of other vassals (c/. Wackernagel,
Kl. Schriften, i. p. 46).
In Finland, smiths to the present day stand in the highest estima-
tion. They are presented with brandy to keep them in good temper,
and the proverb runs : —
Fine bread always for the smith, and
Dainty morsels for the hammerer.
[cf. Ahlqvist, op. cit., p. 60).
Finally, the custom of giving a sword a name of its own, as
though it were a living being (c/. Siegfried's Balmung, Wieland's
Mimung, Beovulfs Niigling, Roland's Durndart, &c.), appears to be
confined to the Teutons.
Herewith we conclude this brief collection of the traits of affinity
between Indo-Germanic and non-Indo-Germanic stories of the
smith. It may readily be made more complete by those of greater
knowledge.
To sum vip the results of this chapter it has been shown first
that in the linguistic relations of the Indo-Europeans no reason is to
be found for referring the development of the smith's craft to the
primitive Indo-European period; and, secondly, that the ambiguity
of the myths and stories relating to the smith and his art does not
seem to us adapted to compensate for the lack of linguistic proof.
We now turn to the history of the individual metals themselves,
from which we hope to obtain more trustworthy data for the
problem under discussion.
CHAPTER IV.
GOLD.
Gold, renowned in story; gold, which glitters in the sands of rivers,
and is usually deposited in the veins of mountains pure and un-
mixed ; gold, the beautiful gleam of which rouses the desire of the
savage as much as the ease with which it can be worked attracts
the artistic sense of more civilised man; gold, highly prized and
highly abused, which is decried by moralising poets now as melius
irrejierttim now as ferro nocentius, but which is equally desired by
all, won for itself its high position in the esteem of man in an age
that lies beyond the beginning of all history. The ancients indeed
can tell of a time when in the words of Lucretius (v. 1272) : —
Fuit in fretio magis ces, aurumque jacebat propter inutilitateyn ;
but this view of a whilom contempt for gold as compared with the
other metals finds no support in actual fact.
The very dawn of history ilhunines a land richly blessed by the
concourse of the most precious metals — Egypt {cf. Lepsius, Die
Metalle in den agyptischen Inschriften, Abh. der Berl. Ak. d. W.
phil-hist. Kl., 1871, p. 31). AVith especial frequency do the
Ethiopians and the southern nations generally appear in repre-
sentations and inscriptions, bringing rich tribute from their
auriferous home in the shape of purses, rings, plates, bars, bricks.
But the Assyrians also, the Rotennu of the inscriptions, and various
tribes of Syria, the Tahi, the Chetites, the people of Megiddo, are
represented as gold-bringing tributaries, which points to the in-
ference that in ancient times gold as well as copper may have been
mined with success in Lebanon.
The name for gold in Egyptian is nuh, Koptic 7iouh, whence
Nubia seems to derive its name. The figurative symbol for
gold, u7i^^\ , which has been preserved in Benihassan in its
original form, ^^""^rn^^^ , represents a cloth folded, with two
corners, in which the grains of gold were washed and shaken. In
the older symbol the sac or bag can be recognised with the water
trickling out ((/. Hebr. sdqaq, G. o-aKKcw). In Thebes the bag was
shaken in the air by two people. Over it is written " preparing
gold." In ancient Egyptian inscriptions two kinds of gold are
I/O PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
distinguished : nuh en set, " gold of the cliffs," mountain gold, and
nuh en mu, "river gold," the latter of which is collected at the
present day in quills, under the name of tibber, by the negroes on
the Blue Nile.
It is scarcely open to doubt that it was river gold which first
attracted the attention of man. For, if what Strabo, c. 146, says,
perhaps with some exaggeration, is true, that in the auriferous sands
of the Turdetanian rivers occasionally masses weighing half a
pound (called TraXat*) are found, the same may have been the case
in rivers of other auriferous lands at the time when gold first began
to be worked ; f though it also seems that in times of remote
antiquity the precious metal was to be obtained from mountains
with the expenditui'e of less energy than it is now. Polybius (in
Strabo, c. 208) relates that amongst the Noric Taurisci a gold-mine
was found so productive that it was only necessaiy to remove the
soil two or three feet in order at once to find gold that could be
worked, and so on.
In ancient Egypt accordingly the mining of gold goes back to
times of the remotest antiquity. A very interesting description
of the ancient Egyptian gold-mines as they are supposed to have
been worked even by the ancient kings has been transmitted to
us by Diodorus Siculus (iii. 12, 14). He paints in gloomy colours
the misery of the thousands of hapless criminals condemned by the
sentence of the king to life-long penal labour in the mines, as they
ply their cruel work in fetters, without rest night or day, driven
by the merciless lash of their ovei'seers, with lamps on their brows,
gliding like ghosts through the gloomy galleries, without care for
their bodies or clothing for their nakedness, so that the writer
concludes with the words : avr-i] yap rj (jivo-i?, oio/xat, iroLfl TrpoSrjXov w<s
o ^pucro? yeveo-tv /xev Ittlttovov t\€.i, ^iAcik^i/ 8e ^aAeTr^v, cnrov8rjv Sc
fieyLCTTrji', ^prja-Lv 8e dm fiea-ov r]Sovrj<i Sk kol Xv7rr]<i.
The proximity of a country famous for its rich gold deposits,
and for the early practice of the arts of preparing and working-
gold, renders it probable that the Semites, who were connected by
numerous historical ties with Egypt, had learned even in the
earliest periods of their history to value and seek the precious
metal. And, as a matter of fact, the Semites' acquaintance with
gold seems to go back to the time when they originally formed
one community. At least this may be inferred from the agree-
ment of several Semitic peoples in their names for this metal :
Hebr. zdhdb, Arab, dsahab, Chald. d(e)hab, Syrian dahbo, Origin.
Semit. dahabu, and Assyr. hurdsu = Hebr. chdruz (only used poetic-
* Probably an Iberian word. Cf. Plinj', Hist. Nat., xxxiii. c. 4, s. 21 :
" Auruin aiTugia qiipesitum non coquitur, sed statim suiuu est. Inveniuntur
ita niassEe. Nee non in putei setiani denas excedentes libras Palacas (Hisjjani
vocant), alii palicurnas ; iidem quod minutum est balucem vocaut. " Cf.
Diefenbach, Origines Europcccc, p. 240.
t The ancients often tell of streams that produced gold in earlier times. Thus
(according to Strabo, c. 626) it was the Pactolus, which has its source in the
Tiniolus, that brought Crcesus his enormous wealth. But even in Strabo's
time iK\e\OLTre rh \l/riyfj.a.
GOLD KNOWN TO THE INDO-IRANIANS. I7I
ally). Both words connote " the glistening, shining metal." A
third designation, Hebr. ketem (synonymous with zdhah), recvirs in
the Egyptian kaOamd {Z. f. afjyx>t. Spr. wid Altertk., x. p}). 4-4 and
114, aiidxii. p. 149).
A special term for gold, not connected with these words, r/ttsh-
kin, the meaning of which is given as the "pliant metal," was
possessed by the Sumerian population of Babylon. But this word,
like the other Sumerian names of metals, with the exception of
copper, appears for the first time in relatively recent texts (with
ideograms compounded), and the linguistic formation according to
Hommel {Die vorsemitischen CtdHiren, Leipzig, 1883, p. 409, /.)
indicates that the Sumerians obtained their knowledge of most
metals, and amongst them of gold, in or from Babylon.
Through the ancient gate of nations, and of Median and Semitic
intercourse, thi'ough the passes of the Zagros chain we come for
the first time on to Indo-Gei'manic ground. A triangle, drawn from
the northernmost point of the Persian Gulf and the southernmost
point of the Caspian Sea to the mouths of the Ganges, includes
roughly the abode of a group of peoples, which, as we have seen,
were united from the earhest period of their history by the closest
bonds of speech and civilisation — the Hindu-Persian branch. Was
this branch already acquainted with gold at the time when it was
still geographically united ? We may venture, I think, to say
" yes " to this question. The ancient name of this metal in the
Vedas, hiraiiya, corresponds, not only in the root-syllable, but
also — and' to this, as we have seen, especial weight must be
attached — in suffix, with the zmxinya of the Avesta. In neither
language is a trace of an earlier meaning (c/. above, p. 120) re-
tained. In all modern Persian dialects — in N. Pers. zarr, zar; in
Kurd, zer, zir, zer ; in Afghan, zar; Beluchee zar {Z. K. M., iv.
p. 425) ; in Bokharian ser (Klaproth, As. PoJyyl., p. 2.52) ; Parsee
zar — the word recvirs, and also beyond doubt in the remotest
member of Iranian, Ossetic, where it occurs as suzgharin (in the
Digoric dialect sugh-zarine, " pure gold ;" Hlibschmann, Osset. Spr.,
p. 56). Parsee tell, N. Pers. tilah, tile, tildh, Arab, teld is isolated
(cf. Z. d. M. G., xxxvi. p. 61).
As in other respects so in its name for gold, Armenian stands
remote from the Hindu-Persian languages, except in so fiir as the
Persian zar has penetrated into it, in the shape of such loan-woixls
as zarili, "leaf-gold, tinsel," t^'c. (cf Z. d. M. G., xxxv. p. 558).
Gold in Armenian is os/ii, wliich can scarcely be Indo-Germanic
or of ancient Armenian origin. It resembles — more it is impossible
to say — on the one hand the above-mentioned Sumerian names for
gold, gush/iin, gushgin; on the other, the Georgian okro, oker,
"gold," which has passed into some North and West Caucasian
languages ; * and, perhaps, also the Finn, vaski, " copper, bronze "
(cf. P. Jensen, Z. f. Assyr., i. 254), since elsewhere also in the East
Asiatic languages we have proof of a change between the meanings
* For the rest the Caucasian names for gold (Lesgliian moescd, inisidi,
Mizilzeghian desi, desau) stand (juite isolated.
172 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
" copper " and " gold " (Jakut. altwi " copper : " the usual mean-
ing of " gold " elsewhere in the Turko-Tataric languages).
Our assumption that gold was known in the primitive Hindu-
Persian period, which is shared both by Geiger {Museon, iv. 17)
and by Spiegel {Arische Perioch, p. 33), finds further support in the
nature of the country, in which we must suppose the Hindu-
Persian period to have been spent. Not only the most important
tributary of the Oxus, the Polytimetus of the ancients, which at
the present day is called Zerafschdn, "the gold-bearer," but also
the streams which descend north and south from the Hindu
Kusch, carry sand glittering with gold in their waters, which
must have early attracted the attention of the population. The
same holds good of the streams w^hich flow down the west and
south-west sides of the Himalaya.*
According to the views of the ancients, especially of Herodotus
and Megasthenes, India, in consequence of an erroneous application
to the whole of it, of what was known as to the north-west of it,
passes as a country blessed with gold. Pliny (Hist. Nat, vi. 25)
tells of a gold and silver island, Chryse and Argyre (east of
the estuary of the Ganges, later XP^^V X'^P^'^^^^'^^ modem
Malacca; cf. Kiepert, HandbiKh d. a. Geog., p. 42). "Thou gold-
abounding Sindhu," "thou river wdth the golden bed" (Jiiranydyi,
hiranyavartani), are the terms applied in the hymns of the Eigveda
to the Indus. Gold-mines, and also gold-washing (Zimmer, Altind.
Lehen, p. 49, /.), are mentioned, and generally a consuming
passion for the precious metal is displayed in the most open fashion
by the worthy poets of the Rigveda. Again, the custom of
cleaning the gold obtained from the mines with watei', which we
came accross in Egypt, is mentioned in Vedic texts [adbhyo
hiravyam punanti); cf. Zimmer, Altind. Lehen, p. 49 /. A
luxuriant terminology flourishes in later Sanskrit for the metal,
the object of desire to all.t
Of these later Sanskrit names for gold I will only call attention
to one, which in a fabulous shape found its way to the west at a
very early period. Herodotus (iii. 102-105), and others after
him, informs us of a valiant people in the north of India who set
out into the desert on camels at the first streak of dawn to fetch
gold. "There are ants there, in size between a dog and a fox,
and of extraordinary swiftness, which burrow in the earth, after
the fashion of ants, and throw up heaps of a golden sand. The
* As is well known, some scholars have endeavoured to find in Sans, rasd
(a m}'thical river of the extreme north) = Zend rahlia (m3'thical stream) a
recollection, common to both branches of the Hindu-Persian group, of a great
river in the land from which they came, the Jaxartes ('Apa|rjs). Cf. Spiegel,
Arische Pcriode, p. 107.
+ Cf. Pott, Etym. Forschitngcn, ii. p. 410, /. He reviews Hindu names for
gold under four heads : sheen and colour, real or imaginary jjlace of discover}-,
qualities or laudator}'' epithets, uncertain origin. Cf. ib. for the Sanskrit
names of the other metals. Narahari's Rdjanighantu (in the middle of the
thirteenth century of our era), ed. by R. Garhe, Leipzig, mentions forty-two
names for gold [cf. p. 33, /. ).
INDIAN GOLD. 1/3
thing is to load the camels with this sand as rapidly as possible
and get home before the cool of the day. For though these ants
remain concealed during the heat, afterwards they come out of
their holes, and guided by the scent give chase to the gold-robbers."
This story, which was widely spread in antiquity, is alluded to in
Hesychius' gloss /i,eTaAAets" fjLvp/xrjKeq* Now, as a matter of fact,
there is a kind of gold called by the Hindus ^:)^^i/^X•rt, " ants "
(Mahdbhdrata, ii., 1860), brought from a North Indian tribe
named the Darada, who were called gold-hunters even by the
ancients, and accoixling to Lassen it is probable that the name
indicates a kind of marmot animal still to be found in the sandy
plains of Thibet, which lives in communities and burrows like
ants. The sand thrown up by these creatures may often have
contained gold, and may have caused the Hindu gold-seekers to
imagine that these animals had a peculiar instinct for discovering
the metal.
Another explanation of the story of the gold-digging ants
assumes that by these mysterious beasts we are to understand a
Thibetan variety of the human species ; and, indeed, recent explora-
tions in Thibet have revealed numerous families of Thibetan gold-
diggers living together in communities, and they, in the depths of
winter, wrapped up to the ears in hides and skins, guarded by
great, fierce dogs, dig with long iron spades for the gold which is to
be found in abundance (cf. AusJand, 1873, p. 39).
Now that we have traversed the ancient civilisations of the East,
from the banks of the Nile to the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and have
found everywhere that joy in the precious metal and longing for it
go back to a point in time which can only be reached by means of
Comparative Philology, let us return to our own quarter of the
globe, Europe.
Nature has not entirely refused her good things to Europe
either. We have accounts even in antiquity of the wealth of
Spain, Gaul, Switzerland, Noricum, Macedonia. Time after time
gold has been discovered in Great Britain and Ireland, in Bohemia,
Austria, Hungary, in the sands of the Danube, the Rhine, the
Moselle, the Eder, the Schwarza, the Rhone, ifec, though frequently
it has only made but a poor return for considerable labour.
Amongst the most important prehistoric finds of gold in Europe
belong those discovered in Hungary, Siebenbiirge, in the Norselands,
and ancient Scythia. Hallstadt also and Myceua; exhibit g(jld ;
the Swiss lake-dwellings but little, as at St Aubin and Mffiringcn.
M. Much, w'ho, in his book Die Kupfet-zeit in Europa, deals with
gold also in ancient Europe (p. 176, jf.), comes to the conclusion in
the first place that gold appears much later than copper in the
culture of the European Aryans ; next, that it appears first of all
in the south-east of their region, whither it may have made its
way through the influence of Asiatic and Semitic culture.
* Cf. also Heliodorus, jEthiopica: irap^a-av yuero tovtov? (Scri bringing silk,
and Arabians bringing spice), ol iK r^y TpaiyKoSvriKrji, xpv'^v 5e rhv /nvpn-qKiav
irpo(TKoixi(ovTes, X. 26, and Philostr. ApolL, vi. 1.
174 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
A sure decision as to the origin and spread of gold in Europe
can scarcely be reached this way. Let us, therefore, commit our-
selves to the guidance of Comparative Philology here again, and
follow it tirst to the starting-point of European civilisation, the
classic region of the Mediterranean.
In Greek gold is xpva-os, a word which various savants refer to
a stem-form *^ep-Tio's or *;(pi5-Ttos, compare with the Hindu-Persian
names for gold given above, and then use as an argument to show
that the original Indo-Germanic period was acquainted with gold.
I will not here go into what seem to me the insuperable gram-
matical difficulties in the way of this comparison, I would only
point out that even if the correctness of such a stem-form as
^ep-Ttos or ^pv-TLos for ;)(p{icros be granted, it is quite out of the
(piestion to draw a satisfactory conclusion from it as to the exist-
ence of a word for gold in the vocabulary of the primeval Indo-
Germanic language, becavise of the complete dissimilarity between
its suffix and those of the Asiatic words (cf. above, p. 133).
All difficulties vanish the moment we decide, in company with
Kenan, V. Hehn, Benfey, and others, to see in the Greek xp^'o-o's a
loan-word from the Hebr. charm, Assyr. hurdsu, which the
Phenicians, whose agency in this matter has the most claim on
our notice, may well have been aquainted with, owing to the
affinity of their language with that of the Northern Semites, and
which, as inscriptions recently discovered show {cf. V. Hehn,
Kulturpjianzen u. Haustiere^, p. 461 ; Z. d. D. M. G., xxx. 137), was
the usual name for the gold. That the Phenician, to whose skill
in mining obvious reference is made in Job xxviii. 1-11 ("silver
has its veins and gold has its place of melting," tfec), opened the
first gold-mines in Greece, on the Island of Thasos and Mount
Panga^um, is a fact which has long been recognised. Herodotus,
who had inspected the mines abandoned by them on the south
coast of Thrace, states that here the Phenicians had undermined
a whole mountain. Aiiri metalla et Jiaturam, says Pliny, vii. 197,
Cadmus Phoenix ad Pangaemn montem invenit. A list of mines
worked by fabulously wealthy kings of Asia Minor and Greece is
given by Strabo, c. 680.* Arabia, too, was a great centre of Semitic
wealth in gold. The- fact that the expeditions of the Phenicians
to the eastern coast and districts of Greece took place in the
fifteenth century, explains how it is that xP^cros is at home in
Greek from the very beginning, and is in common use for forming
names of persons and places. For the rest, as to the gleam of
gold which irradiates the Homeric world, what a famous antiquary
* ws b fM^v TavTa\ov ttKovtos koI tu>v neAoTriSaJj/ a-wh twv wepl ^pvyiav Kal
2i7rt/Ao^ fXfrdWiiiu iyevero. 6 Se KdS,uoi; [e/c toji/] irepl ©paKTji' Kal rh HayyaTov
opos. 6 Se ripia^oK 4k tSiv 4v Acrrvpois Trepl "A^vSov xpi/o'eiccf, wu Kal vvv tri
fjiiKpa XeiireTai'iToWT] S' tj eK^oXri Kal to, opiiyfiara (Trj/j.e7a t^s ird\ai fxeraWfias.
6 Se Mi5ov 4k twv Trepl rh 'Bepfxiov bpos. 6 Se Tvyov /cat A\vaTTOv Kal Kpoiffov
airh TWV 4v AvSia *T?js fiiTa^i) 'ATapviws Tt ital Tl^pyd/xov iroKixvi)
4pTifj.7i e/cyuejU6TaAA€ii,u.eVa exovas, to, x'^P'-"- ^f- Groskurd's Translation, iii.
p. 98. A careful collection of all the places in which finds of gold have beeu
made is given in Bliimner, Termin. unci Tcchnol., iv. 12, ff.
TURKO-TATARIC GOLD. 1/5
(Schomann) remarks may be accepted, c^lm grano snlix, in spite of
Schliemann's discoveries : " Can any one doubt that all this is poetic
gold, with which it was no harder for Greek singers to deck out
their heroes than it was for the poets of the Middle Ages to deck
out the heroes of Teutonic sagas, where also red gold is plenty % "
At any rate, according to Hdt, ii. 69, the Lacedaemonians even
in the sixth century, when they wished to erect a statue to Apollo,
bad to send to Croesus of Lydia to buy the necessary gold. Cf.
further, Bliimner, Term. u. Techn., iv. 11.
So, too, it was from Semitic Asia-Minor, though at a much later
date, and not through Phenician agency, that the /tva (Lat. mina),
which fii'st occurs in Herodotus, penetrated to Greece from Assyr.
manah, which reappears in Akkad. viana and Egypt, min, but
scarcely in Sans, mand (M. Mliller, Biograjihies, Arc, p. 115).
But though in this way it was from the Semitic world that the
gleam of gold first shone upon the Greeks, still at a very early
date news may have reached the Hellenes, through the Pontic
colonies, of the rich treasures of metals that slumbered in the
ravines of the Ural and Altai mountains.
Again, it is Herodotus (iv. 24-31) who tells us that in a land
to the north-east of the Pontic factories, where the ground is
frozen hai'd eight months in the year, and where the air full " of
feathers " casts a wintry veil over the landscape, there dwells a
one-eyed people, whom the Scyths call Arimaspi. As far as the
baldheads, whose name is Argippfei, Hellenic merchants had pene-
trated, not however without having first had to cross a mountain
(the Ural). But beyond them no Greek had pushed ; for lofty,
pathless mo\:ntains (the western end of the Altai) barred the way.
Only so much w^as known with certainty : that to the east lay the
Issedones, whose customs also were known. What, however, was
known of the land of the Arimaspi and the gold-guarding griffins
w'as learned from the Issedones. Indeed, the Turko-Tataric branch
of the Ural-Altaic family of languages, situate at the western end
of the Altai, must have observed the treasures offered to their
notice by nature at a very early period. In spite of the enormous
geographical area occupied by this family of peoples, of whom I
will only name the more familiar Jakuts, Baschkirs, and Kirghishes,
the Uigurs, Usbeks, Turkomans, and Osmanlis of Turkey in
Europe and Asia, throughout the whole region from the Dar-
danelles to the banks of the Lena, the same name for gold, altim,
allyn, iltyn, itc.,* recurs, a word which has penetrated to the
extreme north-east of Asia, into the Samoyed and Tungusic
languages, and etymologically can hardly be dissociated from
the name of the auriferous Altai {rf. Klaproth, Sprachatlas in Asia
polyglotta, pp. 8 and 2&). Still more noteworthy is it that on
the vessels of gold and silver which have been discovered in the
* In Jakutic alone altun does not mean gold but copper, whereas gold in
a very remarkable way is designated "red silver," kysylil kiimys from the
Turko-Tataric word for silver. Cf. in later Sanskrit viahdrajala, "great
silver " = gold.
1/6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Altai district and in ancient Tschiidic graves in lai'ge quantities,
according to Sjogren {cf. above, p. 163; loc. cit., p. 170), the picture
of the fabiilous griffin of antiquity has been observed. Amongst
the Scythian tribes, too, Herodotus found much wealth of gold but
no silver (iv. 71; Strabo, p. 163).
This strange northern world, then, touched the outposts of
Hellenic civilisation as a land of marvels and fairy-tales, and it is
quite possible that when brought into this connection another of
the most beautiful of the legends of classical antiquity, the expedi-
tion of the Argonauts in quest of the golden fleece, acquires a
special significance. Strabo, c. 499, was of this opinion. He
mentions the wealth of Colchos in gold, and relates that the
barbarians caught the gold in the mountain streams by means of
perforated troughs and I'ough fleeces. This was the origin of the
fable of the golden fleeces.* For the rest, the story of the Argo-
nauts was not a native Greek tale, but belonged to the Minyse,
that is to say, in all probability was a tale of Phoiniko-Semitic
navigation {cf. Kiepert, Lelirhuch d. alien Geographie, p. 242, and
Peter, Zeittafeln^, v. p. 11), which was subsequently worked up in
the true Greek spirit.
We now proceed to the Italian tribes of the Apennine peninsula.
^yr The Latin name for gold is in Latin aurum, in Sabine (Paul. Diac,
p. 9. 3) ausum, which points to an Italian stem-form auso. This
form is properly compared with words such as Lat. aurora (*aus6sa),
"dawn," uro {*^ls6), "burn;" and, as is indicated by Lat. atir-ugo,
"jaundice," it originally meant "shining," "yellow," then "gold."
Here the one thing remarkable is that the Italians did not, like
other Indo-Europeans who have special words for gold {cf. Sans.
A^ra^^ya = Zend zaranya, and Goth. gulp = O.S. zlato), draw upon
the root ghel, " to be yellow," with which they were acquainted
(Lat. helvus). To the latter, besides, must be referred Phrygian
yA-ovpo's ( : G. x^^P°'^i "green, yellow"), "gold," and '^Xovv6<;
(O.S. zelenu, "yellow, green"), which occurs in Hesych. without
an iOvLKov.
No indication where the Italians may first have made acquaint-
ance with gold, whether on the side of Etruria, Spain (Basque
urrea, urregoria, "gold"), or Greece, is given unfortunately in
language or elsewhere. It is noteworthy that no gold could be
detected in the lake-dwellings in the plain of the Po. Still there
was a decree even in the Twelve Tables, according to which all
gold was to be excluded from burials : excipitur aurum, quo denies
vincii.
Clearer are the ways by which gold travelled from Italy to the
rest of Europe. All Celtic languages have borrowed their word
* -Kapa TovTois 5e Aeyerat Kol xP^'^'Of Karacpipeiv robs x^^/^''''pPovs, inroSex^crOai
S avrhv rovs ^apfiapovs (paruats KaTaTiTprifxeyais Kal /j.aWci)Ta79 Sopals: a<p' ou
Srj iJ.envde7(r6ai koI to xp^'^^P-'^'^^'^'' ^^pos. Why 0. Grnppe, JFochenschr. f.
Mass. Phil., 1884, No. 16, will see in these and similar stories myths "of the
conquest of the golden waves by the sun-god, after defeating the monsters of
the night," I do not comprehend.
LOAN-WORDS FOR GOLD. 1 77
for gold from Latin. Irish 6r, geti. dir, Cynir. mur, Cambr. our, eur,
etc., come from the Latin aurum. We here have a dehghtful instance
for the student of language, in which it is ])ossil)le by means of
cogent phonetic laws to establish in the most conclusive manner
possible tlie fact that of two words one is a loan-word from the
other. If the Italian form ausom were akin to the Celtic, it must
for instance in Irish have lost its medial spirant, as is made clear
by the case of Ir. smr, " sister," from *suur = Lat. soi'or from *svesor;
it could not possibly have developed an r, for such a phonetic
change is absoUitely foreign to Celtic*
Hence, an important piece of chronology can be established.
The change of s between two vowels into r was accomplished about
the time of the Samnite war, the way for it therefoi-e must have
been paved in popular speech at least fifty years before. But this
agrees most excellently with the time of the great Celtic move-
ments southwards and eastwards which introduced the black day
of Allia into the Roman calendar, when, according to the Koman
storj^ tlie insolent Gaul threw his sword into the scales against a
thousand pounds of Roman gold. After this time the Gauls are
pictured as fond of gold and I'ich in gold (cf. Biod. Sic, v. 27).
In the same way that Italian gold penetrated to the Celtic west,
it also travelled to the Illyrian tribes of the northern Balkan
peninsula. The sole remnant of these tribes, Albanian, presents us
M'ith dr, ap-i, which is certainly borrowed from the Lat. aurum ;
another word, <l>\jopi, cfiXjopt-ov, in the Gegic dialect ^Xiopi,
<f>XjopjvL, for coined gold, which, like the Mgr. </)Xwpi, cjiXovpL, comes
hova fiorinus, fiorinus, kc, is also forthcoming.
Whnt seems to be the oldest loan, however, from the Italian
aurum, inasmuch as it was effected at a time when the s between
the two vowels was still intact, perhaps occurs in the Baltic words,
Pruss. ausis and Lith. duksas. The latter form with the guttural
inserted before the spirant is readily ex])lained by the phonetic
tendencies of the language (cf Lith. tukstantis, O.P. tusimtons :
Goth. ])ti!<zmdi). As regards the path followed by this loan,
it is known that in very early times there existed a trade-route
between the Adriatic and the Baltic, by which the valuable pro-
duct of the north, amber, was conveyed to the Italian south.
Beads of amber are found even in the lake-dwellings of the Po (cf.
Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poehne, p. 29). Now, by this route the
north may have received, in exchange for the precious product of
its sea, many ])ieces of the precious and baser mct;ils from tlie
south. What stands in the way of this ingenious but very bold
conject\n-e of V. Helm's (p. 461) is the circumstance that, thanks
to Genthe's researches [Ucher den etrtiskischen Tnnsch/iandel nach
dem Norden), we know of a direct connection between the Etruscans
and the amber coast of the Baltic, whereas the Romans made their
first acquaintance with the amber through this well-known journey
* Fuither, there are still traces in Old Irish of the final m of the Lntin nunnn,
Cf., in Stokes, Irish Glosses, p. 162, the verse Is 6r iujlan, "he is pure gold."
U
1/8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
of the Roman knight who, under Nero, commercia ea et litora pera-
gravit {Phis. Hist. Nat., xxxvii. 3. 45).
So long, therefore, as it cannot be demonstrated that a name for
gold existed in Etruscan coiTesponding to the Italian auso-, the
relation assumed between the Lithu-Prussian word and the Latin
must remain merely conjecture ; as it would be equally possible
that the Baltic languages possessed a word meaning " shining,"
" yellow " (ef. Lith. auszra, " dawn "), corresponding to and etymo-
logically related with the Lat. auso-, and that they employed it
independently to designate gold (0. Pr. ausis, but why Lith. duksas
with k ?).
The Lat. aurum found its way, though at a later period, into Old
Scandinavian also. It was from the Romans that the Icelanders
first got coined gold and named it eyrir, gen. eyris, pi. aurar, gen.
aura, in opposition to the uncoined gold (gull) which they had long
been familiar with, and which was generally kept in the shape of
rings {haugr).*
Let us now for a moment leave our quarter of the globe and
betake ourselves to another centre from which gold was distributed,
Iran. The Iranian name for gold made its way into the languages
of nearly all the eastern members of the Finnic race, and that at a
time when the old suffixes could not have been lost, as they are in
the New Persian and Afghan dialects of to-day. It is in Mordv.
sirnd, Tscher. sortne, Wog. sorni, Ostiak sorni, Wotiak and Syriah
zarni. The Magyars also (c/. Hung, arany) brought it with them
to their new home. On the other hand, the West Finnic languages,
under the influence of Teutonic culture, all took the Teutonic word
for gold, Finnic kiilda, Esthon. kuld, Lapp, golle, &c. That we
here have not to do with casual coincidences is clearly proved by
the exactly analogous relation of the names for another metal, iron,
as we will show at gx'eater length hereafter.
Between the action of Roman influence on the one side and of
Iranian influence on the other lies the domain of two great peoples,
who are geographical neighbours, and according to the usual view
form a closely connected group in the Indo-Germanic family of
languages, the domain of the Lithu-Slavo-Teutonic peoples. We
have already come across the agreement of Tent, snilda and Slav.
medX, and we shall hereafter meet with many cases in which the
northern tx'ibes agree as regards points of metallurgy. The Slavs
and Teutons agree in their name for gold also : Goth, 'pulth
corresponds to the O.S. zlato, which runs through all the Slavonic
dialects. As the Lithu-Prussian name for gold is divergent, it
would seem that at the relatively very early time when an adjective
meaning " yellow," and formed from the root ghel, established itself
in the linguistic area of Teuto-Slavonic, in the sense of " gold," the
* Aa entirely different explanation of the O.N. eyrir is given by Ahlqvist,
Die Cultiorwortcr in den wcstjinn. Spr., p. 192 : he compares it with O.N. eyra,
pi. eyru, gen. eyrna (Goth, ansd, Lat. mcris), "ear," which is to be explained
hj the early custom of using the earlaps of certain animals as small change (?).
An analogy is offered by the Kuss. polHschka = " ha.U a-n ear."
GOLD AMONGST THE NORTHERN TRIBES. 1 79
Baltic branch must have dwelt apart by itself. The Lettlanders
may have possessed a word corresponding to the Lith. djcsas at
an early period, and subsequently have exchanged it for the Slav.
zelts.
For the rest, gold was known to the tribes of the north for a
long time only as coming from abroad, and at first probably as
coming from the east {cf. Baumstark, Amf. Erldiiterung des alia.
Teiles der Germania, p. 291), before they learnt to discover it in
their own mountains and streams. Herodotus (iv. 104) depicts
the Agathyrsi, who dwelt in Siebenbiirgen, which is rich in
river gold, and in the neighbourhood of Teutonic tribes, as
Xpv(TO(f)6poi. Nevertheless, in spite of Tacitus' idealising words,
Germ. 5 : Argentum et aurum propitiine an irati di negaverint,
duhito. Nee tamen affirmaverim nullam Germanice venam argentum
aurwnve gignere: quis enim scrutatus est? Possessione et tisu hand
perinde afficiuntur, «tc., the auri sacra fames invaded the north
also at a very early period, as many passages in ancient authors
show {cf. Baumstark, op. cit, p. 292). Never has the curse which
hangs over the golden treasures hidden in the depths of earth
found more majestic expression than in the GeiTuan Nibelungenlied.
For the sake of the glittering metal, the fair-haired son of Germany
leai'ns to sell his arm to his country's foe, and his belief in the
inexhaustible wealth of the south in gold was not the least factor
in the persistent impulse of the northern tribes to press on against
the ancient Roman empire, until at last they overthrew it.
To sum up, it has been shown that both amongst the Semitic
peoples and the Hindu-Persian branch of the Indo-Europeans, that
is almost throvighout Asia Minor, acquaintance with gold goes back
to proethnic times.
From Asia Minor gold travelled on the one hand through
Phenician agency to Greece, on the other from Iranian ground to
the Eastern Finns. Great influence on the further distribution of
gold through Europe must have been exercised by Italy. The
Italian word, the origin of which is not quite cleared up, found its
way to the Celts, Albanians, Lithuanians, and in later times to the
Scandinavians also. The Slavo-Teutons have a common name for
gold, which must have established itself in this linguistic area at a
very early date, perhaps owing to oriental influence. The Finns
of the Baltic obtained their term for gold from the ancient
Germans.
On the other hand, the members of the Turko-Tataric race
originally grouped round the western end of the Altai (" the
gold-abounding ") appear to have been acquainted with the
treasures of their auriferous mountain wliilc yet in their original
home, and stories of them even in Herodotus' time seem to have
reached the outposts of Greek culture on the Poutus.
CHAPTER V.
SILVER.
Among the various fluctuations of the order in which, as we
have ah'eady explained, the metals are enumerated in the monvi-
ments of the most ancient peoples, we must here call attention to
the struggle which took place at an early time between gold and
silver for the supremacy. It is in the oldest monuments, when the
metals and other articles of value are being enumerated, that silver
is placed much more commonly before gold than after it, and even
of the Assyrian monuments it may at least be asserted that in them
silver is mentioned as often before as after gold.
The preference, thus demonstrated, for silver to gold at a very
early period in the history of human culture undoubtedly finds its
explanation in the later and rarer appearance of that metal amongst
the oriental nations and amongst mankind generally, a phenomenon
which is clearly indicated by facts of archaeology {cf. Lubbock,
Prehistoric Times, pp. 3, 20, 22, 25), and is sufficiently explained by
the circumstance that silver occurs only in mountains and not in
the sands of rivers, and on the whole is not of such widespread
occurrence, and is harder to get than gold. Certainly the original
Semites {cf. F. Hommel, Die Namen der Sdugetiere, &c., p. 415) seem
to have had a word for silver (Assyr. sarpu = Arab, zarfu"' by the side
of Assyr. kaspu = Hebr. kesef) as well as for gold ; but in the Indo-
Germanic area there is no lack of clear indications of tlie relatively
late appearance of the former metal. The oldest collection of
ancient metals in ancient India {Vdjasaneyisatiihitd, xvii. 13)
mentions immediately after Mranya, " gold," dyas, " ore," or rather
"iron;" in the Rigveda the later word for silver, rajatd (clearly
like dargatd, "visible," from the root darf and yajatd, "venerable,"
from root yaj), appears only once, in the adjectival sense " white,"
used of a horse ; and if in another Vedic text our metal is described
under the general expression rajatdm hiranyam, " white gold," *
which is not worthy to be used as an offering {cf. Zimmer, Altind.
Lehen, p. 52, /.), this is but the same process as occurs in ancient
Egyptian, where hat, Copt, chat, " silver," really means "bright,
shining white," and has the symbol for gold as its determinative.
In Sumerian also the word ku-bahhar, " silver," which otherwise
* Another explanation of the Sans, rajatdm hlranyam is given by A. Kuhn,
Zeitschrift f. agyptische Sprache und AUertumskicnde, 1873, p. 21, /. He
regards it as silver-gold= Egypt, dsem.
SILVER IX ZEND, SANSKRIT, AND IRANIAN. l8l
stands quite by itself, really means " white " or "shining" metal
(F. Hommel, Die vorsemit. Culturen, p. 409).
Rajatd appears as a substantive in the meaning of " silver " for
the first time in Hindu literature in the Atharvaveda* ((/. Zimmer,
op. cit., p. 53).
The Iranian dialects which, agreeing as they do in the name for
gold, indicate their primeval acquaintance with that metal, show
complete divergence in the designation of silver. Erezata, which
corresponds to the Sans, rajatd, is confined to the language of the
Avesta. The Afghans have no special word for silver, but call it
.ynn zar, i.e., " white gold." N.P. sm, Kurd, ziw belong, according
to Spiegel (Tradit. Lit. d. Parsen, ii. p. 370), to G. acrrjiio<;, "un-
stamped," Mod. G. aarjixi, "silver." Another X. Pers. term ncegr-a
" argentum /iquatum," Jezd. dialect nnqrja (Z. d. D. M. G., xxxv
p. 403), Beluchee nwjhra, is Arabian [mikrah). The Ossetes, finally,
have obviously borrowed their word dvlist, avzeste, from the East
Finnic languages Wotiak azves, Syriah ezis, Hung, eziist (Perm, ozi/^,
Wotj. «3i('es, ikc, "lead"), a culture route which we shall often
have occasion to mention in our account of the metals.
If, then, careful examination of Sanskrit and Persian shows that
these peoples' acquaintance with silver cannot go back to any great
antiquity, it is self-evident that the agreement of Sans, rajatd, Zend
erezata, Armen. arcat'^ artsath with Lat. argentiim, on which has been
rested the assumption that silver was known to the Indo-Europeans
before their dispersion, must be, at any rate as regards meaning,
casual. But inasmuch as in countless languages, both Indo-
European and non-Indo-European, silver is indicated as " white,
shining," why may not the same adjective,! designating this colour,
have been employed in different districts of the Indo-Euopean
linguistic area to indicate the new metal? {cf. above, p. 120).
Nevertheless the coincidence between Zend and Sanskrit and
Armenian may be due to an actual connection. Of all the countries
of Asia Minor, Armenia, with the sea-board of the Pontus to the
north, is the richest in silver. According to Strabo (c. 530), Pom-
pey was able to exact from the defeated Tigranes no less than six
thousand talents of silver. In Marco Polo's time silver-mines were
worked, especially in the neighbourhood of Trebizond, with success
{cf. Flitter, Erdkwide, x. p. 272). North-west of Beiburt is a moun-
tain at the present day called Gumish-Dagh — " silver-mountain,"
and on it is a mining village Gumiskkhana, " silver-town," in which,
* The RdjaniglMntu, ed. R. Garbe, p. .35, mentions seventeen later names
for silver, of which those that are derived from the moon are the most interest-
ing for the history of culture : candraWiaka, " moon metal," candrabMti,
"of the appearance of the moon," candrahdsa, "shining white like the
moon."
t It appears, with modification of the stem, to have existed thus : — *rag
( = San.'i. raj-atd), *r^(=Zend erezata, Arm. arc-at<^), *r^( = Lat. arg-entum).
The suffix was -nto. As to the Celtic words, cf. below.
In later times also names for silver are frequently obtained from words for
"white." Cf., e.g., Bulg. aspra, Serv. aspra,jaspra, Alb. asper, &c. : So-irpos,
"white" (Miklosich, Turk. Elem., p. 8).
1 82 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
even in the year 1806, in spite of the rough methods of extraction,
fifty -thousand piastres a month were obtained (cf. A. Soetbeer,
Edel-metall Procluhtion Ergcinzungsheft Nr. 57 z. Petermanns
Mitteilungen, p. 37). Its name in ancient times was*Ao-t/3a {cf.
above, Kurd, ziw, &c., from Mod. G. aaijixi); whence the silver coins
with the legend 'Ao-t^eW (Tomaschek, Lthl. f. o. Phil, i. 126).
If, then, we assvime that in Armenia, which is rich in silver, a
pre-existing adjective first established itself in the meaning of
silver (Armen. artsath, before the sound-shifting *argat-), this term
might easily have travelled to Iran, which is poor in silver (cf.
W. Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, pp. 147 and 389,/.), and may have been
conveyed thence by the primeval trade-route between Iran and India
{cf. A. Weber, Allg. Alonatschrift, 1853, p. 671) along the river
Cabul to Hindustan, It may then have influenced the terms for
silver in both lands. However, as we have said, such an
assumption is unnecessary, especially as neither Northern India
nor even Carmania or Bactria was entirely destitute of silver in
antiquity (Bliimner, Term. u. Tech., iv. 31).
For the rest, Armenia is the starting-point of the knowledge of
silver in another direction at any rate, as is shown by the
permeation of the Armenian word into numerous Caucasian
dialects (Awaric aratz, Cari araz, Quasi-Qumuq arz, &c.; cf.
Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta^, p. 105).
In Southern Europe the G. apyvpo<s is isolated from the other
Indo-Germanic names for silver by its suffix -vpos,* and it gives no
indication of the quarter from which the Greeks first obtained
their knowledge of the white metal. But tradition here again in a
remarkable way leads to the neighbourhood, at least of Armenia, to
the coasts of Pontus Euxinus. Even Homer {II., ii. 857) mentions
the Pontic town 'AXv/3r] with the words : rrjXoOev ii 'AkvfSr]<;, oOev
apyvpov iarl yeviOXiq ; and although in Attica, which was rich
indeed in silver, but whose mines only attained to any importance
shortly before the Persian wars {cf. J. F. Reitemeier, Geschichte cles
Berghaues u. Hilttenwessens hei den alien Volkern, 1785, p. 67), the
discovery of silver was ascribed to the tribal hero Erichthonius,
yet according to another statement it was due to the distant
Scythians. Argentum, says Pliny, Hist. Nat., vii. 56. 197, invenit
Erichthonius Atheniensis, ut alii jEacus, and in Hygini Fab. (ed. M.
Schmidt), p. 149, it is said : Indus rex in Scythia argentwn primus
invenit, quod Erichtho?iius Athenas primum attulit.
The latter appearance of silver in ancient Greece is indicated
also by the fact that the stem apyvpo- is scarcely ever used in the
formation of names of persons and places, whereas the stem xpvao-
{cf. above, p. 174) is commonly so employed. It also deserves notice
that in Homer the stem apyvpo- appears in compounds only four
times, while on the other hand the stem ^vao- occurs thirteen
times. Under the influence of Phenician commerce, which first
brought with it a tremendous flood of this metal, in consequence of
* &py-vpos : apySs *T§-o). Cf. Sans, drju-na, Lat. argd-tus ("briglit-
■witted").
SILVER IN ITALIAN AND CELTIC. 1 83
the early working of the Spanish silver-mines, in Greece (as also
later in Italy) dpyvpiov (argentum) not ypvcro'i became the usual
word for money.
In Italy, acquaintance with silver spread at a relatively early
date, as is indicated by the agreement of Osc. aragetud = Lat.
argentum. But the pile-builders of the Po do not seem to have
been acquainted with it yet (cf. W. Helbig, o]). cit., p. 21).
No trustworthy clue as to whence Italy, so poor in silver, first
obtained the white metal can be discovered. If its inhabitants
first received it from Greek merchants and colonists in the shape
of coin, ornaments, vessels, &c. (cf. talentum, : raXavTov, phalerce :
<f)dXapa, crater a : Kparrip, &c.), supposing the apyvpo^ of the
Hellenic sailor sounded strange in the ears of the Italian farmer,
the foi'eign sounding word may easily have been fitted with a
suflfix from the native dialect, in which formations in -ento- (ungu-
entum, Jlii-entxim, cru-etitus, sil-entiis) were not unfrequent.
It is not easy to determine the relation of the Celtic names for
silver (0. Ir. argat, arget, Cym. aria^it, Bret, archant, Corn.
arhanz) to the Lat. argentum. To the Lat. argentum (*fg-nto)
a primitive and etymologically coianected Celtic *arg-ento {cf. 0. Ir.
ard = Lat. ardutis, *fdh-v6-s) might well correspond. As a matter
of fact, it is seen preserved in Old Celtic names of towns Argento-
ratum (Strassburg), Argento-maguus, Argento-varia (Arzenheim) ;
only, everything is opposed to argento having here meant " silver."
Diodonis Siculus (v. 27. 1.) utterly denies the occurrence of silver
in Gaul (Kara yovv -rqv VaXaTiav apyvpos p.kv to <jvv6Xov ov yiyvcrat) ;
Strabo, p. 191, knows of silver-mines only in the districts of the
Ruteni (in the Department of Aveyron) and the Gabeli west of the
Cevennes. For the rest, every trace of silver in ancient Gaul is
wanting. It is, therefore, in the highest degree probable that in
the ancient Celtic names of towns mentioned, argento- meant
nothing else than the Vedic rajatd, i.e., " white " {cf. Weissenburg,
Weissenfels, Weisslingen, &c.). Argento-ixiium according to this
was "Weissenburg" (Ir. rath, rdith, " Konigsburg "). The ancient
Celtic argento, " white," thus inferred, would then be applied by the
Celts to designate silver when they came across the Lat. argentinn.*
On the other hand, it is certain that the Roman word travelled
east to the Illyrian tribes, and appears in Albanian as ipyjivT-i
{ergjunt, argjdnt, argjan, «fcc., according to G. Meyer). Here
language confirms the course of the history of culture : for it was
the Romans who first worked the wealth of the Illyrian mountains,
particularly in silver (Kiepert, Lehrh. d. a. G., p. So-! ; cf. also
Albanian place-names such as Argentaria), but also in gold (Alb.
ar = Lat. aurum). A second Albanian name for silver aipfie-a and
(repfid-ja comes from the Turkish {sermaje, " gold, caj)ital "). But
the Serv. »rma, " silver," Old Serv. siruma, ^'■fiiuni," Turk, sirmd,
"gold thread," G. oa'p/Aa, "filum," seem related {cf Miklosich, Die
Fremdiv. in den Slav. Spr., p. 127).
* Windisch takes a different view in Fick, IForfrrb., ii.* 801, and assumes
that the Celtic names for silver were directly borrowed from Lat. argsntum.
1 84 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The Indo-Germanic Tannages of Northern Europe are united by
a common word for silver : Goth. siluh\ O.S. sirehro, Lith. sidabras,
Pruss. sirahlan, ace.
The Teutonic word found its way on the one hand into Lapponic
(silbba), on the other through the influence of West Gothic (cf. J.
Grimm, Gesck. d. deutschen Sprache, p. 11) into Basque, where it
appears as cilarra. But we can scarcely assume that no genuine
word for silver had previously existed in the native dialects of the
Iberian peninsula, the extraordinary wealth of which in silver {cf.
Strabo, 147,/.) was known to the most ancient peoples. A trace of
such a name may, perhaps, be contained in the Iberian Orospeda —
"silver-mountain" (Sti'abo, c. 161).
As regards the series of words belonging to the tribes of North
Europe, phonetics point to loans, through old ones which are
scarcely of Indo-Germanic origin. V. Hehn has put forward the
hypothesis that the North European name for silver is to be
taken in connection with the already mentioned Pontic town of
'AXv/Srj, which in that case would, in accordance with Greek
phonetic laws, have to be regarded as standing for 'S,aX.vfir],
" silver-town ; " and so we should be led for the third time to the
mountainous districts of the Black Sea.
It is obvious that this combination of V. Hehn's can scarcely be
called more than an ingenious conjecture, which, moreover, has great
phonetic difficulties to contend with ; only it seems to me still the
best that has been made on the obscure series of North European
words — whose very relation to each other is by no means clear.*
The Thracian a-KapK-q, which occurs in the Hesychian gloss
arKapK-rj' ©pa/cto-rt apyvpta, is quite beyond explanation.
The West Finns obtained their knowledge of silver, not indeed
from Armenia, but probably from the neighbouring Iran, if we
may believe with Sjoegren, that the Finnic names, Finn, hopea,
Esth. hobe, hobbe, Weps. hobed, Wot. opea, opea, Liv. dbdi, ilbdi,
Tschud. hobet, are to be traced to the Persian sepid, Kurd, sipi,
" white," &c. (cf. Bulletin de Vacademie de S'. Petersbourg, vi.
p. 172). Ahlqvist (op. cit., p. 67) cannot explain these words.
For the rest, the spread of silver from the Pontic district to the
barbarians of the north cannot have occurred by the time of
Herodotus, as he expressly {cf. iv. 71, apyvpta 8e ovhlv ovSe x^^'^V
XP^ovrat ; cf also i. 215) denies the knowledge and use of this metal
both to the Scyths proper and to the Eastern Massagette.
The oldest evidence for the presence of silver in Germany is that
of Ctesar (vi. 28), who mentions the use of drinking horns orna-
mented with silver. Tacitus {Germ. 5) knows that the nobles
possessed silver vessels, presents from abroad. Silver-mines in the
country itself, therefore, must have been still unknown at this
time. In the year 47 A.D., indeed, Curtius Rufus had a silver-
mine opened in cigro Mattiaco by his soldiers, but it appeal's to
* Extremely bold conjectures on them, and 'AXvfirj (XaXv^ri) are made by
H. Briinnliofer, Ucber die dltesie Herkunft des Silb:r;: %nid Eiscns in Euroim,
based ou jjlace-names in Asia Minor {Fernschau, Aarau, 1886, i. 54).
ELECTROS. 185
have soon collapsed owing to the poor returns (cf. Tdc. Annah, xi.
20). A regular silver-mine was worked for the first time in tlie
reign of Otto the Great, in the Harz. It is in harmony with this
that before 1100, German names of places consisting of words
compounded with " silver " do not occur {cf. Forstemann, Deutsche
Orfsnamen, p. 139). The same holds good of names of persons.
To conclude this review of the Indo-Germanic words for silver,
let us here mention an isolated name which, in the mouths of the
wandering gipsies, has been driven from India into Euroijc : Zig.
rub, rupp corresponds to Sans, rupya, Hind, rtqxt, as also the gipsy
name for gold, sonakai, sone.gai, «kc., comes from Sans, svarnd,
Hind, sond (cf. Pott, Zigeuner, ii. pp. 274 and 226).
If we glance once more at the names for silver which we have
found in use amongst Indo-Germanic and non-Indo-Germanic
peoples, we shall observe that so far as their etymology is clear,
they agree in calling silver the white or whitish metal. On the
other hand it is interesting to note, that the name for silver which
is widely spread among the Turko-Tataric tribes {cf Klaproth,
Sprachatlas, p. xxxvi.), that is komils, korniis, kiimiis, inasmuch as
it comes from the stem-syllable ko7/i, " to hide," connotes the
hidden, concealed metal, and therefore indicates that it was
relatively hard to work (cf H. Vambery, Die 2^f'i'r>i'i'tive Cultur,
p. 175). Not imfrequently we have found traces of the practice
of actually calling silver, which only became known relatively late,
after its predecessor gold, " white gold," and this is the more
intelligible because it was perhaps owing to careful examination of
gold itself that knowledge of silver was first attained.
It is known that in gold, both that which is obtained from mines
and that which is found in rivers, a varying percentage of silver
usually occurs. This mixture of gold and silver was called in
ancient Egyptian inscriptions dsem, and in the enumei'ation of the
metals and precious stones is placed immediately after gold. It
stands in great esteem. " Gold of the gods, dsem of the goddesses,"
is said of Isis. Now, according to recent investigations by C. R.
Lepsius (cf. Ahh. d. Berl. Ak. d. W., 1871, p. 129), the Hebr.
chash{e)mal corresponds satisfactorily, both as regards the object
indicated and the etymology of the word, to the Egyptian dse7n, as
also does, at least as regards the object indicated, the Greek 6
•^AcKTpos (" the beaming " : rjXeKTwp, " sun "), the Latin form of which,
electrwn, is defined by Pliny (xxxiii. 4. 80) : omni auro inest argenttcm
vario pondere, alibi nona, alibi octava parte. Uhicunqtie quinta
argenti portio est, electrwn vacatur. Indeed, in such passages as
Od. iv. 73,/.:—
■)(a.XKOV TC (TTepoTTTjv KaS ScoyLtara rj)(ije\'Ta
'^pvcrov T rjXeKTpov re Kol apyvpov t)8 iXi(f)ai'TO<: ]
or the Homeric Eiresione, v. 10 : —
CTT ■^XcKTpo) fieftavla
the translation of the word ■qXiKTpo<: — Lepsius distinguishes o
186 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
TjXeKTpo<;, " silver-gold " (cf. Antigone, 1083), -fj ^Xe/crpos, " amber
ornament," to i^keKxpov, "amber " — as " gold-silver "commends itself
to every unprejudiced reader in preference to the usual rendering
" amber." Articles of electrum, such as brooches and cups, have
been found at Hissarlik, in the second, and particularly in the third,
city (cf. Schliemann's Ilios, pp. 388 and 527); though in the Iliad
silver-gold is not yet mentioned.
Herodotus also probably means this electrum by his XevKos
Xpvaros, which Croesus sends, along with a7re<f>6os xpiJ<^os, " refined
gold " (Heb. pdz), i. 50, to Delphi, and in which the Lydian
Pactolus Avas particularly rich (cf. Kiepert, Lehrhuch der alien
Geogr., p. 114). Finally, I feel no hesitation in seeing it in the
Celtic-Irish word flndrxdne. I assume that it comes from
*find-or-uine and indicates the white (find) electrum, as opposed
to dergor, the red (derg) gold. It stands between creduma ("bronze ")
and gold, and is mentioned together with silver. Cups, shield-
buckles, and so on, are made from it (cf. Windisch, /. T., and
O'Curry, Manners and Ctistoms of the Ancient Irish, ed. by W. K.
Sullivan,* i. p. cccclxvi, /.).
We have shown, then, we hope, that in the history of culture
silver generally makes its appearance after gold, from which it
frequently derives its name " white gold."
The Indo-Europeans cannot have known it before their dis-
persion.
To discover the route by which the knowledge of this metal
travelled from people to people is more difficult. The difficulty is
that in the original Indo-European language an adjective meaning
"shining," "white," was in existence, which was uniformly em-
ployed in several linguistic areas to designate silver. Traces of
the original adjectival meaning are still in places clearly to be
distinguished.
The choice of this expression rather than another, it may be
assumed, was influenced by a certain dependence of one linguistic
area on another, e.g., of the Celtic on the Italian, and perhaps of
the Hindu Persian on the Armenian. The Greek word stands by
itself as regards the formation of its suffix ; the Teutonic-Baltic-
Slavonic branch diverges entirely from the other Indo-Germanic
languages in its names for silver.
It is remarkable that the Finns, who show such a want of
independence in their names for gold, appear to have possessed
genuine names for silver.
In the Turko-Tataric languages, also, silver enjoys a uniform
designation.
* Sullivan, on the other hand, thinks: " Findruini was probably bronze
coated with tin or some white alloy like that of tin and lead." He starts
from the obviously more recent ioxva Jinnhruithne, finnbruinni, and resolves
it into find, finn (white), and bruiuni (boiled), "that is a white tinned or
jilated surface."
CHAPTER VI.
COPPER.
If any conclusions whatever can be safely drawn from language
as to the history of culture, then the best founded of them is that
copper was known in proethnic periods to the whole of European
and Asiatic mankind. The frequent outcrop of this metal in a
pure state, as much as its red colour, which could not but attract
the eye, especially of primitive man (c/. above, p. 119), may have
drawn attention to it first of all.
In ancient Egypt, copper, which is usually mentioned as amongst
the tribute offered by the Asiatic peoples, and is called -^omt, counts
amongst the oldest of metals. Its sign, v\/ , appears to have
represented in its original form a crucible (Lepsius, o/?. cit., p. 91).
In Sumerian the word for copper, urud, is the only name of a
metal which is not written with compounded ideograms, a fact
which, according to F. Hommel, Die vorsemit. Culturen, p. 400, /.,
indicates the relatively high antiquity of this metal.
The original Semitic name for copper is in Hebr. n{e)choshet,
Arab, nuhds, Syr. nechosch, Chald. nechasch = Orig. Semit. nahdht
(Hommel).
But the Finns also, to turn to the country east and north of
the Indo-Germanic domain, must have known copper before they
left their original home on the Ural. Finnic vasH, Lapp, vesk,
vie&k (cf. Hung, vas, which, however, means " iron "), recurs in
Ugr. and Ostick. took, "money, metal," whereas copper is j^f^iinroh,
which according to Ahlqvist would be equivalent to "black
copper." In the Finns' idea copper is always the oldest metal.
The Sampo wrought by Ilmarine is copper, a copper mannikin
fells the giant oak for the Wainamoine, and the eternal smith
Ilmarine was born with a copper hammer. Perhaps it may be
inferred from the traces of ancient copper-mines in Siberia, the
so-called Tschud-Schiirf, that the most ancient Finns mined for
copper in primeval times. Yet the Woguls, when the Russians
came, no longer knew anything of mining, and Ahlqvist accord-
ingly conjectures {oj). cit., p. 63) that they forgot their old copper-
mining when trade brought them iron. Finally, the Turko-
Tataric tribes also possess a genuine and very old name for cojiper,
hakir, pakir, Alt. pakras (cf. Vdmbery, Primitive Cultur, p. 174).
1 88 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
If, therefore, all the nations which have surrounded the Tndo-
Germanic family of speech from the oldest times, were acquainted
with copper in the earliest periods of their history, it is a p7'iori
probable that the Indo-Europeans also, before their dispersion, can
hardly have failed to make the acquaintance of this metal. As a
matter of fact, the equation Lat. ces, Goth, aiz, Sans, d^as, Zend ayaiih,
points directly to this conclusion. As regards form, none of the
reasons for suspicion which we have discussed above (c/. p. 133,/.)
can be raised against it. The very difficulty of finding an
etymology for this series of words {cf. Pictet, Origines, i.^ p. 190)
points to its great antiquity.* On the other hand, its original
meaning is a point which requires closer examination. The
Italian aes {cf. Umbr. ahesnes = Lat. ahenus) stands for both the
raw copper as taken from the mine and for the copper artificially
combined with tin, which is bronze. The Teutonic words Goth.
aiz { = xo.Xk6s), Norse eir, A.S. dr (Eng. ore), O.H.G. and M.H.G. er,
have the same sense. The English ore has extended its meaning
the most, and may be used of the ore of every metal, like the
German erz, O.H.G. a7mz (see below). The native metal is meant
in passages sixch as Otfried, i. i. 69, zi nuzze grehit man ouh thar er
inti knphar, and even in the fifteenth to sixteenth century the
Lat. ces is glossed not only as erze or eer, er, but also as copper.
Even in the year 1561 the Swiss Josua Maaler used erin and
Tcilpferin geschirr, &c., apparently as equivalent. Whereas, then,
for Europe we must indubitably start, as regards ws, aiz, from
the meaning " copper, ore," one may be in doubt regarding the
Hindu-Persian ayas, ayanh, whether the proper meaning of these
words in our oldest records is "copper, bi'onze," or as, e.g., Justi
and Bohtlingh-Roth assume, "iron."
If, to begin with, we look at the archaeological facts with regard
to ancient India, copper, which frequently occurs in this land to
the present day, is found in ancient burial-places in abundance.
Hare, but vmmistakably traceable, is bronze, which, however, does
not exhibit the usual western admixture of copper and tin as 9 : 1,
and therefore points to some other source than the west. Again,
the Greek authors Nearchos and Cleitarchos (Strabo, p. 718) speak
of Hindu ;!^aXKds, which, therefore, is to be referred rather to pure
copper than to bronze, t In distribution and antiquity copper is
rivalled by iron, in the ore of which, still worked by the natives
in the most primitive fashion, India is uncommonly rich {cf. R.
Andree, Die Metalle bei den A^ahirvoikern, p. 58, _^.). No datum
for the priority of copper in India can be obtained in this way.
We are therefore thrown entirely on tradition and language.
* It is from a root ai and the suffix -es/os that we must start : Sans, dy-as.
In its weakest form, -s, this suffix is seen in the European Goth, aiz {*ai-s-o)
and the Latin *ce-s-is, a'ris (hy the side of which, anus from *ajesno).
Possibly a deep-scale form %-s : ai-s survives, on which see ch. vii. In the
isolated language of the Jeniseians copper is called ci, is, i (Tomaschek, Z. f.
or. Phil., i. 124).
+ Otherwise, Pliny, xxxiv. 163: ^^ India ncquc ms neque plumbum hahet."
But Ps. Arist. , mirab. ausc, 49, p. 834a, also speaks of Hindu bronze.
AY AS IX THE VEDAS. 1 89
As a matter of fixct both contain manifest indications that in
the age of the Vedas ciyas meant originally, as well as metal in
general, not "iron'' but "copper." The certain nnmes for "iron"
in the Vedic writings, gydmdm dyas (Av., xi. 3, 7, by the side of
Ibhitam, "copper"), or merely gydmd, literally "dark-blue ore"
{cf. the later kdluyasd, "dark-blue," and l-rshudyas, "dark," dyas),
bear the stamp of novelty upon them. They are derivations from
the original dyas-ces, which is appended to them, as in Egyptian
the determinative of copper, which was first known, is attached to
the word for iron (cf. Lepsius, op. cit, p. 108). In the Rigveda,
too, the flashes of lightning, which are compared to wild boars,
are called dyodamshtra, "with brazen teeth," while the sun with
its evening beams is termed dyahsthuna, " resting on brazen
pillars," both of which can only relate to the colour of copper, not
of iron. In addition to these arguments of Zimmer's, the oldest
collection of names of metal in the Vedas, which we have already
mentioned, in the Vdjasancyi-samhitd, xviii. 13, Jtiranyam, dyas,
gydmdm,, lohdm, sisam, trdpu, seems to me to favour the trans-
lation of dyas as copper. Certainly Mahidhara's explanation
translates dyas by lohdm, which in the older commentators means
"copper," and in later times "iron" — gydnidm by Uhm-aloham,
"copper," and lohdm hy Mldyasd, "iron." But apart from the
fact that then iron would be mentioned twice, the explanation is
absolutely contradicted by tlie etymology both of gydmd, literally
"dark-blue," and of lohd, literally "red" (Lat. ramlus; Fick,
Woi'terb., i.3 201). All difficulties disappear the moment we
translate dyas as "brass," which in the eight metals of the later
Hindus (ashfadhdtu) is called pittald or pitaJhoha. Thus we get
gold (and silver), brass, iron, copper, lead, tin.*
Finally, however, by the ayahh of the Avesta we have to under-
stand, especially when it is used for making weapons and utensils,
not iron but metal, bronze. W. Geiger rightl}^ points out {Ostiran.
* la his Biographies of Words, Appendix v., "The Third Metal," Max
Miiller subjects the question of the meaning of the Vedic dyas to a thorough
discussion. He comes to the conclusion : "All tlieref'ore we are justified in
stating positively is, that at the time of the Rigveda, besides silver and gold,
a third metal was known and named dyas; but whether that name referred
to either copper or iron, or to metal in general, there is no evidence to show."
Of my ex[ilanation of the Vdjasancyi-samhUd passage given above he says it
is "purely conjectural." This does not seem to nie finite correct. Rather
my explanation rests on the obviously original meaning of the Sans, cydmd,
"black," "dark" ( = iron ; cf. /xe\as a-lSTipos, Hesiod), and Sans, luhd, "red"
( = copper, Lat. raiidus). If, however, in opposition to the commentator,
whom Max Miiller himself calls in (juestioii as regards his exfilanation of I6hd
= "iron," we take ajdmd as "iron," Wid as "copper," what meaning is
there left for dya^^ hut " bronze ?" This meaning, however, suits the passage
quoted liy Max Miiller in Catap. Br., v. 4. 1. 2: " this is not dyas ('bronze ')
nor gdd, for it is Widyajiam" ("copper"); and, indeed, all the more so, as in
another passage of the same work (vi. 1. 3. 5), as Max Miiller himself points
out, dyas ("bronze") is pictured as resembling gold. In this last passage
("out of grains of sand made he gravel, wherelore in the end sand became
gravel. Out of gravel, ore {di^man), wherefore in the end gravel became ore.
Out of ore (made he) bronze [dyas], wherefore out of ore smelt they bronze;
190 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Cultur, p. 148) that the adjectives attached to ayahh in the Avesta
{raocahina, ipvOpos, zairi, zaranya, aTOo}\j/) are suited only to the
meaning bronze not iron.
AVe hope then that we have shown that as regards the equation
dyas-ces, the European languages have retained the original mean-
ing rather than the Asiatic, in which the old word for copper,
metal, obviously under the influence of an earlier acquaintance
with the working of iron, gradually assumed the meaning of iron,
a common process in the history of languages (c/. Finn. vasM,
"copper": Hung, vas, "iron," A.S. dr : Eng. ore, Sans. loM,
" copper " then " iron," &c.). Yet this by no means brings us to
the end of our considerations.
In the European languages ces-aiz means copper as well as metal,
and thus we are brought to what is perhaps for the historian of
primitive culture the most important question in this piece of
research : whether the equation alluded to designated in the
primeval period native copper or the copper alloyed with tin which
is bronze ; whether the bronze race of Indo-Europeans avouched
by Pictet, and since almost naturalised in science, is a fable or a
reality ; whether we have to picture the original Indo-Europeans
to ourselves spreading as warriors armed with spears, swords,
shields, helmets of bronze, bearing the gifts of a higher civilisation,
and bringing the non- Aryan peoples with their stone weapons easily
to the ground.
I believe that there is nothing in favour of and everything
against the' assumption that the Indo-European were acquainted
with bronze.
To begin with, as we saw, the meaning " black copper " has been
faithfully preserved in the equation dyas-ces by the side of
" bronze ; " and it is natural and obvious that the former must
have been the original meaning. To this must be added that the
names for the tin which is indispensable for the production of
bronze are altogether divergent in the Indo-Germanic languages,
and — a point w^hich we shall have to deal with more closely in ch.
ix. — seem to indicate that this metal only reached the individual
peoples at a later time and in the way of traffic and commerce. Now,
it would certainly be possible to maintain that the Indo-Europeans
were not acquainted with the art of manufacturing bronze indeed,
but were acquainted with bronze itself in consequence of the
importation of bronze objects from some unknown civilised people
or other. Such an assumption certainly cannot be directly refuted ;
neither, however, can it be made probable on any grounds.
On the other hand, that pure, native copper was really known
to the Indo-Europeans appears from another equation : Sans lohd,
out of bronze gold, wherefore well-smelted {bahudhindtdm) bronze is almost
like gold ") Herm. Brunnliofer, Zwr Bronzetechnih aus dem Veda [Fernschau,
Aarau, 3 886, p. 69), sees a voucher of the most convincing description for
dyas in the meaning of " bronze."
For the rest, B. R. in the small edition of their dictionary now always give
" bronze " the first place for dijas.
A COPPER AGE. I9I
orig. "copper" (B. R.), Beluchee rod, Pehl. rod, Mod. Pers. roi
"cF.s," Armen. avoir, "brass" (Hiibschmaiin, Z. d. D. M. G., xxxiv.
133), O.S. ruda '^ vietallum," Lat. raudus, O.N. raudi, which goes
back to a fundamental Indo-Germanic form *raudho ( : i-pv6-p6-s),
and properly means " red." *
Thus, I conceive, we have good reason for ascribing to dyas-ws
the Indo-Germanic meaning of " copper," and consequently for
ci'editing the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion with an ac-
quaintance with tliis metal.
How far copper may have been worked in the primitive period
for metallurgic purposes, for manufacturing ornaments, implements,
and especially weapons, is a question we shall return to in ch. x.
(Indo-Germanic Names of Weapons).
From the standpoint of anthropology, however, be it stated here
{cf. further, details in Part iv. ch. xi.) that copper plays an
essentially different part in prehistoric culture now from what was
assigned to it but a short time ago. Whereas, that is to say,
it has been hitherto assumed that in Euro])e copper periods in
the strict sense existed only in certain localities, e.g., Hinigary,
Ireland {cf. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, i. 55), and Spain (Virchow,
Korrespondenzhlatt d. D. Ges.f. Anthropologie, xii. 73), finds of copper
in all parts of Europe have I'ecently increased to such an extra-
ordinary extent that the assumption of a special Copper Age, which
was in point of time prior to the Bi'onze Age and immediately
subsequent to, or rather contemporary with, the later Stone Age,
seems to ai'chaeologists now inevitable. On these researches cf. M.
Much's work, already mentioned. Die Kupferzeit in Europa und
ihr Verhdltniss zur Kultur der Indogermanen, Wien, 1886. Copper
was worked for the first time in this age, and not by smithying but
by smelting and casting in moulds. Smithying in the proper
sense, according to Much, did not make its appearance until the
discovery of iron and the invention of bronze. Much sees (p. 175)
in the absence of an Indo-Germanic terminology for the smith's
craft, which we called attention to in the first edition of this book,
a proof of his view that this Copper Age was identical with the
primitive Indo-Germanic period ; E. H. Meyer, therefore, should not
have appealed {Indog. Mythen, ii. 682, note) to that work in sup-
port of his assertion of the extreme antiquity of smithying amongst
the Indo-Europeans.
We shall return, as we have said, to this question ; and now once
more betake ourselves to the linguistic side of the equation
dyas-(jes.
We have seen, that on the whole only four branches of the
Indo-Germanic family have preserved the old word for copper,
* Tlie similarity in sound of Indo-Germanic *rarudlio, *rudho, and Siimerian-
Accadian name for copper, uriulu, is remarkable. But wliat in especial appears
to agree with the Suiuerian urtidu is the Basque urraida, "copper;" antl con-
sequently I will not omit to note that F. Hommel {Die sumcro-akkadische
Sprnche und Hire VerwandtschafLivcrhdltnissc) does in fact maintain a
liaguistic connection between the Bosijues and the Sumeriaus (p. 61).
192 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
dyas-ces. The reasons why the others lost it can only be con-
jectured. It is possible that in the gradual spread of the Indo-
Europeans their way did not lead them through copper districts,
and so both the thing and the word were lost from memory. It is
possible also, and perhaps more probable, that the, I might almost
say, delicate constitution of dyas with its two spirants was parti-
cularly exposed to destruction in the rough business of sound-
shiftings and phonetic decay. What would become of the oblique
cases of the old dyas in Greek for example, which has lost bothy
and si It is noteworthy, however, and also indicative of the high
antiquity of the equation, that those branches of the Indo-Germanic
family of speech which have retaiiied the old word, have also
adhered throughout to the neuter gender for the names of the
metals (cf. ch. xi.), which has only been departed from by those lan-
guages that have displaced dyas by more recent expressions. The
reason of this obviously is that in naming the metals the word dyas,
" copper," was originally started from, and the expressions used were:
yellow dyas ( = gold), whitish dyas ( = silver), bluish dyas ( = iron).
If, therefore, we have decided on good grounds in favour of the
view that the manufacture and use of bronze was not known to the
Indo-Europeans before their dispersion, the question at once arises
for the historian of primitive culture, whether it is not possible by
means of Comparative Philology to ascertain the starting-point
from which, and the route by which the knowledge of bronze
spread amongst the Indo-Germanic tribes.
Unfortunately in this question language is an imperfect guide.
There is no Phenician, Etruscan, or other word for bronze which
has taken its way to the north or west of Europe, and which there-
fore might serve as our guiding star. When the Indo-Europeans
became acquainted wath the new metal, whether with its manufac-
ture or with it as a manufactured product, they called it, like the
Egyptians {xpint) and Semites (Hebr. n{e)chosket), by the same name
as they already gave to copper (cf. further, ch. viii.).
The only exception, a very remarkable one, is afforded by
Sumero-Accadian. Here, in addition to the uriulu already men-
tioned, there exists a special term for bronze, zahar. Further, in a
bilingual Magian hymn to the fire-god (Gibil) there is express
mention of the preparation of bronze, ie., of the mixing of copper
and tin. Since this is the absolutely oldest known passage treat-
ing of the manufacture of bronze, I will give it here (from F.
Lenormant, Les noms cle Vairain et du cuivre, Transactions of the
Society of Biblical Archaeology, vi. p. 346; cf. F. Hommel, Die vor-
semitischen Culturen, pp. 277, 409). It runs in Accadian : —
Urudu anna x^X*^* ^'^ '"'"'^
Le cuivre I'etain melangcur + leur tu cs;
in Assyrian : —
Sa eri u anaki muballilsunu atta
Du cuivre et de I'etain leur melavger [c'est) toi.
This suggests the conjecture that we here find ourselves really
BRONZE. 193
very iicai" the starting-point of the bronze industry. The necessary
tin may have been obtained in the way of traffic from the mines of
the Paropamisos, where, according to Strabo (p. 724), tin was
obtained, as is confirmed by modern research (see Baer Archiv f.
Anthrop., vs.. 265). Again, the Sumerian term for bronze is genuine,
and means ( = namdru) " shining a fiery red " (P. Jensen, Z. f.
Assyriologie, i. 255). Hence, at a very early time, zabar spread to
the Semitic languages (Assyr. si2)arru, Arab. zifr).
But even in Egypt the manufacture of bronze can scarcely have
been native. Not only, as we have already remarked, are copper
and bronze on ancient Egyptian monuments bi'ought especially V^y
Asiatic peoples, by the Assyrians (the Rotenmi) in particular, but it
is in the highest degree remarkable that as yet no special name for
tin has been discovered in ancient Egypt ((•/*. Lepsius, op. cit., p. 114).
Now, we must tvirn our attention to the luxuriant terminology
which grew up by the side of and subsequent to dyas in the Indo-
Germauic languages for bronze and copper, a pair of metals which
as we have seen are scarcely separable. If, to begin with, we look
to see in what way the Asiatic Indo-Europeans have replaced dyas
after its ti'ansference to another sphere of meaning, we find that
the Sanskrit names for copper and bronze {cf. Pott, Etym. Forsch.,
ii. p. 414, and Narahari's Rdjanighantu., ed. Garbe, p. 55, /.) have no
connection with words in the other languages. The most common
of the Sanskrit names for copper is tdmra, tdmraJca, " the dark
metal ;" the expression vileccJicimukha, "of the colour of barbarians'
faces," is also interesting.
On the other hand, the Iranian dialects almost uniformly indicate
loans from abroad, which sometimes partially extend over very
wide linguistic areas.
The East Finnic, Wotj. irgon, Soswa-Wogul drgin, Tscher.
vorgene, penetrated from the north into Ossetic {arJchoy, arhhiiy ;
cf. above, p. 181, as to the Ossetic word for silver). From the
north also comes N. Pers. birinj, Kurd hirinj, pirinjol-, which prob-
ably belong to the Armen. plindz = ^^aXKos. This itself appears to
be connected with Georgian spilendsi, " copper;" Asia Polyglotta^, p.
117 {cf. Armen, oski, "gold" : Georg. okro).* Perhaps it is to
Modern Slav influence only that are due : Kurd mys, Mazender viis,
viers, N. Pers. 7)iys, mis (cf. Z. d. M. G., xxv. p. 391), Buchar miss,
Kirgh moes ; cf. O.S. viedi, Pol. mjedz, Upper Serb, mjedz, (fee.
The Afghan hagir, Awaric (in the Caucasus) bach, Alban. bakiir,
N. G. fXTraKiipL, Serb, bakar, Bulg. bakiir, are of Turkish origin,
* F. Justi {Diclionnairc Kurdc-Fran<;ai-i, p. 46) compares the Kurd words.
P. de Lagarde {Armen. Stud., p. 129) compares also the Armen. plindz to Zend
bcrcjya. The meaning, liowcver, of hcrcjya, which only occurs once in the
Avesta (aonyat haca par6hcrcjydt, Vd., 8. 254), is wliolly uncertain. .Tusti
translates: "Away with tin, which is amalgamated with copper." Spiegel
similarly, Geldner [K. Z., xxv. p. 578): " From the tire apparatus of a white-
smith." Geiger [Ostiran. CiiUiir, p. 149) finally takes aonijn parOhcrcjya as a
peculiar kind of tin as contrasted \vith aonya takhairya. Pott {Zeitschriftf. d.
Kundc des M., iv. p. 264) actually compares the European words for bronze
(bronce, &c.) with the Kurd words {birinj, &c. ),
N
194 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The Arab, zifr (cf. above, p. 193) travelled into Kurdic (sipir, sifr;
J. of the Arnerican Or. Soc, x. p. 1.51) from the Semitic south-west.
From the relations of Iran, which are late in time and of little
interest, let us turn to Europe.
The oldest name for bronze and copper on the Balkan Peninsula
is that current in Homer's time, ;^aA,Kos. With regard to this word,
we may assert to begin with, that as compared with atSrjpo's, "iron,"
it is obviously a much older element of the Greek language ; for,
whereas, even in Homeric times there exists a considerable number
of living derivatives from the stem ^a\KO-, such as ;)(aAK:£os, ^^aXKcio?,
^aX/cez;?, -^aXKevw, ^aX/cewv, ^aA./c?yto9, ^aXK-qpr)<;, on the other side,
against this luxuriant growth, crtSv^pos, criSTjpco? stands bai'e and
isolated, and it is only at a later date that this stem also begins to
put forth buds.
As regards the formation of names of persons, the relation of
XaX.Ko- : (TL^-qpo- may be compared with that of -^^pvcro- : apyvpo-, that
is to say ai^rjpo-, " iron," is practically never used in giving names.
In the north of Europe, sti-ange to say, it is precisely the opposite
state of things that prevails. Teutonic proper names are indeed
formed with isen, " iron " (and with gold), but not with er, " copper,"
(or silher). In Slavonic proper names also the only metals used
are zlato, "gold," sirebro, "silver" (not commonly used for this
purpose by the other nations), and gvozdije, "iron," copper not
occurring (cf. G. Krek, Einleitung in die slav. Litteraturgeschichte.
p. 15).
Finally, amongst the Celts I am acquainted only with names
formed with haiarn, "iron," such as Haiarn, Hoiarn, Hoiarnscoet,
Cathoiarn, Hcelhoiarn, &c. (Zeuss, G. C, p. 106).
To these proofs of the priority * of ;)(aAKd? to crt8?7po5 in Greece is
to be added the circumstance that the most ancient name for the
smith {)(aX.K€v<s) and the smithy (xaX/ccoji/, ^^aXKiytos SoAos) is derived
from copper, or rather bronze, and not from iron ; and, finally, the
fact that we can trace in the Homeric poems themselves the
gradual spread of crtSr/pos. According to Beloch's calculations in
the Rivista di filologia, ii. (1873), 49 ff., ^aAKo? is mentioned in
the Iliad 279 x , o-iS-qpo? only 23 x , the majority of which occur in
the late lay of Patroclus' funeral games. The ratio is different in
the more recent Odyssey, in which ■^okKO's is mentioned 80 x , iron
29 X . It also deserves to be noticed that in the epic iron is much
more frequently employed in the production of implements than of
weapons (Helbig, Homerisches Epos", p. 330, _/".).
Thus, language confirms for Greece itself Hesiod's ancient
tradition (cf. Lucret. v. 1282), according to which the men of the
third age : —
-)(aXK^ 8' etpya^ovTO" ^e'Aas 8' ovk 'idKe crtSr^pos.
The most ancient meaning of ;;^aXKos, " copper," can still be
plainly discerned in passages such as Od., i. 182, in which the
* Cf. the exhaustive discussion of this subject in Bliimner, Tcrminologie u.
I'echnologie, iv. 38, ff.
XAAK02. 195
Taphian, kiugMentes, sails to (the Cyprian) Temese to barter ;^aXKos
for (Ti87]po<;. Again, when ^aXKos is mentioned along with gold and
other possessions in the treasure chambers of the king the native
copper is obviously meant, as also when it is used as a medium of
exchange (//., vii. 472). Some scholars, such as Gladstone {Ilovipr
and his Age), Buchholz, and others, decline to proceed beyond this
meaning, and assign the Homeric Age to a pure copper period.
The latter {Die homer. Realien, 1. 2. p. 323) appeals to the epitliet
ipvOpo? which is once attached to x°^^'<o'i {H-, ix. 365). It is clear
though, from what has been said, that in this place ;i(aX/<os means
co])per, while the other and more usual epithets of ^aA/cds, aWoij/,
"glittering,"^a€ivos, "glancing," vu)poij/, "dazzling,"point much more
to bronze than to copper. With this it is in accordance that the most
ancient finds on Greek soil — Mycense, Orchomenos, Tiryns — exhibit
exclusively bronze and no iron, which on the one hand makes
" bronze " the probable main meaning of ^o^'fos in Homeric times,
and on the other speaks against the early use of iron in Greece.
It is, therefore, a statement wholly without foundation, when
Schtimann (Greek Antiquities, i.^ 85) states that •)(akK6<;, used of
weapons of offence, always means " iron."
For the rest, the ancients, if we are to believe certain somewhat
late traditions, understood the art of hardening copper something
like iron.* According to Pausanias, ii. 3. 3., in Corinth the KoptV^tos
)(aXKo<i was plunged red hot (8ta7rDpo9 koX Oep/xos) into the beautiful
stream Tleipyjvr] with this object. Homer, though, makes no
mention of this art. The passage in Od., ix. 391,' where a smith
puts an arrow in cold water, refers to ii'on.
Nothing quite certain can be made out about the oi'igin of the
word ^aA/cos. Its connection with Sans, hrihc, hltku (Curtius,
Grundz.^, p. 197), seems to me altogether improbable. Not only
is the change of meaning wholly without parallel, as far as my
knowledge goes, but the meaning of the Sanskrit word which only
occurs once, when it is accompanied by jatuJia, " lac," and is
translated by trdjiu, " tin," stands so very much by itself that it is
impossible to utilise it ; and Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 56, note 3, should
not have used this etymology in support of the erroneous view, as
I believe it, that xo-Akos meant " bronze " from the beginning.
There is more probability in identifying, as does not only Curtius,
but also other distinguished students of language such as A. Fick
( Verffl. Worterh., i? p. 578) and J. Schmidt {Zur Geschichte des
indog Voc, ii. pp. 67 and 208), the Greek word, thi'ough a stem-
form xaA^o-, with the Lithu-Slavonic names of iron, Lith. ge!ezls,
* Cf. Proclus on the words of Hesiod quoted : AtjAoj Sti twv a-wfxaTwv t)/!/
^<i>ixr\v fjCTKOvv 01 ev Tovrtfi rcS yfvei rwv 5' &\\ajv a/neXovvrfs, 7r«f)2 ri^f raiv
oirkwv KaTaffKevrjv Stirpt^ov koI T(f x^^'^V T^pos rovTO ixpwvTo, iis rw <nSTip(i)
■Kphs yeoipyiav, Sid rivos $a<prisrby x"^''^"' ""■'■^PPOTrotoCi'Tes, ofra (pvffft fxaXaKov'
fK\nrovffris Se Trjs ^a<pr}s (ttI t^u tov criSrtpov Kal iv toTs 7roA.e^iois xpVC"' ^KOtTv.
Cf. Kossignol, Les Mitaux dans Vantiquite, " Sar la Irempc que Ics ancicn.i
domiercnt au cuivre," ])p. 237-42, and Schliemann's Hios, \^\^. ."IS", 814. To
hardeu copper like steel is thought by modern chemists absolutely inconceiv-
able (Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 51).
196 TREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Pruss. geho, O.Z. zcleso. If this is correct, then the languages
which have all lost the ancient d^as, would have preserved another
ancient name for copper, for the original meaning of the equation ■
would be the same as in Greek ; cf. above, p. 236, note.
Undoubtedly it was from the stores of Asia that copper was
mainly brought or fetched to Greece, which is poor in the metal.
Tliere was no hesitation even in Homer's time to undertake the
dangei'ous voyage to Temese, abounding in copper (TroXv^a'^'^os), in
the metalliferous island of Cypros, which was covered with Semitic
colonies (Temese = Sem. t-7n-s, " smelting-house ; " Kiepert, oj). cit.,
p. 134). However, besides the mines in this island, the copper-
mines of the Caucasian district (Ezekiel xxvii. 13*), Sinai, Lebanon,
the Troad (Strabo, c. 606), &c., were open to the Phenicians. On
the whole, therefore, it seems to me most probable that ;j(aXKos
was an ancient name for copper, which the Greeks brought
with them to their new home. Here made acquainted, through
Phenician commerce, first with bronze articles, and then with the
mode of preparing bronze, they transferred the ancient word for
copper to the new mixture of metals : xc-Xk6<; like Lat. ces now
meant both "copper" and "bronze." Closely connected with
the name of the metal apparently is the town, mentioned by
Homer, of Chalcis in Eubcea, a name which according to Pliny
(Hist. Nat, iv. 12. 21) once designated the whole island. Indeed,
according to later tradition, Chalcis must have been a centre
of mining and metallurfjic industry {cf. Buchholz, Die homerischen
Realien, i. 2, p. 322). In spite of this, however, Kiepert {Lehr-
huch der alien Geographie, p. 255) is of opinion that the town
name Chalcis, " inasmuch as the plain and the chalk cliffs in
the neighbourhood contain no metal," is rather to be derived
from a leading article of export from Eubcea, the piirple fish
KoXxq, X'^XVi than from ^^aXKos, " copper."
Before leaving the Greek x^Xkos, which has perpetuated itself in
the N.G. )(aXK6<s, ;^aAKwyu,a, Cyp. ^(drkonian (G. Meyer, Griech.
Grammatik, p. 154), and thence in the Gipsy charkom {cf. Pott,
Zigeuner, ii. p. 168), we must mention a very remarkable compound
of ;)(aXK09, the Old Greek opetT^aXKOs.
This variety of metal is mentioned for the first time in Greek
literature in the Homeric hymn to Venus (vi. 9), where artificial
flow^ers of opet'xaXKos and precious gold are spoken of. A second
passage occurs in the Shield of Ilercides, which goes by the name
of Hesiod (v. 122) :—
Kvrjfxioas opef^dXKeio cftaavov,
}i(fiai(TTOv KXvTa oQypa, Trepl Kvrjfxrjcnv eOrjKev.
What did the ancient poets conceive under this word, which
* " Javau, Tubal (Tibarenes on tbe Pontus), and Mesliecli (Moschi, ib.), they
were thy traffickers : they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass
in thy market." Javan, according to Gesenius {Hebr. Handworterbuch^,
p. 3.^2*), means a town in Arabia ; where, according to Lenormant {Transactions
of the Society of Biblical Arch., vi. p. 347, /. ), Mdkan also, the source from
which the Accado- Assyrian demand for copper was supplied, was situate.
0PEIXAAK02. 197
etymologically means nothing but mountain copper 1 Whereas the
verses of Hesiod, which are obviously a reminiscence of Homer
{II., xix. 613) :—
T€v^€. 8e ol Kvr]iJuSa<; iavov KacrarLrepoio,
suggest that 6p€t)(a.XKo<; - Ka(TaiTipo<i ; on the other hand, in the
Homeric hymn a metal not far removed from gold seems to be
meant. This, again, is decidedly the sense of opetxaAKos in the
third oldest passage in Greek literature in which it is mentioned,
in the Critias of Plato, who mentions it several times in the
description of his fabulous state of Atlantis. The metal, which
now is only known by name, but then was something more than a
mere name (to vvv dvofxa^ofjievov fiovov, rore Se ttAcov ovoyaaros),
occurs in the island in various places. It is the most highly prized
of the metals next to gold (113). The wall of the Acropolis is
covered with it (116). In the interior of the temple the ceiling is
of ivory with decorations of gold and opeti^aXKos ; walls, pillars, and
floor were also covered with it (116). The use here made of
opetXoAKos reminds us in a striking way of the employment of
electrum in the palace of Menelaus (c/. above, p. 185), and this
suggests the supposition that if the ancients really did, at any rate
originally, associate a single idea with the word, which seems prob-
able, they had their eye, in the oldest periods of civilisation, on
the gold-silver, so much employed, to which they may have given
the name " copper ( = ' metal ') of the moinitain," in the same
way as the Egyptians called gold, not relieved of its percentage of
silver, ?m6 en set, " mountain gold " Indeed, opetxaXKos is once
interpreted in Suidas as etSos rjXeKrpov, which, however, must not
be made too much of Anyhow, this explanation seems to me less
forced than that given by Rossignol in his work Les Metaux dans
Vantiquite, p. 220.* The more electrum fell out of use in Greece,
the more indistinct must the meaning of 6pet;(aXK09 have become.
In later Greece it was employed of brass (;(aAKos Xei;/<ds),t which in
its appearance is not unlike gold-silver, and which appears to have
been originally obtained directly from mines in which copper
occurred mixed with zinc, and only later to have been produced by
an artificial admixture. According to Lepsius {Zeitschrift fiir
iigypt. Sprache und AltertJc., x. p. 116, /.), \aXKo\t(iavo<; in the
Septuagint also would mean " copper of Lebanon " = " brass."
At a very early time the Greek opcixaAKos became known to
the Romans, whose most ancient poets, misled by the popular
* " Cependant les poetes se rappelant les services nonibreux que le cuivre
avait rendus et I'estime singuliere ou I'avaieut d'abord tenu les homnies,
idealiserent ce metal et I'appeleient oriclialque ou cuivre de montagne par
excellence de opos et de xa^fo's." Kossignol distinguishes three stages in the
use of the word optj'xaA/cos : (1) age mythique de rorichahjue ; (2) age reel de
I'orichalque, {a) le cuivre pur, (6) I'alliage du cuivre et du zinc, (c) I'alliage du
cuivre et de I'etain ; (3) age latin de Toricliahiue [aurichalcum).
\ Cf. Strabo, c. 610 : eo-Ti 5e Kidos irepl Ta''AvSftpa, '6s Kaiofxffos criS-qpos yiv-
erai' flra /xfia 77}$ rivos Kajxivdevi airoarrd^ei xpevSapyvpof (zillf), r] TrpotrAajSoCtra
Xa\Khv rh KaKov/xevov yiverai Kpufxa orivis opeixa^Kov Ka\ov<n {xpa/xa, 6 Kenpa-
fxfuos x«^'«^s = brass). In the Pcriplus (§ 6), 6p«ixaA»cor is exported to Africa :
^ Xpi^vTai trphs KotTfxou koI (Is cvyKoirrjy UvtI vofxiayLaros.
iqS prehistoric antiquities.
etymology aurichalcum : aurum, saw in it a purely fabulous metal.
Subsequently aurichalcum, orichalcum came to mean "brass" here
also.
If we now turn from Greece to the northern districts of the
Indo-Germanic peoples, from which as far as the sea the old
dyas-a's disappeared without leaving a trace behind, we have first
to regret that no genuine name for copper has been preserved in
Albanian. Besides the hdkur, hakur already mentioned, and the
Latin ]cji2Jr€-a, "bronze," there is also to be found here the expres-
sion Uits or tuns (rovvif-L, Serv. tuc, "bell-metal, brass, bronze,"
Bulg. tiica, "bronze"), which is of Turkish origin.*
The name for copper and bronze, which is the same in neai'ly
all the Slav languages, is in old Slavonic medt (cf. above, p. 157),
and cannot, as far as I know, be traced to any Slavonic root.
It seems to me most probable that O.S. 7)iedi, together with
Teutonic ge-smide, sniida {cf. above, p. 157), belongs to the Indo-
Germanic root smei, smi, by the side of mei, mi, which recurs in the
G. o-fxL-Xr], "cutting-tool," cr/At-Ao? by the side of /ai-Aos, "yew-tree"
("suited for cutting"), and consequently properly meant "to
artificially prepare." The O.S. medi would then in the primitive
period have meant something like "copper trinkets," and would
then come to be employed of the metal itself, in the same way as
the East Finnic name for iron has been obtained from the Iranian
name for knife {cf. ch. vii.).
As regards archaeology, the metallurgy of the Slavonic peoples
still requires closer investigation. Wocel {cf. above, p. 60) assumed
that east of the Carpathians, though there were abundant finds of
iron, copper and bronze were not forthcoming, and that conse-
quently in the region between the Weichsel, Dnieper, and the
Don, an Iron Age succeeded immediately on the Stone Age. But
the recent discovery of abundant finds of copper in the district
mentioned {cf. Krek, Einleitung'^, p. 103, ff.) has shaken this view.
Nor do the Black Sea steppes present any clear picture in the
records of antiquity. According to Hdt., i. 215, the Massagetse
possessed bronze but no iron ; of the Pontic Scyths the historian
says (iv. 71): apyvpwhlovhlv ovh\-xaXKia-)(fiiovTaL. Nevertheless, the
Skoloti were found in possession of arrow-heads of ;>(aX/<os (iv. 81).
Cf further, Tomaschek, Kritik cler dltesten N. achrichten ilher den
scythischen Norden, Wien, 1888, p. 15. The Slavonic term for
copper, in contrast to the term for iron {cf above, p. 195) which is
common to Slavs, Lithuanians, and Prussians, is not shared by
the Baltic languages, whose words for copper and bronze, ivdrias
{cf. also szivitwaris, skaistivaris, by the side of misingi, " brass "),
Pruss. ivargian, seem quite isolated.
Nevertheless here, too, it is perhaps possible to establish a connec-
tion. We have already come across the genius of metals, kshathra
vairya, in the Avesta, a name which is frequently employed to
* Alb. fiAe, which J. Grimm, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, translates
on p. 9 as copper (e^'z), on p. 11 as iron, is obviously nothing more than
(,iKji-ja, "molten bells," in Hahn, Alh. Stud., p. 37 (of the lexicon).
COPPER AND BRONZE. 1 99
designate the metal in clamps, arrows, knives, &c. {cf. Justi, Ilandiv,
p. 93). Perhaps, as is shown by Yasht., 4. 4, haca stardi vairydi,
" of the metal dagger " (according to Justi's translation *), vairya is
used without the addition of kahatkra in the sense of metallicus, ceneus.
Now Persian vairya, however, would correspond satisfactorily to
Lith. wdrias.
Like the whole of the east of Europe, the Celtic west has lost
every trace, except one of which we shall have to speak in the
next chapter, of the original name for copper. It has been replaced
by a common Celtic word Ir. wmcc, uim (cf. umaide, umamail '■^ceretin"
iimhaidhe, ■^akKf.v'i), 0. Cymr. emed, N. Cymr. efydd ; cf. Stokes,
Irish Glosses, p. 83, which originally designated pure copper, as
is shown by the compound crec^ (tin) + umce for bronze. Unfortu-
nately, I have not been able to find any datum for ascertaining the
origin of this word. Copper was to be found in Gaul itself, though
it was by the Romans it was w'orked. But the proximity of Spain,
with its wealth of copper, would amply supply the Celtic tribes
with copper. Of Britain, Caesar, De B. G., v. 12, expressly says:
cere utuntur i7n2yortato (Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 65,/.).
Finally, both in Latin and in the Teutonic languages, when
both pui-e and alloyed copper had come to be comprised under the
ancient dyas-ws, new and more precise expressions to distinguish
between copper and bronze became necessary. Here, again, the
island from which copper was obtained both for Egypt and for
Homeric Greece, Cyprus,t is here again important. Cyprus, an island
rich in copper {cerosa, Tro\v-^aX.KO<;), received its name, owing to the
cypresses in which it abounds {gojjher = Kvn-apia-(To<i), from the Pheni-
cians who first exploited the metallic wealth of its mountains.
In the year 57 B.C. it came into the possession of the Romans,
and the fine copper obtained from its mines {pes Cyprium, -^aX.KO'i
KvTTpios) soon gave its name to the same metal in other lands. In
the course of time the Lat. ces Cyprium, or rather the popiilar
form mprum (which first occurs in Spartianus, Hist. Aug., i. p. 725),
ctipreum, cyprinum, spread to almost every point of the compass.
The word first found its way into the Romance languages, where
however it has survived in French alone {cuivre = cupreuvi). The
other Romance languages use the Latin ceramen, ceramentum,
"copper ware" (like Greek -^aXKWfxa; cf. above, p. 196). So, too,
It. rame, Wal. arame (but alariie, "brass" J), Sp. arambre, alamhre
(whence, also, Basque alamerea by the side of the probably genuine
urraida), Pr. aram, Fr. airain. East of Italy the word ctipr^im
reappears as we saw in Alb. KJi-rrpe-a, "copper;" cf. also N. Serv.
kupor, U. Serv. hopjor. The Latin word, however, has been most
* Darmesteter and De Harlez, as Professor Wilhelm reminds me, translate
the passage r[uite difierently ("from tlic witful sinner").
t Cf. on the finds of copper in Cyprus, Ccsnula Cypcrn, and M. Much, loc.
cit., p. 32,/.
+ The other Romance names for brass, Fr. laiton, Ital. ottone, Span, laton,
are, according to F. Diez {Etym. W. d. rom. Spr.*, p. 230), to be referred to
Rom. (It.) lalta, "white metal" (properly /»Zaia).
200 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
thoroughly appropriated by the Teutonic languages. It runs :
O.H.G. chu2ohar, M.H.G. kupfer, hojrfer, Eug. copper, Dan. kobher,
Swed. koppar, O.N. koparr. From the Teutonic noilh it found
its way on the one hand into Irish {cojxir) and Cornish (coher;
Zeuss, G. C.^, p. 1069), on the other into Finnic (kupari), Lapponic
{kuoppar), Esthonian (kubar-wask). Lapponic air, airra is O.N.
eir, Goth. aiz.
On the other hand, there is much more uncertainty as to the
original provenance of the woi'd which at the present day serves to
designate bronze throughout most of Europe, our and German
bronze, Fr. bronze, Ital. and Span, bronce, N. Gr. /xTrpow^os (M.G. cf.
Ix^t '<at Suo 7r6pTa<; TrpovT^LV€<;), O.S. brozenu ^'fuscus," N.S. brimc,
Serv. and Russ. bronza, Alb. brunze, &c. In its oldest (Middle
Latin) form it is hronzium (ces, cuprum ; bronzina tm^mentum
bellicum ; bronzinum vas ; cf. Du Cange, Gloss. Medice et Infimoe
Latinitatis), and according to some is derived from the originally
German adjective hi^no, "brown," brunizzo, hruniccie (bT^nitius),
and therefore means "the brown metal," while according to others
it comes from the INIiddle Latin obryzum {pbryzum aurum = xpyo-tov
o(3pvt,ov, " gold which has stood the test of fire," obt^ssa the "fire
test of gold," which occurs even in Cicero), designating bronze
after its colour which resembles that of gold ; * cf. Diez, Etyvi. d.
rom. Spr., i.^ p. 69.
A new explanation has been briefly set forth by Berthelot, Stir
le nom du bronze chez les alchhnistes grecs {Revue Archeologique, 1888,
p. 294). As the oldest form of the word he endeavours to establish
a Mid. G. ^povTrjcnov in alchemistic works. This corresponds to a
Lat. ces Brundisium ; since there must have been celebrated
manufactories of bronze (Pliny, Hist. Nat., sxxiii. 9. 45 ; xxxiv.
17. 40).
Besides the expressions already discussed, there crops out in
the High German linguistic area, and only in that area, as early as
the Old High German epoch, another expression for bronze : O.H.G
aruz, aruzi, erezi, Modeni German erz, which recurs in proper
names such as Aruzapah, Arizperc, Arizgrefti, Arizgrtioba, and also
has found its way into non-Indo-Germanic languages, such as Esth.
arts, Hung. eyxz. Unfortunately, its origin is entirely wrapped in
mystery ; anyhow, it has nothing to do vnth aiz, er. Nor does it
wholly coincide in meaning with it ; for, whereas, of the two adjec-
tives, M.H.G. ertn and erzin, the former alone is applied to copper or
bronze (and therefore = Lat. OB^i^MS, oereus, aheneus), erztn, N.H.G.
erzen has the perfectly general meaning metaUicics.f
Finally, the German messing, which makes its appearance from
* "The Romance word must have been coined in Italy, where the initial o
would easily be lost and the n might easily be introduced before the dental ;"
cf. Diez, loc. cit.
t In Grimm's Deutschem Worterh., under "Erz" and "Kupfer," there is a
string of phonetically impossible combinations to explain the etymology of the
German erz. Again, the comparison of Lat. raudus, riuliis, in which Weigand
{Dculsches Wortcrb. ) agrees, is impossible.
MESSING. 201
the twelfth century, O.N. messing, fem., A.S. mdstling, like the Pol.
mosiqdz, 0. Serb, mosaz, N. Serv. mesnik, &c., is a loan-word from the
Latin massa, "mass, mass of metal;" cf. also M.H.G. messe, neut.
and fem., Swiss mosch, "brass." At any rate, this derivation is
more probable than the one given by Kopp (Geschichte der Chemie,
iv. p. 113), according to whom the Teutonic word originally meant
" Mossunic copper," in accordance with a passage of Pseudo-Aris-
totle [De Mirahililms Auscnltationihiis): ^acrt tov Moo-ctvvoikov xo-^kov
Xa/XTTpoTaTOv Koi XevKoraTOv €Lvai, ov TrapaixiyvvfJLevov avrw Kaaairipov
aAAa y^s Tivos (spelter, zinc, ore, &c.) ytvo/^eVi^s avv€ij/oix€V7]<; airw.
For a summary of the results of this discussion, (/. chapter viii.
CHAPTER VII.
IRON.
Iron, hard to work (ttoAvk/at^tos a-iSrjpos), which at the present day
has conquered the world, belongs to the most widely distributed of
the metals, and possesses the peculiarity that, as, with the exception
of meteoric iron, it only occurs in a mineralised form, and is there-
fore not very conspicuous, so even when it has been smelted and
wrought by the hand of man, it offers less resistance to the tooth
of time than do the other metals. Pi'ehistoric archaeology there-
fore often finds itself in the difficulty of not being able to decide
whether the absence of iron from a given stage of culture is to be
ascribed to man's ignorance of it or to the destructive power of
time. Archaeology is therefore thrown back upon the evidence of
history and language more in the case of iron than of any other
metal. This evidence shows that the use of the metal in the
civilised countries of the east goes back, if not beyond, at least as
far as the beginnings of history. Lepsius, in his often quoted
treatise, has traced iron under the name of men, in the oldest
Egyptian inscriptions. Recognisable in pictures by its bluish tint,
it is employed in the earliest times for vessels and weapons.
Nevertheless here, too, the priority of copper is rendered probable
by the circumstance already alluded to, that the word for iron has
the sign of copper as its determinative (cf. Lepsius, op. cit, p. 108).
From Egypt, and afterwards from the trading factories of the
Phenicians, Greeks, and Romans on the Red Sea, there probably
spread articles of iron and a primitive mode of iron-working, in the
direction from north-east to south, into the interior of Africa, thus
making it seem as though the blacks had independently discovered
and worked iron {cf. Andree, Z>ie Metalle hei den Naturvolkern,
p. 3, ff.). In any case the Iron Age was immediately consequent on
the Stone Age in Africa: the other metals are in part named from
the standpoint of iron (above, p. 154, note).
The Semitic languages possess a common expression for iron :
Hebr. har(e)zel,Sjr. pa7-zel, Assjr. pa7'zillu (Arixh. Ji7'zil, "iron point"),
which indicates their primeval acquaintance with this metal (Orig.
Semit. parzilhi). In the Old Testament, too, iron is frequently em-
ployed for vessels, talents (1 Chron. xxiii. 14; xxx. 7), for nails and
door-plates, and also weapons (1 Samuel xvii. 7), although it is
noteworthy that bronze is mentioned much more frequently than
IRON IN PERSIA. 203
iron (in the first four books of the Pentateuch the proportion is 83 : 4). |^
In the same series as the Semitic names for iron is the Sumerian ' \
barza, as to whose exact rehxtion to the Semitic word, however, ' <
I have no views {cf. F. Hommel, Die vorsem. Kulturen, p. 409). \ >
If we now turn to the Indo-Germanic peoples, we find that even
in hieroj^lyphic inscriptions the country of Pers, i.e., Persia, is termed
a principal place for the export of iron (Lepsius, loc. cit., p. 104),
We can, therefore, all the more readily understand how the Zend ■
ayanh, inherited from the primeval Indo-Germanic period, gradually .
came to stand for ii'on, which soon came to dominate their metal- .
lurgy. That iron was, at any rate, known to the Iranian tribes at
a relatively early time, is shown by a name for it which is common
to most of their dialects, even to the remotest of them, Ossetic :
Afghan osjxinah, osptnah, Osset. afseindg, au'seindg, Pamir D. isn,
sjnn, &c. {cf. W. Tomaschek, Centralas. Stvd., ii. p. 70), Kurd
hdsin, atvftin (Justi-Jaba, Worterbuch, p. 439 ; Hiibschmann, Osset.
Sjyr., p. 25). This stock of woi'ds has not yet been explained.*
For the rest, the Persians are described by Herodotus (vi. 6 1 and 84)
throughout as armed with iron and bronze weapons. The kindred
Scyths, also in the time of Herodotus, had made the acquaintance
of iron. The historian relates (iv. 62) that in the cult of Ares an
iron sabre (crtST^pcos aKLvdKr)<;) was worshipped as an emblem of the
god, and the use of this metal in the worship of the gods indicates
a very ancient acquaintance with iron, while our author expressly
denies copper (bronze) to the Scythians (iv. 71) ; cf. above, p. 198. | ^
The Armenian word for iron, erkath, formed on the analogy of I )
artsath, "silver," like the Armenian name for gold and copper, '^
comes from the Caucasian languages (Georg. rHna, kina, " iron," ;
Las. rkHna, "knife;" Asia Poyglotta-, pp. 113, 122).
Special words for hardened iron (steel) seem to have been toler-
ably late in making their appearance in Asia Minor, though
one of them has come to be distributed over a tremendous area :
N. Pers. piUdcl, Syr. 2^-i-d. (Paul de Lagarde, O'es. Ahh., p. 75),
Kurd pila, 2^o^(t, p)'^^'^^^, »fec. (Justi, Dictionnaire Kurde-Franrciis,
p. 84), Pehlevi poldwat, Armen. polovat (Lagarde, Arvien. Stud.,
p. 130), Turk, pala, Russ. btdatii, Lesser Russ. butat (^liklosich,
Fremrhv, s.v.), Mizdzeghic polad, bolat, Mong. bolot, biilat, buridt
(Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta'^, p. 282, Spi-achatl., v.; A. Pott, Zeit-
schriftf. d. K. d. M., p. 262). But where and wherein are we to
look for the origin of this series of words ?
* Hubschmann [K. Z., xxiv. 392) thinks of a Mod. Pers. spin, "white" :
Zend spaeta ; though I do not know of any other case in which a name for
iron is derived from an adjective "wliite."
Justi {JForterb., p. 439) compares with the words mentioned Zend haosafna,
wliich he {Handw., s.v. ), Geldner {K. Z.,xxv. 579), and GeijieriOstiran. Kiillur,
p. 148) translate as "copper," but Spiegel (.<4r.;,s^a, trans. Vend. viii. 254 = viii.
90) as "iron." This is impossible phonetically.
In Modern Persian iron is dhen, which may be explained from *ayasana, or
else belongs to Beloochee dsin, Pehl. |tn (West, Glussary, p. 27). Spiegel
(Arische Pcriode, p. 35) thinks of its coming from asan, "stone" {cf. Sans.
uqnuxn, above, p. 190, note, "stone-work").
204 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The Ossetic name for steel, also, is particularly interesting, inas-
much as it again is borrowed from the Permian languages (Wotj.
anda, Syrj. jendon), and also recurs in the Caucasus (Mizdzeghic
andun ; Klaproth, Sprachatl., v.). For the third time, therefore, we
have come across East Finnic words in Ossetic, that is to say, the
names for silver (dvzist), copper (arkhoT/), steel {andun), to which
we shall subsequently (ch. ix.) have to add that of lead (izdi),
so that the Ossetes inherited from the period when they were still
united with their Iranian brothers only terms for gold {sugh-zarine)
and iron (afseindg). The i-elations, however, between the culture
of the Ossetes and that of the Finnic East are the more easily
explained, because, according to the Ossetic tale, the Ossetic race
once extended considerably farther north than is the case at
present (Asia Polygl.^, p. 83).
The state of the case as regards India may be more briefly dis-
missed. We have already seen that ancient finds of iron are not
rare in India, which is rich in iron ore. Further, Indian steel was
prized even in Greek antiquity (Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 70). Never-
theless, we remarked, that in literary monuments iron cannot be
traced with certainty before the end of the Vedic period (c/. p. 188),
when the oldest names of this metal occur. The later terms (c/.
Pott, Etymologische Forsch., ii, p. 416, and l^ox&hsiYV^ Rdjanighantu,
ed. Garbe, pp. 41, 42) offer nothing of interest. One of them,
Sans. Qastrd, lit. " weapon," has travelled through the world on the
lips of the gipsies as saster, with absin, " steel " ( = Kurd avsin).
We now proceed to Europe, and to ancient Greece first, in order
to look for data as to the first appearance of iron.
Violet-hued (toei?), shining (aWwv), or grey (ttoAios) iron plays
' an important part even in the Homeric poems, thereby affording a
most remarkable contrast between the Homeric period and Schlie-
mann's Hissarlik, where all five prehistoric towns seem to be un-
acqiiainted with iron. In Mycense (cf. Schliemann, 3Iycenes, 141,/.),
on the other hand, iron was known in the form of knives, keys, kc;
though Schliemann believes that the articles which prove this must
be assigned to the beginning of the fifth century B.C. In Homer
iron is used as a medium of exchange like copper, and is stored in
the treasure chambers of the rich. At the funeral games of Patro-
clus (//., xxiii. 825, /.) Achilles offers as a prize a mass of iron
{(ToXov avTo-)(6wvov, i.e., "merely smelted, not wrought;" meteoric
iron is not to be thought of), which will supply the lucky winner
with all the iron he will need for five years' time.* It serves
* e|€( jxiv KoX irevTi irfpiirXofjiivovs iviavrovs
Xpiu>fji.evos' oi)/j.€v yap ol are/j.^ofj.ii/os ye (TiST]pov
TTOijJL^v ovS apoT7]p iTff 4s ttSAlv, dAAct Trapi^ei.
" This passage may be understood to mean either tliat tlae winner of the (r6\os
has the iron utensils necessary for five years made in advance, and made in
the town ; and then keeps them stored at liome against the time they will be
needed ; or we may assume that the countryman furnishes the smith with iron
from his own store when he wants anything made, as is not unfrequently done in
the country to this day; and from this the necessary inference would be the exist-
ence of village or wandering smiths "(c/. Buchholz, Die homer. Real., i. 2, p. 336).
IRON IN HOMER AND HERODOTUS. 20$
principally as the material for making implements used on tlie •)
land ; but axes also, and swords, knives, clubs, arrow-points, are i
frequently mentioned as made of iron. Indeed, crtSi^pos sometimes |
of itself means axe and sword. Nevertheless, as we have already
pointed out, the linguistic relation of x'"-^'^o<; : 0-1877/305 points with j
great probability to the historical priority of the former. '
This is characterised by a Greek story recorded by Herodotus
(i. 67. 68), and placed by him in the time of Croesus. Liches, a
Spartan citizen, having set forth in quest of the bones of Orestes,
comes to a smithy {x^^XKrj'Lov) in which he sees iron being smithied
{(TLSrjpov i$€Xavv6ix€vov). At seeing this he falls into amazement
(iv OwvixarL ^v opeiov to Trocevfjievov). The smith (;^aAKeus not
(TiSr^pcus) marks it and says: "Thou, that art amazed to see
smithying, what wonkiest thou say, liadst tliou seen what I have
seen," and so on. The appointments of the smithy are mentioned
as being bellows (cfivaai), hammer (^cr(f>vpa), and anvil (aK/x(ov). This
story is instructive in that it must have been invented at a time
when the manufacture of iron was still something new ; and
because the smith, of whom it is expressly said that he was working
a-L8r]po<;, nevertheless is called ;)(aAK£us {xaXKTjiov, " smithy ").
No indication when precisely iron became better known in •
Greece can be found.*
The place whence the Greeks gained the acquaintance of this metal
admits also only of conjecture. The mainland of Greece is not pai'-
ticularly rich in iron ore (Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 74). The Peloponnese
is an exception, especially at the promontoi-y of Tsenarum, where
perhaps the Phenicians, if our comparison of Taiva/3oi/= Hebr. tanniir, •
" smelting-hut " {cf. above, p. 159) is right, worked the iron ore.
The Greeks then at an early time depended on foreign metal
deposits. At a very early time a definite tradition established
itself in Greece as to the origin of iron. It is referred by a very
ancient tradition to the neighbourhood of the Pontus Euxinus, to
the Phr^rgian Ida, in whose woody dales the 'iSatot Aa/cruAot,
Kelmis, Damnameneus, and Akmon are represented as discovering
and working the bluish iron. Both in this passage from the
Phoronis, which we have already given, and which is the oldest
that mentions the Idsean Dactyli (cf. above, p. 164), and in the
words of the Scholiast which accompany it (yoj^res 8e rjcrav kol
(f>ap[j.aK€t^. Kat Srjijaovpyol aL^rjpov Xeyovrat irpwroi Kat /xcraAAeis
yev€cr6ai; Schol. Apoll. A., i. 1126), iron alone, and not the other
metals, is mentioned, so that it was only in later times ajiparently
that they were connected with the Dactyli. The Parian Marble
(d<^' ov MtVws 6 TTpwTO^ ej3aaLXeva€ kol K^Stovtav wKio^e Kat aLOi]po<;
€vpiOrj iv ri] "iSrj, €vp6vTwv twv 'iSatwv AaKTvXcxtv KeA/xtos /<ai
Aa/Ava/xeveoJS irr] 1168 (3aaiXcvovTO<; 'AOrji'wv IlavStoi/os) actually gives
a definite year for the discovery of iron.
If we only knew a little about the languages of the nations of
Asia Minor, a simple and satisfactory explanation of the G. criS-Qpo^
* Cf. the remarks by Lang, Sayce, and Leaf in the Academy, 1883, Sept.
22, 29, Oct. 23.
206 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
(Dor. and Mo\. o-tSapos; Sappho, 119), which stands quite by itself
amongst the Indo-Germanic names for the metals, might be forth-
coming. It perhaps deserves to be noticed that the stem 0-1877/30-,
though elsewhere it is scarcely ever employed, as we have seen, to
form names of persons or places, in Lycian is used for both. Cf.
SiSapoi's, '^tSrjpov'i, town and harbour of Lycia ; also a volcanic pro-
montory in Lycia, with a temple of Hephaestus {Scylax Geog. Min.
T., i. p. 301), SiSapi'vruos, an inhabitant thereof (Pape, Eigen-
nameyi, s.v.), and SiSapios, a proper name in a Lycian inscription
(M. Schmidt, The Lycian Tnscnjjtions, p. 12). But according to a
verbal communication from M. Schmidt, the inflection of the
Lycian proper name shows that 2iSaptos is a native personal name.
The attempts which have been made to find a derivation in Indo-
Germanic all seem to me of a very problematic natui'e.*
A special name for steel, the preparation of which by tempering
was knowm in Homeric times (cf. Od., ix. 391), does not occur
in Homer's vocabulary. Kmvos, according to Lepsius' convincing
investigation (op. cit., p. 130), "never anywhere means anything
but a blue colouring matter which was generally prepared from
copper blue either directly, or else a blue glass was made from it
and then pulverised."
The earliest expression for steel is rather aSd/xas, -avTos, which is
mentioned for the first time by Hesiod {Scutum, 137), and is used
of a steel cap (Kwe-q). This word is usually refen-ed to the root
Sa/jt in Sdfivrjixt, Sa/xdo), &c., SO that it would, like the Homeric
dSa/Aao-Tos, mean the " unconquerable " metal. If, however, we
reflect on what, for the designation of so relatively a recent idea
as that of steel, is such a remarkable word both as regards form
and meaning, one cannot resist the suspicion that we here have
before us a foreign word, perhaps the Caucasian aiuhm, in a
Grsecised form. In this connection we may remark that Tomaschek
{Z. f. 0. Phil., i. 125) calls attention to a Caucasian (Udic) zido for
a-iSrjpo? also. At anyrate, it is certain that another and more
common name for steel than dSa/xas, that is )(dXvil/ (also ^(aXv^SiKO's;
Eur., Her., 162), which is first used by^schylus (Prom., 133) : —
KTi'TTOV yap d)((ji) )(a.Xv/3o? Sifj^ev avTpwv fxvy^ov,
travelled to Greece from the neighbourhood of the Caucasus and
* Curtius* and^, p. 246, compares Sanskrit sufc^itos, "smelted," and swftoTii,
"iron \)a.x\," O.l^.G. sweizjan, frigere, and thinks a-'iS-npos meant "smelted
out," but that this does not prove that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted
with iron. Pott {EL Forsch., i. p. 127) compares Lith. sividiis (as also does G.
Meyer, Griech. Gr., p. 197) and Latin sldus, sldcri^ from *sTdesis. If the latter
is correct, the only thing in question is the connection of the root of tri5-Tjpos.
Nevertheless, some historians of culture [cf. 'LenoYmz.\it,Anfdnged. Cultur, p. 58)
on the strength of this regard the Gi'eek word as designating ineteoric iron
{sldus, "star"), which is absolutely without reason. The Coptic henipe
"iron," also, which is usually quoted in this connection as analogous, because
Brugsch compares it with the Egyjitian hCia en pe-t, and treats it as meteoric
iron, receives quite another explanation at the hands of Lepsius (p. 108).
Indeed, even the ff6xos avroxooovos of Homer, as we have hinted, has been
interpreted as meteoric iron {cf. Ratzel, Vorgesch. d. Europ. MenscJien, p. 283).
IRON IN LATIN. 20/
the Poutiis. The word undoubtedly goes back to the name of the
northern nation of the Chalybes (XaXu^cs, XaAu/?ot). The abodes
of this people, as known to antiquity, ai'e variously given as being
situate to the north of the Pontus and Caucasus as well as in
Armenia and Paphlagonia to the south ; and the Chalybes are
uniformly spoken of as distinguished for the mining and working
of iron. Thus, the (riSr]poTeKTov€<; XaAn/Jcs are mentioned by
^■Eschylus (Prom., 715) immediately after the nomad Scyths
{'S,KvOai I'o/AoiSes), with which the Hesychian glosses are in agree-
ment: XciAij/Jot" e9vo<; Tj}? ^Kv6La<;, ottov (rtS>^pos ytVerai and XaXn^StKry*
T^s 'SiKvOia<;, OTTOV (n8y]pov fxeraXXa. Xenophon in his Anabasis
distinguishes two races of Chalybes, one between the Araxes and
Cyros, the othei's vassals of the Mossynoeci on the Pontus. Of the
latter he says {v. v. 1): 6 fito<s ■^v tols 7rAetcrT0t5 auTwi' a-rro (rtSrjpeca<;
K.T.X.
That the Tibarenes and Moschi of the Bible point to the district
of the Pontus has already been said (c/. above, p. 196, note). So,
too, the " iron from the north " mentioned in Jeremiah xv. 12, may
belong here. ^-
Like the Greek crtSr/pos, the Latin /crrwm has no connection with ' '--''
the other Indo-German'ic names for the metals.* Nor is there
any lack of evidence to show the want of iron in Latium at the
most ancient period. The faber ferrarius is missing from the
guilds of Numa. Further, the use of iron is uniformly excluded
from the most ancient cults. It was with a bronze knife that the
Roman FInmen Dialis had to shave his beard, with a bronze plough
that the area of a new town must be marked out, and so on (c/.
Helbig, Die ItaJiker in der Poehne, pp. 80, 81).
In the pile-dwellings of the Po iron is not found.
But from what quarter came the Romans' first acquaintance
with the important metal which subsequently became so familiar
to them that the smith is called faber ferrarius, and the sword and
plough were termed by metonymy ferrum ? Perhaps the Lat.
ferrum itself indicates the way ; for as it may readily be traced to
*fersum, I, with Lenormant, 0. Weise {Griech. Worter im Lat,
p. 153), and others, still think it most probable that ferrum is to
be connected with the expressions already quoted from the Semitic
languages, Hebr. bar{e)zel,f Sumer. barza, &c. That Phcnician
(Cai'thaginian) words found their way into Latin directly (i.e., not
through Greek agency) is shown by cases siich as Lat. (c)tunica : Heb.
ketonet. Lat. ehur, palma, pellex, tfcc, are probably of similar origin
(0. Weise, Rhein. Mus., 1883, p. 540, ff.). It is also known that the
Phenicians extended their voyages at least as far as Co^e (r/.i
* The attempt to compare ferrum with tlie other Indo-Germanic names of L
metals has been made by Pictet {Origines", i. p. 197), who classes it with Sans. ; '
bhadrdm, "iron" (?), and by Lottner {K. Z.,w\\. p. 183), who suggests A. S.
braes. Of. also Pott, Et. Forsch., ii. p. 278 ; Schweizer, K. Z., i. p. 478; Fick,
Vcrgl. TVorterb., ii. p. 169.
t That this word was also Phenician is shown by an ancient Phcnician
inscription from Cyprus [Movers, ii. 3, p. 69).
208 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Mommsen, Rom. Geschichte^ i. p. 128). Some days north, however,
of the Punic factory here erected lay the island of Elba with its
stores of iron, insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis
(Virgil), called 'AiOdXr], the "sooty" by the Greeks.
Now turning from the south and ascending the broad back of
our quarter of the globe, we find the absence of iron in the oldest
periods of which we have historical knowledge brought out by clear
evidence on all sides. We may remark that this absence becomes
more marked as we go towards the north-east. According to the
Germania of Tacitus (c. 6) "iron did not abound in Germany"
("ne ferrum quidem superest "). In the north, Csesar knew that
among the Britons iron only occurred- near the sea, and there only
in inconsiderable quantities (B. G. V., 12). In the east, Tacitus
mentions the linguistic group of the Prusso-Lettlanders under the
name of the ^Estii. He says (c. 45) : " Rarus ferri, frequens fustium
usus." His knowledge ends with the Fenni (Finns), who, " inopia
fe7'ri" " for want of iron," have recourse to sharpened bones for
their arrows. The knowledge of iron and how to work it spreads
to the north of Europe and the adjoining portions of Asia in two
directions : from south-west to north-east and from south-east to
north or north-west. The point of departure is found in the one
case among the Celts, in the west, who in their conquering marches
along the Alps from the fifth century onwards must have come
across rich deposits of metals. Deep in the Austrian Alps, at the
northern foot of the Thorstein, in a profound ravine at the bottom
of which lies the little lake of Hallstadt, recent excavations have
brought to light * a life-like picture of a Celtic settlement with its
salt-mine and its manufacture of iron. Noric iron soon became
known in Italy and throughout the north. Tacitus (c. 43) still
knows in the east on the Carpathians a Gallic people slaves to the
Germans, the Cotini, who " quo magis pudeat " — for the " God that
iron made meant no men to be slaves " — " et ferrum eflfodiunt." In
Gaul itself iron was dug for. Csesar expressly states this of the
Bituriges (Z)e B. G., vii. 22), who proved themselves very useful at the
siege of Avaricum : " Eo scientius quod apud eos magnse sunt
ferrarise atque omne genus cuniculorum notum atque usitatum
est." In this connection it is noteworthy that designation of the
native metal common to all the Celtic languages (Cymr. mwyn,
Ir. mein, mianach) f has spread (Thurneysen, Keltoromanisches,
p. 67) to the Romance languages (Fr. viine, "mine,^' It. mina, &c.).
When the Celts made the acquaintance of iron, whether from the
Greeks of Marseilles, or from Rome, where, according to Pliny
{Hist. Nat., xii. 1. 5), a certain Helico from Helvetia abode at a time
* Recent investigations, I am informed by Herr M. Much, have made it
probable that the burial-ground at Hallstadt was not begun by the Celts, but
only used by them at the end.
t The root of the Celtic stem *mcin is perhaps the above-mentioned (p. 198)
Indo-Germanic smei, mei, "artificially prepare," which appears in O. H.G.
smMa, O.S. medl ; so that the fundamental meaning of the Celtic *?tteift would
be something like " workable " metal.
IRON AAIOXGST THE CELTS AND TEUTONS. 209
before the great Celtic migration in order to learn sniitliying,
" fiibrilcm ob artem," they formed, with a word corresponding to
the Indo-Germanic ayas-ces, " copper, metal," but belonging to a
different vowel-scale, viz., *is ( : ais; cf. above, p. 188, note), a name
for the new idea by appending a derivative suffix, common among
them, -am : *isarn. Later the .s between the vowels must have
dropped out, just as it did in sitcr - sisu?- (Lat. soror) and giall —
gisai (O.H.G. r/i'sal) ; cf. Zeuss, Grammatica Geltica, \)]). 827 and 52.
Hence the forms Irish iarn, iarunn, Cymr. haiarn, Juearn, Corn.
hoern^ hern, horn, Arem. hoiarn, haiarn, «fec. The s between the
vowels, however, was still retained,* when the word along with
several terms used in the manvifacture of iron, which we shall meet
subsequently, was taken over by the Teutonic languages, in which
it appears as Goth, eisurn, A.S. isern (Eng. iron), O.N. isarn, jam,
O.H.G. isarn. The suffix -am, foreign to the Teutonic languages,
betrays the loan, f
The part assigned to the Teutonic peoples in the history of
culture was to convey, for their pai't, the precious gift farther
west. In Old Norse a certain kind of iron {ferrum ochraceum),
which occurs frequently in the north, was called raudi. This
word has no connections in the other Germanic languages, but
through the O.S. rvda, "metal," Lith. rilda (a Slavonic loan-word;
cf. A. Bruckner, Die Slav. Lehnworter im LitaiiiscJien, p. 128),
attaches itself to Lat. raiielus. Sans, lohdm, &c., with which Ave
have made acquaintance above (p. 191). According to this, the
O.N. raudi originally meant copper, then undoubtedly the red,
copper-like iron, ferrum ochraceum. This word found its way from
Norse through Finnic into the other West Finnic languages, and
has become the regular West Finnic expression for iron-ore : Finn.
rauta, Esthon. and Weps. raud, Liv. rand, roda, raod, Lapp.
rtiovdde. There are also numerous other Finnic expressions for
iron and its working, which are of Teutonic and Norse origin.
For instance, malmi, malvi, "iron ore," takki ratcta (Swed. tack-
Jem), " raw iron, ' melto-rauta, or mei'ely melto, mento, vianto, Lapp.
nialddo (Swed. smdlta), "iron not hammered," &c.; the names for
the furnace and the blast-furnace are also borrowed. At the same
time there is no lack of genuine words (cf Ahlqvist, Culturw.,
67, /'., and Bxdhtin de VAcad. de St Petershourg, vi. p. 178).
For it must be acknowledged that the Finns, when once tliey had
been directed to the treasures of their lakes and swamps {cf the
quotation given above, p. 214, as to the birth of iron), soon attained
great skill in the working of iron, and indeed, perhaps, even out-
stripped their Teutonic neighbours. A living testimony to their
skill in smithying is afforded by the extremely numerous names of
* It is shown still in the Burgundian proper name Isarnodori : " Ortns hand
longe a vico, cui vetusta pagaiiitas ob celebritatem clausula nKiue foriissimam
snperstitiosissirni templi Gallica lingua Isarnodori, i.e., ferrei ostii indidit
nomen " ( V. S. E. Eugcndi. Abb. mon. S. Claudii in Burgiuidia ; cf.
Diefenbach, Origines Eitropacac, p. 367).
t A more recent stratum of loans : O.I. wtr>i = 0. N. jam, A.S. iren.
O
2IO PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
places and districts in Finland, which are compounded with rauta,
" iron," such as Bcmtajdriri, Rautaiuesi, Hautakanc/as, and many
others, like the Old High German Isarmho, Isan2)ach, Isanhns, &c.
(cf. Fcirstemann, Deutsche Ortsnamen, p. 139),
A totally different explanation of the West Finnic words (Finn.
rauta, &g.) is given by Lenormant (both i\\ Die Anfcinge der Cultur,
i. p. 79, and Transactions of the Soc. of Billical ArchceoL, vi. p. 354),
who compares them with the Accad. urudu, "copper," already
mentioned by us, and traces the Lithu-Slavonic expressions (ruda,
itc.) to them.
The Teutonic word for iron is, however, only found in the
western languages of the Finnic family, as was also the case with
a Teutonic name for gold (cf above, p. 178). To the east of the
linguistic area mentioned, another word for iron, as for gold, pre-
vails : Ostj. Jcarte, Wotj. Icort, Syrj. hort, Tscher. kirtne, Wog.
leer, Mer, which, like the East Finnic name for gold, can only be
explained if it is referred to the Iranian branch of language. Here;
0. Pers. kareta, N. Pers. kdrd, Buchar. gcird, Kurd, her, Osset. khard,
(fee, means "the iron knife," and it is easily understood that tribes
of wild barbarians might name the metal, which they had never
seen before, after the implement in which it was brought to their
notice, either for the first time or most commonly from Persia.
The word is known in Slavonic (Pol. kord, &c.) and Lithuanian
(kcirdas, Polish loan-word "sword;" cf K. Bruckner, o/j. cit., p. 202).
Between these currents from the east and from the west lies the
area of the Lithu-Slavonic languages with a common name for
iron, Lith. gelezis, Lett, dzelse, Pruss. gel so, O.S. zelezo. We have
already (above, p. 195) pronounced in favour of connecting these
words with the Greek -^aXKO's. The fundamental meaning of the
northern words would then have been " copper," a meaning which,
as we may well conjecture, passed into that of iron under the
influence of the trade with the Black Sea, as the Greek word,
owing to relations with the Phenicians, has taken the meaning of
bronze (above, p. 196).
Finally, I have to mention in Europe a name for iron which is
as interesting as it is obscure. It is the Albanian hek^ir, also ekur.
It is the only name for a metal common to all the dialects of this
language which is not obviously borrowed from abroad. The only
suggestion which perhaps could be put forward to explain this
obscure word would be — inasmuch as initial h in Albanian, as
Professor G. Meyer informs me, is not necessarily organic — to com-
pare the Armenian erkath, Georg. rkina, &c. (cf. above, p. 206).
The names for steel in the north ai*e, as might be expected,
relatively recent.
Nevertheless, the Teutonic languages have a name for steel
which recui's uniformly throughout all the dialects : O.H.G. stahal,
M.H.G. stahel, stachel, stdl, O.N. stdl, Eng. steel, which shows that
the art of hardening iron soon became known here. From the
Teutonic, loans were made by Lapponic (stalle by the side of terds,
teras : Lett, terauds) and by Slavonic (Russ. stall). A certain
STEEL. 2 I I
explanation for the Teutonic words is still wanting {*staklo : 0. I'r.
pami-staclani). O.H.G. stachila, stachulla ^'cuspis" {*staglo) has
been suggested.
But Slavonic was dependent for its names for steel not only on
the west but also on the east. Russ. hidatu, kc, is connected
with Asia Minoi", as we have already seen. Cf. further, Serv. hlik,
Alb. tselik, Turk, celik, Pers. calul; Kuss. harahigiJ, Dzagat. karuhVc;
finally, also, Pol. demeszeJc, "damascened iron," Serv. deviihkinja,
Turk, dimiski, N.G. hfjua-Ki (Damascus).
The widest expansion, however, is that of the Lat. acies
{ — nucleus) ferri, which in Middle Latin developed into aciare,
aciarium. From the latter are derived, on the one hand. It. acciajo,
Span, acero, 0. Port, aceiro, Fr. acier, Wal. otzel, Hung, atze/, South
and West Slav, oceli, ocel, and on the other, It. accicde, Yen. azzale,
O.H.G. ecchif, ecchel, &c. (N .S. jeklo) ; cf. Diez, £tym. Wurterb.\ p. 5.
The Lithuanian and Old Prussian ^)//e«rts, 2)f(t'i/nis, is compared
rightly by Fick ( Vergl. W.-, p. 803), with O.N. fleinn, " point, spear,"
A.S.Jidn, "arrow, missile."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORICAL ORDER OF COPPER, BRONZE, AND IRON.
Now that we have reviewed the considerable material afforded
by the Indo-Germanic names for copper, bronze, and iron, it may
be well to briefly put together the historical results which we
believe we have attained. They are : —
1. It seems probable that the two equations dyas-ces and lohd-
ravdus, which reach back to the vocabulary of the original people,
meant not iron or bronze but the pure, dark copper, which accord-
ingly was known to the original Indo-European people.
2. For deciding the sequence of the metals amongst the Indo-
Germanic peoples, it is worthy of notice that a series of ancient
names of copper gradually assumed the meaning of iron. This
applies to Sans, dyas, Zend ayanh : Lat. oes (to which probably
belongs also Celtic *is-arn = Goth, etsarn), to Sans, lohd, first
"copper" then "iron," to O.N. ra-wcfi : Lat. rattdtis, to Lith.
gelezls : G. )(aXK6<;.*
3. It cannot be doubted that in Greek -^uXko?, which meant
first "copper," and then under Phenician influence bronze, is
historically prior to ctiStjpos. In contrast with the state of things
in the north it is to be specially observed that Greek proper names,
both of places and persons, are frequently formed from the word
for copper (bronze), but scarcely ever from that for iron.
4. In the north of Europe the Teutons obtained their name
for iron through the Celts, the West Finns through the Teutons,
the East Finns from Iranian soil, which suggests the conclusion
that the knowledge of iron spread in the one case from west to
east, in the other from south-east to north-west. The circumstance
that, amongst Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, proper names are formed
principally, perhaps exclusively, fi'om the names for iron, permits
of the conjecture that it was this metal which first exercised an
important influence on the culture of the north. In any case,
those who assume immense bronze industries before iron in the
north of our quarter of the globe must attempt an explanation of
this circumstance.
* The same relation would exist in Lat. fcrnim : A.S. braes {*bhrs- ?), if
Lottuer's equation {cf. above, p. 207, note) Ls correct.
A BRONZE AGE. 213
5. A primeval centre of diffusion for bronze seems to have
existed in the home of the civilised Sumero-Accadian people.
F'rom this neighbouring Semitic centre of civilisation the south of
Europe obtained its acquaintance with bronze. As regards the
north, neither language nor tradition gives a direct indication
tending to solve the question whether the numerous and skilfully
wrought articles of bronze found on this side of the Alps came
from a native bronze industry which then would be antecedent to
an iron industry, or wliether they are due to ancient traffic with
the civilised countries of the south, with Etruria, Italy, Greece,
Thrace. On general grounds, however, and especially because of
the inconsistency which exists between the assumption of a highly
developed Bronze Age amongst the northern peoples, and the low
stage of culture which is incontestably demonstrated to have pre-
vailed amongst them, I conclude in favour of the views repre-
sented by Lindenschmit {Archiv f. Anthropologie, viii. 161, jf.) :
" The bronzes, which on this side of the Alps make their sudden
appearance, completely developed in form and workmanship, can
from their whole character only be regai-ded as the products of a
highly developed industry transmitted by traffic, and that from
the south, from the littoral of the Mediterranean, particulai'ly from
Italy, whence a much more vivifying transmission of ancient
culture to the north can be traced than from the east, from the
countries bordering on the Black Sea." ....
" The use of bronzes in itself, in connection with the isolated
primitive attempts to imitate them, cannot have exercised any
noticeable influence on the development of the north, least of all
such as deserves the term ' Bronze Age ' even in the remotest
degree" (c/. further, Handhuch d. Deutschen Alter tumskumle, i.
54). "The so-called bronze period appears then to have been
nothing but a time of active commercial and industrial intercourse
between the Mediterranean peoples and the north. The products
carried north show no indication whatever either that they were
tlie outcome of the native capacity of the Celto-Teutons — are
related with earlier native creations — -or that they were developed
or grew into anything subsequent. They betoken a state of
culture so foreign and so much superior to the production alike of
the Stone Age which preceded, and of the Iron Age which followed,
tliat they cannot possibly, in any way whatever, be regarded as
evidence that the natives themselves worked the metal, as proving
the existence of a natural period of transition from a national
culture of an early date to one of a later." *
6. Important points await explanation at the hands both of
archajologists and philologists. I may mention the Persian names
for iron, Afgh. ospanah, &c., the G. o-tST/pos, Celtic urntB, O.H.G. aruz,
<fec., the etymology of which still requires solving.
* The opposition to Lindenschniit's point of view is reprosenteil in the
works of Sophus Miiller, J. Undset, 0. Rygh, Hildebranil, and others.
CHAPTER IX.
TIN AND LEAD.*
Archaeological research as to the times at which lead and tin
made their appearance, relatively to each other and to the other
metals, has not yet attained to a decisive result. Whereas, pi-e-
viously it was believed that tin, which is found in the Swiss lake-
dwellings, in Hallstadt {cf. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 20), &c.,
belonged to the most ancient of metals, and that lead made its
first appearance along with silver in the so-called Ii'on Age {cf.
Lubbock, 0/). cit., p. 15), this view has now been shown, particu-
larly by Schliemann's excavations, to be altogether untenable. In
Hissarlik lead is found in all five prehistoric towns, tin in none.
In Mycenae, where, as is well known, the Bronze Age prevails
almost exclusively, lead was discovered in large quantities also
{cf. Schliemann's Mycenes, p. 145).
In ancient enumerations of metals, lead uniformly concludes the
established succession. Tin, which is mentioned at the end for the
first time by the Hebrews {cf. Numbers xxxi. 22 : " Howbeit the
gold and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin. and the lead, every-
thing that may abide the fire," &c.), on the other hand, occurs as
a rule in the Assyi'ian-Accadian inscriptions between silver and
bronze, at any rate before iron {cf. Lenormant, Trcmsactions of the
Soc. of Bibl. Arch., v. pp. 337, 345). This points to the great
antiquity of tin in Mesopotamia {cf. above, p. 192).
The tradition of nearly all civilised peoples is acquainted from
the very beginning with two separate expressions for tin and lead.
The Bible has 'uferet and h{e)dU(J), the Veda sfsa and f7ripu, the
Avesta sru {cf. Justi, Handw., p. 308) and aonya (?),t Homer
fx6XvPo<i and Ka(ro-LT€po<;, Latin 2>lumbum and stannum, though it
* Cf. the extremely learned and copious article "Zin" in Schade's Altdeutschem
JVortcrbuch^, 1872-82, in which a detailed picture of the primeval trade in tin
is given. Although I refer the reader who wishes for further information on
the subject to this work, which as regards the facts of the subject is funda-
mental, I must add that the philological comparisons made by Schade,
frequently differing from the account given above, are not to be accepted with
the same confidence; cf. of late, Bllimner, Terminologie u. Technologie, iv.
81, ff., and K. B. Hofmann, Das Bid bei den Volkeni des Altcrtimis, Berlin,
1885 (Virchow— Holtzendorff).
t Cf. above, p. 194, note, and also Lagarde, Armen. Stud., p. 12.
TIN AND LEAD CONFUSED. 21 5
may be a matter of doubt whether these expressions always really
meant what we understand at the present day by tin and lead in
the scientific sense {cf. Kopp, Geschichte der Chcmie, iv. p. 125, /".).
A remarkable exception is afforded, as we have already mentioned,
by the Egyptian inscriptions, in which Lepsius {cf., op. cit, p.
114) has been able to find no special word for tin, by the side
of the teht, tehti, tehtu (superscribed on bricks of lead), which, as
Coptic would indicate, meant "lead." It frequently happens, how-
ever, that one and the same word in two languages means now
one metal, now the othei*. Thus, in Accadian-Assyrian, anna-
annahi undoubtedly means tin {cf. above, p. 272), whereas this very
word in the Hebrew dndk has taken the meaning of "lead." The
relation of Slav, olovo, " lead " : Lith. alwas, &c., is the same.
It not uncommonly happens that languages, especially of un-
civilised peoples, can only show one word for both metals, as
Mordv. ki'va, Tscher. vulna, Syrj. ezis (also silver), Wotj. ii-:ved (also
silver). A similar state of things is indicated by Lat. 2)luinbum
nigrum, "lead," and. 2ilV'Vihum aUnim, "tin."
The coincidence in the linguistic designations for these two
metals, which chemically are so utterly different from each other,
may be due to their resemblance in colour and appearance, as also
to the limited extent of the use to which they were put. At any
rate, it was only when metallurgical knowledge had made consider-
able advance that lead and tin were distinguished by different
names.
However, as regards the linguistic character of the names for
lead and tin, it is that of travelled words, which have journeyed
far and wide over land and sea ; and no one, not even Pictet, has
ventured to claim that they are Indo-Germanic in their origin. It
is, however, very difficult, perhaps impossible, to ascertain the
starting-point of these words, important as they are for the history
of culture, with certainty, and I must express a fear at the outset
that we shall not do much more than establish some individual
data, and group together some words which are pretty certainly
related. But it is a duty to make this remark, as against the
utterly unscientific use which men like Pictet, Lenormant, and
many others, have made of the words in question, making them
pi-ove anything they like.
The most ancient term for tin that we come across iu Europe
is, as is well known, the Homeric Kacro-trc/jos, which is confined to
the Iliad, and the translation of wliich as tin {pluvihum allnim) is
guaranteed by the express testimony of Pliny {Hist. Nat., xxxiv.
16, 47).* Ornamentations for cuirasses, shields, and waggons are
made of tin. Even greaves of tin are mentioned, but they were
perhaps only covered with tin. It has the epithet eavo'?, which,
according to Curtius {Grundziige^, p. 376), belongs to the root ves,
and means "enveloping." Even Herodotus (iii. 115) knows that
* "Sequitur natura plumbi, cuius duo ffcncra, nigrum atque candidum.
Album habuit auctoritatem et Iliacis teniporibus, teste Homero, cassiteruiu ab
illo dictum."
2l6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
KaaraiTepo? (like to yjXf.KTpov) comes from the farthest point in the
west to which his knowledge extends, that is from the Kao-o-iTcptSe?,
to Greece. But he is not clear as to the actual position of the
islands, and it was the Romans who first applied the name Cassi-
terides to the Scilly Isles, which contain no mines whatever (c/.
Kiepert, Lehrh. d. cdten Geogr., p. 328). Tin was rather ob-
tained from the remotest antiquity to the present day from the
south-west corners of Cornwall, England, where Caesar (i>. G., v. 12)
is acquainted with it.* Shortly after him, Diodorus (v. 22) gives a
detailed descriptioii of the mining of tin in this region, and of its
transport right across Gaul to Massilia and Narbo {cf. 0. Schade,
Altd. Wiirterhtich, p. 1272). Doubtless, the most ancient traders
between Briton and Hellas were the Phenicians. This appears not
only from general considerations but from the definite statement
of Pliny (vii. .56, 57): "Plumbum ex Cassiteride insula primus
adportavit Midacritus." Midacritus, of course, is the Phenician
Melkart, G. 'HpaKA^s, who accompanied the Phenicians on their
sea-voyages as their patron god. Again, the Greek Kao-crtVepos,
which has no etymology in Greek, may be compared with the
Semitic names for tin, Assyr. kdsazatirra, Accad. id-kasduru [cf.
Lenormant, op. cit., p. 337). The Greek word then found its way
on the one hand into the Slavonic languages, O.S. hositern, N.S.
Jcositer, Croat, hositar, Serv. kositer, and Wallachian kositoriu, and
on the other hand, obviously in the train of Alexander the Great's
conquests, into Sanskrit (kastira ; cf. P. W., ii. p. 192). f The
Arabian word (kazdir) borrowed from the Greek has travelled
widely in Africa as kesdir.
If we put this together with the extreme antiquity, referred
to above, of the manufacture of bronze in Mesopotamia (cf. above,
p. 192), it is most probable that Kaa-a-Lrepo'; is a purely Accadian-
Assyrian word which was transferred by the Phenicians to the
output of the rich tin-mines they discovered in the west of
Eui'ope.
Nevertheless, it would be quite possible for /cacrcrtTepos to be
genuinely Hellenic, and to be connected with Sans, kansd, kdmya
(cf. vLcra-oixai from *vt-vcr-JofjLaL), " metal vessel," " metal," " brass "
(B. Ji.). But, then, what was the original meaning of this equation ?
and how is the peculiar suffix -repos of the Greek to be explained ?
If the Greek Kao-o-tVepos gives rise to a number of riddles,
numerous controversies also are attached to the Homeric p.oAi/5os
(//., xi. 237) and fxakv/SSos (in [MoXv/SSaLvr] ; II., xxiv. 80), " lead."
To begin with, we ought to renounce the useless attempt to con-
nect G. p,oAi;/5os with the 'L?Lt.2)lumhum by any common fundamental
form such as *?7iluva (Curtius, Grdz.^, p. 370) or "^mhdjo (Fick,
Worterb., ii.^ 200). A loan by the Latin from the Greek, again
(*yu.Aii/3os, *iJLXvj3o<i = plumbum from */3At;/3os, Rhod. Trepi^oAt/Jwo-ai :
* "Nascitur ibi plumbum album in Mediterraneis regionibus, in maritimis
fenum, sed ejus exigua est copia, sere utuntur importato."
t In the Pcripl. maris erythr., ed. Fabricius, c. 19, Kaa-aiTepos is expressly
mentioned as an article imported into India.
LEAD IN GREEK AND LATIN. 21/
fx.6\.v/3o'?), which I formerly thought possible, can scarcely be
entertained.
If one thinks of the uncertainty of the final syllables of the
Greek word (/^oAt/Sos, /xoXv^o-;, /xoAii/SSos), one becomes suspicious of
its Greek origin. Further, before the Greeks worked the lead-
glance of the Laurion Mountain (Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 89, note) they
were dependent on importation for the metal. The place whence
that first suggests itself is Spain with its abundant lead. Does
fx6Xv(3o<; (Mod. G. fjioXv/Si) conceal an Iberian word in a Phenician
dress, e.g., the name of the country Medu-hriga in Lusitania
{mecht = fjioXv), the inhabitants of which are expressly called
Plumbarii (Pliny, iv. 21,35)1 A town, MoAv/SStV?/, too, is mentioned
in the district of the Mastarnians, near the Pillars of Hercules.*
But we do not possess any indication, even remotely certain, of
the origin of [xoXv^o^.
We can see somewhat more clearly in the case of Lat. 2jluvihu')n,
which also recurs in the Romance languages and Albanian, only we
have to look in a totally different direction. For most of their
lead, which they used especially for water-pipes, the Romans
depended essentially on Spain, where indeed there were Cartha-
ginian lead-mines, Gaul and Britain. Traffic in this metal was
done in the shape of bars or cakes, such as are commonly foiuid
in France, England, and Spain. They are marked with stamps
and inscriptions, such as the name of the Roman emperor, kc,
to indicate that they come from the state mines {cf. Hofmann, loc.
cit., p. 10; Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 90,/.). Now^, what if the name of
the shape in which the lead came, gradually came to be applied
in Latin to the lead itself? Such things do occur in the history
of trade. Thus in Roumanian, for instance, (/ra?ia, " kernel " =
" pomegranate," cannella, " little stalk " = " cinnamon " (Dietz, p.
64), &c. Now the Lat. plumbum (*plomfo) corresponds well
enough to G. irXivOos, " bai'," " brick," if one decides to refer the
word to a fundamental form *plentho, or to regard Ai as represent-
ing a sonant liquid {cf. G. Meyer, Griech. Gr."^, p. 66,/., p. 35).
The neuter gender of Lat. plumhuin is explained by the analogy
of the names of the other metals in Latin.
Tin is called in Lat. stannum ; though the word probably did
not get this meaning before the fourth century a.d., and previously
indicated various alloys of lead {cf. Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie,
iv. 127; Bliimner, loc. cit, p. 81, note 6). The original form
was not stannum, but stagmim, stagneus, stagnattis, as is indicated
by the Romance words : It. stagno, Sp. esta/lo, Fr. etaiii {cf. Diez,
Et. W.\ p. 306).
The derivation is as yet obscure, in spite of 0. Keller {Bnrsians
Jahreahericht, xli. 370) who thinks of tt/kw, " melt " (root stdk ?).
But the Lat. stag-nu-in might quite well go back to a root stagh,
and then be connected through the G. arac^-vXrj, "i)lumb-linc," with
the " plummet," " plummet " (Homeric). From Italy stannum in
the sense of " tin " spread to the Celtic languages : Ir. staii,
* In Bas([ue leiul is called berun, Icruncz, "ofU-ad."
2.1 8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
stain, sdan, Arem, stean, steti, stin, Corn, stean, Cymr. pstoen (cf.
Manners and Ciisto7ns, i. ccccix.). These loan-words have obviously
thrust the native expression cred* gen. creda, cred-iimce, "bronze "
(cf. above, p. 199), which, as we have said, is unfortunately still
quite obscure, into the back ground.
For the rest, in Italy the Etruscans at least, who play such
an important part in the history of the bronze industry [cf. above,
p. 21.3), were not dependent for tin solely on imports, since in
the limestone quarries at Populonia, which show traces of ancient
workings, besides copper, tin has been found (W. Deecke, Etrusker,
ii. 255).
In the north of Europe the Celts and Teutons are united by a
common term for lead: M.H.G. lot, Dutch lood, H.G. ledd = h:.
luaide ('*latcdo). As Gaul is rich in lead (Bliimner, loc. cit., p. 90),
and the Gauls applied themselves to mining earlier than the
Teutons, we have here, as in the case of iron, to do with an early-
loan effected by the Teutons, only here we have not the linguistic
evidence to prove it,
Complete obscurity, on the other hand, enshrouds a second
Teutonic term for lead : O.H.G. hliu, hliuwes, O.N. My (*bleivo),
which has found its way into the West Finnic languages (Finn.
2^ly'>jy-, lyyy, Lapp, hlijo), which have no native names whatever
for tin and lead. In any case Lat. phimhum (Corssen) and N.H.G.
blase (Schade) having no connection here must be put aside.
Neither has the Teutonic term for tin yet been satisfactorily
explained : O.N. and A.S. tin, O.H.G. zin, which again has spread to
the Polish {cyna) and Lithuanian [clnas), and from the north to
most West Finnic tongues (tinna). Least objectionable still is it to
connect the Teutonic word with O.N. teinn, Goth, tains, A.S. tan,
O.H.G. zein, "twig," "thin metal rod" (Fick, Vergl. W., iii.^ 121),
in which form the Teutons may first have made its acquaintance
at the hands of traders ((•/'. above, p. 217).
A third long chain of words is : It. peltro. Span, and Portug.
peltre, 0. Fr. peautre, Dutch peauter, Eng. pewter, 0. Ir. peatar,
(also with s : Eng. spelter, Dutch spialter, H.G. spiauter, 0. Fr.
espeatitre).
According to the laws of the Romance languages this stock of
words comes from Italy, but its actual origin is unknown (cf. Diez,
Mym. Worterh.'^, p. 240).
Finally, total obscurity reigns over the case as regards the
Lithu-Slavonic languages, wdiere for lead the expressions O.S.
olovo (by the side of Lith. alwas [Livonic a/w], O. Pr. ahvis, " tin ")
and Mod. SI. svinec, Russ. svinecit, ifcc. (Lith. szwlnas, Lett, srvins
[Liv. svitia]), occur. Probably in both cases the Lithuanian forms
are loans from the Slavonic (Bruckner, Fremdworter, pp. 67, 144).
The former {olovo) seems to recur in Mag. olom {6n, " tin "), the
latter in Gipsy stoinzi.
* Creidne is the oldest proper name of a smith (cerd) in Ireland, which seems
to speak in favour of the Irishman's acquaintance with the cred in ancient
times (Sullivan, Maniiers and Customs, ii. 210).
TIN AND LEAD IN ASIA MINOR. 219
In this connection it is noteworthy that the Esthonian term sea-
tina, "swine-tin," originates fi'om a confusion of Kuss. svinecu and
O.S. svinija, "swine." As to the East Finnic hxnguages, we may
remark that the name for lead is convertible not only with that of
tin but also with that of silver : silver occurs commonly enough in
lead ore. Thus Syrj. ezis, " silver" and "lead," Wotj. azves, "silver,"
nzves, "lead and tin," slid nzves plumlnun nigrum, tiidi uzces,
phimhum album (cf. above, p. 215). Throughout, however, we see
how recent in the extreme north acquaintance with the metals is.
Turning now to Asia Minor, we content ourselves with putting
together the related words, placing the Indo-Germanic languages
first (cf. Pott, Zeitschrift filr die Kunde des Morgenlandes, iv. pp.
260, 261) :
1. Armen. anag — Hebr. andk, Assyr, anaku, Arab, amilc, Syr.
anchd, ^thiop. nuk, "tin" {cf. above, p. 215).
2. Zend sru, N. Pers. s^lruh {cf. Justi, Handiv., p. 308), Buchar.
ssurh, Afgh. surp — Arab, usrub {cf Klaproth, Asia Polygl., p. 57),
" lead."
3. (Hindi rdnga, Sans, ranga*), Buchar. arsis, N. Pei'S. arziz,
Armen. a)'cic, Zig. arczicz, (cf Pott, Zigeuner, ii. p. 58), Kurd, resas,
erssas, rTisas {Jour, of the American Or. Society/, x. p. 150) — Arab.
razaz, "tin and lead."
4. Osset. kala, Kurd, kalaj, Hindost. Icelley, N. Pers. halay,
Pars, kaldjin {Z. d. M. G., xxxvi. p. 61), N.G. xaAat, Alban. kaldj
— Arab, q^alay, Turk, kcday, Tat. ckalai, Tscher. galai, Georg.
kale, kalai. The most widely distributed word in the Orient for
"tin"(c^: Klaproth, ^s^a Polygl, pp. 97, 122; Miklosich, Tiirk.
Elem., p. 87). Its origin is to be looked for in the name of the
town Qualah in Malacca, the principal mart for tin in the Middle
Ages (Tomaschek, L. f. 0. Phil., i. 125). In the ninth century it
was " a rendezvous for caravans trading from East and West Asia "
(Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, i. 37). From now on the
great stores of tin in Further India seem to make their appearance
for the first time in the history of the world.
5. Osset. isdi (Klaproth, p. 89) — Cagat. zes, Alt. jes, Mong. dzes
{cf Vambery, Primitive Ctdtur., p. 175), "lead."
6. Gipsy sjsclia. Sans, sisa, " lead."
7. Kurd, kurguschum, Afg. kourghdchem, Osm. Bulg. kursum,
Alb. korhim, M.G. KOvpa-ov/jiL — k^lrhm, Cag. kurgasun, Alt. korgozin,
^long. chorgholtsin, "lead" {cf. Vambery, O]). cit., p. 175, and
Miklosich, Tiirk. Elem., p. 101).
8. Hindustani vudiva, Gipsy moUiivo, (Pott, Et. F., i. ^ 113, and
Zigeuner, ii. 456), Mod. G. \x.o\v^vi%
Varioiis Sanskrit words for lead and tin, cf. Pott, Etijm. Fnrsch.,
ii. p. 414,/., and R. Garbe, Die iiulische Mineralien, pp. 36, 37. A
• According to Garbe {Die ind. Mineralien, p. 37, note 1), the Sans, ranga,
which usually means "colour," may po.ssible "under the influence of the
Bengal alphabet" come from ranga, " Bengalese "= " tin." According to
this, tin was imported into Hither India, which was poor in the metal, fronx
Bengal.
220 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
later name for lead yavaneshfu ("treasured by the Yavana
lonians ") is interesting.
This concludes the series of the six metals known to more remote
antiquity. To these was gradually added in the fourth and third
century the knowledge of zinc and quicksilver. The former, first
mentioned in the passage of Pseudo-Aristotle quoted above {cf. p.
201), was designated by the Tiomans by the words cadmea, cadmia,
borrowed from the G. KaSyucta, KaSfita, and is perpetuated in the
Romance language, Span. Port, calamina, Fr. calaviine {cf. 0.
Weise, Griediuche W. im Lateinischen, pp. 154, 365). The German
zink, which appears for the first time in the fifteenth century {cf.
Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, p. iv. p. 116), is obscui'e ; the O.H.G.
zinco ("a white speck in the eye") has been suggested {cf. 0.
Schade, Altd. Wurterb., s.v., zinke).
Quicksilver is first mentioned by Theophrastus as ^^^tos apyupo?,
"liquid silver" {cf. Kopp, op. cit., p. 172). The expression
vSpdpyvpo's for the quicksilver artificially prepared from cinnabar
{cinncdjari = KivvafBapi) appears later. The Romans also dis-
tinguished between argentwn vivum and liydrargurus, "silver
water." Both words in Latin then became the models for most
names for quicksilver in the languages of Europe and Asia Minor
{cf Pott, Z. f, d. Kxmde des M., iv. p. 263). But to trace the
subject further is not part of the object of our work.
CHAPTER X.
AXCIENT IXDO-EUROPEAN XAMES OF WEAPONS.
Thus far we have endeavoured to ascertain how far back an
acquaintance with metals goes in the history of the Indo-Germanic
peoples, and have obtained the result that copper alone was
known to the primitive period. We may now approach the
question — What importance had this metal for the culture of the
primitive age 1 And, since the metallurgic powers of a people are
first utilised for the manufacture of weapons, we hope that a
review of the most important ancient Indo-Germanic names for
weapons will give us safe ground for deciding this question.
" What weapons were known in the primitive period 1 " and " What
light is cast on the nature of ancient Indo-Germanic weapons by
their names?" These are the two main points of view by which
we shall guide ourselves in the following statement.
A comparison of the Hindu-Persian languages, to begin with,
shows the existence in this group of a not inconsiderable number
of coramon names of weapons. They ai*e : —
( 1 ) Bow Sans, dhdnvan = Zend thanvare (X).
(2) Bowstring. . Sans, jya = Zend ^ya (/?tos) ; c/. also Sans.
sncivaii = Zend sndvare (vevpov).
(3) Arrow Sans, ishu =Zend ishu (los).
(4) Weapon.... Sans. mc/Aar = Zend vadare.
(5) Sling Sans, d^an = Zend ascm (a/cwv).
(6) Spear Sans, rshti =Zend arskti, 0. Pers. arshtis.
(J) Pike Sans, ^iila = Zendsilra,0.'Pers.crvpar fjiaxaipa<:,
Hesych.
(8) Sword Sans, asi = 0. Pers. ahi {ahifrashtdd, "punish-
ment with the sword " ?).
(9) Knife Sans. ^V^a =Zei\d kareta.
(10) Axe Sans, ipy'a.s =Zend taezlia, and Sans, takshani
= Zend tas/ia.
(11) Club Sans, vdjra =Zend vazra.
A glance at these equations shows that in the way of purely
defensive armour there is no correspondence. It is also remark-
able that in the Rigveda the defence of the shield does not j'et
seem to be known, or at any rate is not mentioned, and is only
222 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
rarely employed* in the Avesta (spdra = Mod. Pers. sipar (?) ; cf. W.
Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 444). Again, the names for " cuirass "
differ. The Vedic vdrman still has in the Avesta the perfectly
general meaning of " covering, defence " {e.g., the body as the
covering of the soul). Old Iranian expressions are vdrethman,
vairi (from the same root as vdrman), zrddha, kuiris. Of these
zrddha, Parsi zreh, N. Pers. zirah, Kurd, ziri, zirkh, &c., if
correctly derived from the root, zrad, "to clank " = Sans, hrdd,
seems to point direct to the employment of metal. Zrddha is
obviously the iron coat of mail or scales which the Persians wore
on their invasions of Greece (Ki^wi^as ^^etptSwroiJS ttoikiXous ActtiSos
(riSr]pei]<i oif/Lv lxOvouBeo<;, Hdt., vii. 61). Nor is a common word
for helmet (the side pieces of which, however, gipra, are mentioned
in the Rigveda) forthcoming. The Sanskrit expressions Qirastrdna,
girastra, gtraska, girsharaksha, &c. : giras and gtrshdn, "head,"
like Zend sdravdra : sdra, "head," are apparently of recent origin.
Zend khaodha, " helmet," Pehl. khodh, N. Pers. khoi, Osset. khode,
Armen. koyr, which is common to the Iranian languages, meant
originally the pointed Iranian cap as is shown by the Old Persian
name for a portion of the Scyths, Qaka Tigrakhaudd, "Pointed-
Caps," and from Hdt. (vii. 64) : Sa/cat 8e ot 'ZKvBai Trept ^jikv t-^o-l
KecjiaXf^cn KVpl3a(7La<; es o^v airrjyjxiva's opOa? el^ov Tre-mqyvia^ {cf.
Hiibschmann, .^. (i. M. G., xxxvi. p. 133; Spiegel, Keilinschr.^,
p. 221 ; Tomaschek, Central Asiat. Stud., ii. p. 76). In contrast
to this tiara worn by the infantry, the Persian cavalry in the
Persian wars wore bronze and iron helmets (Hdt., vii. 61 and
84) ; they are also mentioned in the Avesta {ayokhaodha). Zend
rdnajKina, " leg-protectors " = " greaves " is not ancient.
In the way of weapons of offence the first rank in the equipment
of a Vedic warrior is taken by the bow.t It is therefore praised
with enthusiam by ancient singers {cf. Rigv., vi. 65. 1 and 2) :
" Like to the thunderstorm is it when the warrior rushes into the
midst of the fray. May the broad cuirass protect thy body ;
march on to victory unscathed. May the bow bring us spoils and
oxen, may the bow be victorious in the heat of the fight ; the
bow fills the foe with terrible fear, may tlue bow give us victory
over the world."
The bow, like the bow-string, has, as we have already seen,
identical names in Sanskrit and Persian, But even with the
arrow differences begin. In the Rigveda two kinds of arrow, an
older and a more recent, are distinguished : " That which is of
stag-horn and is besmeared with poison, and that the mouth of
which is bronze " {dldktd yd rurugtrshny dtho ydsyd dyo mukhavi,
* The Sans. (non-Vedic) spTiara, spTiaraha, "shield," according to T. Noldeke
— Ucbercin militdrischesFremduiortpersischen Ursprungs im Sanskrit {Sitzimgsb.
d. Ak. d. W. zu Berlin, 1888, ii. 1109) — is a loan, though of tolerably ancient
date, from Mod. Pers. sipar.
+ Sans, dhdnvan. Just as O.N. dlmr, the "bow of elm-wood," yr, that
"of yew," G. ro^ou, perhaps = Lat. taxus, so Sans, dhdnvan, the "bow of fir"
(=O.H.G. tanna, Dutch o?e?i, *dhen-ven).
ARROW, SLING, AND CLUB. 223
Ilig-v., vi. 75. 15; cf. Zimmcr, Altind. Lehen, p. 299), which hitter
kind the Hindus carried at the time of the Persian wars : 'IvSoi —
To^a Kaka.fj.iva ei^ov Kol otcTTOus KaXafji.Lvov<i, ctti 8e crtSr^pos r/v (Hdt.,
vii. G6). Linguistic agreement is exhibited by the two peoples in
only one term for arrow, that is Sans. is/m = Zend isku (lo?),
Pamir D. rvasd, ivesii, ivisd (Toraaschek, p. G9), which, of course,
originally designated the older sort {cf. Sans. khurduidJut, "poisoned
arrow "). The other Hindu and Persian names for arrow, cdrt,
cdrya, hdna : Zend tighri, N. Pers., &c., tir (cf. Justi, I/and w., and
P. de Lagarde, G'es. Abh., p. 201), ayoaghra, have nothing to do with
one another. There is, however, yet one Iranian term for arrow
which deserves special notice, that is asti, literally " bone "
(oo-Tc'ov, OS), as Pausanias expressly states of the Sarmatse, (i. 21.5):
oo-T€iVas {cf. Zend asti) aKtSas eVt rots otcTTOis and cVt rots hopaai
al)(jxa<; oo-reiVas am (r&jpov (f>opovai* According to Herodotus,
Persians, Medes, and Scyths came to the fight armed with bow
and arrow.
In addition to bows and arrows, there was the sling-stone in the
way of missiles {cf. further, Ved. ddri by the side of agan). This
was used by the Hindu-Persian heroes quite as much as by those
of Homer, in the times of which we have knowledge. It was
either launched by the mere strength of the ai'm {asdno aremo-
shuta, " sling-stone hurled by the arm ") or by means of artificially
constructed slings (Zend frcidakshana ; cf. W. Geiger, Ostiran. Cul-
tur, p. 446). Hand to hand fighting was begun by means of the
lance, with which the Hindu-Persian period was familiar (Vedic
rshfi, gdru, &c., Zend by the side of arshti - Sans, rshti, sura =
Sans, giild, and also dduru {86pv), dru, anhva, arezazhi.f
After what has been said about the arrow, it is clear that in the
case of the lance there is no question of anything but a horn or
stone head, as we cannot imagine that any people used metal for
the latter without also using it for the former.
The primeval and dreaded weapon for fighting at close quarters
among the Hindus and Iranians is the club {vdjra = vazra, vddhar
= vadare), which might be used for throwing or for hitting. It
is with the club that Indra performs his heroic exploits, and that
the "club-bearer" {vajrm, vdjrahdhu, vdjrahasta) smites the monster
vrtrd. In the Avesta also the gods, especially Mithra, appear
armed with it. Keresdspa, the Iranian hero of prehistoric times,
has the epithet gadhavara, " club-bearer " {cf. W. Geiger, op. ctt,
p. 444,/.), and even in Firdusi the hero carries his gurz ( = vazra)
at his side (cf. P. de Lagarde, Ges. AOL, p. 203).
* In the north-east of Europe, which was exposed to the indiicnce of Iran,
numerous hone iirrow-lieads have been found {Mittcil. d. JFicncr Anthrup.
Ges., ix. 75), whereas in the west of our quarter of the globe flint prevails.
The form also of the two species is quite dillereiit.
Metal arrow-heads, especially those of bronze, like tlie bone missiles and
sling-weapons of the Paheolithic age, frequently display arrangements for the
reception of poison (communicated by M. JIuch).
t According to W. Geiger {Os<i>rt?L CuUHr,\>. 46) aresas/w, " the conqueror in
the tight," denotes not the lance but the bow.
224 • PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
The sword also must be ascribed to the primitive Hindu-Persian
period, because of the equation Sans. asi. = 0. Pers. ahi (Lat. ensis),
and even to the Indo-Germanic period because of Lat. e7isis andG. aop.
But everything indicates that originally this word meant nothing
more than "fighting-knife," as Bohtlingk and Roth assume for
the Sanskrit word. In the frequently quoted passage of Herodotus
(vii. 61,/.), where the historian holds a review of the troops of
nearly all Asia and Africa, none of the peoples is mentioned as
carrying ^Lcjirj, it is always ey;)(€tpi8ia, " short knives." The Persians
in particular wear cy;)(eipt8ta in the girdle at the right side.
Whether the Scytho-Persian dKtvaK7j9 (Hdt., iii. 118, 128; iv. 62;
vii. 54) is only the Persian name for this iy^upC^Lov, or means
something more, cannot be made out. In the same way the Sans.
asi (0. Pers. ahi) is undoubtedly identical with the ancient
Ii'anian expression hareta ( = Sans. hrti), which can be used "of
the surgical knife of the physician as well as of the dagger" (c/.
W. Geiger, op. cit., p. 449). The Jcareta is made of bronze — on one
occasion ayanh actually = kareta — and is doubled-edged. As the
Iranians made the acquaintance of iron at an early period {cf.
above, p. 203), this metal also may have soon come to be employed.
At any rate, the wide distribution of the Iranian word (N. Pers.
kdrd, Kurd, ker, Osset. khard, Pamir Dialects ced, did, cit ;
Tomaschek, p. 69) in the north, partly in the meaning of "sword"
(O.S. koriida, N. Slav, korda, Croat, korda, Serv. korda, corda,
Lith. kdrdas, Pol. kord, Alb. kordil, Magyar kard, Macedo-Romun
KodpvTa), partly in the sense of iron (cf. above, p. 210), shows
quite clearly that the dagger must have been the principal weapon
of the Iranian tribes.
Finally, the axe, the battle-axe, is a weapon beloved by the
Hindu-Persian peoples for close fighting. In the Vedas it is called
svddhiti, paragii, the genuine Scytho-Persian expression is o-ayapts,
a word which Herodotus (ii. 61) translates as d^tViy, "axe." The
attempt sometimes made to connect this word with O.S. sekyra,
sekyra, which is primevally related with Lat. sec-are, sec-uris, is
phonetically impossible. On the other hand, another name for axe
has certainly travelled north from Iranian territory to the Slavs
and Finns. Pers. tabar, tabr, Baluci toivdr, Pamir D. tipdr, recurs
not only in nearly all Slav languages (0. Russ. toporU, &c.;
Miklosich, Turk. Elem,., p. 1), but also in Hungar. topor, Tscher.
tavdr, &c. (Ahlqvist, p. 30).
According to Tomaschek [Central Asiat. Stud., ii. p. 67), Mordv.
uzere, uzyr, " axe," Liv. vazdr, Esth. wazar, &c., are derived from
Iranian dialects (Wakhi wagak, &c., " axe, bored iron ").
Again, the Armenians appear as a rule to be dependent on
Persia for the names of their weapons (cf. zen, " weapon " = Zend
zaena, zrah, "cuirass" = Zend zrddha, Mod. Pers. zirah, salaiiart,
" helmet " = Zend sdravdra, Syr. sanvartd, tapar, " axe " = N. Pers.
tabar, teg, " lance " = N. Pers. tey, "sword," Zend taegha, aspar,
" shield" = N. Pers. sipar, soiir, "sword" = 0. Pers. crt-pas {cf. above,
p. 210), nizak, " spear" = N. Pers. ncza, daznak, " dagger" = N. Pers.
DIVERGEXCE OF GREEK AND LATIX. 22$
cUUna, jmtJcandaran, " quiver " = N. Pers. 2^(iikdn, "arrow " + ddrdn,
"arrow-holder." The Armenian net, "arrow," is originally con-
nected with Sans, nadd, "reed." Arm. wahan, "shield," may
perhaps be compared with Osset. vart'^, "shield," Zend verethra
\Z. d. D. M. G., xxxviii. 432). Arm. aleln, "bow," is obscure.
In southern Europe we are struck by the total divergence of
Greek and Latin as regards the names of weapons. Compare : —
Cuirass, $wpr)$ - lorica.
Helmet, Kopv;, -n-rjXrj^, Tpv(f>aX€La, Kvvlr], Kpdvo's — cassis, galea.
Greaves, Kvr]plhi<i — ocrece.
Shield, do-TTi?, o-ttKo?, Xai(rrjiov, " targe " — scutum, clypeus.
Lance, eyxo?) fyx^''?' Sdpv, ^vcttov, fxeXir] - hasta, veru, vericulum,
pihim, kc.
Sword, $i<fio^, (fxiayavov, aop - gladius, ensis.
Bow, To^ov, /Slo? - arms.
Arrow, oicttos, tos, /3e'Xos — sagitta, «fec.
Indeed, in the catalogues of Grteco-Italian words, with the
exception perhaps of aclis, -idis = ayKvXrj, dy/cuXts, "javelin-strap,
javelin," in the case of which borrowing is not out of the question
(cf. O. Weise, Griech. W. im Lat., p. 75 ; Saalfeld, Tensaurus,
p. 11), there is scarcely an equation which can correctly be placed
here. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable and striking to
observe {cf. above, p. 130) the far from inconsiderable number of
points in which Greek agrees with the Hindu-Persian languages.
They are mainly as follows : —
Bow, ^to? =Sans. jyrt, "bow-string."
Arrow, id? =Sans. ishu.
Lance-head, aOrjp = Sans, athari.
Javelin, ktjXov = Sans. ^alyd.
Javelin, Kecrrpos = Sans, gastrd.
Spear, hopv — Zend ddiiru.
Sling-stone, aKwv = Sans. d^an.
Axe, TTcAe/cus = Sans, parapi.
[Razor, ^p6v =Sans. kshurd.
Spindle, arpaKTos =Sans. tarkd.
Ploughshare, euXaVa, Lac. = Sans, vfka.^
Further, the Greeks and the Hindu-Persians have a common
word for the " fight " and fighting (Sans, yudh, Zend yud = va-fiivrj).
It is, however, manifest, that here too there is no common name
for any kind of defensive weapon. The Greek names for such a
weapon obviously originated on Greek soil, and display everywhere
traces of barbaric age.
The shield on the one hand is simply called " hide," " leather."
Thus (TUKO's (TroBr)v€Kes, afji4>ifipoTov) : Sans, tvac, "hide, skin ;" Horn.
/SoDs, f^wv is "steer "and "shield," pivds, "hide" and "shield."
Again, I am inclined to include here tlie yippov, which appears for
the first time in Herodotus, and indicates a light shield woven of
withies and covered with ox-hide, and to compare yeppov {* yepa-o)
p
226 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
with Sans, grsh-fi, "cattle," and O.H.G. cAwr.swia, " peltry-ware "
(of. kurschner). Finally, TriX-T-q, " shield," and TrdX-fxr], " shield "
(Hesych.), attach themselves withont difficulty to ■n-iXp.a, " sole,"
Lat. pellis, Goth. -Jill, or perhaps also to Sans, cm-man, " leather,"
" shield " (* qer-).
On the other hand, the shield is named after the wood of which
it is made. Thus Iria is the " willow " shield made of withies [cf.
iTc'a, " willow"). So, too, do-TTts, synonymous in Homer with crctKo?,
seems to me to belong to acnr-po-<;, acnr-pi-'?, "a kind of oak" {cf.
also acTKpa : O.N. askr, "ash"). The attempt made by Bezzen-
berger in his Beitrdge (i. 337) to connect G. do-7rts with Lith. ahydas
is scarcely tenable, ©upcos (: Ovpa), a " dooi'-shaped " shield, is
used by later writers, particularly in reference to Celtic armour.
The fundamental meaning is simply "door-board."
The cuirass, Hom. Owpri, seems to correspond to the Sans.
dhdraka, which, however, has still the general meaning of " recep-
tacle." Again, the names for the helmet are specifically Greek :
• Kopvs and Kpdi/os can scarcely be sej)arated from Kapa, " head " (see
above, p. 222) ; Kvvi-q (: kvwv) is originally a cap of dog-skin ;
though, even in Homer, we find Kwirj x'"-^'<VPV'^ *^^ TrdyxaXKO's by the
side of Kvvir] TavpecT], ktlSlt], diy^trj {cf. above, Zend ayokhaoclha).
Amongst weapons of offence, the club {poiraXov : pairt^, pwTre?,
Kopvvrj : Kpdvo'i, " coral-wood " 1) survives into Homeric times.
With it the Greek national hero Heracles performs his exploits.
Like the club of the Cyclops Polyphemus {Od., ix. 378), it was,
according to Theocritus (xxv. 208), made fi'om a wild olive (cAa'tVeoi/).
With it Orion hunts wild beasts in the nether world {Od., xi. 572),
and Ereuthalion, the club-bearer (/copw^xTjs), slays young Nestor (//.,
vii. 136); but it seems to have disappeared from Homeric battles.
Again, the bow (y8to?, to^ov = taxus, " yew ") no longer forms a
regular part of the armour of the Homeric hoplite. Still there
were peoples, like the Locri, of a lower stage of civilisation who
"had come against Troy relying on the bow and the well-
twisted flock of wool" (cf. II., xiii. 713,/.). How completely the
bow served as the principal weapon in prehistoric Greek times,
however, is best shown by the example of Heracles, who even in
Hades meets Odysseus : —
yvfxvbv ro^ov e^cov Kat ctti vevprjffiLv oicttov,
Setvov TraTrrati'OJi/, aid f^aXiovTi eoi/vW9.
{Od., xi. 607),
Again, the barbarous custom of besmearing the arrow-head with
poison (lovs xpUaOai) is once mentioned in the Odyssey (i. 260),
and perhaps the G. ot'o-ros, for which as yet no satisfactory
etymology has been found, may mean " the poisoned," sc. to?,
" arrow," being possibly derived from *o-rto--Tos (Lat. vims, Sans.
vishd, " poison " = *Fio--os, tos).* The stone {XlOos, x^PP-o-Slov) which
the Homeric heroes were still accustomed to hurl has been
mentioned.
* 6'ia-T6s = sm-vis46. = 3)^1 is to be regarded as in o-Trarpos, 6-^v^.
THE LANCE AND THE SWORD. 227
The lance is, as regards the shaft, of the poHshed (^vo-tov :$€ui)
wood of the oak {86pv) or ash {fxeXiTj). Other names for the hmce
also reveal a similar origin : Kpa.vf.ia is "the cornel "( : xpavos), and
the lance fashioned from its wood ; alyavir} (cf. fxrjXir], " apple-tree,"
TTTcXer], "elm") is really "oak-tree" (O.H.G. eih), then the
"oaken lance " (cf K. Z., xxx. 461); finally, I venture to compare
eyxo?, ^yx^^V '^^'i^h oyx-vrj, " the cultivated," and d^-pas, " the wild
pear-tree " {cngh-, ongh-, ngh), since the wood of this tree, which, in
the Feloponnese especially, is frequent, is readily employed for
carving.*
The lance-head, at'x/A?;, corresponds to Lith. jeszmas, "roasting-
spit," Pruss. at/smis. As to its manufacture, language reveals
nothing directly ; though the scene in the Odyssey, in Polyphemus'
cave, shows how rapidly and simply a serviceable point might be
obtained, in a non-metallic age, by burning. Another old Greek word
which is guaranteed by the tragedians and Herodotus, though not
by Homer, is X6yx% which enjoys a wide though not altogether in-
telligible circle of relations. On the one hand, the word seems
to be connected with the Semitic (Hebrew, r6mah,0vig. Sem. rumhu;
cf. Bezzenberger's Beitr., i. pp. 274, 291, and above, p. 44), and on
the other with the Lat. lancea, which denotes a long, light spear pro-
vided with leather straps, and is used particularly of Celtic and Iberian
weapons {cf. Diefenbach, Origines Europ.., p. 372). Perhaps, how-
ever, the explanation of A.oyx'*? is something much simpler. If one
calls to mind expressions such as ^varov, sc. Sopv, lit. " polished,"
and reflects that one of the most striking characteristics of the
primitive (see below) as well as of the Homeric spear is its length
(eyxo<5 ev8eKd7rr)x}J, TrtAwpiov, p.aKp6v, jxlya, hoXixo(TKiov), the con-
jecture is suggested that XoyxQ ( : Lat. longus) is nothing but "the
long," sc. /xeXir], though it would be remarkable that this word
should survive nowhere else in Greek.
The old Greek ft'^09, " sword," which from the excavations in
Mycenae (cf Schliemann, Mycenes, p. 561, /., and Helbig, Horn.
Epos.^, p. 322, jf.), seems to have had a length of about | to 1 metre,
and which was originally in Schliemann's opinion sharply dis-
tinguished fi'om the much shorter (ftda-yai'ov, " dagger " {(^dcryavov
from *(r(f>dyavo]/ : root crc^ay ?), has the epithets ravv-i^K-qs, 6$v<;, p-eyas,
cTTi^apos, dyu,(/)7;Kr/s, " two-edged," ;(dA(c€09, KOJTTT^cis, ttc, and forms
the most important and valued of the Greek hopelite's wea])ons.
As to the explanation of this word there are two conflicting views,
one which connects ^t'<^os with Indo-Germanic words, to wit O.H.G.
scaba, "plane," O.N. scafa, "scraper" (^t^at, Hesych.; cf A. Fick,
Worterb., i.^ p. 808 ; Curtius, Gmndz.^, p. 699) ; the other, which
derives the Greek word from Oriental languages, yEg. scfi, Arab.
seif-un, &c. {cf F. ^liiller, Beitrdge, ii. ]jp. 490-49 ; A. Midler in
Bezzenberger's Beitrdge, i. p. 300). I confess that the latter view
seems to me the more probable. In any case it is noteworthy that
* Fick in Bezzenberger's Beitrdge z. Kwiidc d. indog. Spr., i. p. 34, conncots
ey^os with root 4yx = vfx^ "to stand," O.S. nlza, nlsti, " pciiclrare," nozl,
"knife" (?), Cf. author, B. B., xv. 285.
228 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
at Hissarlik not a trace of swords has been found in any of the
seven prehistoric towns, a circumstance which Schliemann con-
strues as a proof of the length of time that separates Homer's
poetry from the conquest of Troy (cf. Ilios, p. 539 ; Troja, p. 103).
Moreover, $L(f>o<;, at any rate in Homer's language, is wholly with-
out derivatives, and was not originally used in the formation of
proper names, whereas the words for lance, tyxo^j ^nd especially
alxfj^t], are often employed for this purpose. I am, therefoi'e, of
opinion that the Greeks inherited from prehistoric times nothing
but a short dagger (aop = asi, Lat. ensis), which, like the old-
fashioned word aop, was gradually driven out by the long and
certainly metal fcc^os impoi'ted from Asia.
For the rest, the excavations at Hissarlik show us how far into
the age of metals, in any case, the Stone Age survives with its
hammers, axes, hatchets, saws, and pounders of stone, and its
needles and awls of bone and ivory. Gladstone (Homer and the
Homeric Age, p. 48), therefore, is not so far wrong in thinking
that by axes and hatchets (dftVai, TreXeKct?), with which the rank
and file fight, for instance, round the ship of Protesilaus [II., xv.
711), there may have been many an implement of stone.
In Italy, the transition from the age of stone to the age of
metals can still be traced tolerably clearly. Whereas, in the pile-
dwellings of Lombardy, stone weapons and implements are by far
the most numerous, the manufacture of bronze shows considerable
advance in the settlements south of the Po, and that of stone
implements a decline. On ground demonstrably Latin a stone
weapon has never yet been found (cf. Helbig, Die Italiker in der
Poebne, pp. 25, 91). Now as the population of the Peninsula by
Italian tribes undoubtedly proceeded from the north to the south,
we can see advance in the manufacture of bronze keeping pace
with the gradual approach to the culture of the Mediterranean
district.
The most ancient and sacred weapon in Italy is the spear, from
whose Sabine name, curis (cf. above, p. 184), Quirinus and the
Quirites were supposed to derive their appellation, and which, pre-
served in the Regia on sacred ground, was (Plutarch, Romulus, 29)
worshipped actually as Mars, like the Scythian aKtva/o??. Ancient
Latin words for the spear are hasta (Lat. hastahis = Umbr. hostatir)
: Goth, gazds,* " sting," the heavy lance of the Servian phalanx,
contus (G. KovTos, Sans. Ininta ; cf. J. Schmidt, Verivandtschaftsverh.,
p. 62), veru (Lat. verM = Umbr. herva ^^verua;" cf. Bitcheler, Lex.
ItaL, X. : O.I. hir, " sting "), pilum (vaao?), the javelin of the
Roman legions, perhaps of Etruscan origin, as the iron portion
of a javelin has been found amongst old Etruscan weapons
* This comparison (Briigmann, Grundriss, i. 373), however, does not explain
the of the Umbrian forms liostatu, hostatir. If h is regarded, not unusually,
as unfounded etymologically (for the Umbrian cf. Biicheler, Umbrica, p. 182),
then Lat. hasta {*fsta) may be compared with Sans, rshti, Zend arshti
(above, p. 222) ; cf. fastigium from *farstigmin, &c. (Schweizer-Sidler, Gr.'^,
p. 68).
THE LATIN SWORD. 229
{ef. J. Marquai'dt, Romische Staatsverivaltung, ii. pp. 318, 328),
but linguistically identical with Lat. pUum, " pestle " (: pi7iso).
Lance-heads are found conuuonly both in the pile-dwellings of
the Po district and in the necropolis of Alba Longa.
On the other hand, in both places — and this fact forms the best
confirmation of what we have said above as to the G. $Lcf>o<; — there
is an almost com})lete absence of weapons " which correspond to
the ordinary notion of a sword," (Helbig, op. cit., pp. 20 and 78; cf.
however, p. 135). The dagger-like knives found in the pile-
dwellings, originally called, we may assume, ensis (asi), a word
which subsequently found I'efuge in poetical diction exclusively,
never exceed 15 centimetres in the length of their blades. In
ancient Rome, again, there are not wanting traces of the rarity with
which swords were nsed (cf. Helbig, o]). cit., p. 79). The proper
Latin expression for sword is gladkis, a word which after the
Second Punic war denoted the relatively short, two-edged, pointed
Spanish sword, which at this period was taken over by the Romans,
but seems, before the time alluded to, to have been the name of
a longer weapon, similar to the Gallic sword {proelongi ac sine
mucronibtis, Livy, xxii. 46).
If one assumes that the initial sound of the Latin word was
weakened (Schweizer-Sidler, Lat. Gr.'^, p. 54), the *cladius thus
obtained from gladius is connected by unmistakable affinity with
O.I. claideb, claidhene (*cladivo (?); ctfedh, " widow," from *vidhevd).
It may, however, then be doubted whether we have here a word
primevally related in Celtic and Italic {cf. also O.H.G. helza, A.S.
helt, " hilt," *ke/d), or an early loan from Celtic to Latin, since the
Romans were perpetually carrying on a lively exchange of weapons
with other peoples. Perhaps, under the circumstances, tlie latter
is the more pi'obable ; and, then, the Romans would bring with
them from the primeval period only e)isis ( = asi), for which gladius
was substituted in consequence of their contact with the Gauls of
North Italy.
As gladitis, however, drove the old ejisis out of use, so gladius
again was superseded in the mouths of the people by a word spatha,
which, in the Imperial period, found its way to Rome from Greece
{(nraBrj), designating a broad, two-edged sword, and which has
passed into nearly all the Romance languages (Span, espada, Fr.
epee), and also into German (O.H.G. spafo, M.H.G. spaten), &c. (cf.
Diefenbach, Orig. Europ., p. 422, and Diez, Etym. IF.'*, p. 301).
The bow and arrow,* in common use among the inhabitants of
the northern Italian pile-dwellings, have quite fallen into the back-
gTound in the equipment of the Servian army, and even the body
of light-armed rorarii only use the javelin and the sling imported
from Greece {funda : a-^iv^ovyj), not the bow. It was only later
* Arciis and sagitta. The latter is altogether obscure. Tlie former recurs
in Gotli. arhvazna, "arrow " {*arqo). In connection with what lias beeu said
above with regard to Sans, dhdnvan, O.N. dlmr and ^r, G. ro^ov, we
may think of the German tree-names arfe,arhe {2>inus lembra) ; cf. autlior,
B. B. , XV. 290.
230 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
that this weapon again became familiar to Rome in the hands of
the auxiliaries and allies.
In the way of defensive armour the name of the shield here too
is a very primitive one. Lat. sndum (Ovpeo?), originally the long,
rectangular shield of the Samnites, undoubtedly belongs to the
G. 0-KVT09 (kvto^) "hide, leather" {cf. o-a/cos = Sans, tvac, &c.).
Chipeus, dipetis (dcnri's) is the round, bronze shield, with which in
the Servian army citizens of the first class were armed, while the
second and third carried the scutum. As the round, bronze shield
is obviously of Tuscan origin (M. Jahns, Handbuch d. Gesch. d.
Kriegsivesens, p. 196), perhaps the word which designates it is also ;
at any rate, no satisfactory explanation for clupeus is forthcom-
ing.
The impression made on the Italian farmers by the introduction
of the metal shield, which was strange of course to the pile-
dwellers, may be recognised, as Helbig rightly remarks in Die
Italiker in der Poebne, p. 78, in the myths connected with the
ancilia of the Salii. "A bronze shield," so it was said, " fell from
heaven or, sent by the gods, was found in the regia of Nimia. In
oi'der that the gift of heaven might not be carried off by enemies,
Numa caused the smith Mamurius to make eleven other shields
exactly like it; which, together with their archetype, served as the
equipment of the twelve Salii." Parma - Trdp/xr] is of unknown
origin ; cetra — KaLrpeai (cf. Diefenbach, Orig. Euro})., p. 294) is
obviously a barbaric word.
For the helmet there are two Latin expressions: cassis, cassidis,
for the metal helmet which was first of bronze, and then, from
the time of Camillus (Plutarch, CamilL, 40), iron; and galea for
the helmet of leather (Kwer)). The former takes us to an original
form *catti, and connects itself accordingly with the Teutonic,
O.H.G. huot (also "helmet"), A.S. hcett, &c.; to the second, galea,
which appears as a loan-word in O.S. galija, and, indeed, in nearly
all Slav languages {cf. also M.H.G. galie, the O.H.G. htdja, hulla,
" covering for the head "), is said to correspond. The latter is
phonetically very improbable. I should prefer to connect the
Latin galea, in its older forms galear, galenus, galenum with the
Greek yakirj, yaXiJ, " weasel," as Dolon in the Iliad (x. 334) wears
a Kvviy] KTi^eri, i.e., a cap of weasel-skin.
The corslet lorica, a word that of course has nothing to do with
6wprj^, is originally a leather collar, i.e., a series of straps (lora) of
sole-leather fastened one on the other. " Lorica quod e loris de
crudo corio pectoralia faciebant: postea subcidit Gallica e ferro
sub id vocabulum, ex annulis ferrea tunica," Varro de L. L., v. 116.
Thorax and Ixatapliractes are Greek. The ocrece (Kvy]fXL8e<;) finally
were, if rightly connected with Lith. aukle (Fick, Worterbuch, ii.^
p. 34),* originally straps for the foot.
If, therefore, on classic soil neither the TravoTrXta of the Homeric
hero, nor the brilliant armour of the Roman legionary, has been
* The stem-verb is Lith. au-ti, "to pull on shoes." Lat. o-crece could only
belong here if it originated from *ii-crecc {ind-uo) or *6-creoe.
DEFENSIVE ARMOUR IN THE NORTH. 23 1
able to conceal from us traces of the primitive warrior's equipment,
how much more numerous may we expect the survivals from the
primeval period to be which wc shall encounter the moment we
set foot on the territoi'j of the northern peoples, the Celts, the
Teutons, and the Slavs.
Down to historic times the only piece of defensive armour here
is the shield, the northern names for which are : I. sciath, Tent.
Goth, ski/dtcs, O.H.G. scilt, &c., O.S. Stitu, Lith. shydas. Of these,
O.S. Uitii (whence 0. Pr. staytan) and O.I. sciath go back to a
fundamental *skeito, which corresponds to O.H.G. sclt, O.N. skid,
"log- wood;" while M.H.G. hret. and A.S. 6o?'fZ combine the meanings
of "board" and "shield." As regards the fact, compare the statement
of Tacitus, Ann. ii. 14 : " Ne scuta quidem ferro nervoque firmata
sed viminum textus vel tenues et fucatas colore tabulas." The
shield of the north is the great, broad, rectangular scutum (6vpe6<;)
covering the whole man ; round shields are only ascribed as ex-
ceptions to the eastern peoples by Tacitus {Germ., 43). It was
either withy-work (G. Iria) with a covering of leather (Tac, Ann.,
ii. 14), or consisted of thin boards of yew (O'Curry, Manners and
Customs, i. p. cccclxv), alder (I. fern, "shield " : fernog, "alder;"
Windisch, /. T.), or linden (O.H.G. linta, A.S. lind, "shield"). The
outside was usually painted a bright colour (Tac, Germ., 6). Next
to red, white was particularly affected. White shields were carried
by the Cimbrian cavalry (Plutarch, Mar., 15); in the Hildebrand-
slied, father and son have hvitte scilti. Finden, an Irish name for
shield {cf. Windisch, /. T., p. 5.50), is obviously to be derived
from /j?k/, "white." Another term, very widely distributed in the
northern languages, for the great shield that covered the whole
body is It. targa, Span. Port, tarja, Fr. targe, O.N. targa, torgti-
skio/dr, A.S. ta7-ge (O.H.G. zarga, "shelter"), Cymr. taryan, I. target,
" targe," a word unfortunately of doubtful origin {cf. Diez, Etym.
IF.*, p. 315). Metal fittings in the way of buckles, rings, (fcc, were
only employed in later times in the north to give a better hold on
the shield.*
Very slowly, though still it may be discei'ned to some extent
in language, did the custom of protecting the body from the
missiles of the enemy by means of close-titting armour spread
through the north, despised as it was at first by barbaric courage.
The Celts beyond a doubt borrowed their term for corslet from the
Lat. lorica, I. luirech, Cymr. Ihiryg {cf. Stokes, Irish Glosses, p. 53,
and Windisch, /. T., s.v.), just as the collective term for Roman
armour {anna, " defensive armour " in particular : tela) has passed
into Irish (r/r//i; Windisch, /. T.). The leather collar denoted by
the I. luirech held its own against metal armour fwr an exceedingly
long time. Cuirasses of seven well-tanned ox-liides, and so on, are
frequently mentioned in Irish texts (cf. Manners and Ciistoms, i.
p. cccclxxiv). Another Irish expression for armour is conganch-
ness, which Sullivan is inclined to derive from congan, pi. congna,
* Goth, slcildus and Lith. skydas have not yet been explained.
232 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
" horn," and to see in it a name for the horn cnirass ascribed by
Tacitus {Hist., i. 79) to the Quadi and others.*
On the other hand, the continental Gauls, to whom Pliny
expressly ascribes the independent discovery of metallurgy {Hist.
Nat., xxxiv. 17), may have effected the transition to bronze or iron
corslets at an early period. According to Tacitus {Ann., iii. 45)
the Gauls had men actually covered Avith iron {ferrarii), who are
styled by the enigmatical word crujopellarii. According to Diod.
(v. 30), the Gauls even in the time of Ceesar had iron and actually
golden armour.
When Tacitus wrote, corslets were rare amongst the Germans
{Germ., 6), or as good as wanting {Ann., ii, 14). The extensive
equipment which Plutarch {Mar., 25) ascribes to the Cimbri must
have come either from foreign booty or from the imagination of
the writer. The whole of the east seems to have been indebted to its
contact with the Celtic west for its knowledge of the cuirass. Goth.
hrunjo, O.H.G. brtotja, A.S. hyrne, O.N. hrynja, O.S. briinja, bronja,
and also 0. Fr. broigne, brunie, Prov. hronha. Middle Lat. (813)
brugna, probably go back to the Celtic-Irish bruinne, "breast," as
Germ, panzer, M.H.G. jianzier, 0. Yx. jpanchire, Span, pancera, P. It.
panciera,Q,oxa.Q from It. panda. Span, panza, &c., "paunch," {pantex).
So, too, M.H.G. harnasch, O.N. hardneskja, 0. Fr. harnas, Fr.
harnois, Span., &c., arnes. It. arnese, in the last instance come from
Celt. I. ia?-n, Cymr. haiarn, &c., "iron," {cf. Diez, Etym. W.\
26; Thurne3'sen, Kelto-rom. 36,/.). Our tolerably modern word
" cuirass " belongs to Fr. cuirasse in the first instance, and then to
Prov. coirassa, Span, coraza. It. corazza, literally " leather vest "
{•.coriMm); cf. Diez, op. cit., p. 108. Terms for the cuirass native
to the Teutons are O.H.G. halsperga, A.S. heahbeorg, O.N. hdhbiorg
(Fr. haubert), and Goth, sarva, A.S. sea7'o, O.H.G. gisarawi, which
latter makes its appearance in the Lith. szdriva, and rather connotes
the complete suit of armour. For the rest, the Old German briinne
can only mean the leathern collar. It was only gradually that
people learnt to sew iron rings or scales on it, and to add to the
briinne, in its special sense of cuirass, the brynstiikur (sleeves) and
brynglofar (gauntlets), &c. {cf. Weinhold, Altn. Leben, p. 210,/.).
The ^KAa^iyj/ot and "Avrai, according to Procop. {De hell, goth.,
iii. 14), were entirely unprovided with cuirasses: "In battle the
majority fight on foot with small shields and javelins, absolutely
without cuirasses, some even without tunic or cloak, save for a
fragment round the hips and loins."
In the same way the rarity of the helmet in the north is
demonstrated by unimpeachable historic evidence {cf. Baumstark,
Atuf. Erldut., i. p. 331). Here, too, the way for the iron helmet
was paved by the leathern cap, or the woven helmet of leather or
wood, which Herodotus knows amongst Asiatic peoples (vii, 79).
* An intere.sting description of the manufacture of liorn cuirasses from
horses' hoofs (dirKri) by the Sarmatte, from whom the Quadi probably {cf.
Ammianius Marcellinus, xvii. 12) may have learned the art, is given by
Pausauias (i. xxi. 6).
NORTHERN WEAPONS OF OFFENCE, 233
The Celtic names for the helmet {cf. I. cath-harr, at-cluic, &c.) have no
connection either with Latin or Teutonic. On the other liand, tlie
Teutonic words, Goth, hilms, O.H.G., A.S., 0. Sax. /ie/m,.O.N. Iijdlmr
( = Sans, rdrman, " defence "), exhibit remarkable agreement, not
only amongst themselves, but also with the O.S. slhiiii, 0. Russ.
Setotn, from which, again, as a loan-word the Lith. szdlmas is derived
(Briickner, Die Slav. Fremdiv., p. 140). Fick {Worterh., ii.^ 697)
and Miklosich [Et. W.) conjecture that the agreement between the
Slav and the Teutonic languages is again due to borrowing on the
part of the Slavs ; in any case, however, language points to the
existence of a pi'imeval covering for the head, however barbaric,
amongst the Slavs and Teutons.
Coming now to weapons of offence, we find that here too, as in
the soiith, the bow has fallen into the background, and that it has
taken refuge with the nomad tribes of the east (Tac, Germ., 46).
It has, however, nowhere entirely disappeared {cf. Holzmann, Germ.
Altert., p. 145), and the ancient Slavs (SfAa'/Joi »cai "Avrat) are
credited by the strategic writer Mauricius {cf. Miillenhoflf, Deutsche
Altertumsk., ii. 37) with the use of the wooden bow and small
poisoned arrows. The bow is made of the wood of the elm or
yew, and is therefore called simply dlmr or yr in Norse {cf. above,
p. 222, note, and p. 229, note). Horn bows, too, are forthcoming, as
in Homer {cf II., iv. 1Q5), among the Huns. That the north was
acquainted with the bow from primeval times is demonstrated by
the far from inconsiderable number of common expressions for it
and its arrows. Thus, in Old Irish, there is a name for arrow,
clkiharcu {cf. O'Curry, Manners and Customs, i. p. ccccliii, /.), the
second part of which, -arcu, obviously corresponds to the common
Teutonic name for arrow, O.N. or, G. urvar, Goth, arhvanza, A.S.
earh, as also to the Latin arcus.* That this was the arrow with
its original horn or stone head, such as we have the evidence of
history to show was used by the Sarmatse (Paus., i. xxi. 2), the
Huns (Ammianius Marcellinus, xxxi. ii. 9), the /Ethiopians (Hdt.,
vii. 69), is intrinsically credible because of the large niunber of such
arrows that have been found in Celtic and Teutonic soil, and is
i-endercd probable by the fact that in both groups of languages the
old-fashioned word was driven out by new terms borrowed from
abroad, obviously in order to designate the arrow with an iron
head. Thus, in the Celtic languages, the Lat. sagitta makes its
appearance in I. saiget, saiged, Cymd. saeth{cf. Stokes, /ri'sA Glosses,
p. 57), while the Teutonic languages have appropriated the Lat.
pihim in O.H.G. phil, pf'il, A.S. ^j?/, Scand. ^;ti7a.
Other equations, which seem to be due to original connection
of the woi-ds, are, in the north, O.H.G. strula, " arrow " = O.S. strela,
Lith. temptyva, " bow-string " = O.S. tejtiva (Fick), Lith. lankas,
" bow " (Kurschat lihkis, " bow-line ") = O.S. Igku, kc. It is phone-
tically impossible for the Old I, tuag, " bow," to correspond, as
* Cf. aViove, p. 229, note. The transition in meaning from "bow" to
"arrow" is paralleled in M.H.G. vliz, flit sch : how Q. flits, "arrow," It.
freccia, Sir3,n. frccha, fl^cha, Yi: flUhc, &c. (cf. Diez, Eti/m. IV.*, p. 147).
234 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Pictet (ii.- p. 77) will have it, to the G. to^ov (taxus). It, however,
has not 3'et been explained.
The clul) siirvives in northern antiquity rather in story than ir
real life. Nevertheless, as an irregular weapon, it is widely distri-
buted (cf. Weinhold, Altn. Lehen, p. 204). In the time of Tacitus
it was still the principal weapon of the /Estyi (the Lithu-Prussians ;
cf. Tac, Germ., 45: rarus fem, frequens fustmm tistis). Again, the
cateja of the ancients (cf. Diefenbach, Orig. Europ., p. 287) seems
to have been a club-like weapon in use amongst the Celts and
Teutons.
On the other hand, another important species of weapons, which
not only serves at close quarters to strike the foe to the ground,
but also, when boldly hurled, hits the enemy from a distance, has
continued in active use in the north — battle-hammers, axes, and
hatchets. The first in particular, the stone hammer, is very closely
interwoven with the religious conceptions of the Indo-Europeans.
From the hand of the German god of the thunderstorm fly now
arrows, now clubs, now hammers; Indra hurls the drman (Rigv., iv.
iii. 1 ; i. xviii. I. 9), Zeus the aKfjunv (Hes., Theog., 22). The Teut.
O.^.hamarr, O.i^.hamur, A.S. hamor,O.^.G.hamar is etymologically
connected with Slav, hameni, "stone " {cf. above, p. 160). Further,
we have direct historic and linguistic evidence to show how long
stone continued to be used for the manufacture of the weapons
mentioned. In the battle at Magli Tuired {Manners and Customs,
i. p. cccclvii) certain warriors were armed " with rough-headed
stones held in iron swathes." In the Hildebrandslied the stone
axes {staimhort chludun) clash as the young heroes fall on one
another. And even at the battle of Hastings (1066): " Jactant
Angli cuspides et diversorum generum tela, ssevissimas quoque
secures et lignis imposita saxa" {Manners and Customs, i.
p. cccclix). " Nay ! even at the end of the thirteenth century
stone axes were wielded by the Scots whom William Wallace led
against the English " (Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poehne, p. 43).
Common terms for the things in question are the Europ. dftVr;
TLat. asciaf\, Goth, aqizi (Fick, Worterh., i. p. 480), and O.S. mlatH,
'' hammer " = Lat. mart-ulus = (from *ma.lt-ulus) : O.I. Mail = O.H.G.
hihal;* O.H.G. barta, "axe" (cf. staimbort) = O.S. bradi/ ; O.H.G.
dehsala, "axe" = O.S. tesla (Lith. teszlyczia); Lith. kugis, " hammer "
= 0.S. ki/j ; O.S. mlatil, "hammer " = Lat. martellus (?); O.P. ivedigo,
" axe " = Lith. wedega, Lett, wedga, kc. It is remarkable that with
the exception of the Frankish francisca {(f. Diefenbach, Orig.
Eurojiceoe, p. 345) the ancients tell us little about these weapons of
the northern Indo-Europeans ; though on archa3ological monuments
the axe or hatchet is the regvilar attribute of barbaric peoples {cf.
V. Hehn, Culfurpjfanzen^, p. 503).
I pass by the manifold use made, especially in Old Irish warfare
(Manners and Customs, i. p. cccclvi, /.), of stones, shaped and
* Windisch, however, would {Kurzgef. Irischc Gramm., p. 114, note) regard
both words as loans from the Romance languages ; cf. It. pialla (?). Cf. now
Thurneysen, Kelto-Romanisches, p. 84,/.
THE NORTHERN SPEAR AND SWORD. 235
iinshaped, in order to proceed to the two principal pieces of
northern offensive armour, tlie spear and the sword.
The northern spear is originally the tremendous, long {enoi-mis,
inr/ens, 2y}'(i^lo)i[/a) shaft of ash-wood (yaeAtr;, O.N. askr, "lance;" in
the HildebrandsHed, too, fighting is done ascim), which is polished
(O.N. skafinn, ^o-tov) and jjrovided either with a bone or stone
head, in place of iron, or hai'dened in the fire [telum proeuatum,
oLKovTov eiTLKavTov). Even among the Germans of Tacitus, although
they possessed the framea which was provided with a small and
short iron head {Germ., 6), only the first rank in the fights with
Germanicus had real spears, the rest had shafts hardened in the
fire (Tac, Ann., ii. 14).
Amongst the many northern terms for the various kinds of
spears — many of which have been handed down to us by the
ancients themselves — see the articles ayyojves,* cateja,^ framea,
ffe.mm, mataris, lancea, sparus\ in Diefenbacii's Origines EurojJcucB —
none is so intei'esting as the Teutonic O.H.G. ger, her, A.S. gar,
O.N. geir, with azger, dtgdr, atgeir. No one will doubt that these
words must be connected with the Irish gai, ga, "spear," which,
according to the laws of the language, goes back to an original form
*gaisos (cf. Stokes, Irish Glosses, p. 57), and in that form appears as
a loan-word in Lat. gcesrim and G. yatcros {cf. Diefenbach, 07-ig.
Furo])., p. 350,/.). Some scholars, as Fick {Worterb., ii.'^ 784) and
Kluge {Ft. W."^), are inclined to extend the equation I. gai, O.H.G.
ger still further, and to compare Sans, heshas, to which it may be
objected a limine that the Sans, word, according to B. R., means
not "arrow" (as Grassmann takes it) but simply " wounding," and
such a change of meaning as from " wound " to " lance," or the
reverse, can scarcely be demonstrated.
As for the relation of the Teutonic and Celtic words, there is no
phonetic criterion forthcoming to settle with certainty whether
they are primevally related or borrowed one from the other. If,
however, one I'eflects that the spear is the earliest and commonest
weapon ascribed to the Celtic tribes, and that it is expressly
described as of iron (Diefenbach, loc. cit., p. 352), I think it is most
probable that the Teutons, who obtained their first knowledge of
iron from their Celtic neighbours (above, p. 209), borrowed the name
of the iron spear from the Celts at the same time as they borrowed
the name for iron, i.e., at a time when the intervocalic s was still
retained in Celtic. How early this was is shown by the employ-
ment of the stem *gaiso in Teutonic proper names (O.H.G. Ger hart,
GcrtriU, ttc).
In passing I will call attention to a weapon, allied to the spear,
to which the Celts and the Teutons gave the same name, that is
the German sturmgabel (" charging spear "). In Irish it is gabul,
* &yywves, "spear with barbed points": O.H.G. ango, "sting,'' angul,
" fish-hook " = G. oyKos, " barbetl hook."
t Cateja : I. cath, "fight" (?).
X Spams may be genuine Latin. Tn any ease it is connected with O.II.G.
sper, O.N. spjiir. Cf. M. H.G. spiirbaum, "service-tree" {ccuculusl).
236 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
gahlach, gahalca (cf. Manners and Customs, i. p. cccclvi), which
corresponds fairly well with the German gahel.
Finally, we still have left some Slavonic names for the spear :
O.S. kopije, sulica, and laUa. The^ first, perhaps, belongs to G.
KOTTTOi ; stilica from *su-dlica (cf. Cech. sudlice) may be a nomen
instrximenti : O.S. su, stmati, "push," whence also Sans, ^ic-la has
(above, p. 222) been derived. Lastly, O.S. Iqsta — which can scarcely
be borrowed from Lat. lancea (Krek^, p. 151) — in my opinion is from
*lontja, and is connected with Orig. S. *lontu (Less. Russ. iut,
"twig," Wr. iut, "bark of a young lime-tree," Russ. lutle, "forest
of limes for bark;" Miklosich, Et. TT.), which is primevally related
with O.H.G. linta (Lat. linter, "canoe of lime-wood," G. i-XdzTj),
and may itself have originally meant "lime-tree." We should
then here again have a tree-name furnishing, as is so often the
case, a name for the spear, and get the rather interesting evolution
of meaning : —
/O.H.G. linta, "shield," from "Hme-
O.H.G. /wi^a, "lime-tree" J wood."
(G. iXdrr)). \ Lat. linter, "bark," from "lime-wood."
V O.S. lasta, "spear," from "lime-wood.'
Compared with the spear, the sword in the north is a young
weapon. This, however, does not apply to the Celts of Gaul, to
whom, as ample evidence shows {cf. A. Holtzmann, German. Alter-
tiuner, p. 140), swords were known at a very early time (cf. also
above, p. 229, on claideh). But of the Germans, Tacitus {Germ., 6)
expressly says rari gladiis uinnt%ir, and Germanicus {Ann., ii. 14)
dwells on the advantages which the Romans with their short
javelin and swords had in woody country over the Germans with
their shields and spears.*
This raritas gladiortim, however, seems to have been greater
amongst the western than amongst the eastern Teutons ; for that
metal swords, owing to the influence of Persia, found their way
early into the east of Europe, is shown first by the extremely wide
distribution of the Iranian kareta in the sense of "dagger, sword"
{cf. above, p. 210), and next by the express tradition of the
ancients. It is to the eastern Teutons that Tacitus ascribes
{Germ., 43) breves gladii. According to Strabo (c. 306) the Roxo-
lani, a Sarmatic tribe, possessed not only helmets and corslets of
raw hides (w/xo/Jotvos) but also ^i4>'^]. According to Tacitus {Hist.,
i. 79), they were so great that they needed both hands to manage
them. MiillenhofF {MonatsbericJite d. Berliner Acad. d. Wissens.,
1886, p. 571) would like to see in the word Saupo/xarat itself "the
blade-bearers " (Zend saora, " blade "). These statements certainly
seem to be inconsistent wuth what Pausanias says (i. xxi. 8), that
* When Dio Cassias (xxxviii. 49) makes the Germans of Ariovistus armed
with swordti both Large and small, we must reflect that they had been for many-
years on Celtic territory. Of the swords of the Ciinbriau cavalry (Plutarch,
Mar., 25), the remark that we have already made of their cuirasses and helmets
holds good {cf. above). Cf. Baumstark, Ausfuhrl. Erldut.,\. p. 307.
SWORD AND KNIFE. 237
the Sarmatso were absolutely without metals (Saupo/xurats yap ovre
auToIs (TL8y]p6<; Icttiv 6pvcr(TOfjievo<i ovre a<f)t(ri iadyovaw).
A word fur sword common to Celts, Teutons, and Litlui-Slavs, or
to any two of these branches, is not to be found. The equation
O.S. midi = Goth. 7neH, A.S. mece, O.N. mcekh; according to
Miklosich (Die Fremdtv. in den s/av. Sjyrachen), is due to the Slavs
borrowing the Teutonic word, the origin of which, however, has
not yet been explained {cf. also Krek, Einl.-, p. 150).
It is, however, certain that several northern words for the sword
are derived from names for knife — the stone knife. The classic
example of this is the Teutonic O.N. sax, O.S. sahs, A.S. seax,
O.H.G. sahs, "short sword," words which etymologically belong to
the Lat. saxum, "rock, stone." Again, this word is transmitted to
us in the compound scramasaxtts by the medicCval historians, and
from it the Saxons got their name (cf. also Forstemann, Altdeutsches
Xnmcnhych, i. p. 1065). The first part of the word scramaxaxus is
derived by Diefenbach (cf. Orig. Europ., p. 418) from the Old High
German foi"m of the Modern German schramrne, which, however, as
scrama by itself is the name of a weapon, is very improbable.
May we possibly see in scrama the Latinised form of the O.N. skdlm
{cf. also Thracian crKciXfjir]), "knife, swoi'd"(1).
Of the same origin as the Teut. sahs is the Slav, nozl, " knife,
sword," which, according to Fick ( Wwterh., ii.^ p. 592), is connected
with Pruss. nagis, Lith. tltnagas, "flint" (Krek-, p. 152, disagrees),
Goth, hairus, O.S. ho-u, A.S. heor, O.N. hjorr, "sword," corresponds
to Sans, cdru, " arrow," and must, therefore, have stood for some
Indo-Germanic weapon (but what?). A.S. hill, O.S. bil (not to be
confused with hihal, " axe ") is obscure. Compared with such for-
mations, A.S. tren (frequent in Beowulf), "sword," literally "iron,"
and, therefore, parallel to Zend ayahh (cf. above, p. 224) and G.
criSr^pos (e^c'XKerat avSpa aLSrjpo?), is relatively young.
Otherwise, how late the manufacture of metal swords was
amongst the Teutonic peoples is shown not least conclusively by
the custom mentioned above (p. 168) of giving them proper names,
which obviously points to the great scarcity of this kind of
weapoix
Having thus travelled over the whole Indo-Germanic area, we
will by way of conclusion cast a glance at the Finnic east, and
enquire wliether the dependence shown by the West Finns on their
civilised neighboiu's in the matter of the names of metals can be
paralleled at all in the names of weapons. As a matter of fact it
can. The oldest piece of information preserved to us (Tac, Germ.,
46) about the Fenni states with regard to their weapons as is
well known: " Non arma vestitui pelles sola insagittis
spes, quas inopia ferri ossibus aspcrant." This statement of the
historians is amply confirmed by a linguistic examination of the
West Finnic names of weapons {cf. the material collected by
Ahlqvist, Die CulUirwiJrter in den tvestfinnischen Sprachen, pp.
237-41). In Finnic armour, whenever it becomes probable that
metal was employed, the words cease to be genuine. There are
238 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
accordingly native terms for the bow (Finn, jousi), arrow (nuoli),
and quiver {viijii). To quite late times the Finns were famous in
the north as masters in the art of archery (c/. Weinhold, Altn.
Lehen, ]). 206). There is also a genuine name for corslet, Finn.
lutcsto, from luu, "bone," doubtless designating a corslet made of
bone. On the other hand, the iron corslet has a borrowed name
(jmntsari, harniska, Lith. hrunna). The name for the shield also
is borrowed (kilpi : O.N. hlif), and of the sword (Finn, viiekka :
O.N. nicekir, ka/pa : Swed. glctf, Ixorti : Russ. l-ortiku), and of the
iron spear (Finn. Iceihds : O.N. geir, or kesja), while the genuine
expressions for pike (Finn, saitta and tuura) still have the original
meaning of " rod, pole." The knife (Finn, veitsi) has a genuine
name. For the axe Finnic has borrowed names {hirves : Lith.
kirtvis, tappara : Russ. toporii ; cf. above, p. 2'2-^, p)artuska : Tent.
hard, bardisan, hellebard), whereas other closely connected
languages have genuine names for it.
" The only explanation for this fact in Finnic," says Ahlqvist, " is
to suppose that the Finns also had a special name of their own in
earlier times for the stone axe, and that later when they began to
get iron axes in the way of commerce from their more civilised
neighbours, they adopted the foreign name along with the foreign
implement."
Reviewing the state of things pictured in this chapter, we find
that defensive rumour, such as helmet, corslet, greaves, &c., must
have been absolutely unknown to primeval Indo-European times.
Not even the shield has a name universal and identical through-
out. None the less, this obvious means of protecting the body
from the enemy's missiles must have been amongst the earliest
pieces of defensive armour, only perhaps its primitive nature was
so simple that expressions like "leather" or "board" sufficed to
designate it for a long time.
Amongst offensive weapons we find in the oldest times the bow
and arrow', the club, the sling-stone, the lance, and the axe, and
finally, a short fighting-knife probably — simple weapons, which as
countless excavations teach us could very well be manufactured
without any metal whatever. As a matter of fact plenty of
linguistic and historic evidence shows that the so-called Stone Age
continued long into historical times in numerous places in the
area covered by the Indo-Germanic peoples.
As for the origin of the names given to the weapons, we saw
that they were very frequently taken from the material out of
which the weapons themselves were made. This was first and
foremost Avood, then stone, bones, and leather. Names of weapons
derived from the metals were late and rare. It might, indeed, be
alleged against this argument that as, e.g., G. fxeXcr] undoubtedly
designated the ashen spear with point of iron, something similar
may have been the case in the primeval period. But this objec-
tion loses its force when we see that the ashen lance, simply burnt
to a point, continued in use amongst the northern peoples into
historic times.
COPPER POSSIBLY USED. 239
I am, therefore, of opinion that the names of weapons simply
confirm the conchision previously obtained, viz., that the primeval
Indo-European period was in essentials in a stage of culture ante-
cedent to metals.
Whither, and how far, in addition to non-metallic materials,
copper — which was known to the ])rimitive period, and was first
worked not by the hammer of the smith but by smelting, casting,
and moulds — was em})loyed cannot be decided either by language
or history. Anyhow, we may admit the possibility that this
probably very rare and precious metal may in isolated cases have
been employed, in the manner just described, in the manufacture
of weapons, perhaps especially in making the Indo-Germanic fight-
ing-knife * (ensis). But it must always be borne in mind that
the state of things depicted in this chapter would be inconceivable
if copper in the principal 2)eriod had possessed any sort of pre-
dominating metallurgic importance.
* Pure copper daf^ger blades from the most diverse quarters of Europe are
now known. Cf. the Tables of Copper Finds in ]\Iuch, loc. eit., p. 59.
Prehistoric stone knives consist, according to a letter from Much, of pris-
matic rtint-flakes as a rule 5 to 10 (occasionally more than 20) centimetres long
with two more or less parallel edges, and are adapted only for cutting not for
thrusting or digging. On these grounds, I think, the equation dsi-cnuis is
the earliest in whicli one can suspect the employment of metal, i.e., co2)per.
Though cf. above ou sahs.
PART IV.
THE PEIMEVAL PEEIOD.
TToWa 8 'dv Kal &K\a tis airo5e(^iie rh irdXaiov ''EWriviKhu o/xoiorpoira to? vvv
fiapfiapiKif ^laircifievov. {Thuc, i. vi. 4.)
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
The preceding discussion on the appearance of the metals,
especially amongst the Indo-Germanic peoples, has we hope
smoothed the way for a sound and methodical conception of the
primitive Indo-European age. We have amply explained above
that the appearance of metals and the gradual advance in the
knowledge of working them opens a new world of culture to man.
Consequently we must, now that it has been shown that the oldest
Indo-Europeans were not yet practically acquainted with metals or
metallurgy, proceed to modify our conception of the culture of
the primitive age, to correspond with the condition of a society
which lacks those powerfvil levers of civilisation.
A living picture of such a society has been put before our eyes
in Europe by the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, in which the
oldest remains go back to the Stone Age, when metals were
unknown. And, as is well known, in spite of this ignorance of
metals we have here a population, low indeed in the scale of evolu-
tion, but by no means troglodytes. The lake-dweller of the Stone
Age knew how-to fell mighty trees with his stone axe ; he drove
them with much skill and labour into the bottom of the lake, and
on them erected his wooden huts. He had already domesticated
the most important tame animals, cows and sheep, goats and dogs.
He had even begun- agriculture : he grew wheat and barley, and
even flax, which he had learnt to spin and weave in a primitive
way. Stone, bone, horn, and wood take the place of the later
metals in the manufacture of axes, hatchets, knives, arrow-points,
lances, fishing-hooks, ikc.
A SCIENCE OF COMPARATIVE ANTIQUITIES. 24 1
The student, who on the strength of the evidence of language
denies that the Indo-Europcans before their dispersion were
ignorant of the metals, must necessarily be of the opinion (cf.
above, p. 28) that the Swiss lake-dwellers, at least those of the
Stone Age, did not belong to the Indo-European family. Wc,
however, are in a different position. It is, thei'cfore, worth our
while to enquire since we have established two important negative
points of agreement between the civilisation of the prehistoric
Indo-Eluropeans and that of the oldest lake-dwellers, whether we
cannot also discover some positive points of agreement between
them.
However, apart from the obvious importance of such a comparison
for our knowledge of the prehistoric period of the peoples of our
quarter of the globe, it were to be wished that Philology, having
to do with primeval matters from the point of view of language,
would turn her eyes as often as possible from her books to the
actual remains of the primeval period which have been preserved
in our soil ; for only thus will it be possible for her to give life
and blood to the often luisubstantial phantoms of her combina-
tions, and to select the right meaning out of the many which
linguistic phenomena are capable of bearing. That it may not
seem as though we allowed ourselves to be prejudiced by the
results of ai'chfeology in our reconstruction and conception of the
])rimeval Indo-Germanic period, it will be well to endeavour in
the following chapters (i.-x.) to infer the material civilisation of
the Indo-Europeans from the other material at our disposal and
without reference to archaeology; and then in a special chapter
(ch. xi.) to discuss the relation of the picture of primitive culture
thus obtained to that which the laudable toil of anthropologists
in our quarter of the Avorld has brought bodily to light.
As before, so now, we shall start from the results of Comparative
Philology, with the design of utilising them in accordance with
the principles already enunciated in the second part of this book.
But with this only half of our task will be done. Above all things
it will be our endeavour to recover in the pages of actual history
traces of the primitive mode of life which we have been led to infer
from the evidence of language. Comparative Philology — such was
the result of all our discussion of the subject of method — in investi-
gating the primeval history of the Indo-Europeans must have at
her side a science of Comparative Antiquities.
The function of such a science, as yet existing but in embryo,
is to ascertain by comparing the antiquities of the individual Indo-
Uermanic peoples the stock of culture inherited from the primeval
period by all Indo-Europeans. Such a statement would be ex-
tremely obvious, and consequently very superfluous, did it not look
as though the error which has now happily been expelled from the
region of Comparative Grammar, the mistake that is of imagining
that all linguistic phenomena were preserved in their original form
in Sanskrit, is likely to be repeated in the Held of Comparative
Antiquities. It is either tacitly assumed or frankly avowed that
242 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the most correct course is to picture the culture of the Indo-
Europeans to ourselves as just like that of the ancient Indians.
The Veda is the beginning and the end of all knowledge.
Such a view, however — even if it proved eventually to be, as I
do not believe, wholly or partially correct — is fraught with danger
at the present stage of investigation, inasmuch as it bars the way
to an unprejudiced observation of the development of the culture
of the other Indo-European peoples. Hardly less serious is it, in
my opinion, arbitrarily to select a group of two or more peoples
for the purpose of comparing their antiquities, when Comparative
Philology has not as yet given the least countenance to the supposi-
tion that they are intimately connected. For it is obvious that
what is supposed to have been ascertained to be the common
inheritance of such peoples carries with it very serious conse-
quences for the rest of the Indo-Europeans. It is undoubtedly
right to compare the antiquities of Hindus and Persians, or of
Slavs and Lithuanians, with each other. But in my opinion it is
a source of inevitable error to separate the Greeks and Italians,
or the Hindus, Greeks, and Italians, from the rest of the Indo-
Europeans, as has been done, and treat them by themselves with
a view to ascertaining the stock of culture jointly inherited by
them from primeval times. All three peoples at the very begin-
ning of their records appear before us as occupying what, compared
with the North European branch of the Indo-Germanic family, is
a relatively high stage of moral and material civilisation. But
Italy for five hundred years before had been exposed to the influ-
ence of Greek colonies, Greece for about the same length of time
to the civilising stimulus of Phenician commerce. The agreements
of the two countries in the j^ossession of certain pieces of material
civilisation, or of customs and conceptions important in the history
of culture, may well be the outcome of borrowing from abroad, on
the part of the Greeks from the Phenicians, of the Italians from
the Greeks ; and, indeed, that this is the case in countless instances
is demonstrable and matter of fact. Again, the question whether
and how f:xr ancient India has been subject to the action of West
Asiatic culture has by no means yet received its final solution.*
But leaving on one side the idea of extensive borrowing from
abroad, which thrusts itself upon \is, is it not in the highest degree
probable that three peoples so nearly akin to each other, when
once they had entered on the path of a higher civilisation,
developed the seeds of culture jointly inherited by them from the
primeval period in directions new indeed but resembling each
other, so that now they look as though they had had one and the
same historical origin 1 I should be inclined to think that what
K. Brugmann (above, p. 72) has said as to the casual nature of
the coincidences to be found between certain individual groups of
Indo-Europeans in the case of linguistic phenomena, applies also
to the domain of the history of culture.
* Cf. on this point recently 0. Gruppe, Die griechischen Kulte und Mythcn,
pp. 171-80.
CASUAL COINCIDENCES IN ANTIQUITIES. 243
Thus wc have ah-eady seen that even the Vcdic warrior hastens
to the field armed witli hchnct and cuirass ; and does so on a
lightly built fighting chariot, drawn by swift hoi'ses. The same
picture is presented to us by the Homeric poems, and even the
lloman warrior is not without artistic metal armour of defence
as far back as the most ancient times.
Nevei'theless, we have been able to demonstrate above that the
original Indo-Germanic language possessed no expression for this
latter conception ; and amongst the Indo-Gcrmanic tribes of the
north of Europe we find the primitive stage of armour, thus inferred,
still faithfully preserved. We shall also subsequently see (ch. iii.)
that in the warfare of this early period it is impossible to imagine
that fighting chariots were employed. It is obvious, therefore, that
we have in all these cases to do with advances in culture made by
the peoples in question — the Indians, Greeks, and Romans — after
their departure from the original home, either by their own
luaaided efforts or in consequence of external stimulus, or both.
No connection can be traced back to primeval times between the
armour of the Grseco-Romans and the Hindus, or between the
fighting chariots of the Greeks and Hindus.
In this connection what is true of the material culture of the
Indo-Europeans is equally true of their moral and religious culture.
We may draw an example of this from two works already mentioned
by us {cf. above, p. 142) by B. W. Leist, his Grceco-Italische Rechts-
geschichte, and his Altarisrhes (i.e., however, only Indo-Grseco-
Italian), jtis gentium, which, though full of matter and of thought,
contain conclusions with reference to the primeval period that
must be seriously called in question. One of the most important
ideas running through this book is that the conceptions designated
as rtd and dhdrma by the Indians, the former of which comprehends
the mundane and earthly order of things, the latter a divine law
made known by the lips of the priests, come down from the primeval,
ancient Aryan period. If, to begin with, we examine the linguistic
foundation for this view, and, according to Leist, as we have already
seen, it must "always be the core of the proof," we find that it is
extremely suspicious.
The equation Oe/jus : Sans, dhaman we have already spoken of
above, p. 141. We must altogether give up the connection of the
Sans, dhdrma with the probably Elian gloss of Hesychius, Oipfxa,
"truce of god," as the p of this word to all appearance stands for
<r (cf. Paus., V. 15. 4: tov (jlIv Srj rrapa 'HA€tot9 ©ipp-tov kol avTw
IXOL TraptoraTO etKci^eiv w? Kara. 'Ar^tSa yXwcrcrav elr) 6€(rixL0<;).
Remains then the Indian rtd, which Leist (following Vanicek)
compares both with Lat. rdtu.s:, ratio, and also with Lat. ritus.
That the latter is quite impossible needs not here to be proved.
Unfortunately, however, the equation Sans. //a=Lat. rdfurn, ratio
is at least very disputable. Sans, rtd, "right, straight," "order,"
smdrtu, " period of time," belong, according to B. R., to the root ar,
•'to rise, go, obtain," itc, so that the original meaning may well
have been "course," " in the right course," from which the conception
244 PKEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
of order might easily have been developed {rf. Sans, eva, " course "
= O.H.G. ewa, "law"). But how this root ar, to which in Greek
opvvfXL corresponds, and in Latin orior, could produce a rdtus, ratio,
which further can hai'dly be dissociated from reor, ratus sum, I at
least am unable to see.*
Leaving this linguistic foundation we have still the agreement
of the two ideas in point of meaning, and if we compare the
Indian r^a with the Latin ratio, rdtum in that respect, one must
admit that the comparison is a sti'iking one in many points,
assuming, that is, that with the Indian conception one compares
the spiritual content which the whole of Latin literature, ancient
and recent, associates with ratio, rdtum — or in the course of
centuries has imported into it ; for that the same extent or depth
of connotation which later philosophers and still later jurists, have
assigned to these words Avas present in the brains of the peasants
who inhabited the Apennine Peninsula, or even of the priests
who accompanied them, is an assumption, the probability of which
needs to be demonstrated not taken for granted.
As for the dhdrma-OiixLs-fas conception, is it not in this case
also a very natural thing that three lofty, closely related peoples
should, when their belief in the gods had assumed a purer form,
independently come to regard certain precepts, such as that honour
is due to one's elders or to guests, as expressions of the will of the
immortals 1 Leist assigns this proceeding to the primeval period.
But how do we know for certain that the pirimeval period's con-
ception of the gods was altogether an ethical one ? May not the
power of the forces of nature in the primeval period have been
conceived rather as supernaturally capricious than as divinely
ordained ?
And if we really assume that Leist has made the connection of
all these conceptions probable, surely the objection then arises —
Why do we find that in Teutonic, for instance, the primeval period
of which we have as yet no right, as has already been remarked,
to dissociate from that of the Indians, Greeks, and liomans, the
dhdrma-Oifxts-fas conception has not been developed with equal
clearness ? In short, it seems to me, we have here exactly the
same state of things as in the instance chosen above of the absence
of armour amongst the northern peoples and the presence of the
armoured warrior of the Veda, of Homex", and of ancient Home.
May not the explanation also be the same'?
Perhaps in the present condition of our science it is not
altogether possible to obtain indisputable results in the case of
these final, most difficult, and most subtile questions as to the moral
and religious life of our Indo-Germanic forefathers, until the
nature of the material culture of the primeval Indo-Germanic
period has been settled with some approach to certainty. Leist
declines absolutely to consider this point {Groico-It. Rechtsg., p. 9).
* These difficulties for the rest have been raised by Max Miiller, who
before Leist had thoroughly discussed the conception of rtd (cf. Origin and
Growth of Religion, 1880, f- 246, /.).■
RETROGRESSION IMPROBABLE. 245
The unprejudiced observer, however, will say a 2>>'iori that a
people in the state of culture which Pictet assumes for the primeval
period, and a barbarous tribe such as Helm sees in the Indo-
Europeans (above, p. 34), must have different notions of law and
right, and that in many cases the meaning of equations I'cferring
to a higher spiritual life amongst the Indo-Euroj)eans will depend
on which of these alternatives we decide to assume.*
The science of Comparative Antiquities then must be on its
guard against making arbitrary excisions and incisions in the
unity of the Indo-Germauic peoples ; and in its endeavours to
reconstruct the prehistoric past must pay no less attention to the
primitive than to the higher layers of culture which may be proved
to exist in Indo-Germanic soil.
We have already seen on p. 40, ff., above, that there have not
been wanting scholai-s who have sought to explain the contrast
between these stages of culture by assuming that amongst the
Indo-Germanic peoples, the Northern Europeans in particular
declined from their former high level of civilisation in consequence
of their trying migrations. This notion of the surrender of a
culture once possessed, and of the lapse into savagery of tribes
originally civilised, is indeed conceivable in itself, and can be proved
to be actually true in certain special cases. But to picture the
civilised career of w^hole peoples, and those Indo-European, as first
a fall from and then a struggle up to higher planes of culture, is
a mode of conception which to begin with is in direct opposition
to all the scientific spirit of our century, accustomed as it is to
regard the phenomena of life, in nature and in man alike, as
exhibiting progressive evolution from lower forms to higher.
It loses all support, however, the moment it is proved that the
traits of barbarism, which we encounter with especial frequency
among the Northern Indo-Europeans, face us in the antiquities of
the Indians and Iranians, the Greeks and the Romans, in the shape
of survivals, which considered by themselves often seem incompre-
* As I have shice seen, similar objections have been made against Leist
from the juristic point of view. Cf. R. Loening, Zcllschrift fiir die rjcsamte
StrufrechtsivisseiiscJia/t, v. .553, .//'. " On the other hand the author has most
overlooked the beginnings of law amongst the other Indo-Germanic peoples,
especially the Teutons, who appear to him to stand in essential contrast to
the Greeks and Italians because of the less fixed nature of their rites and
ceremonies. In itself this is indisputable (?) ; but, on the other hand, it is
to be observed that in the case of no people is the original state of things
known to us on lietter evidence than in the case of the Teutons, and that
consequently it is from them the relatively safest conclusions can be drawn as
to the beginnings of Indo-Germanic law generally, and, therefore, indirectly as
to the beginnings of Gneco-Italian law in particular. By way of check at any
rate the most ancient German conceptions of law must be indispensable for
the knowledge even of Gra'co-Italian law.
" I will not, however, conceal the fact, that in my o))inion to base the oldest
Aryan notions of law on sacred and ceremonial conceptions, and to refer them
to this origin, and, further, to ascribe to primeval times the comprehension of
j)hysical and legal order under one and the same idea, rtd or ixdio
is entirely without warrant. As regards the Latin word ratum, ratio, it
certainly did not originally possess the meaning of 'fixed, immovable,' but
only acquired it later by transference."
246 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
hensible or absurd, but wliich when taken in connection with
I'elated focts occiirring amongst related peoples frequently afford
us unexpected glimpses into the life and experience of prehistoric
epochs, survivals of a barbarism which a Thucydides was not
ashamed to recognise as such in so many words — they form the
motto of this woi'k — with the Parthenon or Athene Promachos of
his native town before him.
It loses all support again the moment it is shown that the
linguistic facts from which the pictui'C of this Indo-Germanic
})aradise is drawn are capable of another interpretation, and one
compatible with the teaching of history and of prehistoric research.
A contradiction between language and (trustworthy) record of the
past never occurs. Where it appears so to do, one or the other
has been misunderstood. That this is really so has, we hope, been
shown in numerous instances by our previous pages. The following
will make a considerable addition to the number.*
By the " primeval Indo-European period " we understand parti-
cularly that prehistoric age in which the collective Indo-European
peoples, still united to one another and distinguished from other
peoples by the possession of essentially the same tongue and
culture, together dwelt, or fed their flocks together, on what,
relatively to their later geographical distribution, was a circum-
scribed area. What was the origin of this prehistoric Indo-
European family of peoples, speech, and culture, what its previous
history was, lies beyond the bounds of knowledge.
Only in rare instances shall we succeed in noting intermediate
stages between this the most ancient age and the beginnings of the
historical life of the individual nations. But it is just these inter-
mediate stages that we hope will afford us some not unimportant
clues to the solution of the last problem we have to deal with —
that of the " Original Home of the Indo-Europeans."
We have narrated the history of this question in detail in the
first part of this book. The casual observer may, perhaps, detect
nothing in it but a tangled mass of conti'adictory and inconsistent
hypotheses. The judicious eye, however, will discover advance
even here. It shows itself, if nowhere else, at least in that the
belief in the a prim'i necessity that the Indo-Europeans must
have their origin in the interior of Asia — a belief to which even a
Hehn could bow — may be regarded as exploded. Not less signifi-
cant is it that gradually all sciences relating to the histoi-y of man
are beginning to take their places with regard to this problem,
and that therefore the one-sided and consequently prejudicial treat-
ment of the problem by grammar has reached its end.
In the first edition of this book we still hesitated to give a
decided answer to the question as to the original home of the
Indo-Europeans. Now after nearly twelve years work on matters
relating to the primeval history of our race we Avill venture on an
attempt to solve this important problem,
* In many respects G. Krek's views on the subject of method in the
Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte- difler.
CHAPTER II.
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
Catalogue of Indo-Germanic Mammals — Lion and Tiger — Hunting — Indo
Germanic Names of Birds — The Dove, a Bird of Death — Right and Left —
Hawking— The Eel— The Snake.
In the following pages our object is to ascertain particularly the
fauna with which we must imagine the Indo-Europeans of the
primeval period to have been surrounded. For the moment we
shall not distinguish between the domesticated and the wild
varieties; we must, however, even at this point take up the ques-
tion what conclusion we can draw from the animal kingdom as
known to the Indo-Europeans, about the geographical position of
their original home. Again, incidentally we shall have to discuss
some other of the relations, not without their importance for the
history of culture, existing between the anin^al kingdom and man.
To begin with, the following list of Indo-Germanic mammals
may be drawn up on the strength of the evidence of language : —
A. Carnivora.
1. The Dog: Sans, rva, Zend spa, Armen. sun, G. kv(dv, Lat.
canis, Goth, hunds, Lith. szii, Ir. cii,
2. The Wolf: Sans, vrka, Zend vehrka, Arm. gail, (i. Av'ko?,
Lat. hipus, Goth, vxdfs, Alb. ul'k, O.S. vluku, Lith. vi-tkas.
3. The Bear: Sans, fksha, Pamir D. yurs, Arm. arj, G. apKTos,
Lat. ^lrsus, I. art, Alb. ari.
4. The Otter: Sans, udrd, Zend iidra, G. vSpos, O.H.G. ottir,
Lith. udra, O.S. vydra.
5. The Pole- Cat: Sans, karika, Lith. szeszkas (Fick, B. B., iii. 165).
Peculiar to the European Group.
1. The Hedgehog: G. ep^tvos, O.H.G. igil, Lith. ezys, O.S. jezt
(Arm. ozni).
2. The Fox: G. aX'^irq^,* Lith. Idpe, (Lat. vulpesl), G. Lac.
^oua = Goth. /aw/io (cf. B. B., xv. 135).
* In Greek the fox first appears as the hero of fable in the Parian Archi-
lochus (fr. 89). This conception of the animal is probably Semitic in its
origin. Cf. author, A'. Z. N. F., x. 464 ; and on other names for the fox in
Europe, cf. author, B. B., xv. 135.
248 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
3. The Lynx : G. Xuy^, O.H.G. luhs, Lith. luszis.
i. The Weasel: G. aieAovpos = O.H.G. visil, wisul ; G. yaX^ =
Cymr. hele (of. K. Z., xxx. 358, 367).
Peculiar to the Indo-Iranian Group.
The Jackal : Sans, srfjdld = Mod. Pers. shagdl (?).
B. Rodents.
1. The Mouse : Sans, milsh, Mod. Pers. 7nus, Arm, muhi, G. /xus,
Lat. mus, O.H.G. mils, O.S. inysx.
2. The Hare : Sans, fflfff, Pamir D. smi, Afgh. soi, 0. Pr. sasins,
O.H.G. haso, Wal. ceinach (Stokes, B. B., ix. 88).
3. The Beaver: Zend bawrt, Lat. Jiber, Corn. 6e/(??', O.H.G.
hihar, Lith. bebrus, O.S. bebru.
C. SOLIDUNGULOUS.
The Horse : Sans, apva, Zend a-s^a, G. TTTTros, Lat. equus, L ec/<,
A.S. ehu, Lith. asziva.
Cf. also Arm. ^V, gen. yioy = Sans. Aaya.
Peculiar to the Indo-Iranian Group.
The Ass : Sans, l-hdra, Zend Tchara.
D. Cloven-Hoofed or Ruminants.
1. The Ox : Sans, go, Zend gdo, Arm. ^-ow, G. /3oi)?, Lat. 60s,
I. 60, O.H.G. chuo, O.S. govqdo.
2. The Sheep : Sans, dw^, G. 019, Lat. ovis, I. di, O.H.G. atiioi,
Lith. oM'is, O.S. ovica.
3. The Goat : Sans, ajd, Arm. aic, G. ai^ (L ag allaid), Lith.
olys, Alb. 81.
Also Zend biiza, Arm. 6ifc, O.H.G. boc, I. 6occ, and Lat. caper,
O.N. Aff/V, refer probably to the he-goat.
Peculiar to the European Group.
The Hart: G. eXac^os, eAXo5, Lith. e7»fs, O.S. jeleni, Cj^mr. e/a^?l
-Arm. fX^, Lat. c«'?ws = 0. H. G. hiruz.
Cf. also O.H.G. f/a/?o (Lat. -Tent, aloes). Buss. ?osi.
Peculiar to the Indo-Iranian Group.
The Camel : Sans, ushtra, Zend ushtra, Mod. Pers. ushtur, Pamir
D. iishttcr, shtur Jchtiir.
E. Ungulata.
The Pig : Sans, siikard, Zend /i2l, G. i)s, Lat. s?/s, O.H.G. su,
O.S. svinija.
Further, European : Lat. a^jer, O.H.G. ft«r, O.S. t'f^^ri. Indo-
Iranian : Sans, vardhd, Zend vardza.
In this list, as far as I am awai*e, there is little that could be
employed in discussing the question as to the original home of the
THE I.ION. 249
Tndo-Europcans. It deserves to be noticed first that in the
jn-imitive Aryan fauna all the quadrupeds — lion, elephant, ape,
«fec. — which the Sanskrit people came across for the fii-st time in
India are absent ; next, that in the vocabulary of the common
Indo-Germanic tongue there is a name for the horse, but none for
the camel or the ass. We shall not, however, return to this point
until we come to the history of the domesticated animals.
First of all we must state our attitude as regards the lion ques-
tion — on which we have already frequently touched (cf. pp. 87, 91).
If we betake oiirselves first to Asia, we find apparently that the
Indo-Iranians, while yet nnited, had not made the acquaintance of
the king of the beasts. His name is as yet unknown in the songs
of the Avesta. The Indians, however, after separating from their
Iranian brothers must have encountered the terrible beast of prey
when they migrated into the land of the five rivers, for in the
oldest hymns of the Iligveda the lion is reputed the most dread-
ful foe of men and herds alike. His name in Indian is siihhd,
siihht, a word which either comes from the primitive non-Aryan
tongues of India, or else is taken from the native vocabulary, in
which case it must originally have designated a leopard-like beast,
or some such creature ((/. Arm. inc — siihhd, "leopard").
In Europe the lion's names seem at first collectively to be due to
borrowing from the G. Aewv, as I assumed before ; the Greek word
itself has been derived by some from the animal's Semitic names,
Hebr. l(e)bi, Idhiy, Egypt. laJm, Copt, lahoi. On closer examina-
tion, however, this view is found to be met by great phonetic
difhculties : neither can the joint Slavonic livii be referred to
O.H.G. lewo, nor can the latter, along with the remarkable O.H.G.
louwo, be explained from Lat. leo, the relation of which again to
Xiwv (cf. leon-em : Aeovr-a, Aeatva from *XeavJa) has by no means
been cleared up. It looks, therefore, as though in the European
names for the lion we have to recognise, besides a good deal of
borrowing, the existence of a certain kernel of words primevally
related, though certainly as yet this lias not been phonetically
established.* The idea, however, that the European branch of
the Indo-Germanic family might possess a joint name for the lion
is not without its basis in facts. The lion, who on palfeontological
evidence (cf. Lubbock, Prehistoric I'imai^, p. 294) was once distri-
buted over nearly all l^AU-ope, had indeed in the Neolithic Age on
the whole disappeared, e.f/., from the fauna of the Swiss lake-
dwellings. Still, according to the express evidence, which cannot
* There are, as far as I cau see, two possibilities, both of which, however,
leave some points obscure.
First, one can start from a root-form liv.Uiv. Liv- explains: O.S. llvii,
O.H.G. l&wo, probably also Lith. liutas (cf. above, p. 126) and G. xTr. Leiv-
explains : Ion. x^luv, Lat. Zco (Lat. Ico from Iciv-on \\\iQ deics iYow\*dciv-o =
Sans, devc'ui). O.H.G. louwo (for which there is only late authority) remains
unexplained.
Or one can assume Icvjon : lov-jon (root 7u, lev, lov). The former explains
G. Xiiuiv, \((Dv, from which in this case Lat. ho would be borrowed ; the
latter explains O.H.G. Zeffo and lomvo. The Slavonic llvu, Lith. liutas, and
G. \7s remain unexplained. With iLH.G. lunze, cf. Slav. Ivica.
250 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
reasonably be doubted, of Herodotus (vii. 125) and Aristotle {Hist.
Animal, 28), a species of lion survived in Thrace and neighbouring
districts even till historic times ; so that there is nothing to
prevent us assuming that it was in Europe itself that the Indo-
Kuropeans had learnt to know and name the lion.
Still who would hope to get further in these things than weigh-
ing probabilities 1
Nothing like so far back in the history of the Indo-Europeans
does the lion's dreadful rival for supremacy over the beasts, the
tiger, go. In India the songs of the liigveda have nothing to
say about him ; his name [vydghrd) first occurs in the Atharva-
veda, i.e., at a time when the Indian immigration must have
extended much farther towards the Ganges ; for it is in the reeds
and grasses of Bengal that we have to look for the tiger's proper
home. Nor is he mentioned amongst the beasts of prey in the
Avesta. The district of Hyrcania, whose numerous tigers the
later writers of antiquity speak of with especial frequency, was
then called Vehrl-ana " wolf-land."
It is, therefore, not improbable, as H. Hiibschmann conjectures
{Armen. Stud., i. 14), that the tiger has spread in relatively late
times from India over portions of West and North Asia. The
Armen. vagr, " tiger," is remarkable ; Hiibschmann takes it as
borrowed from Sans, vydghrd through the Persian (Mod. Pers.
6rt6?', though joajoara is older ; A"". ^., xxvi. 542). W. Geiger, but
1 cannot agree with him, i-eckons the tiger amongst the Indo-
Iranian fauna (cf. La civilisation des Aryas, ii. 35, extrait du Museon).
In Europe the first tiger was seen in Athens about 300 B.C.
The king Seleucus (Nicator) sent him as a present to tKe
Athenians, as the verses of Philemon in the Necera state : —
wcTTcp SeAcvKOs SeCp' hrejxxpe ri^v Tiypiv rjv eiSofxev rifjiei<;.
(Athen., xiii. 590.)
As to his Grscco-Roman name, Varro — the first Latin author
to mention the tiger — remarks : " Tigris qui est ut leo varius ;
vocabulum ex lingua Armenia ; nam ibi et sagitta et quod
vehementissimum flumen dicitur tigris;" cf. L. L., v. 20, p. 102,
only it is not in Armenian, but in Iranian that tighri. Mod. Pers.
tir, means " arrow."
But even if we leave aside the lion and tiger, the list of Indo-
European mammals contains quadrupeds enough for the primeval
sportsman ; but it is worthy of note in this connection that the
Indo-Germanic languages contain no uniform, primeval term for
" the hunt, to hunt, hunter." This idea either is expressed by
derivatives from words for " wild animals " (Sans, mrgd-ya-te : nirgd,
"game," mrgayci, " hiuit," mfgayu, "hunter," G. 6rjpev(o : Or)p =
Lat. ferns), or else verbs of a more general meaning have assumed
the special sense of hunting, as G. dypevw, dypcus from aypa
( = I. ar, " fight, battle "), or O.H.G. jagon (perhaps = G. Si-(j)ojkw) ;
r, lastly, paraphi-ases have been resorted to siich as G. Kw-qyerrj'?.
Still it deserves to be noted that in Europe in three linguistic
THE BIRD-WORLD. 25 I
areas, which frequently coincielc elsewhere in their vocabularies
(above, p. 127), an Indo-Geruianic root of general meaning has
uniformly retained a reference to hunting and to wild beasts. It is
the Sans, vt, ve-ti, " to rush upon, fight," which recurs in Lat. ve-nari,
O.H.G. iveida, O.N. veutr, As. wd.t {* voi-to), and in I. fiad, " game,"
fiadach, "hunt" (*ve.i-dho).
Generally, however, one ouglit perhaps to be on one's guard
against assigning too important a part to hunting in the life of
primitive hinds beginning farming. The spoils of the chase were
not offered to the gods and were onl}' eaten in time of extremity.
So, perhaps, Tacitus formed the more correct estimate of our fore-
fathers, when in patently designed antithesis to the words of the
divus Julius (de B. G., vi. 21, vita omnis in ve7iationibus ; and iv. 1,
multum sunt in venationibus) he said expressly in the Germania,
(c. 13) : Non multum venationibus, plus per otium transigunt dediti
somno ciboque. Primitive man fights wild beasts because he must.
Sport is known only in higher stages of culture, and only then
demands a special name.
In the bird-world,* to which we now pass, the difficulty of
ascertaining what was known to the primeval period is increased
by the frequency of onomatopoetic formation, on which we have
insisted above. Thus we find as characteristic : —
Of the Owl : the sounds u and hu : Sans. I'diika, Lat. ultcla,
O.H.G. uwila - Arm. bu-cc, G. ^va?, Lat. bubo.
Of the Cuckoo: ku : Sans. Icukild, G. k6kkv$, Lat. cuculus, O.S.
kukavica, Lith. kukiiti, I. cdi.
Of the Hen : kerk : Sans, krka-vaku, Zend kahrkdsa, kahrkatds^
Mod. Pers. kark, Kurd, kurk, Afgh. cirk, Osset. kharkh,
Pamir D. kork, G. Kcp/cos (cf. also KepKa^' lepa^; Kepxas" Kpi^\
K^pKiOaXi^' €pa)8to?, KepKvos" u'paf (Hesych.), I. cere.
Of the Piaven and the Crow : kur : G. Kopaf, Lat. corvus — G,
KopdiVT], Lat. comix, Umbr. curnaco.
Of the Hoopoe : up : G. cttoi/^, Lat. upupa.
Of the Jay : ki-ki : Sans, kikidivi, G. Ktcrcra (from *Ki.KLa)y
O.H.G. hehara.
Of a Partridge-like creature : te-ter, ti-tir : Sans, tiftirt. Mod
Pers. tedzrev, G. rerpa^, reVpi^, rerpawv, Lat. tefrao, O.S.
tetrevu (with frequent changes of meaning).
It not unfrequently also happens that the same root furnishes
names for very different birds : thus qan (Lat. cano) furnishes Lat.
ci-c6n-ia, " stork," G. kvkvos, "swan" {*qe-rino-, unless the (ircek
word is to be connected with Sans, rakiind, above, p. 130), and
Teut. hana, huon, "cock, hen," rjiKapos' dXeKrpvwr, Hcs. (root. q7i,
qa7i, qon). Again, Sans, kap-ota, " dove," Pamir D. kibit, and
O.H.G. habuh, "hawk" (Mid. Lat. ccqms), appear to derive from
the same root (Lat. capio), "to seize, grip."
* Cf., for nuiclithat belongs here, O.Keller, Gricchischcnnd Lat. Ticniamcn^
Aicsland,l879, p. 441, jf. ; i70,Jf'. ; and A. v. Edlingcr, Erkliirung dcr Ticrnamcn.
2^2 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Except in 'names of these kinds, the names of but few birds
agree in both Asiatic and European languages. I may mention : —
Sans, ryend, Zend mena, " eagle or falcon," G. iktivos, " kite "
(Armen. cin, "milvus'"?).
Sans, vdrtikd, Pamir D. wolch, G. oprv^, " quail."
Sans, hamsd, Armen. sag, Afgh. zdghah, G. xw^ Tiiii. anser
(I. ffeis, "swan"), Teut. gans, O.S. gqsi (perhaps borrowed
from the Teut.), Lith. zqsis, "a goose-like bird."
Sans, uti, G.vrjaaa, Lat. anas, O.H.G. anuf, "a duck-like bird."
Agreement is more frequent in Europe : —
O.H.G. aro, O.S. oriiu, Lith. ere'lis. Corn, er, "eagle" : G. opvi5,
"bird" (cf. G. atcro's, "eagle," from *a-Fy-€Tos according to
Benfey : Sans, vi, " bird," G. otw^o's).
G. ycpavos, Lat. g7'us, Cymr. garan, A.S. cran, Lith. gerv'e O.S.
zeo^tvi (Armen. krtinJc), "crane."
G. KLXX-ovpo<s (*Ki-A-ta) = Lith. kiele, " wag-tail " (author, B. B., xv.
127).
G. Aapos, O.N. liri, "a sea-bird" (^Bugge, B. B., iii. 105).
Lat. turdela, M.H.G. drostel, Lith. strdzdas, "throstle."
Lat. 2^^cus, O.H.G. specht, " woodpecker."
Lat. stnrnus, O.H.G. stain, "starling."
With considerable change of meaning : —
G. xf/dp, "starling," Lat. parra, Umbr. parfa, "avis auguralis "
{or pdrus, "titmouse"), O.H.G. sparo, "sparrow."
Lat. merxda {*mis-uki), " ousel " : O.H.G. meisa, " titmouse."
So much for the names of Indo-Germanic birds. Here, again,
we reserve for our next chapter the ansv.-er to the question whether
any of them had passed into the service of man in prehistoric
times in order that in this chapter we may estimate the significance
which the bird-world possessed in the faiths or superstitions of the
Indo-Europeans.
To man in the earlier stages of culture the beast of the wilder-
ness is au object of reverential respect. With the fox, the wolf,
the weasel, itc, that crosses tlie path or the vision of the traveller,
he associates forebodings sometimes of joy, but mostly of gloom, to
such a degree that at the present day we can hardly form an idea
of the religious and superstitious anxiety with which the various
phenomena of nature weighed on the mind of man (cf. P. Schwarz,
Meyischen und Tiere im Aherglauhen der Griechen U7id Homer,
Progr. Celle, 1888; and L. Hopf, Tierorakel und OraTceltiere in
alter und neuer Zeit., Stuttgart, 1888).
To an especial degree does this hold good of the kingdom of
birds, whose mysterious and incalculable comings and goings in
the region deemed to be the abode of the immortals seem to fit
them above all other creatures to afford mankind indications of
the will of the gods or the mystery of the future. Possibly, too,
the obsei-vation that it is birds which give the first intimation of the
coming spring or winter may liave contributed towards the belief in
DOVES BIRDS OF DEATH. 253
their gift of prophecy, though certainly it is not ascribed princi-
pally to migratory birds bnt mostly to birds of prey.
Some birds are of themselves signs of good-luck or ill-luck.
Amongst the latter are not only the owl, but — what seems less
generally known — the dove. The dove is an Indo-Gemianic death-
bird, whether on account of its dark grey plumage (TreAcia : ttcAos,
Goth, duho : I. dtih, " black "), or of its complaining note, which
even the ancients had observed.
Ulfilas translates turtle-dove (rpvywv) by hraivadubo, " deatli-
bird." The Longobardi, as J. Grinun {D. Myth.) states on the
authority of Paiilus Diac, erected near the graves in churchyards
poles, on the top of which was a wooden image of a dove for those
of their relations who died or were killed abroad.
We encounter a similar view in the Veda. Here kapota, "dove,"
is the messenger of NiiYti, the spirit of death, and of Yama, the
god of death. A characteristic passage may be found in the
Eigveda, x. 165 : —
1. Devdh kapiita ishito yiid iclidn dhCdo nirriyd iddm djagdma.
Tdsmd arcdma hmdvdina nishkrtim ^dvi no astu dvi^jdde rdm
cdtushjKide.
" Ye gods, what the sacred dove the messenger of Nirrti
came in quest of, for that will we make expiation and
song : may it be well with our two-footed creatures, well
with our four-footed beasts."
2. Qivdh kapota ishito no astu andgd devdh cakuno grheshu.
" May the holy dove be gracious unto us, ye gods, and the
birds in the house without harm."
3. Md'no hiiistd ihd devdh hap)ota.
"May the dove do us no injury here, oh ! gods."
4. Ydsya dutdh pmihita hhd etdt tdsviai yamdya ndmo astu
mftydve.
" Honour be to Yama, to death, as whose messenger she (the
dove) has been sent hither," ttc.
Cf. also A. Weber, Omina and Portenfa. Abh. d. k. 6'e.s. (/. ir.
i)i Berlin, 1858; and E. Hultzsch, Prolegomena zu Vasafitardjct
gdkuna nehst Textproben, Leipzig, 1879. If, however, the concep-
tion of the dove as a death-bird maybe regarded as Indo-Germanic,
a- hitherto obscure term for this creature in Greek ma}' perhaps be
explained : it is cfidaaa, (fxiTTa, which then (cf. ■vrp6(l>pacrcra and
Jlepaecfiaaara) would belong to root <f}ev {*<f)lj,-rja.) in l-ire-^v-ov,
(fi6v-o<;, and would explicitly designate the dove as the "death-
bringing " bird.
As a rule, however, the appearance or cry of one and the same
bird is lucky or unlucky according as it comes from the right or
tlie left. Here, however, we have the well known remarkable fact
that by the Romans omens on the left were regarded as betokening
good-luck, omens on the right bad-luck, whereas amongst other
Indo-Europeans it is the opposite idea which prevails. It will not.
2 54 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
therefore, be wholly uninteresting to ascertain what was the
original Indo-European view.
J. Grimm {Geschichte d. D. Spr., " Recht und Link," pp. 980-96)
gives his explanation as follows: fii'st he starts from the indubit-
able fact that the Indo-Europeans originally took their bearings
by turning their faces to the sun so that they had the south
to the right and the north to the left. This is proved by
the agreement of the Indo-Iranian languages with the Celtic.
Cf. Sans, pranc and purva = Zend poum, " in fi'ont " = east ; Sans.
ddkshina = Zendi dashina, "to the right " = south ; Sans, savyd,
" left " = north ; and I. dess, "to the right" and "southwards,"
tiiath, " to the left and northwards." A trace of this way of look-
ing at things has been preserved by Teutonic in its O.H.G. 7iord,
&c., which corresponds to the Umbrian adjective nertru, "sinistro,"
nertrukti, "ad sinistrum " ((?. viprepo^, "nether").*
The north therefore was to the left. Consequently, J. Grimm
goes on to argue, as antiquity placed the habitation of the gods to
the north, it was natural that signs from the left should be con-
sidered lucky. This view the Romans have preserved. " The
■Greeks, however, and all other peoples agreeing with them in this
matter, must in their wanderings westwards have accustomed
themselves to direct their looks to the setting instead of the rising
sun, and so the auspicious north came to be on their right side,
whei'eas previously it had been on their left."
This view contains several improbabilities. I will insist only on
one. The Indians, who on no theory migrated from east to west,
and who did retain the primitive way of taking their bearings
(cf. The Di'kkan = ddks/mia), ought, if J. Grimm's view were right,
at all events to have remained faithful to the old view that omens
on the left betokened good-luck. But in the Rigveda it is the right
side which is considei'ed lucky. Cf. Rigveda, ii. 42: —
3. Ava hranda dakshvnato grhd'ndm sumangalo hhadravddt
^dkunte.
" Cry, oh ! bird, from the right of the house, and bring luck and
betoken happiness;" and Rigveda, ii. 43 : —
1. Pradakshinid cibhi firnaiiti kd^xivo vdyo vddantal rtutha
t^akuntayali.
" On the right sing the singers of praise, the birds, wdio speak
in accordance with order."
In contrast to this, compare the meanings of vdma, " left, askew,
* For other names for points of the compass, cf. Handelsgesehichte u.
Warcnkundc, i. 42. We may add 0. S. jugii, "south," "soutli wind," Cech
jih, "wet weather," which I com]iare with G. vyp6s, "damp," "wet." Cf.
also j/oros, "south," "south wind," vStios, voTep6s, "damp" (N.H.G. nassl).
The Teutonic name for the south is still involved in complete obscurity.
O.H.G. sundan, O.N. sunnan, A.S. silctan, "from the south," orig. Teut.
stem su/ip. I may, therefore, remark that possibly the name for the
southern quarter coincides with that of the sea, the strait: O.N. simd, A.S.
sund, orig. T^ut. stem smw)) (from *svu7n-to : schwimmen). Cf. Hebr.
yam, "sea" (Mi'diterranean)= " west." From this it would follow that at
a certain jteriod of their prehistoric development the Teutons settled to the
north of some sea.
RIGHT — LEFT = LUCKY — UNLUCKY. , 255
awTy, unfavourable," &c., masculine "the left hand," neuter "dis-
grace, disaster."
I am consequently inclined rather to infer from the a<^recment
of Sanskrit, Greek, and Teutonic (cf. J. Grimm, loc. cit., p. 984; and
Cicero, Div., ii. di : " Ita nobis sinistra videntur, Graiis et barbaris
dextra meliora "), that it is these languages and jjeoples that have
preserved the original idea. Only, " right - left " = " lucky - un-
lucky " had in this connection originally nothing to do witli the points
of the compass, but was based solely on a symbolical transference
of conceptions previously formed of the right hand and the left.
The Indo Germanic word for "the right" (Sans, ddkshiiia, Zend
dashina, O.S. desinu, Lith. deszint, G. Se^to?, Lat. dexter, I. dess,
Goth, taihsvo) means nearly everywhere also "skilful, clevei\"
Cf. also O.S., A.S. sidthora, svtdre, "right hand," i.e., "fortior,
citior," M.H.G. diu hezzer hant (J. Grimm, loc. cit., p. 987). In the
opposite way, G. Xatos, Lat. Icevus, O.S. levii belong to G. Xmpo?,
"tepidxis, lenis," O.H.G. sieo, O.S. sleu, "feeble, lukewarm" (stem
*slaivo : *divo). Sans, a-sre-mdn, "not growing weary;" and I
would explain G. link in much the same way. I compai'e O.H.G.
lencha, "left hand," Low Rh. slinc (stem *slenqo) : G. Xayapo?,
"languishing" (stem *slng-), and Lat. lanr/ueo, "be faint" (stem
'^'slng-). Further, G. Xrjyoi, "cease" : O.H.G. slack, O.N. slakr (root
*sler/ : slag). For crKato9 = Lat. sccevus, "left," unfortunately no
etymology is forthcoming. Goth, hleiduma : G. k\ltv<;, " slope," is
really "awry" in conti'ast to rechts originally "straight."
It was, therefore, from the right side that lucky signs came,
because the right is equivalent to "skilful," "clever;" and from
the left that unlucky signs came, because the left was regarded
as "weak," "feeble." Now it is a phenomenon exhibited in all
languages that the utterance of ominous, ill-foreboding words is
avoided. It is conceivable that the faithful preservation of the
word for the right in the Indo-Germanic languages, as contrasted
with the divergence even of dialects in the designations for the
left — the Teutonic and Italian tongues (Umbr. nertro : Lat. sinister)
may be mentioned — -finds its explanation in this fact. In place
of such ominous words, w'hich there is a tendency to avoid,
euphemistic terms {cf. Germ. Freund Heini for death) or expressions
of pious reverence {cf Germ. Gottseibeiuns for devil) are employed.
It is only from this point of view that it seems to me possible
to fully understand certain words for the left in the Indo-Ger-
manic languages, e.g., the G. €vww/jlo<;, which means "of good
omen" in the same sense that the dread Frinyes were called
Fumenides, "the gracious," i.e., those whom we would fain have
gracious to us. The G. apia-Tepo^, which even in Homer {Od., xx.
242) means both "the left" and "unluck}'," I derive not fi'om
upetwr, aptcTTO'i, apaptcrKO), apecTKO), but from apd, "prayer,"
"entreaty," "curse," "malediction," dpaios, dpdofxai, upei-q, so that
it designates the side expressed only with reverence and awe. So,
too, in my opinion, as regards Zend vairyastdra and O.H.G.
winistar, "left," which, according to K. Brugmann, originally had
256 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the sense of good and desii*able {Rhein. Mus. N. F., xxxiii. 399, /".j^
we ought rather to start from the roots ver and ven, in the mean-
ing of the Lat. vereri and venerdri, so that the sense of these
words also would be verendus and veneralnmdus.
In Latin one would most naturally expect a word for "left,''
with the express sense of " beneficial ;" and Brugmann {loc. cit),
separating Lat. sin-i-ster from sen-ex, with which "Windisch
{K. Z., xxvii. 169) had connected it, has an attractive derivation
of it from root sen (Sans, sdn-tyas, " more profitable," G. a-vvu)).
Originally, therefore, right and left had nothing to do with east
and west, south and north, as far as the interpretation of omens is
concerned.
It was only when the interpretation of bird-portents and other
otwvot* had become a special science in Greece and Rome that it
became necessary to transfer " the right " and " the left " to the
quarters of the sky. The G. ^eoTrpoTros, " inquirer of the gods "
(root prek = Goth, fraihnan), or /^avrt?, differing from the usual
mode of orientation, turned his face to the north : thus the east
was to the right and betokened good-luck, the west to the left and
boded ill. This is clearly shown, e.g., in Homer (//., xii. 237, ff.): —
Tvvy] S otcoj'otcrt Tai^jTrTepvyeacn KeXct'ets
TrecOecrOaL, twv ovti fj.€TaTTpiirojx ovh' dAeyt'^oj
€tT liri Se^t tojcri Trpos 7)0) r rjiXiov re
ctT tTT dpLcrrepa tol ye ttoti t,6<^ov rjepoiVTu..
2Kaios = Lat. sccBi'us, "left," is used several times (cf. Od., iii.
295) in the sense of western.
In the case of Roman auspices we have to assume two different
modes of orientation : first, the more common, ancient Indo-Ger-
manic mode of turning to the east ; and second, a less common,
apparently younger, mode of turning to the south {cf. Nissen, Das
Templum, 1869, p. 171,/!). The left side, which, according to the
augur's conception, is the lucky one, is accordingly either the
north (cf. Servius, ad Aen., ii. 693 : " Siuistras autem partes
septentrionales esse augurum disciplina consentit, et ideo ex ipsa
parte significantiora esse fulmina, quoniam altiora et viciniora
domicilio Jovis ") or the east, the quarter of the rising sun. By
the side of this view, however, there perpetually runs the usual,
perhaps the people's, idea of the sinister character of omens on the
left, and the propitious character of those on the right, as a glance
at the lexicon, s.v., 'Isevus,' 'sctevus,' 'dexter' will show. Cf. also
Plant., Asin., ii. i. 12 : " Picus et cornix ab Iseva, corvus, parra ab
dextera consuadent."
How the Roman augur reached this optimistic view of omens on
the left, whether by borrowing from Etruscan ritual (cf. Dionys.,
V. 5 : Tt^errat Se 'Po)/Aat06 ras eK twv dpicTTepwv IttI to. Se^ta dcrrpaTras
alcTLOV^, UTf. Tvapa. Tvpprjvwv SiSa^^Oevjes )> 01' from cosmo-
* Like the G. oliay6s, the Sans, t^akund, originally "bird," has acquired the
meaning of "omen." Cdkund is the science of the (^akunika, i.e., of him who
know how to interpret the calcund. Cf. on this E. Hultzseh, loc. cit., p. 6, ff.
FALCONRY. 257
gonical or other considerations, we do not know. In no case,
liowever, are we justified in treating a peculiarity of Roman angury,
which conflicts with the usage of rehited peoples as an ancient
Indo-Germanic custom.
Finally, we may remark incidentally upon one direction in which
the bird-world has been of importance for the history of culture,
even though not in the time before the dispersion of the Indo-
P^uropeans and not amongst all Indo-European peoples — the custom
of hunting smaller game with falcons, hawks, sparrow-hawks, &c.
When and where did this mode of hunting first arise 1
V. Hehn (Kn/hirjijianzen und Haustiere^ p. 367) asserts that
falconry is no German practice, but rather came to the Germans
from the Celts, and that at no very early period. This Anew,
however, seems to me to have no evidence ; for hunting with birds
can not be detected, at any rate in early times, anywhere amongst
the Celts ; and as regards the series I. sebocr, Cymr. heJ>auc, O.H.G.
habuh, O.N. haukr, " hawk," it was not the Teutons, as Hehn believed,
but on the contrary the Celts {cf. Thurneysen, Kelto-Romanisches,
p. 22), who were the borrowers.
In the fourth century a.d., the new mode of hunting must have
made its appearance amongst the Romans {cf. Baist, Z. f. D. A.u. L.,
1883, p. 5i, and W. Brandes, Arch. f. Lat. Lex., 1886, p. 141,
accipiter, "falcon for hunting"), and it is not improbable that it
migrated from Teutonic into Roman territory. This is favoured
by a set of Latin terms for hawking which are plainly of Teutonic
origin: thus, It. sparaviere, F. epervier : O.H.G. sjjai'ivdri, "sparrow-
hawk," It. fierfalco. Span, gerifalte, Prov. (jirfalc, F. yerfaut : O.N.
<ieirfalki, " spear-falcon " (Baist, loc. cit., p. 59), or from geier-
falke, It. logoro, F. leiirre : M.H.G. hioder, "lure." Again, O.H.G.
faldio, O.N. falke, M. Lat. fa/co, It. falcone, F. faxicon, although I
cannot accept Baist's proposed derivation from fallen any more
than Kluge's from Volcce, seems much more likely to be of
barbarian than of Roman origin (cf Baist, loc cit., p. .58).
If this is correct, then as Ctesar, Pliny, and Tacitus are not
acquainted with falconry amongst the Teutons, it may have
appeared amongst them for the first time in the second or third
century. This, however, is the time, i.e., about the second half
of the second century, of the migration of the Goths to the Lower
Danube and the Black Sea. Now, south of the Danube, in ancient
Thrace, as we know from Aristotle's Hist. Anim., ix. x.xxvi. 4,
hawking was practised before the Christian era. If this mode of
hunting had taken root in Tlu'acian soil, the Teutons may have
learnt and developed it there, as is the opinion of J. Grimm
{Geschichte d. D. Spir., p. 47), who in this question has come to a
sounder decision than has V. Hehn. It may be remarked further,
that Ctesias {Op. Beliquice Coll., Biihr 250) is accjuainted with
hunting by means of birds in India ; but though tliis practice is
familiar to the East, especially among Turko-Tataric peoples {cf.
Yambery, Primitive Culttcr, p. 100), Ctesias' statement has not,
as far as I know, been confirmed from Indian sources.
R
258 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Ouly a few remarks need here be made about the other classes
of animals, an examination of whose Indo-Germanic names I
reserve. Particular points will meet us subsequently. Emphasis
has already {cf. above, p. 118) been laid on the total absence of
etymologically related names of fishes, certainly a fact of consider-
able significance, both geographically and in tlie history of culture.
It might appear as though an exception to this were aflForded by
the name for the eel in some European languages — G. €y)(€.Xv<i, Lat.
anguiUa, Lith. ^mytirys, O.S. qgoriUi ; and since this fish does not
occur in streams which empty themselves directly or indirectly
into the Black Sea, Penka {Herkunft der Arier, pp. 38, 46) accord-
ingly has deemed Southern Russia excluded from the question as
to the original home of the Indo-Europeans. This conclusion is
wrecked on the fact that the names mentioned may be, and
probably (above, p. 118) are, diminutives, separately formed by
the respective languages, of an original word for snake : Sans, dhi-,
Zend azhi-, Lith. angh, Lat. angiiis, O.I. esc-ung, O.H.G. mic, G. e>^i?.
Anyhow, no corresponding Indo-Iranian word is forthcoming.
Penka {loc. cit.) calls the names for the oyster, G. oa-rpeov, Lat.
ostrea, A.S. ostre, M.H.G. lister, "primitive Aryan," yet their con-
nection is undoubtedly that of borrowing.
This is rightly emphasised by Max Miiller (Jjiogra2)hies of
Words, pp. 118, 124). Nor does the word for snake just mentioned
(cf. also Lat. serpens ^Ssms. smyd) prove anything, for snake-like
creatures are distributed over the whole Indo-Germanic area.
There seem, however, to have been crab-like creatures in the
Indo-Germanic favma, as is indicated by the equations Sans.
karl-afa = G. KapKtVos, Lat. cancer (from *carc-i'o ?), and G. Kdjxapo<i =
O.N. humarr.
CHAPTER III.
CATTLE.
Ancient Imlo-Germanic Domesticated Animals : Cow, Sheep, Goat, Dog, Pig,
and Horse — IHding and Fighting Chariots — Ancient History of the Mule,
Ass, and Camel — Conclusions as to the Original Indo-European Home —
The Cat — Birds — Ape, Parrot, Peacock.
When we visit a farm at the present day and observe the friendly
nature of the life which goes on there — the horse proudly and
obediently bending his neck to the yoke ; the cow offering her
streaming udder to the milk-maid ; the woolly flock going forth to
the field, accompanied by their trusty protector, the dog, who
comes fawning to his master — this familiar intercourse between
man and beast seems so natural that it is scarcely conceivable that
things may once have been different.
And yet in this picture we only see the final result of thousands
and thousands of years of the work of civilisation, the enormous
importance of which simply escapes our notice because it is by
every-day wonders that our amazement is least excited.
In the civilised states of the Old World, indeed, the domestication
of animals is lost in the mists of antiquity. The inhabitants of
the valley of the Nile and of the plain between the Tigris and the
Euphrates were the pioneers of civilisation in this respect. Nay !
if we go beyond the limits of history and travel back to the time
when the Semitic tongues and nations were not yet differentiated,
we find that the domestication of animals was already far advanced.
The ass, the camel, goats, sheep, oxen, the dog, and perhaps even
the horse were then in the service of man {cf. Hommel, Die Namen
(lev Sdtigetiere hei den siidsemitischen Yolkern, p. 461,/'.).
Even the Indo-European was a cattle-breeder. His herds (Goth.
AaiVf/a = Sans, fdrdha) were his wealth (Tac, Germ.., c. 5), the object
for which he fought (Sans, gdvishti, "struggle for cows"= "fight"),
and the source of his food and clothing. Yet he, too, must have
passed through a lower stage of development, and the question may
be asked whether his cattle-raising was his own idea or suggested
by his neighbours ? But we shall soon see that tlie Indo-European
names for tiie oldest domesticated animals have such a thoroughly
native air that they lend no support to the hypothesis of borrowing.
The importance of cattle in the primitive age is shown by the exist-
260 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
ence of a common collective name for it. The Germ, vieh, O.H.G.
jikti, Goth, faihu, O.P. ^^^A-m (?), are etymologically identical with
\jxt.pecus, Sans, joap M, Zend ^>asi< ("small cattle" pai'ticularly), and
go back to a root joap (Sans, ya^dydmi), which meant "ftisten,"
"capture." The domesticated animals were then perhaps originally
*' the fastened " as opposed to those which ran wild (Curtius,
Grundz.^, p. 267). Here a series of general names refei'ring
specially to cattle may be mentioned, such as G. e^pis = Sans.
vddhri, " gelder," the use of the root ster to designate sterile beasts
(Sans, stari, Armen. sterj, O.H.G. stero, "ram," M.H.G. stdrke,
G. (TT€pp6<;, Lat. sterilis), the roots ers (Sans, rshahhd, G. apprjv) and
vers (Sans, vf-sha, Lat. verves, Lith. werszis) for the male, the root
dhe for the female (Sans, dhenu, Zend daenu, I. dinu, "agna," &c.),
and so on.
By far the most important position was occupied by the horned
cattle, as is shown by the primitive names for the special ages and
sexes. We may mention here Sans, ukshdn, Goth, auhsa, Cymr.
ych, Corn, ohan ; Zend staora ("draught-cattle"), Goth, stiur,
O.N. \j6rr, O.S. turu, G. raSpos, Lat. taurtts, Osc. Tavpo/x, Umbr.
torn, turuf, Gall, tarvos, 1. tarh ; Sans, go, Zend gdo, Armen. how^
G. /SoSs, Lat. 60s, L ho, O.H.G. chuo, O.S. govedo ; Sans, va^ti,
Lat. vacca ; G. Trdjorts, O.H.G. farro (Sans, pfshati, "spotted
cow ").
The cow, which, like the bull, is intimately connected with Indo-
European mythology, has during her life-time a double significance.
On the one hand, she is the milk-giving creature (Sans, dhenu, Zend
gdo daenu) ; on the other, she is specially the beast of bvirden and
draught of the primitive age (Sans, anaclvdh). When killed, her
flesh supplies food, while the hide is converted into shields, bow-
strings, bags, straps, caps, &c.*
In the way of small cattle the sheep and the goat were un-
doubtedly known in the primitive age. That these domesticated
animals were known in primitive times is shown first by the
equivalent names for them which occur in many Indo-European
languages (cf. Sans, dvi, G. 019, Lat. ovis, I. 6i, O.H.G. auwi, Lith.
awls, O.S. ovica ; cf. also G. dp,vos = Lat. agnus, I. uan, O.S. jagne,
and Armen. gafn = G. aprjv and Sans, ajd, Armen. ayts, G. ai^, Lith.
ozys, perhaps also Zend iza in ^'^«ma = Sans. ajina, O.S. jazino,
"hide;" cf. above, p. 248), next by the fact that we find them
domesticated in the remotest periods of the history of all the Indo-
* On shields of cow-hide, cf. above, p. 225. It is especially to be noted
that in ancient times the leather bottle was used for keeping liquids in, as is
still the case amongst nomad peoples {Vambeiy, Primitive Cidtur, p. 86), and
that this custom explains several names lor liquid measures and vessels
amongst the Indo-Europeans. Cf. G. wiKXa, "milk-pail" (/7.,xvi. 642) — never
"hide" — : Lat. pellis, Goth, -fill (author, K. Z., xxx. 479), Lat. culms, "the
greatest cubic measure of liquids" : G. KovXe6s, "leather bottle," M. Lat.
bidga, M.H.G. bulga, "water-vessel of leather," O.H.G. bidga, "leather
sack" : Goth, bcdgs, I. bole, O.H.G. tioniia, "tun," from the Celtic, I. tunna :
Mid. I. to7id, tonn, Bret, tonncn {*tunn& or *tundd ; Thurneysen, Kelto-Rom.,
p. 87), "skin of man and of animals," L crocan, " olla " (A.S. crocca, O.N.
krukica) : I. crocenn, " hide " (Zeuss, Gr. C.-, p. 778), &c.
THE PIG — THE HORSE. 26 1
Europeans, amongst the Hindus of the Vedas, the Persians of the
Avesta, the Greeks of Homer, the ancient Romans, &c.
A somewhat closer investigation is required by the other quad-
rupeds, which at the present day are to be found in the stables
and yards of a farm. Let us begin with the domestic pig : the
European name, G. v5, Lat. su.% 0. H.G. sd, O.S. svinija, certainly
does recur in Indo-Iranian, in Zend hil (Osset. khui/, N. Pers. khilk,
Pamir D. khilg*), &c., perhaps also in the Sans. suJcard, "wild-boar:"
only swine-breeding is unknown to the Vedat and Avesta, as also
to the original Semites and the Sumerian population of Babylon.
On the other hand, as a glance at Odysseus' wealth in swine is
enough to show, they were common in the Homeric period. At
the most, the extreme rarity with which pigs, as compared with
cows, sheep, and goats, are used as offerings, might be made into an
argument to show that the Greeks made the acquaintance of the
animal somewhat late. In Italy, again, there is evidence to show
that the pig was domesticated of old (Lat. svs, Umbr. sim, ace. sing.,
$if\ nom. plur.), and in the Suovetaurilia the pig was an essential
feature. When one considers these facts, and reflects that it is in
the Eui'opean languages that a new name, common to all the
languages, and originally perhaps designating the young of the
animal (G. TropKos in Varro, Lat. porcus, Umbr. porka, I, ore,
O.H.G. farah, Lith. parszas, O.S. prase), crops out, the conjecture
suggests itself that it was first among the European members of
the Indo-Germanic family that the domestication of the pig spread,
and that contemporaneously with numerous other advances in
agriculture (cf. below, ch. v.) made by them; for to rear and
house the pig demands a settled and agricultural population. In
the extreme north, in Finland and Esthonia, the pig was, until
quite recent times, dreaded as the destroyer of the young crops :
and fowls and pigs were exhibited for money by wandering gipsies
as strange and remarkable beasts (cf. Ahlqvist, Kulturwiirter,
p. 22).
It would be of extraordinary importance for the history of
culture to secure a final solution of the question how- far the horse,
which was undoubtedly known to the Indo-Europeans (Sans, d^va,
Zend aspa, G. ittttos, Lat. equus, I. ech, 0. Sax. ehu-, Lith. asziva),
was amongst the number of the animals domesticated in the
jjrimitive age. The domestication of this noblest of animals, on
whose back the bold rider speeds with the rapidity of lightning,
gives, as the interesting picture drawn by V. Hehn in his Kultur-
pjlanzen ^md Ilaustieren shows, an entirely new and special character
to a primitive people.
The art of riding was practised neither by the Greeks of Homer
* "The Mordv. tmva, titwo, 'sow' (from. wif«), is a primeval loan-word ; the
oak-forests on the Middle Volga have been from the oklest times a favourable
hjcalc for rearing swine " (Tomaschek, p. 32). Ahlqvist {Kulturw., p. 18) regards
the Mordv. word as genuine.
t Cf. also j:EUaii, ii. 4 : vv oUn &ypiov of/re ^fjupov iv'lvZols ytvecrOai \(yfi
KTTjffias.
262 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
nor by the Hindus of the Rigveda,* and if it is common amongst
the Persians of the Avesta, it is not improbable that they learnt
it from the nomad tribes of the Turko-Tataric family which
swarmed round Persia (c/. W. Geiger, Ostii-an. Cultur, p. 354).
The terms for riding again in the related languages differ fi'om
one another, and are apparently of recent date (cf. tTnrevo) : LTnrevs,
eqidtare : eques, equo vehi like the Zend barata = i<f)epeTo, "he
rode ;" Germ, reiten, O.N. rida, A.S. rtdan, properly "to move for-
ward," G. (pepeaOaL, M.H.G. rulen, "to travel by ship," &c.). Further,
where the horse is used as a beast of draught it is not yoked to
the heavy wagon, a piece of work which, as we have said, the ox
had to perform, but is harnessed (as is the practice of the most
ancient Greeks, Hindus, and Persians) to the rapid war-chariot, or,
at the most, to a light travelling carriage.
This custom, again, of using chariots for the serious business of
war or the joyous amusement of racing, can scarcely be regarded
as dating from the primeval Indo-Cermanic period. To say
nothing of anything else, it would impute to the primitive age a
mode of carriage-building such as we could by no means expect
in the ancient time when metals were unknown (cf. below, ch. x.).
In Europe the use of war-chariots amongst the most ancient
Greeks, which is established by the grave-stones of Mycenee,
undoubtedly derives from Egypt and Semitic Asia Minor, where this
mode of fighting can be traced as far back as the seventeenth cen-
tury before Ch rist (cf. W. Helbig, Das homerische Epos, p. 8 8, /". ) . The
Indo-lranian custom of fighting from war-chariots may well belong
to the same circle of culture. Indeed, Roth, at any rate (Z. d. D.
M. G., XXXV. 686), is of opinion that it could not have originated in
the narrow valleys of India, though it may have originated amongst
their Persian brethren in the plains north of the Parapamisus.
Strange to say, war-chariots were known to another section of
the Western Indo-Europeans, the Celtic Britons, with whose
essedarii Csesar made his acquaintance. V. Hehn {Knlturpf. u.
Haust.^, p. 52), whose tendency is to refer all identical or similar
phenomena of culture to one centre, is of opinion that the Celtic
war-chariots " were borrowed after the great Celtic migrations to
the East, and into the neighbourhood of Persian and Thracian
peoples, from these peoples."
* That is to say, it was not of importance for the history of culture,
especially for military purposes ; for that the art of occasionally jumping on
the back of the swift-footed creature was understood is shown by various
passages both in the Homeric poem and in the Rigveda. Of the former, the
most important are OcL, v. 371; 11., x. 513 and xv. 679. Of the latter,
especially, v. 61. 2 : —
Kvd vd 'fvdh kvabhi gavah ? " Where ai'e your horses, where the bridle ?"
Kathdm gtka hatha yaxjnl "How could you, whence did you come ? "
PrsMM scidC nasur ydmah. ' ' On their back the seat, in the nostrils the rein. "
Jaghdne coda eshdm. "On their hindquarters the whip (?)."
Vi sakthani ndro yamuh. "The men bestrode them."
Putrahrtlu nd jdnayah. "Like women in filio procreando."
Cf. Max Midler, Biographies of Words, p. 116.
RIDING AND DRIVING UNKNOWN. 263
However, if we reflect that the moA'ement, referred to, of
Galatiau tribes to Thrace, Greece, and Asia Minor, was not earlier
than the beginning of the third century, whereas EngUind was
occupied by Celtic tribes much earlier (cf. K. Miillenhoff", J). A., ii.
238), we shall deem it incredible that the knowledge possessed
by the former, even though they might have picked it up from
the Thracian tribes, was only preserved by the latter : for, of
the existence of the custom of fighting from chariots amongst the
Continental Celts, Cccsar knows nothing. The Celts were a people
fond of horses and experienced in the art of building wagons, as
the dependence of the Romans in this respect on the Celts shows
{<:/. Lat. reda, "mail-coach" : I. de-riad, "bigte," Lat. serrdnun:
I. sesrech, sesirtck, "wagon," Lat. carr^is : I. carr, <tc.). As the
fighting of infantry and cavalry mixed was a specially Celtic (and
Teutonic) feature, why should not a tribe have hit upon the idea
independently of yoking the swift-footed horse to a lightly built
war-chariot ?
The hoi*se then cannot have been employed in the primitive
period either for riding or driving. It is, however, conceivable
that, then, as is even now the case with the Turko-Tataric tribes,
horses were bred in half-wild droves, not so much for the service
as for the food of man — for the sake of their flesh and milk ; and
I confess that this possibility still seems to me to fit in most
excellently with the picture which we must form of the primitive
national economy of the Indo-Europeans. Xot until after the
dispersion, though perhaps while certain groups were still con-
nected together (Sans. arwm = Zend aurva/it, Armen. jV = Sans.
kdya, G. TTwAos = Goth, tula, O.H.G. folo, O.H.G. stuot = Lith.
stodas, O.S. stado, "herd of horses;" cf. O.I. graig, "herd of
horses": Lat. grex, I. wcfrc = O.H.G. vieriha), was it that horse-
breeding attained to a certain importance, though it was only in
historic times that the creature became an important factor in
commerce, and came to take the place of the steer or mule
in field-work and domestic labour {cf. on this point, author,
HaruMsfieschichte 11. Warenkunde, i. 23, /.). For the place of
the horse in the history of culture, especially for the sanctity
which attached to him, particularly amongst the Iranian and
Teuto-Slavonic tribes, and for horse-oracles, see V. Helm, p.
20,/.
Finally, if we give one more glance at the peoples who were
the neighbours of the Indo-Europeans, we find that A. v. Kremer
would make out that the domestication of the horse was unknown
even to the original Semites — nay! that they even borrowed tlie
name of the animal from the Indo-Europeans. However, we have
made our acquaintance with F. Hommel's attempt {cf. above,
p. 43) to establish an original Semitic name for war-horse.
In any case, the Semites were familiar with horse-breeding at an
early period, and they first introduced it amongst the Sumerian
population of the Euphrates disti'ict ('/. F. Hommcl, Die vorsemit.
litdturen, p. 402,/.).
264 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Again in Egypt, where on the monuments of the ancient
kingdom (3500-2000) horses are neither pictured nor mentioned,
the names for the horse, sesnn-t, ses, semsem (Hebr. sfis), betray
their Semitic origin (<•/'. F. Hommel, Die Namen der Saur/etiere,
p. 420,/.).
Finally, while the horse was known, in an undomesticated state,
to the Indo-Europeans before the dispersion, the uniform name,
at, applied to the animal by all the members of the tremendous
Turko-Tataric family, serves to show how near we are now
approaching to the centre from which the horse was originally
propagated, the steppes of Central Asia (cf. H. Vambery, Die
Primitive Cultur, p. 188). The Finns also had made acquaint-
ance with the creature before making their appearance on the
Baltic.
If it is probable that the domestication of the quadrupeds thus
far mentioned — and amongst these domesticated animals we may
indubitably include the watcher of the herds, the dog (Sans.
gvdn, Zend spa, G. Kvmv, Lat. canis, I. cii, Teut. hun-d, Lith. ssii) —
must be regarded as dating from prehistoric times ; it is equally
probable that the remaining mammals, used at the present day
as domestic animals, over either all or parts of the Indo-Gei'manic
area — that is to say the ass, the mule, the camel, and the cat —
played no part in the economy of Indo-Germanic life. We will
begin by discussing the firet three kinds of animal, and that with
reference to the state of things in Europe.
The beast of draught and burden par excellence in the time of
Homer and Hesiod is the mule (rjixiovo?, ovpev<;, opcv?). The
Homeric poets point to the district of the Paphlagonian Eneti as
the mule's native home, Anacreon to the Mysians as those who first
effected the union of the ass and the mare (cf. //., ii. 852, and
Atiacr., fr. 34, Bergk). The mule then came from Pontic Asia
Minor.
On the other hand, the ass is only mentioned once in the Homeric
poems, that is in //., xi. 558, where Telamonian Ajax is compared
to the animal. In this connection we shall do w^ell to remember
that in the Orient the wild-ass is held as a model of strength and
courage, so that the Caliph Mervan received the name of
" Dschesira's (i.e., Mesopotamia's) ass." The ass, therefore, cannot
possibly have belonged to the domesticated animals of the Homeric
age. Under these circumstances it is certainly remarkable that
the mule, which was the first to make its appearance, should be
named after the ass, which only came later, 17/xiovos : 6vo<i, "half-
ass " : " ass." I can only explain this to myself on the assumption
that when the Hellenes themselves took to breeding mules they
imported individual he or she asses, which were solely for breed-
ing purposes, and were much too costly to use for field or house
work. This accords with the fact that in the oldest lyric,
immediately succeeding on Homer, the ass appears rather as a
brood animal than a domesticated creature, a point which I
have discussed in A'. Z., xxx. 374:, ff. The first certain mention
THE MULE AND THE ASS. 265
of the ass in the latter capacity I find is in Tyrtajus (Bergk,
fr. 6) :—
oxnrep ovol ^cyaXots a-^diai. reipofxevoL
Secnrocrvvoicn ^epovTes drayKaiT^S ^tto Avyp^s
rjixLcrv TravTos ocrov Kapirov apovpa <ji€p€L.
The Phocfcans, according to Hesychius, had a special word for
the ass, which was imported for breeding piarposes (tovs ovovs tov^
iir ox^^oLv TTc/xTTo/AeVovs), fjiV)(X6<;, from which the Lat. viulus is
borrowed. This word is also explained by Hesychius as = /.tot^os,
" adulterer," and I have elsewhere compared it with /avttos (from
*/jbVK-Jo)' yuvatKos atSotov, Hes., jxv^a, " slime," aTro/xi'crtrco, "blow (the
nose)," cfec. We have then here the indisputable transition in
meaning from " covei'ing ass" to "mule." It seems to me there-
fore probable that the two other Greek names for mule, viz., oi'peu?,
opev's (the derivation of which from opos would be too abstract), and
ytWo? (FtVvoc, ri'j'os = Lat. hinnus) are to be explained in a similar
way, as follows : — ovpev<: : ovpem {6pev<s being connected in popular
etymology with opos, " mountain ") and FtWos from *Fto--vos : root
vis, "to wet, make liquid." In older stages of language the
meanings urinain facere and semen profundere usually run into
each other. Again, O.S. mizr/u, miskii, mistf, '^^rjp.iovcK" cannot be
separated from mez-r/a, " sap," Lat. mingere, G. ofjux^w, /Aot;(of-,
"adulterer," Sans, mih "mingere" and "semen profundere." The
Slavonic peoples also pi'obably derive their knowledge of the mule
from the Pontus at an early period.
Unfortunately, the Gi'eek and Latin name for the ass, 6vo<; -
asijius, is itself not yet explained. What we should be most
inclined to expect after what has been said would be a Pontic word
from Asia Minor ; for, wherever the ancients obtained the offspring
of the ass and the horse from, there must the ass have been bred
from of old. Now, in Armenian, eS occurs as the name of the ass,
a word which may come from the ancient non-Indo-Germanic
Armenian tongue, and which, according to F. Hommel, recurs in
the Sumero-Accadian ansu, a?isi (cf. Turko-Tat. esek, esik, " ass ").
Some such forrn of the word, with metathesis of the nasal, *ai^-7io,
*as-ino, may have produced the G. ovos {*6cr-vo) and — through
Illyrico-Thracian — the Lat. asinn.
At any rate, the starting-point I have indicated seems to me
more probable, both as regards the word and the flicts of the case,
than the loan, which V. Hehn following Th. Bcnfcy upholds, of
ovos - asi7ius from the Semitic, Hebr. citon, Orig. Sem. atdnv,
" she-ass."
The animal's names in the north of Europe, O.I. assan (A.S. assa),
Goth, asihis, A.S. eosol (/ from n), and O.S. osllu, Lith. ilsifas
(which last two again come from the Teutonic), collectively point
to the Lat. asimis as the source from which they were borrowed.
The camel, as is well known, never entered the service of the
European branch of the Indo-Germanic family. Its Semitic name
/cap,7;A.os ( = Lat. camelus) appears to have first become known in
266 PKEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Greece at the time of the Persian wars. It is mentioned for the
first time in .Esch., Szippl., 285. The most extraordinary thing,
however, is the Slavo-Teutonic name for this animal : Goth.
ulhandus, A.S. olfend, O.H.G. olbenta, O.S. vellhadu, which sound
like G. iXecjias, Lat. elephantus. Is it conceivable that we have here
a confusion between the elephant and the camel 1 or must we recog-
nise in eAe'^ai'T- - ulhandus, a primeval animal-name, the meaning
of which was differentiated in later times in different directions?
If we now turn to the Indo-Iranian branch, we find that with
them the history of tlie ass and the camel goes back to a much
higher antiquity. I certainly w'ill not venture to decide whether
the domestication of the two animals can be ascribed to the Indo-
Iranian period ; for, since Sans. Ichdra, " ass " = Zend khara only
appears in late literature, and Sans. i^Wtfra = Zend ushtra, "camel,"
in the Veda stands for a tame and for a wild species of buffalo, and
is only later to be translated as camel, we must not base ourselves
too much on this pair of equations. Geiger [Museon, loc. cit., p.
28, /f.; cf. also Spieg^-l, Die arische Periode, pp. 49, 51) is of opinion
that they still indicated the wild species. In that case the Indians
would have lost the beast from view when they immigrated into
the Punjaub, and have applied the word itshtra, thus set free, to a
species of buffalo, until they once more became acquainted with
the domesticated camel (with two humps) in the course of com-
merce and intercourse with Bactria. Be this as it may, the ass in
any case is amongst the most ancient domesticated animals we can
ascertain to have been known to the Iranians and Indians. Besides
Ma?'a = Pamir D. Mu7', khar, &c., another name for the ass or the
foal of an ass occurs in Ii'anian, kathwa = Pamir D. Jcucit (Tomaschek,
Pamir D., p. 31), which may possibly explain G. kolvOwv (Aristo-
phanes), " ass." The old Vedic names for the animal are garddahkd
and rdsabha, the latter of which belongs to rasa {cf. above, G.
/Au;^Xd?, itc). The A9vins particulai'ly, the gods of the morning
light, appear upon a wagon drawn by asses (Rgv., i. 34 9 ; viii.
74. 7). On the other hand, the mule does not appear in the Rig-
veda ; it is called later arvatard : d^va, " horse." The meanings of
the Sans, lishtra we have already mentioned. In Iranian, however,
" from the most ancient parts of the Avesta down to the modern
dialects " the word stands for the domesticated camel. To sum up
— on the one hand, the horse occurred in the Indo-Germanic fauna ;
on the other, from all that we know, the ass and the camel did
not. The combination of these tAvo facts seems to me to assist us
considerably in taking ovxr bearings in the question of the original
home of the Indo-Europeans. According to the usual view, the
original centre of distribution for the horse was the sandy steppes
and grassy plains of Central Asia. But, in the opinion of unpre-
judiced naturalists, the area of the horse's distribution must have
been much wider in early times ; and, in particular, must have
covered portions of Europe not only in earlier geological epochs
{cf. Wallace, The Geographical DistriJmtion of Animals, i. 135,
136) but also in the present. According to Schmarda {Die geo-
THE IXDO-EUROPEAN HOME. 267
grnpJiiache Verhreitung tier Tiere, p. 405) the orip:inal habitat of
the horse included the valley of the Oxus, Northern Asia,
Chorassan, "and probably all Europe." The tarpan, which to the
present day scours the country between Lake Aral and the southern
heights of Asia perfectly wild, is said to have been met with a
hundred years ago in Russia in Europe (Brehm, Tierlehen, ii. 335);
and it can hardly be that all the numerous historical notices of
wild-horses in all parts of Europe are to be explained, as by V. Hehn,
as so-called muzins or runaways.
On the other liand, the original habitat of the ass and the
camel was limited to the Semitic desei'ts and the steppes of Central
Asia ; and in fact the domestication of the two animals dates from
the primeval period of those peoples whose oi'igines may be certainly
looked for in Asia. This applies alike to the Semites (Grig. Sem.
'/amalu and atdnu, himdru, "ass") and the Turko-Tatars {tube,
fih'e, "camel," and esek, esik, "ass"); while the Indo-Iranian
l)ranch of the Indo-Europeans made the acquaintance of both
beasts, as we saw, at a very early period, perhaps in the time when
they were yet undivided, though neither animal was known to the
Indo-Europeans before the dispersion. From these facts it would
follow that we must look for the home of the Indo-Europeans
before the dispersion within the area of distribution of the
horse, but withoiit that of the ass and the camel, which would
lead us either to Europe (eastern) or the moi'e northern parts of
Asia; for in the latter neighbourhood the Finns made the
acquaintance of the horse before they burst upon the Baltic (c/.
above, p. 45).
"We are well aware Avhat can be said against conclusions of this
kind considered separately. They can, however, only be incidentally
indicated here ; in a later chapter (xiv.) they will be set forth
connectedly.
Chronologically the latest acquisition in Europe in the way of
four-footed domestic animals is the cat. The high antiquity
which its domestication in Eg}^pt goes back to, and its appearance
in, the imj)erium Romanum, probably in the fir.st centuries of the
migrations of the peoples, have been thoroughly illusti"ated by
V. Hehn. It is, indeed, difficult to determine precisely when
cathis, catta were first used of the domestic house-cat. The
earliest certain instance of their use occurs about 600 in a passage
of Diaconus Johannes about Gregory the Great ((/. K. Sittl,
Wolfflins Archiv, v. 133, f.). To appreciate the history of this
creature properly we must bear in mind that the forerunners of
the cat in Europe were the weasel or the closely-related marten
and pole-cat, whose common, primeval names have been given in the
second chapter. This applies alike to the part which the weasel
plays in the mythology and superstition of antiquity,* and to tlie
meaning of its name, " mouse-catcher," (Lat. mustela ; cf. author,
B. B., XV. 130). In both respects the tame Egyptian house-cat wa.s
* Consider, e.g., the ill-luck foreboded by the cat that crosses one's path;
where the cat quite takes the place of the weasel iu anti<iuity.
268 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
the successor of the weasel,* and thus it has come about that
many of the latter's names, such as G. aUXovpos and Lat. fceles,
have come to be applied to the former. According to V. Hehn,
when the tame house-cat came to Europe, a special name for her
came also into popular Latin — M. Lat. cattus, catta (: catulus),
lit. "little beast." This new word was the source of the names of
the felis domestica for all Europe in mediaeval and modern times.
But against this view it is to be noted that the Teutonic languages
have in their O.H.G. chazza, chataro {cf. F. Kluge, Faul und
Braune's £., xiv. 585 ; cf. also N.H.G. kitze), very ancient forms
which hardly suggest borrowing. There is another consideration
also which makes against Helm's view.
In Low Latin cattus, catus, meant not only cat (cf. Du Cange,
ii.^), but also something else — that is, a sort of pent- roof used to
cover soldiers' approach to an enemy's walls. Cattus in this sense
is obviously to be taken like Lat. ctmicuhis, " rabbit " and " mine : "
the metaphor is from the slinking, crafty way the cat approaches
the bird's-nest or the hare's form. Now, this engine of war is men-
tioned by the military writer Vegetius (iv. 15), where, according
to the most probable reading, the words are : vineas dixerunt
veteres, quas mine militari harbaricoque usu Cattos vacant. These
pent-roofs, then, were called as early as the fourth century catti by
barbarians, and thus it appears probable from this point of view
also that under this word there lurks not a Latin cattus in the
sense of "little beast," but a genuine Teutonic chazza, which
originally stood for the wild-cat, sacred to the goddess Freya, along
with the boar and the falcon as a beast of burden, and then was
transferred to the felis domestica. The word, then, just as was the
case {cf. author, B. B., xv. 130) with the name of the marten (A.S.
meard : M. Lat. martes), found its way into Middle Latin and the
Romance languages (It. c/atto, F. chat), and travelled into the
languages of the rest of Europe (Common Slav, kotu, " tom-cat," Lith.
kate, "cat," kdtinas, "tom-cat," I. cat, Mod. G. Karriys, Karra, &c.)
either from them or direct from the Teutonic.
In India the value of the cat (Sans, mdrjdrd and viddla) as a
catcher of mice does not seem to have been discovered until very
late. Panini, who gives a certain rule for forming compounds
from the names of proverbially antagonistic creatures, mentions
neither cat and dog, nor cat and mouse. Indeed, even in the
original version of the Panchatantra the falcon and not the cat
seems to haTfe occupied the position of enemy to the mouse (cf.
Max Miiller, Lidia, 261-66).
We next turn to the question whether any of the species of
birds discussed in the previous chapter had come to be bred by
man as early as the primeval period. I believe, however, that here
we shall come to an entirely negative conclusion.
The absence of birds from the domestic economy of the Indo-
* Cf. Wiesel und Katze, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Haustiere, by Dr
V. Placzek (Sonderabdruck aus dcm XXVI. Bande der Verhandlungcn dcs
naturforschenden Vereins in Briinn), Briinn, 1888.
TAME BIRDS UNKNOWN. 269
Europeans seems to me to follow from general considerations
based on the history of culture, as the breeding of birds requires
more solid and permanent dwellings than, as we shall hereafter see,
we can venture to presuppose amongst the nomad or half-nomad
Tndo-Europeans. Again, in the beginnings of agriculture, the farmer
dreads the pecking birds which may destroy the scanty produce of
his fields.
However, the complete want of tame birds in the primeval
period follows direct from the circumstance that when the Indo-
Germanic peoples make their first appearance in history they had
not carried the breeding of birds beyond the most elementary
beginnings.
Amongst the Homeric Greeks the only kind of tame bird is the
goose, and it is rather a luxury than of use. Penelope keeps a flock
of twenty geese. In the Rigveda, again, the word hamd, which
corresponds to the G. ^(rjv, still stands for the wild-goose, as is
shown by, e.g., R'gv., viii. 35, where the goose is put upon the
same footing as the falcon and hm-idrava birds (cf. v. 8, haiisdu
iva patatho adhvagau, "ye fly like two wild-geese"). The case is
similar with dti, which corresponds to G. vrjo-aa, "duck."
Again, there was probably even in the primeval period a name
for a wild variety of hen [cf. above, p. 251). The taming of the
domestic hen, which comes from India, and is even mentioned in the
Veda (l-rkavaku), but is foreign to the Old Testament and Egypt, and
its transmission to the west, were the doing mainly of the Iranians,
amongst whom the cock as being the herald of morn and the
symbol of light and of the sun has become a sacred bird [cf. W.
Geiger, Ostiran. Kidtur, p. 367). From them in the second half of
the sixth century he travelled to the Hellenes, amongst whom he
appears as a Persian bird, with the unfortunately obscure name
oAcKTcop, aXeKTpvwiv. The Slavs actually called the bird by a
Persian name : Common Slav, kuru, kura = Pers. churu, chtiruh,
churits. For the rest, tlie history of the fowl is frequently obscure.*
It has been treated by V. Hehn, loc. cit., p. 280, /"., and 0. Weise,
Die Griech. W. im Latein., p. 108.
We have already made acquaintance with the wild, darkish field-
dove as an Indo-European bird of ill-luck. The tame, white house-
dove, according to Hchn's researches, was originally the symbol
of the Semiramis of Central Asia, then became associated with the
cult of Aschera and Astarte in Syria, and thus passed into the
service of Aphrodite in Greece, where it appears as oikctis, e'c^eVno?,
Trepto-Tcpa in the time of the tragedians. A significant chain of
names for the house-dove, due of course to borrowing, is Lat.
columba, A.S. culufre, I. colom, OS. golahl (cf. Lith. balafidiK,
Osset. baldn ; Hiibschmann, Osset. Spr., p. 120). A recent thorough
discussion of the dove : Lorentz, Die Taube im Altertum, Wurzen.
Progr., 1886.
Our examination of the species of animals thus far mentioned
* Another series of names for this creature, not mentioned above, is F. coq,
A.S. iijcen, O.N. kokkr, Finn, kukko.
2/0 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
has already brought us not unfrequently iuto the circle which links
(ireece, and through Greece the rest of Eiirope, with the culture of
the East. To go further than this is beyond the scope of this
work, but we may conclude this chapter with a brief reference to
three animals which belong to the world of oriental culture, and
from it have travelled to Europe, and whose names still in many
respects constitute enigmas for us.
They are the ape, the parrot, and the peacock. The first, in
company with the fox, eiicounters us mider the wholly obscure
name of tti^t^kos for the first time in the fragment of the Parian
Archilochus mentioned above, p. 248. Much later, G. k^ttos - Lat.
cephus appeal's, which, in connection with the Vedic kajA, Hebr.
qof, Egypt, gqfi, is one of the most interesting of ancient com-
mercial words.
We shall return to the North European names for the ape in
another connection in the next chapter.
The parrot is mentioned even in the Vedas as a bird gifted with
the power of speech {2Xiriishavdc). The first Greek mention of the
remarkable creature comes from the physician Ctesias, who lived
at the Persian court about 400 B.C.
The question is, whether his Greek name o-trraKos, i]/iTTaKo<;,
)8tTTa/<os (Lat. 2^sittacus, O.H.G. sitich) can be brought into con-
nection with the Asiatic expressions Sans, eiika, Pers. tiiti, Hind.
tota, Kom. totu.
The peacock also is originally an Indian bird, where it is
mentioned even in the Rigveda {mayuri). On its appearance in
the west, cf. V. Hehn, p. 2>Ql,ff. But here, too, the series Lat.
pdvo (O.H.G. phdwo), G. radt^, Sans, gikhin, Tamil togei, Hebr.
tukkijjim presents difficulties which have not yet been solved.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLANT-WORLD.
hulo-Gennaiiifi and Europoan names of Trees — The Orit^inal Home-Question —
The Soul of Trees — Wood and Temple — G. i/r]6s and vavs — The Oak the
Tree of the Supreme God.
In this chapter we intend to select, out of the whole of the
Indo-Germanic flora, only forest-trees ; and to treat them on the
one hand from the point of view of the geographical distribution
of plants, on the other in some of their relations to and importance
for the history of culture.
There is one solitary forest-tree whose name exists identically the
same over large surfaces in Europe and as far as India. It is the
birch : Eng. birch, G. birke, Lith. be'rzas, O.S. breza, Sans. bhUrja,
Osset. barse, bars, Pamir D.furz, brug. The root is probably the Sans.
hkrdj, " to shine," so that the shining white birch is meant, which
thrives only in northern latitudes. In the south of Europe the
tree is rare (Grisebach, loc. cit., p. 310), and its name also tends to
disappear. Few people connect Lat. fraxinus, "ash," while Lat.
betula, "birch," derives from I. beithe, W. bedw.
Another German name for the birch, only preserved in dialects,
is ludere, ludern (cf. Schmeller, Bair. W.). It has a satisfactory
countei'part in G. KK-qOpr}, which, however, as the birch is wanting
in Greece, has come to be applied to the birch's nearest relation,
the alder.
As far as Persia, at any rate, the European name for willow is to
be found : O.H.G. loida, G. iria (yirca, Hes.), Lat. vitex = Zend
vaHi {= oioa'a), Parsee ivtd, N.P. bid. Cf. also O.W.G. fehiwa,
•' willow" = Osset. /dVM', farive, "alder " (Hiibschmann, Osstt. Sjn'.,
p. 65).
Agreement in the names of trees becomes much more frequent
the moment we confine ourselves to comparison of European
languages.*
Undoubtedly the most important part here is played by tlie
king of the woods, the " original tree " in Europe, the oak, for
which, or its fruit, we have three important series of equivalent
* Several of the equations which follow have been set forth more fully by
me iuB.B., xv. 284,/.
272 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
forms: Lat. quercus * = O.H.G. forha, orig. "oak" (cf. O.H.G.
vereh-eih, Longobard /e?-e/ia, " assculus "), then " fii" ;" O.H.G. eih
(in Iceland "tree ") = G. aty-t'Awi/', " species roboris," aly-ai'er], "the
oaken spear," Lat. cesculus from *cef/-sculus (cf. author, K. Z., xxx.
461) ; and G. ^ctXavos, Lat. glans, O.S. zeladi, Armeu. kalin, " aconi."
Oak-forests in early times were much more widely spread in
Europe than they are at the present day. Hesychius transmits
to us a score of luifortunately obscure names for the oak. In
North Germany it can still be demonstrated by reference to
archives that coniferous trees have in many places driven out
foliaceous trees, and that pines have taken the place of oaks
(Grisebach, loc. cit., i. 156, and V. Berg, Geschichte der deutschen
Wdlder, 1871, p. 31). It is, therefore, extremely probable that
the change of meaning " oak-fir," which we have also found in
quercns-fiihre, and which will be confirmed by other analogous
instances (see below), is due to the facts just stated.
So, too, it seems to me that the meaning of the oak, as the tree
par excellence, follows from the words which, though differing
widely in their vowels, are characterised by the presence of the two
consonants, cl-r, and mean sometimes "tree," sometimes "oak,"
and not unfrequently have even taken on the meaning of " pine."
Probably the primary significance of this stock of words in the
original language was "tree;" while, as the agreement of Maced.
8apt>XAos, I. dair, daur, G. Spus, " oak," indicates, it had, at any rate
in the period which we may call "the European period," also the
secondary meaning of " oak." Phonetically the following series in
this widespreading stock may be distinguished : —
Sans. Zend dr-u, "tree," O.S. druvo, "wood," Alb. dru, "wood,
tree," G. 8pS?, "oak" (O.H.G. trog, "wooden vessel").
O.S. drevo (*dervo), "wood," Goth, triu (^drevo), "tree," Lith.
deriva, "resinous wood," M.H.G. zirbe,i zirbel, "stone-pine,"
O.N. ti/rr, "fir" (Dutch teer, O.N. tjara, "tar").
Sans, darti, Zend dduru, "wood" (G. Sopv, "spear").
Maced. SapuA-Aos, "oak," I. dair, daur, "oak," Lat. larix,X
"larch."
The same alternation of meaning between " wood " and " oak "
occurs in O.S. dcibu, "oak," from *dahru = O.Yi.G. zimhar (Goth.
timrjan), "firewood." Perhaps G. Seu-Sp-ov, " ti'ee," is also : Spv?.
Can it be that Lat. robur, "oak," and arbor are related by " grada-
tion" (ablaut) in some way (not indeed clear to us)?
Important ethnographic data are afforded by the name for the
tree of Western and Central Europe, the beech. O.H.G. buohha,
* Perhaps G. irpt-vo-s also, "the evergreen oak," is related as far as its
root is concerned with Lat. qiier-c-us {*qri-no-s, Lat. quer-nus ?).
On pi = r, see G. Meyer, Griech. Gr.'^, § 29.
t Zirbe, *zirive, and also (in accordance with phonetic law) zirme, zirn, is
found first in late M. H.G., in Bavarian, and Austrian sources. Cf. Lexer,
M. H. D. W., and Schmeller, Bair. W.
X Larix from *darix like lacrima from dacrima. Cf. 0. L gen. darach =
darac-os from dair : laric-is.
THE BEECH ARGUMENT. 273
A.S. hoce is identical with Lat. fdgus, with huky, which appears in
all Slav languages, and with G. ^>/yos, which, however, means not
"beech" but "oak." On the one hand, the original meaning of
this series of words is conclusively demonstrated to be " beech " by
the agreement of the nortliern languages with Latin. On the
other, the change of meaning in Greek finds a very simple explana-
tion in the fact that to the south of a line drawn from the Am-
bracian to the Malian Gulf the beech disappears.* From these
facts, the necessary inference is that the Greeks must once have
lived together in close connection with the Latins and Teutons to
the north of the line just mentioned.
In the east the beech does not extend beyond a line which one
may imagine drawn from Frisches Haff, near Kiinigsberg, to the
Crimea, and thence to the Caucasus. t The Slavonic words do not
phonetically correspond to the Teutonic, and can only have come
as loan-woi'ds from Teutonic, even in the primitive Slavonic period;
it may, therefore, be inferred that this tree was wanting in the
primitive Slavonic flora, and that the oldest abodes of the Slavs
consequently must be looked for without the limits of the beech, as
given above. It is in harmony with this that in Great Russian
no names of places are formed from htiJcy, and that in Little
Rnssian they are confined to Galicia (Krek, E'mleituwf-^ p. 138).
The Lithuanians have a special and obscure word of their own
for the beech, skrohlas; the Albanians call it ah = O.N. askr,
"ash" (G. Meyer, B. B., viii. 185).
In the north the beech had not yet crossed the Channel, if we
may trust Ciesar's information, De B. G., v. 12 : "Materia cuiusque
generis ut in Gallia est prseter faguni atque abietem."
Like the beech, the lime does not occur, or occurs extremely
rarely, in Greece proper. It is only on the Macedonian mountains
that the so-called silver-lime tree appears (Lenz, Botanik, p. 639;
Fraas, Si/iiopds, p. 99). <I>tAi;pa, which is translated in the lexicons
as "lime," is not often to be found in literature before the time of
Alexander, e.g., Hdt., iv. 67, where Scythian priests draw omens
from the bark of the cjukvpr] {cf. below). Further, the word is
obviously related to (^eXXos, " cork-oak," (f>iXa^ • Spvs, apud Eleos
(Hesych.), so that it is probable that (jakvpa originally meant the
cork-oak especially, and was perhaps first applied to the silver-lime
of Macedonia by Theophrastus {Hist. Plant., 3. 10). Under these
circumstances, if what we have said above as to the beech is correct,
viz., that the Greeks were once settled in the north of the Balkan
* Cf. Kiepert, Lchrhuch der alien GeograpJde, p. 236 : "Tlie cnmmonest forest-
trees are the evergreen varieties of the oak it is only on the north-
east slopes of the mountains on the Thessalian coast, in the interior of Epirus
and Maceilonia, that the beech befjins to make its appearance."
t Cf. Grisebach, loc. cU., i. 88: "The beech's north-eastern limit of vegeta-
tion begins in the southernmost parts of Norway, touches the west coast of
Sweden at Gothenburg, follows it only as far as Kalniar, and cuts almost in a
straight line across the Continent from Frisches Half, near Kiinigsberg, across
Poland as far as Podolia, until on the other side of the steppes it is continued
to the Crimea and the Caucasus."
274 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES,
Peninsula, we might expect that the North Eui'opean names for
the lime would recur in Greece with a difference in meaning — an
expectation which is perliaps verified by the two equations :
O.H.G. Ii7ita* = G. eAttTTy, and O.S. lipa, "lime" = G. a:-At</)-aXos "
Spy's (Hesych.).
For the rest, we content ourselves with putting together those
names of our forest-trees which correspond etymologically to each
other in the various European languages : —
Pine : G. irevKr],. O.H.G. fiu/ita, Lith. ptiszls, Armen. pHci, " pine " :
G. TTtWa, Lat. 7>w-, O.S. plklii, "pitch;" Lat. abies, G. (?)
a/5tv ■ iXdrrjv, ol Se TvevKrjv, Hesych. ; G. ttltvs = Sans, pt'tadru,
pita-ddru, pituddru (late), Pamir D. ^j»i^, would be Grseco-
Indo-Iranian.
On Teut. tcmne and arfe see above, pp. 222, 229. Kien (A.S. ceti)
in kiefer from hien-fohre is obscure. As regards the initial sound,
O.I. gius in crand-gius, "pine-tree," or hi gl. pjix (Stokes, Irish
Glosses), may be compared.
Sallow: Lat. salix, Ir. sail, saileach, O.H.G. sal aha ; also Arcad.
eXUr] • hea, Hesych.
Hazel : Lat. corylus, L coll, O.H.G. hasel.
Elm : Lat. ulmus, O.N. almr, O.H.G. elmhoum, L levi (cf. : N.H.G.
riister (fund, form *rus-tro) : I. ruaim, " a species of alder "
{^'Teus-mi).
Alder : O.N. alnus, O.H.G. elira, Lith. elksnis, O.S. Jeltchn. The
root appears to be the same as Lat. ^dmus, &c.
Ash : O.N. askr, N. SI. jasen, jesen, Pruss. woasis, Lith. usis
(Alb. ah, "beech," G. 6$vr]\ 1).
Maple : Lat. ace7\ O.H.G. dhorn, O.S. Menu, O.N. hlynr. Mod.
H.G. dial, lehne, lenne, lohne.
Apparently confined to the north of Europe : —
Aspen : O.H.G. apsa, Lith. a2msze, Prusfe. ahse, Cech osika. (Lat.
p)opuhis, G. aiyeipos.)
Yew : I. do, Welsh yiv, Corn, hiuin, Mid. Lat. ivus, ¥. if, O.H.G.
tva, X 0. Pruss. invis. (Lat. taxus, G. criuXa^.)
Eastwards the yew disappears, apparently at the same time as
the beech. In Slavonic, accordingly, iva means something else —
willow. In Lithuanian, in egle, lglitis = O.S. jela {*jedla), "fir,"
* Cf. Lat. Uiiter, " boat " (of lime-wood), Lith. lenta, " board ; " B. B., vi.
240, and above, p. 236.
t G. o^vT] is given in the lexicons as " beech," which scarcelj- fits in with
the above. It may be noted that o^uij is used even in Archilochus for
" spear," just like fieAiri, "ash."
J According to Kluge {EL JF.*) the origin of this series apparently is to bn
found in Teutonic, where, by the side of O.H.G. iwa, O.N. yr, a form with a
guttural appears, 0. H. G. thct, A, S. coh.
TREES AND THE INDO-ET'ROPEAN HOME. 2/5
the moaninu's of " jcw " and " tir " run into each other. Tliis is
the case with Shvv. tisii also. We have still to mention : —
Mallow: O.I. j'A'ir (" taxiis baccata" and mallow according to
Windisch, Ir. T., p. 613), Mod. H.G. ehresche, eihrisck,eibisch.
Reviewing the state of things sketched above, we find that the
agreement between Europe and Asia as to the names of trees is
patently extrcmel_y liniited as compared for instance with the
agreement with regard to the names of the mammals ; and that
it is only of the so-called European stock of culture that this
ceases to be true. The most obvious explanation of these facts
apparently is to assume that the Indo-Europeans before the dis-
persion dwelt in a thinly-wooded region (which would accord with
the small number of Indo-European bird-names, i.e., names comnion
to Eurt)pe and to Asia), and that it was the Europeans who first
entered a well-wooded district. It is, however, necessary to be
circumspect in drawing conclusions of this kind. In the earliest
historical times the Indo-Europeans are spread over an area which,
except for India, coincides with that zone in the geographical dis-
tribution of animals which Wallace, in The Geographiail. DUtrihu-
tion of Animals, calls the " palceo-arctic," and of which he says (i,
215): "This region is of enormous extent, and embraces all the
temperate zone of the great eastern Continent. And yet the
zoological unity of this enormous reach is so great that most
species of animals in lands so far removed from each other as
Great Britain and North Japan are identical." The area over
which the Indo-Europeans are distributed however, may, as we
saw on p. 117, be divided, as far as the geographical distribution
of plants is concerned, into four distinct regions characterised by
a difference of vegetation ; so that the marked divergence of the
Indo-European names of trees, contrasted with the less pronoiuiccd
divergence in the names of the mammals, may be due to these
facts. Thus, for example, the Indo-Iranians may once have shared
in the European names for trees, and then owing to migTations
through treeless steppes and to contact with new vegetation have
lost them. The question, therefore, whether the absence of common
names of trees in the fundamental Indo-Germanic language is
accidental or not, cannot yet, in this chapter, be decided : other
considerations and fresh points of view will be required if we are
to attain a certain amount of probability in favour of the one
hypothesis or the other.
Einally, we may mention that certain species of fruit-trees, which
conclusive considerations drawn from the history of culture
(ch. V.) compel us to regard as wild varieties, have designations
common to the members of certain groups of Euro})can languages.
Thus in the south, Lat. cornus and (t. Kpdvov, " cornel-cherry,"
Lat. indium and G. jxtjXov, " apple," Lat. pirvs and (J. uttio?, " pear-
tree" (also oyx-v-q, " domesticated," dx-pus from *«.;^-pas, "wild-pear;"
cf. above, p. 227), Lat. prtimis and G. irpovfxvo^, " plum-tree,"
correspond. In the last three cases, however, a loan from Greek
2/6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
to Latin is not impossible {cf. 0. Weise, Griech. W. im Latein.,
p. 128).
In the north we may compare : O.H.G. deha, O.S. sliva, Lith.
slyva, "sloe," Russ. derenu, and O.H.G. tirn2)au77i, " cornel-cherry,"
O.H.G. u'thsila, and Russ. visnja.
I should not regard the North European names for the apple as
primevally related: I. ahall, uball, uhull, H.G. apfel, Eng. apple,
Lith. ohulas, O.S. jahluko. As the names of most of our fruit-
trees come from the Latin — cherry (cerasus), fig {ficus), pear
(piru.'i), mulberry (morus), plum (pnaius), &g. — I would rather
assume that the names of the apple given above are to be derived
from Italy, fi'om a town of fruitful Campania celebrated for the
cultivation of fruit-trees, Ahella, modern Avella Vecchia. Here
the cultivation of another fruit, the nut, was so important that
ahellana, sc. mix = nux. In the same way the I. ahull * may have
come from malum abellanum, as the Germ, pfirsich comes from
inalum persicum. This combination would be the more probable
if it could be shown that the apple-tree in particular was cultivated
in the ancient -4 /W/a. As a matter of fact, in Virgil (^En., vii. 470:
"Et quos maliferte despectant ma3nia AbelliB ") " apple-bearing
Abella " is mentioned. Certainly, the MSS. only give mije.tiiahellcB ;
but even before Servius this had been emended into mcenia Abellce.
Attractive, however, as this derivation is, as regards the facts, I do
not disguise from myself that phonetically the regularity with
which I. b {aball), Dutch jo (Eng. apple), H.G. j^f {(^pfil), Lith. b
(obulas), correspond to each other, is disturbing in the case of a
set of loan-words.
In Teutonic especially, there seem to be no Latin loan-words
which have been subjected to the First Sound-shifting. I assume,
accordingly, that the Celts, as early as their inroad into Italy,
took into their language a word corresponding to the I. aball,
which spread to the Teutons before the First Sound-shifting, and
thence to the other northern members of the Indo-Germanic
family.
In the same way the Celts made the acquaintance of the ape,
on their foraging incursions, and at the same time of a designa-
tion for it, *dj8-av-as (instead of dyS-pavas • KcXtoI tov<s KcpKOTrt-
OrJKov?, Hesych.), and handed it on to the Teutons (st. a2J-an,
O.N. ctpi, O.H.G. affo; B. £., xv. 287).
If, as we have seen, the linguistic history of our forest-trees
possesses a high antiquity, at any rate in our quarter of the globe,
the same may be said of a thousand traits of custom and belief
wdiich have grown up around them. Here too, however, there
is undoubted need of exhaustive investigation to distinguish
between what has been jointly inherited and what has been
borrowed or is due to mere coincidence. The northern tribes
of Europe, like the Greeks and Romans, agree in believing in the
* C/., indeed, Cormac'b Glossary (Stokes, 17-ish Glosses, p. 79) : " Aball, now,
from a town of Italy called Ahcllwin, i.e., it is thence that the seed of the
apples was brought formerly,"
TREE AND TEMPLE. 277
life of the tree, in the soul of the tree. The tree grows, bears
fruit, withers, and dies like man. A naive imagination, therefore,
readily conceives the idea of likening it to a living being. It was
from trees, such was the belief, that the human race originated.
In Homer we have the proverb, ovk dirv 8pi'09 eVo-t ov8' aTro 7reTprj<;.
In the north we meet the myth of the world tree, Yggdrasil.
Many trees bleed like men when struck by tlic blow of the axe.
Forest and grove are peopled with wood-spirits, wild-women,
dryads, and nymphs. In fine, here we have the source of the
countless cults of wood and field that W. Mannhardt has under-
taken to disentangle and pourtniy (cf. below, ch. xiii.) in his two
works, The Ctdt of the Tree amonr/xt the Teutons and Neighlxmring
Peoples {Der Baumlcultus der Germanen und Hirer Xachharstdmme,
Berlin, 1875) and Ancient Cults of Wood and Field {Antike Wald-
und Feld-kulie aus nordeiirojjdischer Ueherlieferung erldutert, 1877).
This fundamental idea of the life of trees is coiniected particu-
larly -with the primeval view that looks for the abode of the
immortal gods in trees. Woods and groves are the oldest temples
erected for the immortals by Nature herself. I need not adduce
in proof the numerous historical examples which J. Grimm has
collected for the northern peoples in the Deutsche Mythologie, i.'\
and C. Butticher for the Greeks and Romans in his Ueher den
Baumktdtus der Hellencn nnd Romer, Berlin, 1856. From the
point of view of philology, however, J. Grimm makes the acute
remark : " Temple, therefore, and forest are convertible terms.
What we conceive of as a house built and walled in, passes,
the further we go into early times, into the idea of holy ground
hedged in and surrounded by self-gTown trees never touched by
the hand of man " {M7/th., i.^ 59), and " the oldest expressions in
German as in Greek cannot be dissociated from the idea of the
holy grove" (Geschichte d. D. Spr., p. 116). In proof, J. Grimm
appeals to the Teutonic words : Goth, alhs (?), O.H.G. wih, O.H.G.
haruc {harugari, " priest "), A.S. hearu * (O.H.G. ^7arrt?<'fn'i), the
meanings of which obviously waver between lums and faman,
and to the Greek refievos (" sacred enclosure " : refxro)) and uAo-os
( = G.H.G. waldl). G.vads, "temple," alone, according to J. Grimm,
is "more abstract:" it belongs to vatw, "I dwell," and means
"dwelling of the gods." But this is certainly incorrect : vao? can-
not be derived from vaiw {tvacr-a-a, e-vacr-^ryj/). f The dialect forms,
Horn. vr}6<;, Attic vews, ^Eol. vttuos, rather point to a stem *i'dF-o.
That this stock of words even in Homeric times designated a
* The only one of these words clear to me is A.S hearu {*bar-vo). It
belongs to the Common Slavonic borii, " fir-tree," " fir- tree forest." Cf. also
O.N. barr, " tlie needles or s))iiies of a fir-tree," bar-skd(jr, "needle-wood"
(Vigfussoii). The transition of meaning from A.S. hearu, " forest," O.X. bijrr,
kc. : O.S. borii, " fir," is the .same as in der tanii : die tnnnc, der or das biicch :
die buche, das csch, das asp, which all mean first "a forest of respective kinds
of trees," and then "forest" in general (cf. Schmeller, Bair. W., i.- 196).
Slav, bora also occurs in the general sense of forest (Xliklosich, Et. W.).
t Mq\. vavoi. too, conld hardly come from *vatT-Yo (G. Curtius, Grdz.*,
p. 315).
2/8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
building, however rude, is shown by passages such as II., \. 44G
{oOl ol vqo^ ye rirvKTo), or Od., vi. 9 [iSeifxaro olkov<; kol vr)OV^
TTotT^cre). N7;os, however, did not always mean the Avhole temple,
so much as the innermost sanctuary of the lepelov, which contained
the image of the god (to aSvTov, 6 arjKo^) ; cf. Hdt., i. 183. But
what was the meaning of V7]6<; in pre-Homeric times, when there
was nothing that could be called an edifice in any sense 1
The correct answer to this question has been given before now
by Pliny, where he expresses the opinion (Hist. Nat., xii. 1. 2.)
that trees were the most ancient dwellings of the gods. This is
confirmed by countless traits of Greek tradition. The oldest
temple of the Ephesian Artemis was in the bole of an elm (irpifjivio
ivL TrrfXirji), or within the stem of an oak {(f>-qyov vtto Trpe/xvio).
Pausanias (viii. 13. 2) states : Trpos 8e rfj TroAet $6av6v l(niv
'Apre/AtSos ■ 'iSpvrai 8e iv KeSpw /xeyaA.7/. Images of the gods were
set on trees or under trees. There was a Zevs eVSei/Spos, a Ai6wao<;
evSevSpos, a 'EAeVr/ SerSptns like 'Aprep-i? KeSpedrt?, &c. (cf. Botticher,
ih., pp. 9, f., 142; K. F. Hermann, Lehrh. d. gottesdienstl. Alter-
tiimer'^, p. 91, ^'. ; Baumeister, Denhndler, i.). In fact, if we
may venture to ascribe to the stem *i/dFd- a meaning prior to
that of "temple," there is considerable probability that it w^as
"tree-trunk."
We are carried back to the same stem and the same funda-
mental meaning, in my opinion, by the set of woi'ds, which in the
original language designated the skiff" or boat : Sans, ndu by the
side oi ndva, ndva ; Lat. ndvi-, G. vav<i (Dor. gen. vdos. Ion. vy}6<i,
Att. i^eajs) by the side of *vdFo, *v7;Fo in ''E.)(ivr}o<i, proper noun,
" ski ff'-h older," &c. We shall have subsequently (ch. x. and xi.)
to discuss the boat-building of the Indo-Europeans more in detail.
We may, however, at once state emphatically and definitely that
we have to regard Indo-European boats as nothing more than tree-
trunks hollowed out, " dug-outs." This is mirrored clearly enough
in langiiage : we may call to mind Sans, ddmi, " wood," "skiff,"
O.N. asJcr, M. Lat. ascus, "ash," "skiff," O.N. eikja, "oak," "boat,"
O.S.stamm, Lat. linter (cf. above, pp. 236, 274), caudex, and caupulus,
M. Lat. cocha, F. cliogue, I. fusta, M. Lat. fustis, I. legno : lignum,
itc, all "tree-trunk" and "boat." It appears to me, therefore,
indubitable that Ave have to assume the following development of
meaning : —
Indo-G. ndv-, ndv6, ( G. 1/770?, "sacred tree-trunk," "temple."
"tree-trunk" \ G. (or Indo-G.) vav?, "dug-out," "skiff."
The question as to the root of this stem may be left undiscussed.
The oak belongs above all to the supreme deity, and this con-
firms the conclusion to which we reached, by means of philology
simply, as to the importance of this tree amongst the European
branch of the Indo-Germanic family. I need here only refer to
the primeval cult of the Dodonrean Zeus, who is actually called
<fii~iyovolo<;, or to the Jupiter Feretrius (Liv., i. 10) worshipped in a
primeval oak on the Capitol. Maximus Tyrius (Botticher, p. 529)
CHIPS AND LOTS. 279
can say of the Celts : KeArot ai/Sova-i fxkv Ata • ayaX/xa 8e Atos
KeXriKov vxl/rjXr] Bpv<s. At Geismar, in Hesse, Boiiifixcius felled the
lofty oak, which "prisco Paganonun vocabulo appellatur robur
Jovis." Finally, Slavs, Lithuanians, and Prussians consecrate this
tree to their god, O.S. Ferufiu, Litli. Perkunas, Pruss. Fercunis,
who manifests himself in thunder and lightning.
One further remark may here be made. If the divine numen
prevades the tree, it is natural that man's inborn longing to lift
the veil of the future should address itself not last of all to the
trees. In the way of tree-oracles, I should be inclined to regard
casting lots by means of chips as one of the oldest.
Our word lot itself (O.N. hlutr, O.H.G. hluz, Goth, hlduts) cor-
responds to G. KXaSos,* "twig," as A.S. tan, O.N. teiyin, M. Lat.
teni {Lex. Fris. tit., xiv.) = O.H.G. zein, "small stick," and just as
G. xX^-po-s, "lot," belongs to kAw, KXrj-fxa, /cAa-80-s, "twig." The
oldest detailed statement as to the Teutonic casting of lots by
means of chips from trees is contained in the 10th chapter of the
Ge7'mania: "Virgam frugiferre arbori (oak, beech) decisam in
surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretes super can-
didam vestem temere ac fortuito spargiuit. Mox, si publico
consultetur, sacerdos civitalis, sin privatim, ipse pater familia;,
precatus deos cfelumque suspiciens ter singulos tollit, sublatos
secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur." More primitive,
though not indeed quite clear, is the custom of the Pontic (Iranian)
Scyths : fxavTw; Se ^kvOcwi' et it ttoAAoi, ol fjiavTcvovraL pdjSSoLcri
iTeivycn TroWjjcn w8e ' lirtav ^a/ceAof? pa/3Scov fxeydXov<; eveiKcovTai,
OevT€<; -^afjial Sie^eiXLaaovai (undo them) avrors kol ctti fj.iav cKacrxT^i'
pdfiSov Ti^eVres (one behind another) OeaTri^ovaL • d/xa re AcyovTc?
TavTtt crvveiXeovcTL rots pa^oous ottutw kol avrts Kara fxiav (rvvTiOexcn'
avTT] jxiv acjii y /JiavTiKr) Trarpwir] Icrri (Hdt., iv. 67),
The custom of drawing lots recurs amongst the Greeks and
Romans in the KXyjpo/jiavTia and pa^So/tavrtat (cf. Hermann,
Gotfesdienstl. Altert.'^, pp. 247, 277), and also in the so7-tes Frcenes-
tinm, of which Cicero tells in the De Divinaf., ii. 41, although on
classic ground, it was decidedly forced into the background by
other modes of prognostication. Nevertheless, it alone, as Lobeck
indeed remarked in his Aglaophamtis, p. 814, explains the G.
aveXeiv, used for the answer given by an oracle : it corresponds to
the surculos tollere of Tacitus, while the Lat. sor-tes : ser-ere, " to
put in a row,'' seems to afford a parallel to the Scythian custom
Tas pdjSSovi iirl fiiav eKaarrjv TiOevai. O.H.G. lesan and Lat. legere
originally was — reading these lots when aiTanged like cards. The
solemn declaration of the results arrived at was, Goth, ussif/gvan,
"to read" (or = ^eo-Trt^civ (1); see above), divining the oracle of the
lots was A.S. rcedan, Eng. to read {cf. Kluge, Et. IF.'*, under lesen).
* Cf. author, K. Z., xxx. 475.
t (>dP-So-s, formed like K\a.-5o-s from *Fpd0-So-s, corresponds to Lat.
verbena, O.S. vrUba, "willow," so that (>d.0Sos Ireii/rj in Hdt. {cf. above) is
really tautological. Root i-erb by the side of vo-j), which latter form we shall
have to discuss subsequently (ch. viii.).
280 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Originally divination by chips probably depended, as amongst
the Scyths, solely on the configuration of the lots which we ought
perhaps to regard as distinguished by primitive marks that were
not alphabetical, but may be called runes (O.N. and A.S. riln, O.H.G.
riina; cf. I. riin, " secret "). Then, when the first beginnings of
writing came to be known directly or indirectly from the east
amongst the European peoples, the alphabetical letters, which
were more convenient and still little known, served to enhance the
significance of the lots. This is, perhaps, indicated by the passage
quoted above from the Germania (cf. thereon R. v. Liliencron u.
K. MiillenhofF, Zta- Runenlehre, Halle, 1852) ; and the sortes Prcenes-
tince too, in Cicero, are said to be " in robore insculpta; priscarum
litterarum notis."
To this period Ave must assign the origin of words such as Eng.
hook, G. buck : buocha," and Eng. tvrite, A.S. wo^itcm, properly
"carve," sc. runes, while Goth, meljan, " write," properly "paint,"
presupposes ink and parchment ; and O.H.G. scrthan belongs to
the region of Roman culture. Cf. further, E. Sievers in Paul's
Grundriss der germ. Phil., i. 239, who separates hooh from huocha,
which can hardly be right. Thus, in tlie plant-world even the
trees of the forest affect the life of mortals in a very significant
manner. The bonds they cast round men become the closer the
nearer we approach the subject of the next chapter. Agriculture.
CHAPTER V.
AGRICULTURE.
Historical Notices of Indo-Germanic Agriculture and Settlements — Equations
in Agricultural Terminology : Indo-European, European, and Indo-Iranian
— Transition from Pastoral to Agricultural life — The Plough — Common
Field System — Ancient European and Indu-Iranian Cultivated Plants.
That the Greek tribes when they entered the history of the
world were still profoundly penetrated with the roving instinct,
Thucydides (i. c. 21), with his usual discernment, saw long ago.
"The country which is now called Hellas," he says, "was not
regularly settled in ancient times. The people were migratory, and
readily left their homes whenever they were overpowered by
numbers. There was no commerce, and they could not safely hold
intercoui'se with one another either by land or sea. The several
tribes cultivated their own soil {vefiofxevoC re to. avTCjv) just enough
to obtain a maintenance from it. But they had no accumulations
of wealth, and did not plant the ground with trees {ovSe. yrjv
cfiVTevovTe';) ; for, being without walls, they were never sure that an
invader might not come and despoil them. Living in this manner
they knew they could anywhere obtain a bare subsistence "
(Jowett's translation).
Thus, on the classic soil of ancient Greece, we meet with pre-
cisely the same nomad, roving people, that nv.iny centuries later
the Grajco-Roman writers again found in the north of Europe.
" Common to all inhabitants of this land " (Germany), says Strabo
(c. 29), "is their readiness to migrate — a consequence of the
simplicity of their mode of life, their ignorance of agriculture in
the proper sense * (8ta to [xr] yewpyeiv), and their custom, instead of
laying in stores of provisions, of living in huts and providing only
for the needs of the day. They derive most of their food from
their cattle like the Nomads ; and imitating them they load their
goods and furniture on wagons, and move with their cattle where-
ever they like." If to this unequivocal statement we add the
well-known, though much disputed, passages in Cfcsar (B. G., iv. cc.
1, 4, and vi. 22, 1), in which the ancient Germans appear as a
wholly nomad though agricultural people; and of Tacitus [German.,
c. 26), according to whose description the first advances towards
* This translation is {cf. Arnold, Deutsche Urzcit, p. 218) recommended by the
context.
^<>
A
282 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
settled life and personal property have actually been made (cf.
Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit, p. 205,/.); if, further, we compare what
l^rocopius {B. G., iii, 14, p. 334, /'.) says of the 'S.KXa^-qvoL (Slavs),
that they dwelt in miserable huts f\ir removed from each other,
and severally changed their dwellings very frequently, it becomes
impossible to doubt that the Indo-European peoples, when they
made their first appearance in history, were still possessed with
nomadic tendencies.
At the same time, however, the passages quoted above clearly
show that the Indo-Europeaus must have been acquainted with
the rudiments of agriculture, even in prehistoric times, since they
appear equipped with them when they emerge from the mists of
prehistoric antiquity. At any rate, Pytheas (cf. Strabo, c. 201*)
in his journey to the North Sea — that is about 300 B.C. — found
domesticated animals, and a mode, though an extremely primitive
mode, of agricultui-e amongst the tribes of the north. Indeed the
.Estyi, the ancestors of the Lithuanians, though they continued in
almost entire ignorance of metals, pursued even in the time of
Tacitus {German., c. 45) a diligent agriculture; and the strategic
writer Maui'icius {a. 582-602 ; Miillenhofi", ii. 35) can say of the
Slavs (2KAa/?ot) that they were rich in cattle of various kinds and
in agricultural produce, stored in houses, especially millet. The
Celtic Britons make only an apparent exception. It is only of the
inhabitants of the interior that Caesar says (v. c. 14) : Interiores
jderique frumenta nan serunt. That on the coast, however,
agriculture was well known is clearly shown by several passages
in the B. G. (iv. c. 31, 2, c. 32, 1). If now we put the evidence of
language by the side of these histoi'ical data, we find — to anticipate
in a brief form the result of our investigations — an extremely
limited amount of agreement between the EurojDean and the
Asiatic branches of the Indo-European family in agricultural
terminology, a considerable and significant agreement of the
European languages amongst themselves ; and even amongst the
Indo-Iranians there are forthcoming some important, if not
numerous, instances of agreement in this matter.
To the first-named class belongs the frequently mentioned Sans.
ydva, Zewdi yava (Pers. ^a?^, "barley," Osset. ye?/>, yaw, "millet,"
Pamir D. y^img, &c., "meal;" Tomaschek, p. 63), G. t,f.a, lAth. jatvai,
"grain," and according to Stokes (Irish Glosses, p. 779) also Irish
edma. The original meaning of this stock of words, however, can
scarcely be ascertained, as the meaning has not been finally
established in the Veda (grain, barley) and Homer — ^ea, with
oXvpa, serves as fodder for horses. Here must be mentioned Lat.
pinso, Gr. TTTia-a-ia, Sans. ^ji'.sA, " grind to pieces," which has, indeed,
in itself no value for inferences as to the primeval period, but is
* TO Tuv Kapwwv elvai rv rjfxipmv Kol C4^^ '^'^^ f^^" o.(poplav Travre\ri tuv Se
(Xiraviv, K€yxp<j> Se Kol aypiois Xaxo-^ots koI Kaptro7s Kcd pi^ats rpecpecrdai ' Trap
ois Se (t7tos Kal iJ.e\i yiyveTai, Kol to irofxa efrevdev exe'J' ' rhv Se ff'irov, eTrtiS^
rohs ^]\iovs ovk ex^vai Kadapovs, iv oiKois /neydXois KSiTTOvffi ffvyKopuffOivrwv
Sevpo Tuv cTTaxvaii' ' al yap a\(as axp'JCTOi yiyovrai 5ia rb a.vl]\iov Ka\ tovs
vixfipous.
AGRICULTURAL EQUATIONS. 283
connected in many Indo-Eiu"opcan languages with the preparation
of grain : O.S. 2)tse>io, "meal," O.N. ^^s," chaff '"' (Curtius, Grimdz.^,
p. 498), Zend pi>^htra, "stamping out the grain," Mod. Ver^. pint,
" farina tosta tritica," Pamir D. piJst, 2^'^t (Tomaschek, p. G2).
Further, we sliould perhaps here consider the following equations,
the geographical distribution of which however is narrow (cf.
above, ]:)p. 178, 183) : Lith. dfoia, " bread " = Sans, dhdniis, "grains
of corn," Zend dd7ia (Mod. Pers. ddnah, Pamir D. ping-ddna, " five-
com," "millet"), G. reAo-ov, " furrow " = Sans, harshu, Zend karsha,
G. Lac. €vAaKa = Sans. vfl-a, "plough," and G. Aaiov, O.N. le =
Sans, lavi [lavaJca, lavnnaka), " sickle." The comparison of G.
apovpa with Sans, urvdrd and Zend urvara, " field of crops "
(Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 150), frequently asserted and employed
for conclusions as to the history of cultiu'e, must be regarded as
dubious (G. Meyer, Gr. Grp-, p. 91).
In contrast to these instances of linguistic agreement between
Asia and Europe we now give those groups of equations which exist
in the languages alike of South and North Europe. They are : —
Cultivated I^and : G. dypos, Lat. agrer, Goth, ahrs {cf. Sans, djra,
"pasture"). £v\o\:',^ acfC.
To Plough : G. apod), Lat. ararer, I. airivi, O.S. orati, Lith. drti.
The Plough : G. aporpov, Armen. aror, Lat. aratmm, I. arathar,
O.N. ardr ; O.S. oralo, Lith. drUas, O.N. arl.
Harrow, to harrow : G. (Hesych.) o^tv?^, Lat. occa, occare, O.H.G.
egjan, egida, Lith. aheti, akeciios, 0. Corn. ocet.
Sow : Lat, sero, Cymr. he?i, L sil, "seed," Goth, sedan, O.S. seja,
Lith. seti.
Seed : Lat. semen, O.H.G. scnno, O.S. shne, O. Pr. semen, Lith.
semu.
Mow: G. dfidw, O.H.G. mdjan, G. d-/i,77-To?, " harvest " = O.H.G.
mad.
Sickle : G. dp--q (Lat. smyere), O.S. srupu.
Mill : G. p-vXtj, uAe'o) (root inl), Lat. molere, I. vielim, Goth malav,
O.S. meljq, Lith. mdlti, Alb. miel, "meal" {cf. Armen.
mal-em, Sans, mar, "grind to pieces" (?).
Furrow : Lat. ]iorca, O.H.G. /ww/i, 0. Bret, rec (Armen. herk (?),
G. Trpaatr) (1) ; cf. below, p. 289).
Bed : Lat. lira, Lith. li/se, O.S. lecha (M.H.G. his, "track").
Ear (chaff) : Lat. acus, agna, G. a)(yri, Goth, ahs, ahana.
To these there is next to be added the not inconsiderable
number of joint names for cereals and otlier fruits of the earth,
which we shall consider subsequently, and of which we will here
produce oidy those sets that are above all suspicion of late borrow-
ing and are phonetically certain. They are : —
1. Lat. grdnum, Goth, kaum, O.S. zruno (cf. Afgh. zarai, zarai ;
K. Z., xxiii. 23).
2. Lat. hordeum, O.H.G. gersta (cf. .\rmen. gat-i, 'Peh.]. jurtdk,
"grain, corn;" Hiibschmann, A. S., p. 24),
284 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
3. G. 77-iipos, OS. jtjyro, Lith. purai.
4. hilt, far, Goth, bar-iz-, O.S. burif,, Alb. ^rtr,
5. (}. ixeXivrj, L;it. mi/him, Lith. vialnds.
6. G. fjL-^KO)v, O. H.G. mago, O.S. maku.
7. Lat. /a^a, O.S. ?*o6;'?, Alb. 6a^f.
8. G. Kpuixvov, Lith. kerniuszis, L crem, Mod. H.G. rams.
To establish the historic, and above all the prehistoric, meanings
of these terms is a business which will occupy us hereafter. For
the present we have here in the third place to give the few
instances of agreement in agricultural terminology between the
Indo-Iranian languages. They are : —
Sans, scif^yd = Zend hahya, " seed-com " (c/. Armen. haz, " bread;"
Fortunatovv, B. B., vii. 88).
Sans. Jcarsh {krshtdyas, " cultivators " = men) = Zend karesh, "to
plough " ((/. G. reXo-ov).
Sans, urvdrd, " corn-field " = Zend urvara {cf. W. Geiger, Ostiran.
Cultur, p. 150, and above, p. 283).
Sans, ddtrd = 'Mod. Pers. das, "sickle."
Sans, godhuma — Mod. Pers. gandum, Pamir D. ghidhn, " wheat "
(Tomaschek, Centralasiat. St., ii. 62 ; cf. yavh6p,y}v ' aXevpa,
Hesych.).
Sans, mdsha, " bean " = Mod. Pers. md^, Pamir D. ma;)^ (Toma-
schek, Centralasiat. St., ii. 62),
Sans, hhahghd = Zend haiiha (see below).
According to Tomaschek [loc. cit., p. 70) and Spiegel {Arische
Periods, p. 70), Sans, phcila, " plough " = Mod. Pers. supar,
Sanglici spur, &c., belong here, which, however, is not possible.
Proceeding now to draw historical inferences from these
linguistic data, we may, when we contrast the abundance of terms
connected with cattle-breeding which are common to Europe and
to Asia wdth the prevailing poverty of joint agricultural expressions,
infer this much with certainty, that farming, in the most ancient
prehistoric epoch that philology can take us back to, must have
played a very secondary part to cattle-breeding in the national
economy of the Indo-Europeans. Indeed, the equations given
above (Sans, ydva, &c., and Sans, jo^s7i, &c.) are perhaps reconcilable
with the view expressed by V. Hehn, that we are to conceive ydva
as nothing more than a wild variety of cereal, the grains of which
were trodden out and eaten.
I hold, however, decidedly to the opinion of those scholars (ef
above, p. 55) who see in the numerous agricultural terms common
to the European languages a proof that the Indo-Germanic occu-
]>ants of Europe must; still have been closely connected together
when they made important advances in agriculture. There is, as
we have already seen, nothing in this inconsistent with the assump-
tion that when words already existing were gradually becoming
specialised and limited to the definite meanings of ploughing, sowing,
Ac, and were spreading from tribe to tribe, and coming to cover
now a wider, now a narrower, geographical area, the peoples referred
PASTORAL AND AGRICULTURAL LIFE. 285
to may already liave been differentiated as regards dialect and
ethnology, even though their area of distribution, when compared
with that covered by them in historic times, was relatively narrow.
The question now presents itself — What have we to regai'd as the
cause and what the nature of the joint transition of so large a
portion of the Indo-Europeans from pastoral to agricultural life,
however primitive ? To begin with, thei'e is nothing to warrant
the assumption that, say, the neighbourhood of a more highly
civilised people, or contact, whether in peace or war, with such a
people, was the cause of this advance in national economy. At
any rate, language has everywhere drawn on its own native resources
for the designation of the new found art. 'Aypos, in European
languages " arable land," means in the Sans djra, " pasture," in the
Zend a:i'a, a waste stretch of land ; the root mel, used in European
to designate the grinding of corn, has in the Sans. ??irtr still the
meaning of grinding in general ; Goth, saiivi and its stock only
pi'evails in the sense of sowing in parts of Europe, for the G. irjfjLi
\*si-se-vii) has still retained the original sense of throwing (the
seed ; cf. Sans, vap, " strew, sow "). Further, it is impossible to
suggest any primitive people that can be regarded as the teacher
of the Indo-Europeans. We must then, it seems, look for some
more deep-seated explanation.
In the matter of agriculture, if of anything, man is the child of
the soil that bears him ; and it is obvious that the inhabitant of
grassy steppes is much later in learning to entrust the seed-corn
to the earth than is the occupant of rich soil. We may, therefore,
venture to conjecture that the gradual expansion of the Indo-
Europeans brought the European peoples to a portion of the earth
more fruitful than the point they started from. At an early period
the original people may have fallen into two divisions — one, pure
nomads to all intents and purposes, the other devoted to cattle-
breeding and agriculture, even though a nomad mode of life still
survived amongst them — just as in antiquity, the Scyths were
divided into "^Kvdai apor^pe? (or yewpyot), occupying the fertile
districts of the west, and 'S,Kv6ai i/op,aSes (or /3acrtA.etot), spreading
over the eastern steppes ; or as the Turko-Tatars have from of old
consisted of two main divisions, the JcoceJc and comrti, i.e., wandering
and settled nomads, of whom the former devote themselves exclu-
sively to cattle-breeding, while tlie latter early applied themselves
to the cultivation of certain productive districts on the banks of
rivers (Vambery, Primitive Cultur, p. 103).
But the transition from pastoral to agricultural life cannot be
explained solely, or even mainl}-, by a difference of soil. In this
respect the observations made by D. Mackenzie Wallace in his
book Rusda (ii. 44, ff.) on the economic condition of the Bashkirs
are highly instructive : " They are at present passing from pastoral
to agricultural life ; and it is not a little interesting to note the
causes which induce them to make this change, and the way in
which it is made. Philosophers have long held a theory of social
development, according to which men were at first hunters, then
286 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
shepherds, and lastly agriculturists. How far this theory is in
accordance with realit}' we need not for the present inquire, bnt
we may examine an important part of it, and ask ourselves the
(question — Why did pastoral tribes adopt agriculture? The common
explanation is that they changed their mode of life in consequence
of some ill-defined, fortuitous circumstance. A great legislator
arose amongst them and taught them to till the soil, or they came
in contact with an agricultural race and adopted the customs of
their neighbours. Such explanations may content those theorists
who habitually draw their facts from their own internal conscious-
ness, but they must appear eminently unsatisfactory to any one
who has lived with a pastoral people. Pastoral life i s so incom -
parably more agreeable than the hard lot of the agricidturistj^Aid
so much more in accordance with the natural indolence of human
nature, that no great legislator, though he had the wisdom of
Solomon and the eloquence of Demosthenes, could possibly induce
his fellow-countrymen to pass voluntarily from the one to the other.
Of all the ordinary means of gaining a livelihood — with tlie excep-
tion perhaps of mining — agriculture is the most laborious, and is
never voluntarily adopted by men who have not been accustomed
to it from their childhood. The life of a pastoral race, on the con-
trary, is an almost unbroken holiday, and I can imagine nothing
except the prospect of starvation which could induce men who live
by their flocks and herds to make the transition to agricultural
life. The prospect of starvation is, in fact, the cause of the transi-
tion — probably in all cases, and certainly in the case of the Bashkirs.
So long as they had abundance of pasturage they never thought of
tilling the soil. Their flocks and herds supplied them with all that
they required, and enabled them to lead a tranquilly indolent
existence "With diminution of the pasturage came diminu-
tion of the live-stock, their sole means of subsistence. In spite
of their passively conservative existence they had to look about
for some new means of obtaining food and clothing— some new
mode of life requiring less extensive teiTitorial possessions."
A. Meitzen expresses himself exactly in the same sense in his
paper. Das Nomadeyithum der Germanen und ihrer Kachharn in
Wes^t Enropa ( Verhandhmqen des ziveiten deutschen Geographentags
in Halle, Berlin, 1882, p. 74).
Applying the teaching of these facts to the condition of the
Tndo-Europeari3 of the most ancient period, we find it probable that
the gradual spread of the original people must have brought the
European branch to a country which imposed considerable i-estric-
tions on free and unimpeded pasturage. Now, in the previous
chapter, we have seen that the European languages are character-
ised by the fact that in them names, etymologically identical, for
forest-trees (and also for birds) first appear in large numbers, quite
as much as by their agreement in agricultural terminology. What
now if these two facts are not merely coincident but causally con-
nected % What, if language mirrors the migration of the Indo-
Europeans from treeless endless stej)pes, where the solitary herdsman
AGRICULTURE. 28/
pastures his flock, into a laud fertile iudecd, but confronting the
nomad hordes with dense primeval forests, narrowing their pasturage
down to the banks of lakes and streams, and — as the tril)e increased
and multiplied in spite of need and sickness — forcing the impatient
nomad to take in hand, at any rate, for the space of a temporary-
settlement, the plough which the man and master by preference
left to women, children, grey-beai'ds {Germ. 25), and slaves 1
Thus we have the following parallels : —
Steppe and Forest-Country.
Pasture and Agriculture.
Indo-Europeans and Europeans.
How this hypothesis accords with the geographical data that we
have to consider in connection with the Indo-Europeans we shall
see hereafter (ch. xiv.). I may, however, at once distinctly say
that, as a matter of fact, in the state of things sketched above, I
see an important clue to the question as to the origin of the
primitive Indo-Europeans.
But we have to conceive of this prehistoric agriculture of the
European branch of the Indo-Germanic family as being of the
most primitive possible character. To the poet we may concede
that Ceres steps into the blood-thirsty savages' midst, and with the
first innocent offering of ears of corn bestows upon them all the
gifts of a higher civilisation : in reality the links in the chain of
development by which agriculture rises from the state of a piteous
appendage of the business of pastoral life to a position of inde-
pendent dignity are innumerable.
To begin with, the use of metals and metal instruments is by no
means implied in assuming a primitive form of agriculture for the
prehistoric Indo-European period. In New Zealand {cf. Th. Waitz
und G. Gerland, Anthropoiogie der Naturvolker, vi. p. 61), "before
planting, the soil was turned by means of pointed sticks, clods
were broken by hand, roots and stones removed. Woodland was
made arable by burning the wood, and the same plant was planted
in the same place as long as it would thrive." C. H. Ran {Archiv f.
Anthroj)., iv. 1, ff.) describes the Red Indians' stone agricultural
implements.
The Indo-Germanic occupants of Europe were offered by the
forest-country they entered plenty of material for their primitive
agricultural implements. The Indo-Germanic plough was con-
structed in no other way than the most ancient Roman plough,
nor perhaps than the old Greek aporpov airoyvov of Hesiod ( Works
and Days, 482), i.e., it was a stout piece of wood bent into a
hook shape, and beam and share-beam were all of a piece {cf.
C. H. Rail, Geschichte des Pjitiges, 1845, p. 14, jf'., and Baumeister,
DenJcmdler, s.v. Acherbau). And, of course, there was nothing of
the nature of a handle of any kind.
In out of the way corners of Europe this plough has survived
into modern times.
Language, again, gives evidence as to the oldest make of plough :
288 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
in Gothic hoha, "plough," corresponds exactly to Sans, gcil-hd, Lith.
szaka^ "branch." To the same root, nasalised (Sans, c^anlii, "pole,"
O.S. sahu, "bi-anch," G. Kayxavos, "dry," used of wood), the Mod.
I. ceachta, " plough " {*cect- from cenct-), seems to me to belong.
The senses of the O.S. socha * (Miklosich, Et. W.) come under the
head of "stick, used for cutting open the ground;" for just as
O.H.G. seh, "plough," is connected with sage and sichel : Lat. sec-
dre, so I connect O.S. socha : Sans, gas, " cut," fdsd, " cutting," gdsd,
" cutting edge, dagger." The o-TrLvSrjpa • aporpov of Hesychius
may belong to Sans, sjxindand, " tree," Wakhi spmidr (Tomaschek,
C. St., ii. 71). Sans. (Vedic) Idngala, "plough," is obscure to me
(c/. Sans, laguda, "stick " ??).
G. yvrys (yva, " arable laud ") is etymologically the bent wood or
" crook " which the farmer in Hesiod was himself to look for on hill
and dale (<^epetv 8e yvrjv, or av evpr]<;, ets olkov, Kar opos 8t^7//x€j'OS rj
/car' apovpav, Trpivivov, W. and D. 425 ; cf. also Ran, loc. cit., p 25).
It belongs to yv-po-s, " bent," and its root is perhaps the same as
that of Lat. bu^ri, " crook," which in that case must, on account
of its b, have been originally an Oscan farmer's word (cf. bos : Sans.
gdii). As yuiys is related to yi5-po-s, "bent," so is ekv/jia, "share-
beam " (originally however, of course, share-beam + crook) : iXvot,
"bend, twist;" unless, perhaps, e-Au-p-a is primevally connected
with Lith. le-mn, gen. le-men-s " tree," and only assimilated to lXv(x>
in the matter of its vowel.
The ancient ludo-Germanic plough then was nothing more
originally than a bent, wooden branch ; which, however, may at an
early time have had a sharp stone, instead of iron, affixed to the
end turned to the soil. This arrangement may date from primeval
times. At any rate, there are two European equations, not indeed
absolutely certain, which specially designate the plough-share.
One is G. -uwis, vvl<; = Lat. vomer, vomis {^us-ni : *ves-mi ; Fick,
K. Z., xxii. 156), the other G. 6</>-vi-s • wr/, aporpov, Hesych. = O.H.G.
wag-an-so, waginso, M.H.G. tvagense i*voqh-n- ; Bugge, B. B., iii. 121,
disagrees). In German this part of the plough is called seh (see
above) and scaro : O.H.G. sceran, in Slav, leniesi : lomiti, "break."
It is further to be noted, as indeed J. Grimm observed {Geschichte
d. D. Spr., p. 56), that the plough or certain parts of it are often
named after various animals. Thus Sans, vfka means the wolf with
its biting teeth and also the plough (G. cvXaKo) ; in O.H.G. geiza
(cf. Lat. hcedus) is used of the plough-stilt, which is fixed like a horn
to the crook or the shai"e-beam (cf. Hesych., aty-Xas ■ to, Trept ttjv
vvvLv ToJ) aporpov : alt} ; but the rooting hog seems to have figured
especially in these rustic metaphors. Thus in Old Irish socc (F. soc)
= Cymr. swch, Corn. soch. Bret. sou6h, so6h, is the plough-share
(*sticcos), but also means " pig's snout," which must be regarded as
the older meaning ; cf Cymr. hivch, Corn, hoch, Bret, houch, hoch,
"hog" (Thurneysen, Kelto-Romanishes, p. 112). Even still in
* V. Hehn erroneously compares socha with Goth, hoha, and connects
O.H.G. seh (incorrectly written seh) with F. soc, &c., see below.
PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND UNKNOWN. 289
Germany, according to J. Grimm, the light ])lough in some districts
is called " Schweinsnase" and amongst us pufs nose.
This being so, it is probable that the European term for tlie
pig (quoted above, p. 261), Lat. porcus, Lith. 2^(tfxzas, O.S. ^jrase,
O.I. ore, O.H.G. farah {*j)orko-) is identical with Lat. ^;o?'crt,
"ridge," O.H.G. furah, "furrow," O.I. rech, &c. {*2V;ko-). *Prko-
(-.porl-o), then, ])robably originally meant "plough," then the furrow
made by the plough (c/. A.S. sulh, "plough" : Lat. su/ctis, "fur-
row," Goth, hoha, "plough" : O.H.G. huohiii, "furrow," G. yi'r^s,
" plough " : ym, " arable-land," G. aiXaxo- ' wvis, Hesych. : avAa^,
"furrow," itc. ); so that the development of meaning was pig
(fiirrow), plough, furrow. Armen. herk, "fresh-ploughed fallow-
land," would be difficult because of its k = q.
Complete obscurity, unfortunately, covers the origin of the Slavo-
Teutonic word : O.H.G. phhiog, O.N. ptMgr, Russ. pthigii., Pol.
pixig, Lith. pliugas (from Lesser Russian pluh). The tei*m also
recurs in Wallachian {j'llug) and in Rhasto-Romance (Lob. ^:><o, Tir.
plot'). L. Diefenbach {0. K, p. 399) and, following him, V. Hehn
refer to Pliny, Hist. Nat., xviii. 18. 48, where the subject is tlie
discovery of the wheel-plough (F. charrue): " Vomerum plura
genera non pridem inventum in Raetia Gallia), ut duas
adderent tali rotulas, quod genus vocant plaumorati " (Mid. Lat.
p>loum, p)lovii,m); but this does not give anything like a clear
etymological connection. G. Baist ( Wo/fflin's Archiv, iii. 285)
proposes to read the last sentence of the passage quoted above,
thus : " Quod genus vocant ploum Ra^ti."
It must have been a work of unutterable difficulty to prepare
the forest-soil of ancient Europe, matted as it was with roots, to
receive the grain of Ceres, with the primitive implements of the
primeval age — a work which, on the whole, could not have been
executed by individuals, but only by the sib community.
As a consequence, the arable-land gained by the joint labour of
the sib remained in its possession, even when the settlements had
become permanent. As to the Teutons we have Csesar's statements
with respect to this {B. G., vi. 22): " Neque quisquam agri modum
certum aut fines habet proprios : sed magistratus ac principes in
anuos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum qui tum ima
coierunt, quantum et quo loco visum est, agri attribuunt atque
anno post alio transire cogunt"; and (iv. 1) as to the Suebi : "Sed
privati ac separati agri apud eos nihil est neque longius anno
remanere uno in loco incolendi causa licet." It follows from these
words that in Cesar's time amongst the Teutons private property
in land was unknown, that the soil was rather the property of the
various communities, into which the civitas was divided. The
magisti'ates annually assigned the use of certain land to the indi-
vidual sib communities. The land-marks, and with them the
dwellings, were changed every year. The cultivation of tlie soil,
within t\\Q f/entps ac cor/nationes, was done in common (from Brunncr,
Deutsche RechtsgescMchte, i. 69, Leipzig, 1887).
In Tacitus {Germ., c. 26: "Agri pro numero cultorum ab uni-
T
290 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
versis in vices occupantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem
partiuntur : facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia preebent : arva
per annos mutant, superest et ager") the transition from the
joint cultivation of the soil to its private enjoyment by the various
House-Fathers has already been effected. The redistribution of
the plough-land now takes place amongst the villagers, i.e.,
amongst the members of the mark. The arable-land is now dis-
tributed, probably by the periodical drawing of lots, amongst the
householders If the soil, in consequence of the ignor-
ance of manure, was exhausted in a short time, the land after
harvest was allowed to remain as wild pasture-land, and another
portion of the mark was measured and allotted out as arable-land
(Brunner, loc. cit, p. 61).
In Russia, as amongst the rest of the Slavs, the system of
communal ownership has, as is well known, survived in many
districts to modern times. The land belongs to the village
community, and is periodically allotted to individuals to use for
a longer or shorter time (from one to twenty years); cf. M.
Kulischer, Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsych. u. Sprachw., x. 370.
Precisely the same system can be shown to have existed in
ancient Ireland from the Brelion laws (cf. Maine, Lectures on the
Early History of Institutions'^; ch. iv., The Tribe and the Land).
Finally, I am inclined to regard the ancient distribution of land
in Sparta, which bears the name of Lycurgus, as nothing but a
similar allotment of the arable-land gained by conquest. At any
rate, after this distribution the soil still continued to be the pro-
perty of the community, the state; and the Meri assigned by the
state to the non-nobles at least were inalienable, and reverted to
the community when a family died out [cf G. Gilbert, Handbuch
hr griech. Staatsaltertilmer, i. 10,/"., Leipzig, 1881).
In ancient Rome, too, the conception of ownership must, accord-
ing to Th. Mommsen's account {Rom. Staatsrecht, iii. i. 21, ff.),
have manifested itself solely in movable property {faviilia, pecunia),
while the soil was originally the common property of the tribe.
Under these circumstances we have no difficulty in understanding
that the primitive terms for property, wealth, riches, &c. (cf.
Handel sgeschichte und Warenkunde, i. 5), include nothing like the
Lat. possessio or the German besitz, which I'efer to "real" property.
Nor is there any primeval expression for "inheritance," "inherit,"
which, again, must have applied to movables. The words used by
the individual languages to express this idea frequently start from
the sense of "orphan," "orphaned." Thus, Goth, arbi, "inherit-
ance," I. 07'be, " hereditas " (where note the parallelism of mean-
ing in these two neighbouring languages; cf above, p. 125),
belong to Lat. orbus, G. 6p<^ai/os ; and the Lat. hires, "heir,"
obviously cannot be dissociated from G. XV'P^'"^ (with Common
Greek e ; cf. Cret. ;^r;pei;ovo-a, Gortyna Code), " orphaned, widowed,
bereaved " (Sans, ja-hd'-nu, " bereaved ").*
* This comparison, which is derived indeed from Bopp, seems to me better
both as regards meaning and sound than the comparison of Lat. hired- with
CULTIVATED PLANTS. 29 1
Private property in land amongst the Teutons and Slavs started
with the farmyard, which we may picture to ourselves even in
primitive times as surrounded by a fence of twisted thorns and
reeds. This space, cut oti' from the coiumon land or the general
j)asturage, is probably what was originally indicated by tlie
European equations : Lat. Icortus, cohors, Osc. hiirtdm, G. )(6pTO<i,
"grass, hay, fodder, farmyard," O.I. govt, "seges," luh-yort,
"vegetable-garden," Lith. zahlis, "horseyard," Goth, (jards, Germ.
garten, and G. k-^ttos (kSttos) = O.H.G. huoha. So long, however,
as settlements were but tcmpoi'ary, the concej)tion of property,
sti'ictly speaking, could not be developed. Subsequently the
expression hufe in German comprised all rights which the indi-
vidual members of the village or farming community possessed in
regard to the soil (Brunner, loc. cit., p. 62). In Greece all per-
manent occupation, and therefore also personal property, in land
goes back to the garden (Kr]Tro<;) and the cultivation of the trees
therein. In the terminology of the Twelve Tables, heredium,
" inheritance," means merely the garden (not the arable land)
which belongs to a farmhouse (horttis); Mommsen, loc. cit., p. 23.
We shall return subsequently (ch. xii.) to the relation of the
Indo-Europeans and their tribes and communities to the soil which
they cultivated and on which they dwelt.
As, however, it is indubitable, after what has been said, that
the Indo-Germanic occupants of Europe practised agriculture at
a time when they were ethnically united, we have the right to
further enquire how great or how small was the knowledge of
cultivated plants which the European members of the Indo-
Germanic family brought with them into the period of historic
tradition. Such an investigation, however, is unfortunately beset
with great difficulties.
For one thing, within the limits of a single equation there is an
extraordinary variation of meaning. Thus, G. irvpos (Syrac. o-Tn'pos)
and Lith. j^i^i'fo.i means wheat, whereas the Slav, pyro means in the
various dialects far, mi/ium, spelt, triticum rejiens, quick-grass
(Miklosich, Et. W.). Now, V. Hehn in all such cases starts from
the wild varieties, in this case the quick-grass, as being the species
to which the term was originally applied. But granted even that
this view is correct — for there is nothing impossible either as
regards fact or language in the change being from the culti-
vated to the wild variety — the agreement of Greek, Lithuanian,
and Slavonic in meaning " wheat" as opposed to " quick-grass "
remains just as important as, say, the agreement of Lat. sero,
Goth, saian, Lith. s'eti in the meaning " to sow " as against G. i-qfii^
"throw." For the rest, the triticum repens is called (piick-grass in
some German dialects (c/. Grassmann, Pflanzennameii, p. 253).
To these difficulties which reside in the varying meanings of
the words must be added one that is particularly great in tliis
G. x*^P> 0. Lat. hir, " band " (cf. manclpium from manu capen), wliicb Cuitius
first brought out, and for which Leist {Civil ist. Stud., iv. 91) has endeavoured
to provide further support.
292 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
instance — that of distinguishing sharply between what was early
borrowed and what is primevally related. Finally, we have no
satisfactory information as to the real meaning of a whole string
of cultivated plants — I may quote from Greek alone, ^ea, oXvpa,
For all these reasons it is very precarious work making definite
statements about the capital possessed in this line by the primitive
age ; and we are anxious to insist emphatically on this point at
the very beginning of this section.
To begin with, I feel no hesitation in ascribing barley and
wheat to prehistoric European culture. For the former I find
two equations, Lat. hnrdeum = 0.^.(^. gersta, and Alb. el'-2>hi = Q.
oA^i (oEAc^tToi/). I cannot venture to compare G. Kpi-Or] with
Lat. hordeum in spite of Thurneysen {K. Z., xxx. 352). It is an
expansion of the simple Homeric Kpt, which occurs in another
expanded form, ^hri-rjo, in Kpi/^-avo?, " baidey-cake," " oven for .
roasting barley," and in KpL/xvov (from ^Kpt/S-vo-v), " barley."
Barley all over Indo-Germanic territory — in Homer, ancient Italy,
amongst the Scandinavians (c/. Weinhold, Altn. Leben, p. 78) —
appears as a cultivated plant of extreme antiquity, closely con-
nected with the holy ritual of sacrifice, as Pliny (Hist. Nat.,
xviii. 7. 14) expressly says : " Antiquissimum in cibis hordeum."
Amongst its other names, the Lith. mieziei, 0. Pr. moasis, and the
O.S. j^ci?n?/ (root jenk)* remain obscure to me.
The names for wheat have already been mentioned. In the
north of Europe, Goth, hvaiteis seems to be represented by Lith.
kiviec-ziei. If this connection is really one dating from primeval
times, hvaiteis could not have anything to do with Goth, hveits,
"white" (c/., however, Bret, giviniz, " wheat ": ^rzt'e/m, " white"),
which recurs in Lithuanian szivH'czids = Sans, fvetd, "bright." An
equation confined to the south seems to be Lat. simila, simildgo =
G. IfjiaXtd ■ TO k-TTifXETpov TOiv dXeijpcDV, t/xaXt's • rj iTrLpLvXios diSrj, Hesych.
In Europe wheat is scarcely inferior in antiquity to barley, though
it was hardly cultivated in the most ancient times in Italy as
extensively as the other cereals (c/. Helbig, Die Italiker in der
Poehne, p. 65). Its cultivation flourished in Homeric times, where
it is called /xeXiTjS^s, yaeXt^pwj/. Its meal, from which bread
{■wvp-vo-v) is baked, is the meal Kar' e^o^tjv : aXeiara, aXevpov : dXew,
root mel, ml (Armen. aleur, aliilr, "meal," loan-word (?); cf. Hiibsch-
mann, A. St., i. 17). In the same way the Lat. trtticum, perhaps
also 0. 1, tuirend, helongs to tero, trito-, "I'ub to pieces." Barley
and wheat were used to make beer even in ancient Germany (Tac,
Ger7n., 23).
Another equation, running from north to south, is Lat. far (Umbr.
far, farer, Osc. far, Umbr. farsio, fasio), " spelt " — on ancient
Italian ground by far the most important of cereals, especially for
sacrifices — Goth, bariz-, O.N. barr, "barley "(I. bairgen, "bread"?),
O.S. burU, "milii genus," Alb. bar, "grass," a series, the original
meaning of which it can hardly be possible to recover. Germ.
* Perhaps related in root to G. a/c-oo-rij, "barley" (root cnki).
MILLET, OATS, AND FLAX. 293
spelz, Dutch spelt {*S2)el-do) recurs, as I believe, in Lat. 2'>oUen (from
*spl-d-m ; cf. sallere from *sal-dere), ^' f\uo n\ea\." The root-forms
spel and pel (jjol-enta, puis, palea* ttoAtos) are also seen in G.
Tra-o-TToA-i; and Trat-TrttX-?;, " finest meal." Thus Lat. 2wllen : Dutch
spelt :: G. dOdpr], " wheat-meal broth " : Lat. ador " spelt," unless
the latter belongs to Goth, atisk (above, p. 128).
Millet must have attained to very considerable importance at an
early period. This is indicated not only by the records of history
{cf. above, p. 282, /■.), but also by the names of this grass-plant.
G. fjieXivrj, Lat. milium, Lith. malnds is the "meal-plant" (root wie/,
G. dXe'w, Lat. molo, Lith. mdlti) ; Lith. s6-ra, s6ros ( : se-ti; cf. Goth.
sai-so : sedan, G. d^iT^/xt : d</)ew/<a) is the " seed-plant ; " G. e\vfj.o<; :
iXvfia, "plough-share," is the "plough-plant; " Lat. pd-nicum -.pasci,
pd-nis is the " feeding-plant. "f G. Keyxpos alone (which seems to
be related by "gradation" to Kdxpvs, "barley"), and UlsiV. pjf'oso
( = A.S. fyrs, " lolium " ?), I find obscure.
We have then ascribed barley, wheat, and millet in the way of
grain to prehistoric European agriculture, but it is probable that
the acquaintance of rye was made at a time posterior to the wider
geographical expansion of the northern European tribes, to whose
languages the equation : O.H.G. rocko, O.N. riigr, A.S. ri/[/e, Lith.
rugys, O.S. ruH is confined. The origin of this stock of words
(*rughi-) is obscure: a connection with Sans. V7nhi, "rice," and
Thracian ^pl^a (Hehn) is hardly conceivable. In the south of
Europe this grass-plant was not originally cultivated. When it
became known it was called sec-ale, "sickle-plant."
The cultivation of oats belongs to a much later period : to the
South Europeans they were only known as a weed. As such they
were probably designated from the beginning by the equation :
O.S. ovisu, Lith. dwizos, Lat. avena. Numerous names, such as
G. aiyiAoji/^, ^pofxos, &c., as J. Grimm indeed remarked, designate
oats as sheep-weed or goat-weed : according to V. Hehn the tertinm
comparationis is the sterility of the goat and of oats, while accord-
ing to J. Grimm the animals mentioned particularly attack oats.
The equation given above, O.S. ovisii, probably belongs to this
category, and perhaps may be combined with O.S. ovica, Lith.
aivis, Lat. ovis ; but hardly O.H.G. haharo, which cannot be
connected with O.N. hafr (G . Ka.Trpo<; "goat"), because Swed.
hagre (Finn, l-akra) points to a form containing a guttural {cf.
Kluge, Et. W.). Subsequently oats became a favourite food in the
north, especially among the Teutons.
Flax I regard as having been cultivated in the primeval period :
G. Xlvov, Lat. Ihium, 1. lin, Goth, lein, O.S. linu, Lith. Unas.
There is absolutely no reason for regarding this series as due to
* If pal-ca, "chaft"," belongs here, it is obvious to connect O.H.G. spriti.
Mod. G. spreic, with G. <rirvpi/6s, " wheat" {cf. above) : root spur : sprii, spreiv.
+ Can it be that O.H.G. hirsi, hirso {*ker-s) have a siniihir fundanieiital
meaning, and belong to G. KopevwfjLi, "satiate" {*L'or-c.i)l Kluge (A'<. IV.)
compares Lat. cirrus, " tuft ; " Grassmann {rflanzennatncn) connects hirso •
Sans, krsh (" idougli -plant " therefore), which root, liowever, shows an I in
European [cf. G. TiKaov). Others suggest Lat. Cere^. Xon liquet.
294 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
borrowing.* The Yoot*(cf. Horn., Xl-tl, Xl-to) seems preserved in
Sans, li, It-na-ti, "bend oneself," so that the flax stalk was naturally
named after its tough and pliant filament, which is so well
adapted for spinning. The connection of the stock of words
mentioned from original times is supported by the primeval
derivatives from *li-no : Lat. iinteum, "linen," Lith. linta, "orna-
mental band," O.N. linnr (*linCtr), "girdle," O.I. leine (nom. plur.
lenti).
On the other hand, the agreement between the European words
used to designate hemp : G. /<avva/3is, Lat. cannabis, O.S. konoplja,
O.N. hampr, A.S. lunnep, O.H.G. hanafi% certainly due to borrow-
ing. The Greek word occurs first in Herodotus, who (iv. 75) is
acqiiainted with hemp both wild and cultivated (/cat avTOfxarrj koi
a-veLpofjievr]) in the country of the Scyths, whence, indeed, this other-
wise obscure word may have its origin. The Romans, amongst
whom hemp is mentioned for the first time about 100 B.C.,
naturally have to thank the Greeks for their cannabis.
The Teutonic word may have been borrowed from Lat. cannabis,
and in that case must go back to a time before the First Sound-
shifting, which is improbable both in itself {cf. above, p. 276),
and because of the late date at which hemp became known in
Italy. A more likely assumption, therefore, is that the Slavo-
Teutonic expression, O.S. honoplja, O.H.G. hanaf, comes from the
same source as the Greek Kavva^is, and must then have spread
through both branches at a very early date. In no case could
the European words mentioned be primevally related with Sans.
^and, "hemp," which would necessarily be represented by an O.S.
*sono2m.
A second Slavo-Teutonic expression, in which, however, the
meanings of " flax " and " hemp " would be confused, is perhaps
O.H.G. flahs, if it can be compared with O.S. poskoni, "hemp,"
which also occurs with / (Pol. pioskon, hith. 2)1 askanei ; Miklosich, Ut.
W.). Still the relation of Teut. Jlah-s : Slav, plosk- remains obscure.
Again, Russ. i^enlka, Pol. pitnka, compared with Iran, banha,
" hemp " (Hehn), is unexplained, and very remarkable.
Especial difficulties are off"ered by the names of the leguminous
plants. As regards peas,t in the first place, Lat. ervum and G.
* V. Helm {Kidturpflanzen^, p. 523, *p. 482) would like to refer G. Kivov to
Daciau hvv, "nettle," which, however, involves unheard of phonetic changes
in vowel and consonant alike. O.H.G. linta, " lime-tree," again is to be kept
cXeiiv oi Iinteum ; cf. above, p. 274. Again, O.H.G. flahs has been compared
with Lith. pldukas, "hair," even indeed with O.S. vlasu, O.N. hor with O.S.
kropiva, which are all phonetically impossible. Alb. (Tusc. ) ke7'2>, but Geg.
kanrp, which Hehn compares with O.S. kropiva, is nothing but a loan-word
from It. canape, "hemp" (G. Meyer, Alb. Gr., % 12).
+ V. Hehn {KuUurpjlanzen^ , p. 178) assumes *vorvo as the original form of
ipo^os; but first, the hiatus after ^ [II., xiii. 588: ^ fpeySji/^oO isnoproof of an
initial digamma; next, the Hesychian forms yiXivdos, yepivBoi, which lack the
characteristic /8, must be excluded ; and, thirdly, v in Greek cannot change
into /3. Further, as Hehn also assumes, ervum would have to be borrowed from
fpe^LvOoi, which is phonetically impossible. The a of arwiz, Hehn, following
Wackernagel, conjectures to be an echo of the Goth, ai in the suppositious
Goth. *airveits!
PEA, LENTIL, AND BEAN. 295
ip((3iv6o's, o/)o/3os, unite in a common fundamental form *ergo,
*orgo. But wliat was the relation of these words to the Teutonic
expressions, A.S. earfe, O.H.G. arwiz, araiviz, Mod. Germ, erhse /
The difficulties in the way of assuming that these are loan-words
from the south of Europe are known to every student of language.
Kluge, therefore, feels compelled in his Et. W. to assume a common
unknown source (as in the case of the names for " hemp ") for A.S.
earfe, O.H.G. arioiz, Lat. ervum, G. ipel3tv6o<;. I do not regard
this as necessary. I believe that by bringing in the G. dpa/cds,
''leguminous plant," we can show the Teutonic words to be related
at least in point of root with the South European words. Thus
we get : *e'r-go = Lat. er(f/)vtim, G. ipi(3Lv0o<;, opojSos ; *>'-Qo — G.
d-pa-Kos ; *f-5'o = O.H.G. ar{g)ivtz (siiffi.x obscure); and A.S. m/^e
(the u- timbre of the r vowel would explain the labialism).
Greek and Latin have still a second name for the pea which
rather points to primeval relationship : Lat. pisum, G. Tricra-oi/,
TTtVos {*2^ins-o), which derives from the above:mentioned root Trrto-crw,
pinso, &c.
The pea was cultivated in Homer ; its extreme antiquity in Italy
is indicated by proper names such as Piso and Cicero (: ci-cer — i}.
Kp-l6-<i).
In the names for the lentil primeval connection and borrowing
seem to cross : Lat. lens, lentis (cf. Lentuhis), is perhaps primevall}'
connected with O.S. leUa {*lent-ja) ; while O.H.G. linsi is rather
borrowed from the Latin, Lith. leiisze is obviously of German origin.
O.S. socivo is obscure. In Homer the lentil is not mentioned.
The same holds of the names for the bean : Lat. faba {gens
Fahioruvi), from which I. seih is borrowed, corresponds according
to phonetic law with O.S. hohu (from which again come 0. Pr.
haba, \Ath. pup>a), and with Alb. ba-6e {6e diminutive according to
G. Meyer). Germ, bohne, O.H.G. bona, A.S. bean, O.N. baioi
appear to stand apart. Most probably they are primevally related
with G. <^aKos " lentil " (Teut. fundamental form *bag-na). The
meaning would then waver between "bean" and " lentil," much
the same as in O.S. grachu, "bean," Mod. G. grah, "pea." The
Greeks, who cultivated the bean even in Homeric times, formed a
new word for it : /cm/xog, Tia'avos : kvcco, " swell " {cf. Brugmann,
Gr. Gr., p. 20;.
I conclude this account of the fruits of the field with a mention
of the liliaceoe and bulbous plants.
Amongst the former I mention the onion : G. Kp6p.vov (as old as
Homer), Lith. kermusze, I. crem, N.H.D. rams. Further, Lat.
cepa, ccepe (gens Coepionum) may be compared with Arcad. KciTrta
(0. AVeise, Gr. W. im Lat., p. 126), and G. yeAyis by the side of
^oA/3os {*gel-go) with Lat. buUms ; for the latter word is rather
primevally related to the Greek than borrowed from it. This is
confirmed by its employment as a proper name {Jiulbus), and by
the number of its derivatives : hulbosus, bulbacens, etc. For Lat.
b = g, cf. above, p. 417, on bitra.
For leek (garlic) I refer to G. o-KopoSor = Alb. /nul^re, G. irpaa-ov
296 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
(O.S, pra2?7,) = Lat. iwrr^im (Osthoff, M. V., ii. 50, disagrees), and
to I. hiss {*luk-s), O.H.G. louh, Russ. fuku, Lith. Mkai, which are
obviously borrowed, perhaps from east to west.
As for the names of the rape : G. puTrus, Lat. rdpa, O.H.G. ruoba,
O.S. o-epa, I fear we shall again not get beyond a non liquet.
Against the primeval connection of these words there are first
linguistic reasons, viz., that initial Greek p does not seem to go
back to an ancient initial r (G. Meyer, Griech. GrP', p. 175), and
also that the gradation {Ahlant) from e : a (O.S. repa : Lat. rdpa),
which must be assumed on the theory of primeval relationship,
would be altogether unusual ; next, as regards the history of
culture, it is suspicious that, unlike the other cultivated plants
which we have assigned to the primeval period, the rape does not
seem to have been cultivated in ancient Greek (Homeric) days,
but only ajDpears at a relatively late period. 'PctTrvs, " rape," is
preceded by a word formed from the same stem, pa</)avts (Aristoph.),
'• radish." On the other hand, the assumption of a loan from the
South European to the North European languages is by no means
satisfactory phonetically.
Summing up we find as the result of purely linguistic arguments
that the names for barley, wheat, millet, flax, perhaps also for peas,
beans, and onions, in all probability go back to the prehistoric
European period. All these plants were already under cultivation
in Homeric times and in ancient Italy, nor is there wanting express
evidence that they were, at least partially, known in the north of
Europe.
Another observation forces itself on our notice in this connection ;
the stock of cultivated plants which, as we believe, we have traced
to the prehistoric European period, recurs in all essential points in
the culture of the Semites and Egyptians, i.e., those plants which
we found to belong to the former period, such as barley, wheat,
millet, flax, beans, onions, also recur among the latter peoples ;
while those which are absent in the one case, such as rye, oats, and
hemp, are missing in the other also {cf. Franz Woenig, Die Pfl.anzen
im alien JJJf/ypten, 2 Aufl., Leipzig, 1886, and Riem, Handwdrterhiich
des hiblischen Altertums, Bielefeld u. Leipzig, 1884 ; cf. also above,
p. 43). Only, in the way of leguminous plants, amongst Semites
and Egyptians alike, the lentil plays the principal part instead of
peas, which, perhaps, were on the whole unknown. The rape is not
mentioned in the Bible, and its occurrence in Egypt seems doubtful
{cf. Woenig, loc. cit., p. 216, f.). The above-named cultivated plants
therefore must at a very early time have obtained an extraordinarily
wide distribution, which, however, became the more restricted the
farther north it went : thus, according to Ahlqvist's investigations,
the Finns cultivated barley and rape alone {cf. above, p. 45). What
the centre was from which they were distributed is a point on which
we await instruction from naturalists. Any one, however, who
takes up De Candolle's book on the Origin of Ctdtivated Plants, in
which our scientific knowledge on this point is put together, may
easily see that we are here still plunged in a sea of doubts, and
THE CULTIVATION OF TREES. 297
that Humboldt's dictum : " The origin, the earliest home of the
plants most useful to man, his companions from the remotest ages,
is as mipenetrable a secret as the home of the domesticated
animals," has not jet been refuted in the cases of those particular
plants whose original home it would most interest us to know.
There remains therefore an extraordinary amount for future
research to do, as regards both f\icts and language, in the matter of
the most ancient cultivated plants.
Returning to the European members of the Indo-Germanic
family, we regard it as probable that even when they had once
applied themselves to a primitive, semi-nomad form of agriculture,
which they only practised with any earnestness when a longish
halt was forced upon them, they stuck at this stage of civilisa-
tion for many centuries. A new era dawns on the south when
it comes in contact with the civilised world of the Orient, on
the north when it encounters the civilisation of the Mediterranean
peoples.
The last and surest step in permanent agriculture is the culti-
vation of trees, which, of course, was totally unknown to the
European members of the Indo-Germanic family in their earliest
period. As Thucydides expressly says of the most ancient Greeks,
tliat they planted no trees {ov8e (^in-twrcs), so Tacitus says of the
Teutons (c. 26) : " Necenim cum ubertate et amplitudine soli labore
contendunt, ut pomaria conserant et prata separent et hortos
rigent: sola terrse seges imperatur." On "wild fruit-trees, see above,
p. 275, ff. Habituation to more permanent habitations brought with
it the gradual introduction of horticulture and kitchen-gardens,
which were imknown to the primitive age, although perhaps even
in temporary settlements individual families may have just fenced
off a piece of ground in the neighbourhood of the house on which
to grow bulbs, beans, and peas. The names of kitchen and garden
plants (words such as cole, cummin, cabbage, vetch, onion, radish,
mint, asparagus, &c.) common to nearly the whole Slavo-Teutonic
(and partially to the Celtic) north, bear the mark of their South
European origin on the face of them. Frequently they cannot be
traced further back than Italy or Greece ; not unfrequently, how-
ever, they take us across Italy and Greece to the district whence
come countless valuable gifts of civilisation — the Semitic and Syrian
world. Thus, to quote only one example here, the names for
cimimin (Hebr. kammon, Arab, Icammim, G. kv^ivov, Lat. cummum,
O.H.G. chumin, 0. Russ. Jcjuminu) clearly indicate the route
followed by civilisation from east to west in this case.
But all this is no part of our task. We shall be brought back
once more to the subject of cultivated ])lants by the history of
wine, which we reserve for chapter vii. (Food and Drink),
Having thus far concerned ourselves exclusively with the agri-
culture of the prehistoric European period, we must before
closing this chapter dwell, if only for a few words, on the Indo-
Iranians. We have already seen on p. 284 that special agree-
ments exist between Sanskrit and Iranian in agricultural
298 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
terminology ; and there is nothing to prevent us from assuming
that these peoples, like the Europeans, effected their transition
to agriculture, or at any rate made considerable advances in
agriculture, on some suitable soil, the locality of which we shall
subsequently endeavour to determine, at a time when they were
yet ethnically united.
This early ludo-Iranian agriculture again must be regarded as
primitive in kind and as not implying permanent settlement. In
the Avesta itself, according to W. Geiger's investigations (Ostiran.
Kultw\ p. 399, /'.), we are confronted by two stages of culture
amongst the Zend people. First the Gdtlids present us with what
was practically the economic life of the primeval Tndo-Iranian
period : agriculture is not absolutely unknown, but it is very
secondary to cattle-breeding. The centre of the tribal economy is
the cow. Irrigation of the soil — absolutely indispensable, under the
peculiar conditions of the ground in Persia, if the soil is to be tilled
even in a moderately effective manner- — is not yet mentioned.
The picture presented by the younger portions of the Avesta is
quite different : in them the Iranian has become a settled agricul-
turist, who tills the soil in accordance with the godly precepts
of Ahura Mazda. Irrigation is practised with technical skill.
Even the cultivation of trees, which binds man more surely to his
native soil, is known to the people of the Avesta.
The Indians, too, seem to have enjoyed, even in the age of the
Rigveda, a more settled form of life than, say, the Greeks of
whom Thucydides speaks {cf. above, p. 281), or the Teutons
described by Caesar, notwithstanding the fact that a gradual
advance southwards and eastwards, in the face of the resistance
of the natives, was still going on amongst the Indians. Here
and there, as Ludwig remarks in the index to his translation of the
Rigveda, p. 138, the text seems indeed to point to the existence
of hostile relations between the later " Aryan " immigrants and
the earlier ones who had already permanently settled down.
Unfortunately, as yet we know very little of the relation of
the Vedic Indian to the soil he tilled. What is beyond doubt is
that the economic life of this period was played in the community
of villagers who were bound together by the bonds of kinsman-
ship. But, touching the relation of the individual to the land
of the whole village, from the point of view of legal rights and
property, nothing satisfactory is known to me. One passage
(Rigv., i. 110. 5) clearly refei-s to measuring out fields {kshetrayn
iva VI mavius tejanena), and may refer to private property not
to the property of the community.* In this connection we may
* We may expect further information as to the state of things in modern
India in this respect from the Ethnological Survey of India (above, p. 112).
Cf. the cliaracteristic questions : "382. Are there traces, among the
caste or tribe, of village communities or of a communal organisation embracing
groups of villages ? 386. Are there any traces of tlie periodical redistribution
of common arable land among tlie members or sections of the community ?
389. Do communal rights of pasturage exist or are they asserted over land
which is private property? " &c.
INDO-IRANIAN AGRICULTURE. 299
mention th.at both in Sanskrit and in Iranian, words for settle-
ment, <tc., are formed from the root krsh, karesh, "to plough:"
thus, Sans, krshtdyas (especially ^M/7ca k?:) means literally
" ploughman," then "a settled people," "men "; Zend karsha in
kars^ho-rdza, " founding settlements " (Geiger, 0. C, p. 399).
What cultivated plants belong to the primitive Indo-Iranian
period cannot be determined owing to the scantiness of our
sources in this matter. The only plant mentioned both in the
Avesta and also in the Rigveda, is i/dva, but — even if this word
meant barley in later Sanskrit, and also in modern Iranian dialects
(Pers. gaic, Osset. i/eu', "barley," but Digoric i/au, "millet") — it
is still doubtful whether the word originally had such a restricted
meaning.
The flax of the Europeans (c/. above, p. 294) has its place
taken by the hemp of the Indo-Iranians (Sans, hhangd = Zend
baitha), which was originally prized for the intoxicating eftects of
its decoctions. In the Rigveda hhangd is an epithet of soma ;
as hemp it appears for the first time in the Atharva Veda. In
Iranian heng is to this day a name for the intoxicating haschisch
(W. Geiger, 0. C, p. 152).
We shall speak of Sans, soma = Zend kauma in chapter vii.
As for cultivated plants mentioned not in the Rigveda, but in
other Vedic texts, wheat and beans (cf. above, p. 284) seem to
have joint names in Sanskrit and modern Persian dialects.
CHAPTER VL
COMPUTATION OF TIJIE.
Divisions of the Year — Originally Two — Additions — The Year — Moon and
Month — Computation of Gestation — Superstition — Lunar and Solar Year
— Names of the Months — Computation by Nights — Day — Divisions of
the Day,
If to the history of agriculture and cultivated plants I append
a short review of the origins of the Tndo-Germanic methods of
computing time, it is because the two things are causally con-
'nected with each other. J. Grimm {Geschichte d. D. Spr.) rightly
remarks : " Agricultural peoples are the first to attend to the
service of the gods and the computation of time;" and it is
obvious that he who commits the seed to the bosom of the earth,
and hopes for wealth and happiness for himself and his family
from its growth and prosperity — he is the first man in the country-
side to take a lively interest in the precise computation of time.
Now, as we have seen in the preceding pages that the Indo-
Europeans in their primeval period were far from having attained
the height of permanent agricultural life, it will be important to
investigate whether what we can ascertain as to the oldest method
of computing time is in harmony with this conclusion.
Nor will it be less valuable — for the purpose of understanding
the historic calendars of the individual Indo-Germanic peoples — to
discover the common element at the bottom of them all. And,
thirdly, it is beyond dispute that the divisions of time made by
a people, e.g., the question how many and what seasons of the
year it distinguished, are closely connected with the position and
climate of the country in which it dwells ; so that we may hope
to gain some further data for this subject, i.e., the question of the
original Indo-European home.
I. The Seasons op the Year.
In the case of a people that lives almost exclusively on the
produce of its herds, two observations are forced on the notice of
man by the influence of changes of weather ; that is to say, he
distinguishes between the season of the year in which his herds
have to seek their food on the open pasture-land, and that in
which they have to be sheltered from the horrors of the weather
THE SEASONS Or THE YEAR. 3OI
in subterranean caves, in the safety of the pen, or in the hospitable
stall.
If we may believe Vambery (Primitive Kultur, p. 162,/.), the
Turko-Tataric peoples in their primitive period distinguished two
seasons of the year only, summer and winter, in the name of
which the conditions of nomad life are clearly mirrored. Accord-
ing to him the name of summer, jaz, amounts to " the season of
the year in which a people scatters" {jaz, "to spread owt" jazi,
" plain," jazilamak, " to go to the pasturage, to the steppes "),
whereas the name of winter, Ms, his meant the snowy season of
the year (Jcaj-is, kais-Ms, "snow-drift").
What can we infer as to the conditions of life amongst the most
ancient Indo-Europeans in this respect 1
The season of the year most sharply defined in the Indo-Germanic
languages, and most widely spread amongst them, is beyond
question winter: Zend zyn, "winter," G. x'-^^i "snow," Lat. hiems,
\. gam, "winter;" Sans, hdyand, "year," Zend zayano, "winter;"
Sans, hemantd, "winter," G. xct^iwv, "storm," Armen. _/m«, "snow,"
Lith. iiema, O.S. zima ; Sans, himd, "cold, winter," Zend zima,
"winter, year," Arm. jmern, "winter," Alb. dimen, "winter," Teut.
en-girnus, "annual" \lex Salica ; Kern Taal u. Letterb., ii. 143),
Lat. htimis, trinius, kc, "biennial, triennial," G. ;^i/Aapos, xijxaipa,
"he-goat, goat" ("yearling").
The root is unknown ; but the change of meaning in the stock
of words quoted (winter, storm, snow) mirrors the conditions of a
northern winter, and this is confirmed by the presence of an Indo-
Germanic root for "to snow:" Zend snizh (but vafra, "snow" =
Sans, vdpra, "earthwork"?), Lat. ninguere, nix, G. vt<^et, vtcjia, Goth.
s)idivs, Lith. sni\gas, O.S. snegil, I. snechta. The comparison of
O.H.G. is with Zend isi, "ice," is doubtful.
Over against this stock of words for winter are three equations
which agree in denoting a more pleasant season of the year. They
are : —
1. Sans, vasantd, Zend vauhri (Mod. P. hehdr), Armen. garun,
O.S. vesna, O.N. vdr, Lat. ver, G. tap, "spring," Lith. wasara,
" summer."
2. O.S. jar il, "spring," G. ojpa, "pleasant season of the year,"
Goth, jer, "yeai*," Zend ydre, "year."
3. Sans, sdmd, "half-year, year," Zend hama, Armen. amafii, am,
"year," I. sam, samrad, O.H.G. sumar, "summer."
The question then presents itself whether the above series of
words are only different ways of expressing the same notion, or
whether they warrant us in assuming that the warm and j)leasant
season of the year had ahvady been divided by the original people
into spring and summer. I believe the latter was not the case ;
that on the contx'ary everything serves to indicate that the Indo-
European year was divided into two parts, sunnner and winter. Anil
I believe I can make the following points in support of this view: —
1. The above equations by no means agree in their meanings.
302 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
AVhereas in the other derivations of the root ves the notion of spring-
inheres, Lith. wasara means "summer," and it is oiAj po-wasaris
that naeans " spring." Again, G. wpa (No. 2) is the pleasant season
in general, as is shown particularly by oTr-wprj, "harvest" ("late
summer"). In the case of No. 3 we probably have to start from
the meaning of "half-year," preserved in Sanskrit, as scarcely
anyone will be willing to separate sd7nd from samd, " equal."
Hence the conception of summer — the two meanings coexisted in
the primeval period — as a term of six months.
2. Nearly everywhere in the chronology of the individual
peoples a division of the year into two parts can be traced. This
finds linguistic expression in the circumstance that the terms for
summer, spring, and winter have parallel suffix formations. As in
the primeval period *ghi-7n and *sem- * existed side by side, so in
Zend zima and hama correspond to each other (Spiegel, Arische
Periode, pp. 21, 23), in Armenian amarn axidijviefn (Hiibschmann,
A. St., i. 40), in Teutonic sum-ar and uint-ar, in Celtic gam and
sam, in Indian vasantd and hemantd. There is absolutely no
instance in which one and the same language shows identity of
suffixes in the names of three seasons of the year. In Slavonic, also,
the year is divided into two principal divisions, summer (leto) and
winter {zivia) ; and, finally, evident traces of the old state of things
are not wanting in Greek (cf. Od., vii. 118: rawv ovttot€. Kapiro^
cLTToXXvTaL ovB' aTToXeLTrei ;^et|U,aTOS oiSe Oepev;) and Latin (Ungei*,
Zeitrecknung der Griechen und Riimer Handhuch der Kl. A. herausg.
V. I, Muller, i. 556 and 610).
3. Most Indo-Gennanic peoples' view^s of nature are pervaded by
the idea of a conflict between the pleasant and the wintry season of
the year. In the Zend Avesta the story is: Perpetual summer
reigned in the Airyana-vaejanh, but Agra-mainyus could not suffer
this happiness to endure ; therefore he created a counteraction, a
great snake and the winter, produced by the Dtevas. Our own
Teutonic antiquity developed the contrast between summer and
winter in an extremely original mannei", for which I refer to J.
Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie. Slavonic tales tell of a youth or a
young maiden who is rescued from the power which had bound her
in an enchanted palace of crystal. This reminds us of our Sleeping
Beauty : the kiss of spring releases the earth plunged in the deep
slumber of winter. In warmer climes, peopled by Indo-Eui'opeans,
this simile naturally loses its foi'ce. In India all recollection of it
seems to have been transferred to the struggle between India and
Vritra, who has captured the cloud cows.
For all these reasons I believe we have the right to presuppose
an original division of the Indo-Germanic year into two seasons.
The coexistence of the three above-mentioned terms for the
pleasant season of the year may be explained by assuming that the
words formed from the root ye, "to go," were originally adjectives
to *semd, so that ^yerd semd may have meant the half-year in which
" one goes out, goes to the pasture-land " (cf. Zend d-yd-thra, " the
* Cf. Brugmann, Gruiidriss, it. i. 453.
A THIRD SEASON OF THE YEAR. 3O3
return of the cattle from pasture," Sans, ydtrd, "going out to
pasture," Roth, Z. d. D. M. G., xxxiv. 704, and Turko-Tat. jVij above,
p. 301). The words formed from the root ves^ however, certainly
only designated the beginning of the pleasant season {cf. O.H.G.
ositariln, ostara, "ancient spring festival," from root «s : vex), as is
shown by the fact that none of them can, like the derivatives from
sem-, ye, ghei, serve to designate the whole year.
Now, we have already seen that the Indo-Germanic population
of Europe, like the Indo-Iranians before their separation, must
have made some not inconsiderable advances in the matter of
agriculture; and thus we might expect to find amongst both
groups of peoples a third season of the year designated, which did
not indeed drive out the ancient division of the year into two parts
— for this continued as we have said into historic times — but which
did bring into particular prominence that portion of the pleasant
season (*sem) in which things ripened and crops were got in.
As a matter of fact this seems to have been the case. In Indo-
Iranian, Sans, gar-dd and Zend saredha agree, and in all proba-
bility belong to the Sans, root gar-, "to seethe, cook." In European
• I am inclined, in spite of certain phonetic ditliculties, to join
Frohde {B. B., i. 329) in comparing Goth, asans, " Oepo<i " (^ept^etv,
"to gather crops," O.S. jeseni, Russ. oseni, Pr. assanis, "harvest")
= Lat. Minus, "year" (lit. " summer," "crop-time; " anntis for *dnus
from *as-no; cf. cunnus for *cihius from *cus-no; Stolz, Lat. Gr., p.
187), annona, "produce in the shape of grain."* The common root
would be the as, which is widely spread in ancient Teutonic in
the meaning of "working in the fields" (M.H.G. asten, O.H.G.
arnon). Cf. Kluge, Et. IF".*, p. 73; Thurneysen, K. Z., xxx. 476,
differs.
If we now leave these primeval expressions and turn to the
subsequent additions made by the most important peoples to their
terminology, w^e find it remarkable to begin with that Teutonic has
retained but few traces of derivatives from the roots ves and gliei.
The place of the former has been taken by O.H.G. lenzo, langiz,
A.S. lencten, which is confined to West Teutonic languages, and is
altogether obscure ; of the latter by the common Teutonic Goth.
vintrus, which perhaps belongs to the O.I. find, "white," and so
designates the season of the year after the colour of the snow
(Keller, Keltische Brief e, p. 113). A parallel to this is afforded
by the Lithuanian name for the harvest, r^idu : riidas, "red."
Touching the Teutonic harvest we have the important record of
Tacitus {Germ., 26): " Hiems et ver et sestas intellectum ac
vocabula habent, autunmi perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur."
It follows from this that the O.H.G. herhest, A.S. haii'fest\
(O.N. hatist can scarcely be connected), which is confined to
* That the agricultural Romans chose an expression wliich literally meant
"harvest-crop" to designate the year seems likely enough. Others, indeed,
compare Lat. annus : Goth, d^n, "year."
t The root, however, is of course the same as in Lat. carpere, G. KapirSs.
Cf. Heb. choref, "harvest": cMraf, "pluck.".
304 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
High German and Dutch, did not estabhsh itself until after
Tacitus as the word for the crop of bona autumni, i.e., of fruit.
Previously, as it is an ancient formation, it may have been
synonymovis with Goth, asans.
In the Slavonic languages the Common Slav, leto alone remains
for us to mention. It is usually connected with Lith. li/tu.s,
"rain," which linguistically is correct euough, but as an explana-
tion of the meaning is extremely remarkable. See below.
It is intelligible that in southern climes new expressions became
necessary for summer (Lat. cestas : atdut, G. Oepo<; = Armen.
jer : Sans, gharmd, " glow," Lat. formus), expressing the warmth
of the season. Summer is here the harvest season (Oepi^eiv, " to
harvest "). Lat. ver and G. eap attain the rank of a separate
season. Then in both languages various names for the harvest,
the time of fruit crops and vintage, grow up : in Lat. autumnus,
which is perhaps assimilated in its suffix to Vert-ummis ( : verto),
" the god of the turning seasons of the year," of the TrepLirXofxevuiv
eviavTwv (c/. Sans, ritu-vrtti, "turn of the seasons," "year");
the *auto which remains I would compare with O.N. aiidr,
" wealth." In Greek, even in Homer, the o-rr-Mpr] {cf. Gei'man
spdtjahr = harvest) follows the ^epos, the T^Bakvla oTrcopi/, the time
of great heat {II.., xxi. 346), but also of the pouring rain (//., xvi.
385). Attempts at dividing the year into six or seven portions are
also found amongst the Greeks (linger, loc. cit., p. 561).
In the Vendidad of the Avesta, as already remarked, winter and
summer {zyao, zinia : hama) form the basis of the computation of
time. The short transitional season of spring {yanhri and zare-
maya,'^ "the green": Sans, hdri : O.'Si. zelenii, "green") is not
originally taken into account. The word created in the Indo-
Iranian period for fruit-time, saredha, has taken on the meaning
of "year," though in Ossetic sdrdd, "summer," has preserved the
proper sense of " time of ripe fruit" {sdrdd and zumdg, "summer"
and " winter," by the side of a more recent division into five
parts ; Hiibschmann, Osset. S2}r., p. 63).
On Indian soil a steady increase in the number of the seasons
may be observed. As sdmd was only preserved in the sense of
"half-year," "year," the terms inherited from the primeval period
were vasantd, hemantd, farad. The division of the year into three
parts {trayo vd rtavah samvatsarasya, Qui. Br.) in the Vedic
period tended, the further behind the old abodes in the Punjaub
were left, to become a division into five seasons : vasantd, grtshmd
{oistas, Oipoq), varshd (" rainy season ; " cf. Slav. lUo), gardd,
hemantd fifira, {giQira, "cool"), oi', dividing the last two, into
six seasons (cf. B. R., under rtu, " season of the year"). The modern
Hindus, finally, distinguish: Baras, the rainy season, July and
August ; Scharad, the depressing, humid seasons after the rains,
September and October ; Henianta, the cool season, November and
December; Sisira, the dewy season, the period of cool mornings
and of cloud, January and February ; Wasant, spring, March and
* Cf. Rotli, Z. d. D. M. G., xxxiv. 702.
THE CONCEPTION OF YEAR. 30$
April ; Grischma, the bright, sunny, hot time of the year. May and
June (Schlagiutweit, Indien, ii. 173, note).
To return to the primeval period, there is still the important
question whether the conception of winter and summer combined
into one whole, the conception of the year, had found expression
in language.
This appears actually to have been the case. We find agree-
ment between : Sans, sarli-vat-s-ard, " year," samvatsain, " a year
long," pcD'ivatsard, "a full year," vatsard, G. FcVos,* "year," Alb.
viet, "year," si-viet, "in this year" (G. Meyer, Aib. Gr.), Lat.
vetu!i,\ "old," O.S. vetilchu, Lith. wetuszas, &c. Further, Sans.
parut, Pamir D. jxirJ, par-wuz (Tomaschek, C. St., p. 19), Osset.
fare, N. Pers. 2^dr, Armen. heru (Hiibschmann, Arm. St., i. 39 ;
0)<set. Spr., 65) = G. Trepvat, O.N. fjor]). There is yet a second
Indo-Germanic equation to produce : Lith. metas = Alb. mot, " year "
(£. B., viii. 9), the original meaning of which (root me) is "measure
of time," just as in Slavonic words meaning "year," like Bulg.
godina,8erv. god, and words meaning "time," "feast" (Pol.
gody, Cecil hod), are derived from the same root ; | Miklosich, Et.
W., p. 61. It seems to me, therefore, not impossible that O.S.
leto, "summer," "year," must rather be connected with I. lith,
"festival," "feast-day," than with Lith. lytus, "rain."
Other means, however, of counting the year may have been
employed in the primeval period than the ancient neuter vttos,
which perhaps originally meant nothing more than " past time,"
"antiquity." On the one hand, in ancient texts the seasons of
the year are enumerated in order.
Thus, in the Hildebrandslied we have : Ic wallota sumaro enti
u'intro sehstic ( = 30 years, 60 half-years, A.S. missere, O.N. misseri) ;
in Heliand, and elsewhere, thea habda so fiUc wintro endi sumaro
gilibd. In the Rigveda, too, we have such sentences as "live for
a hundred years, a hundred winters, a hundred spi'ings, and
increase in strength." Similarly in Homer and elsewhere. It is
obvious that expressions of this broad and unwieldy description
were principally employed on poetic occasions, e.g., in the pompous
* In the G. iviavris I divide thus : ivi-a>jT6-s, and compare *avT6s : FeVos
from o-Ft-J-j (cf. aTfios from *a-FeT-^o's : a-vT-firtf from d-Fr-^trj;- ; G. Meyer,
Gr. Gr.-, § 101). Tlie first element is eVio- (: eros, (vo-s, " tlie earlier") =
Sans, sdna, "old." Od., i. 16 : —
a\\' ore Si) eras ?i\0€ ■mptirXoiJ.ivci)!' iviavTOiv
TCf) 01 iTr(KK(i'(TaVTO K.T.K.,
would, e.g., really be : " When — as the earlier years turned by — that j'car came
in which," &c.
Ascoli [K. Z., xvii. 401, ./f.) gives a different explanation.
t The Lat. adjective also had originally the meaning of " year, age,
antiquity " (c/. K. Brugmann, K. Z., xxiv. 38; J. Schnudt, Die P/urnlhi/iUmgcn
dericlfj. Neutra, p. 84). A different explanation in Thurneysen, A'. Z., xxx. 485.
+ With Slav, gods, "time, festival, year," I compare G. ^7r/-/35-5, "day
after the festival " (root c/ed). The received interpretation of this word as
"that which follows on foot" altogether omits the reference which the word
always has to the festival.
U
306 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
invocations of health and happiness which were known even to the
primeval period.
For the pm-poses of daily life it sufficed to designate the coming
year or the past by the name of one of the seasons (jmrs pi'o toto).
The Indo-Germauic languages are pervaded by an unmistakable
tendency to forget the original meaning of the name of a season
and to employ it to designate the year as a whole. In this sense
we have : —
1. The ^Yinter: Derivatives from the root g he i [cf. above, p. 301).
Cf., further, Goth, vintrus (qino hl6\>rinnandei tvalih vintruns),
Zend ailvigdma, " winter and year." The frequency of this change
of meaning from winter to year is an indication of the important
part played by winter in the climate of the oi'iginal land.
2. The Autumn : Zend saredhu [cf. above, p. 304). So, too.
Sans, (ardd is very frequently used for " year." A. Weber {Ind.
Stud., xvii. 232) remarks on this: "The formal enumeration of
years, in the aphorisms of the ritual text, down to the grhya-
sutra, is by harvests. This represents an intermediate stage
between the old method of counting by winters (himds) and the
later method by rainy seasons (varshdiii), corresponding to the
change of abode which had taken place in the meanwhile."
3. The Summer : Derivatives from the root sem- (see above,
p. 301). To these we may perhaps add O.S. leto, "summer,"
"year" (cf. however, above, p. 305). Dei'ivatives from the root
i/e (see ai)ove, p. 301).
The changes of meaning here indicated in Indo-European are
repeated in the Finn languages. Thus, we have in Mordv. Hza,
"summer," "year," inOstjak tal, "winter," "year;" and, further,
in Ostjiik tallun, "winter and summer " = year. These languages
have also a common word for the concept year : Finn, vuosi,
Weps. 2V0S, Ostj. ot. Tomaschek regards this as identical with
Indo-Germanic vet, ut (Pamir D., p. 19), a remarkable connection,
if correct, in the history of culture.
II. Moon and Month.
Of the stars that deck the heavens' vault, it was the moon with
her perpetual changes that first pi'oclaimed the course of time to
the Indo-Europeans as to other peoples. "Omnium admirationem,"
says Pliny {Hist. Nat., ii. 9. 41), " vincit novissimum sidus tei'risque
familiarissimum." Moon and month coincide, with occasional
small differences of suffix, in Indo-European : thus in Sans, mds,
Zend nido, 0. Pers. mdha, in O.S. mexeci, in Lith. menu (m'enesis,
"month" only), in Goth, mena, "moon" : men6\'>s, "month."
Frequently it is only the name of the measure of time that
survives from this root, while new names have come in for the
constellation: thus G. fxriv : a-eXrjvt], "moon" (crcAas, "bright-
ness"), Lat. mensis, (Mene, "dea menstruationis") : luna (hicere,
"to beam"), Armen. amis, "month" : hisin, "moon" {lucere), O.I.
mi : esca, " moon " (of obscure origin). Cf. also Alb. moi, "month."
MOON AND MONTH. 307
The root of the whole of this stock (on whose phonetics see J.
Schmidt, K. Z., xxvi. 345) is rightly looked for in the Indo-G.
me, Sans, md-mi, " I measure," so that the moon presents herself
as " the measure of time," as Max Miiller expresses it : " the
golden hand on tlie dark dial of heaven."
In the month as determined by the moon we have then to see
the first and surest begiimings of a systematic computation of
time amongst the Indo-Europeans.
The purely lunar month consists, of course, of 29 days, 12
hours, 44 minutes, 3 seconds ; and that it continued for a con-
siderable time to have the value of the period assigned to it by
nature, not only in the primeval age, but also amongst the
individual peoples, is indicated in all probability, amongst other
things by the fact that one of the most important natural processes,
the term of which could be accurately reckoned, gestation, was
fixed in early ages not at nine but at ten months.
If, in the Vedic period, a child has to be indicated as near birth,
it is called daramasya, "a ten months' child." In a prayer for the
fertility of woman the words used are : —
Tdm te gdrhham Imvdmahe — da^aine mdsi sutave.
" We pray thee for the delivery of the fruit (previously described)
in the tenth month." So, too, in the Avesta the normal time for
confinement is the tenth month (Geiger, 0. C, p. 236), in Hero-
dotus (vi. 69) equally, and also amongst the Romans, e.g., the same
computation occurs in the Twelve Tables (Unger, loc. cit., p. 616).
Cf. Leist on the conception of a gestation-year of ten months
{Altarisches Jus Gentium, p. 2Q2, ff.).
The month is naturally divided, by the two opposite phases of
tlie full moon and the new moon, into two halves, which the
Indians call 2)urva-pakshd and apara-pakshd, the " front " and
"hind" (Zimmer, Altind. L., p. 364), or ncklapakska and h-shna-
paksha, the " bright " and " dark " halves. The expressions
7/dva and dyava also occur in Vedic texts for the same ideas. I
should be inclined to connect this ydva with yuixui, "young"
(ydv-tyai'ts, ydv-iskla), and hith. jdunas vienii, "new moon."
The division of the month into two parts which we have found
amongst the Indo-Europeans is also presupposed in the Avesta
(Geiger, loc. cit., p. 316). In Greek it is pointed to by the expres-
sion fjL-qvo'i LCTTafjLevov and fx.r)v6s ^6lvovto<5, although in historical
times a division of the month into three decades of days (the waxing
crescent, more or less full disk, the waning crescent) was brought into
connection with it. Amongst the Teutons also, in Tacitus' account
{Germ., c. xi.), the new and full moon aj)pear as the most prominent
phases of the moon ("cum ant inchoatur luna aut impletur").
On Roman ground, the idtis, "the brighter nights" (G. I$ap6<;, aiOoy,
" bum"), coiTespond to the full moon, to the new moon the calender,
"the proclaiming day" (caiare, KoXetv), so named "because on the
first day of every calendar month at the command of the king (later
of the sacrificial king) the pontifices proclaimed in the presence
308 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
of the multitude assembled in front of the city hill, whether five or
seven days were to be reckoned from this day to the day of the first
quarter inclusive " (Mommsen). The relation of the nonce (dies ante
nonnm idus), in their origin, to the ca/endce and idus has not yet
been cleai'ly made out (cf., amongst others, Flex, Die cdteste Monats-
teihmg der Romer, Jena, 1880). Not a trace of any further sub-
division of the month into more than two parts can be discovered
in the primeval period.
The moon is the measure of time, and consequently has power
over the growth and decay of things as influenced by the coiu'se
of time. Again, the light of the moon came at an early period to
be credited with an influence on the vegetation of the earth, on
man and his destiu}'. It is not the object of this work to trace
the mark left on all ages of the past by this belief, which is often
weird and gloomy, though often cheerful and child-like. We may,
however, mention some few of the most ancient pieces of evidence
which show what an important influence the belief in the signi-
ficance of the' phases of the moon has frequently had on the history
of the Indo-Germanic peoples. " Cum ex captivis qusereret," sa^^s
Csesar [B. G., i. 50), "quamobrem Ariovistus proelio non decertaret,
hanc reperiebat causam, quod apud Germanos ea consuetudo esset,
ut matres familise eorum sortibus ac vaticinationibus declararent,
utrum pra3lium committi ex usu esset necne ; eas ita dicere : non
esse fas Germanos superare, si ante novara lunam proelio con-
tendissent." The explanation is given by Tacitus (Germ., c. xi.) :
" Coeunt nisi quid fortuitum et subitum incidit certis diebus cum
aut inchoatur luna aut impletur ; nam agendis rebus hoc aus-
picatissimum initium credunt." In an exactly similar way the
Spartans, who were later than the other Greeks in getting
enlightenment, sent the Athenians no assistance at Marathon
because they dared not march out /xt/ ov ttXt^pcos eovT05 tov kvkXov
(Hdt., vi. 106).
Whether the lunar month is multiplied by 12, our usual number
of months, or by 13, the number of months common amongst
many east Asiatic peoples (cf. Schiefner, Das dreizehnmonatliche
Jahr und die Monatsnamen der sibirischen Volker, Melanges Russes,
Tome iii. 307, ff.), in neither case does the number of months in
the solar year give 365^ days ; and this raises the important
question whether an attempt was made as early as the primeval
period to equalise the lunar and the solar yeai*.
As a matter of fact, Albrecht Weber in his treatise, Zivei vedische
Texte ilher Omina und Porteiita, has, on p. 388, put forward the
conjecture that the twelve hallowed nights which make their
appearance in Vedic antiquity, and which we encounter also in the
west, especially amongst the Teutons,* are to be regarded as such
an attempt. This scholar has, however, more recently himself
raised doubts of this, as he says in Indische SUidien, xvii. 224 :
"And when the question is raised, what then may we regard
* A speci.al investigation of the "twelfths" would be welcome (cf. E. H.
Meyer, Indog. Mythen, ii. 526 ; Ludwig, Der Rigveda, vi. 232).
THE LUNAR MONTH AND SOLAR YEAR. 309
as really at the bottom of these twelve days, it is at least an
obvious idea to see in them an attempt to balance the lunar
year of 354 days (beyond a question tlie oldest mode of computing
the year) with the solar year of 366 days ; and so, in spite of
the lunar computation common amongst the people, to take into
account the actual facts, according to which the " course of the
sun " determines the extent of the year. By putting on the
twelve superfluous days to the end of the lunar year on the one
hand the computation of time was corrected, on the other a sacred
time was obtained which was regarded as of good omen for the
coming year. Such an explanation is open to suspicion, because
then the agreement which exists between Indians and Teutons in
regard to the Twelfths would compel us to assume a correct
comprehension of the lunar aud solar year for the primitive Indo-
Germans ; and that after all has not inconsiderable difficulties of
its own, inasmuch as one can hardly venture to ascribe such
knowledge based on their own observation to the people of that
period."
On general grounds, I too consider it improbable that tlie
arithmetical problem involved in balancing the lunar and solar
year was solved by the primitive people. The same conclusion
too is indicated by special considerations.
The references to time and its computation contained in the
ancient names for the sun * are as scanty as we have seen the
moon to be important, both in fact and language, as a " measure
of time." In Greek, the word XvKd(3a?, "year" (avr-), which first
appears in the Odi/ssej/, might perhaps be cited here, if it is really
to be taken as meaning " course of time." In Italian, the Umbrian
o.<e, Pelignian ««s, "anni, annum " (Biicheler, L. J. v.), which seems
to correspond to the Etrurian Usil, " Sol et Eos," Lat. aur-ora,
might belong here. Sans, rtu-vrtti (above) is quite a recent
formation. I know, however, of no other designation of the year
derived from the course of the sim, or from a name for the
sun at all. When, therefore, Ideler makes the following observa-
tion on the usage of language in his Handbook of Chronology :
" Finally, as regards the year, the only remark that need be made,
in addition to what we have said of its duration and different
forms, is that the designation for this concept in nearly all
languages designates a circular course, movement in an orbit,"
this is distinctly untrue of the ludo-Germanic family.
Further, the following considci'ation confirms me in the con-
viction that the Indo-Europeans befoi'e the dispersion liad not got
beyond computing time by means of tlie purely lunar month :
as soon as the linmr year comes to be squared with the solar year,
and the month is disconnected from the changes of the moon in
which it had its origin, it is self-evident that the months of which
the circle of the year was composed become definite, annually
recurring units to which it was absolutely necessary that names
should be given. Had this step been taken as early as the
* For the names of the sun, see ch. .\iii.
3IO PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
])rin-ieval period, we should confidently expect that, in the great
iiUDiber of Indo-Germanic names for the months handed down
from ancient as well as recent times, traces at least would be
found here and there of some original agreement between them.
Only the fact is just the opposite. Not only do the groups of
languages, into which the Indo-Germanic family of speech is
divided, altogether diverge from each other in their names for the
months, but the members of these groups, e.g., of the Teutonic
and Slavonic, of the Lithuanian, show snch a variegated diversity
in their dialects as to exclude the faintest notion of any original
agreement.
The difference between the Greek and the Roman names for the
months is excellently characterised by Mommsen : " Whereas by
far the larger number of the Greek months derive their names
from the gods and the festival of the gods, few from the character-
istics of the seasons, and perhaps none from the mere number of
their place ; amongst the xniimaginative Latins — we have no infor-
mation about the Sabellians in this respect — at least half of the
months, from Quinctilis to December, are named merely by their
numbers, the majority of the remaining Latin and Sabellian
months {Ajjrilis, Maius or Mceshis, Junius, Floralis, Januarius,
Februarius, inter calarius) from the characteristics of the seasons
or peculiarities of the calendar, and only one single, though
indubitable, one from a deity — the month of Mars, which god
appears here, without companions, and at the head of the Latin,
and probably also of the Sabellian, calendai*, more decidedly than
any where else as par excellence the tribal and national god of the
Latins and Sabellians, that is to say of the Italians. "
A wide field of observation is revealed when we set foot in
northern Europe upon Teutonic* and Slavonic+ ground. Here
native names spring up in luxuriant abundance in nearly every
district, borrowed sometimes from the occupations of daily life,
sometimes from time or weather, sometimes from plants and
animals, sometimes from religious life, and generally from
Christianity, but always agreeing in the fresh and natural
character stamped upon them.
Not until the Roman calendar becomes known, and succeeds in
graduall}^ and steathily smuggling in its foreign names, are the
names of the months established in a fixed oixler.
With what difficulty, however, the popular mind, content as it
is with what is old, becomes habituated to precise computation
b}" days and months, is shown by districts in which expressions
such as in der sat, in don snite, im hrdchet, ini Iwihoet, have only
slowly been supplanted by sdtnidn, schnitmonat, brdch- and hoii-
monat.
* Cf. J. Grimm, Geschichte der deutschen S2)rachc, c. 6, " Feste und
Monate;" and K. Weinhold, Die deutschen Monatnamen, Halle, 1869.
+ Cf. F. Miklosich, Die slavisclien 3Ionatsnamen {Denhschriften d. philos.
hist. CI. d. kais. Ak. d. W., xvii. 1-30), Wien, 1868 ; Krek, Einleitung in die
Slav. Literaiur<jeschichte% ]). b\0, ff. Schiefner's above-mentioned work, Das
dreizehn monatliche Jahr, &c., is important for comparison.
NIGHT AXD DAY. 3II
T am inclined to regard the much-vexed* Odhanbdrs, the six
annual festivals of the Avcsta, as originally a means of this kind
for determining time, and as intermediate in a sort of way between
the names of the seasons and of the months. Thus, raitishahya
(: hahya, "sowing ") is " the time which brings the grain with it ;"
Aydtlirima, "the time of calling the cattle home" {cf. above, p.
303); Maidyozaremya, "the middle of verdure," tfec.
We saw above, on p. 303, that the oldest, indeed a prehistoric,
expression of this kind amongst the Europeans is the equation
Goth, asans (O.S. jesenl), Lat. annus, annona, "the time of
harvest."
III. Night and Day.
As the measure of time in the ])rimeval period was the moon
and not the sun, the computation of time by nights and not by
days needs no explanation. Nor should it be necessary to adduce
evidence for the existence of this well-known custom of the
remotest times. In Sanskrit daixi-rdtrd {: rdtrt, " night ") means
a period of ten days, nirdtiiram, "night for night" = "daily."
" Let us celebrate the ancient nights (days) and autumns (years),"
says a hymn. In the Avesta the practice of counting by nights
{ksha2)an) is carried still further. Amongst the Teutons, in whom
this usage struck Tacitus even (" nee diemmi uumerum sed
noctium computant," Germ., xi.), formulas such as siehen nehte,
vierzehn nacht, zu vierzehn nechten are of the most frequent
occuri'euce in ancient German law. In English fortnight and
sennight are used to this day.
The same custom among the Celts is testified to by Ctesar {B. G.,
vi. 18 : "Galli se omnes ab Dite patre prognatos pra3dicant idque
ab druidibus proditum dicunt. Ob earn causam spatia omnis tem-
poris non numero dierum sed noctium finiunt "). Intimately
bound up with this is the circumstance that the night, from which
according to the ancient popular fancy the day is born, precedes
the day. In ancient Persian cuneiform inscriptions which adhere
strictly to formulae, h&hapavd raucapativd means " by night and
day." In Sanskrit, besides ahordtrd, aharniga, we also have
rdtryahan, " night and day," and naktamdinam, " by day and
night." The Athenians began the complete day {wx6ri^€pov) at
sunset, the Komans at midnight (Unger, loc. cit., p. 552). " Nox
ducere diem videtur," says Tacitus of the Teutons. " Dies natales
et mensium et annorum initia sic observant, ut nociem diets sub-
serjuatur," says Ciesar of the Celts.
It harmonises with this importance of the night as a primeval
* Cf. A. Bezzenbe'-ger, " Einige avestisohe Worter und Formen," iVrtcAnVA-
tni von d. K. GescUsclmftder IV., p. 251, /., Gottingen, 1878 ; R. Roth, "Der
Kalemler des Avesta uiid die sogenanriten Gahanlifir," Z. d. I). M. G., 1880,
}). 698, //■. ; W. Geiger, Ostirani.sche CuHur ;'De'ilnih7., Dcr Arcstische Kalendcr
und die Heimat der Areata- Religiaii Verh. d. internal. Orientalislcn- Con-
gresses, ii. 237, ff. All these passages deal also with the proper names for the
mouths in the Avesta and in ancient Persian. For the ancient Indian names
for the months, see Zimmer, Altind. Lcben, p. 370.
312 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
measure of time that the individual peoples have adhered with
great tenacity to its Indo-(Termanic names, as also to those of
winter and month; cf. Sans, ndkti-s, ndkta (also ahtii = *nJitu), Zend
nakhUiru, "nightly," G. vv^, Lat. nox, O.S. noUi, Lith. naktls, Alb.
nate, Goth, nahts, O.I. innocht, "this night." Original Tndo-Ger-
manic foiTQ *noqt-. The root is obscure. The equation, Sans.
ksha]), kshapd = Zend kshap, kshapara, \% confined to Indo-Iranian.
Sans. r&.tri, r&,tra (: Sans, ram, " rest," or root ro, "to rest," in O.H.G.
ruowa, A.S. row, "rest," *rm-tro or *r6-tro), the obscure Sans, nig,
f., "night," and O.I. aidche, oidche, stand isolated. In contrast to
this agreement in the names for night, there is diversity amongst
the Indo-Germanic languages as to the names for day, not so
much in the root (Sans, div, " to beam ") as in the formation of
the suffixes : the close unity of our stock of languages in the
terminology of winter, moon-month, and night, the three principal
pillars of the most ancient mode of computing time, would not
be given by the agreement exhibited in the names for summer,
bun, and day.
The ancient name for day was, as we have said, a formation
from the root div {cf. Sans, div, dydvi-dyavi, dive-dive, "day for
day," Lat. dies, O.I. dia, Armen. tiv ; Sans, dina, O.S. dmi, Lith.
diena). Sans, dhan = Iran. *a2an (Spiegel, A. P., p. 98) is confined
to Indo-Iranian. O. Pers. rauca ( : luc-ere, Mod. Pers. roz), Goth.
dags* ( : Sans, dah, "to bum," Lith. dagas, "harvest"), and the
unexplained Zend ay are (Pamir D. yir, yor), G. rjjxipa, rj/xap (Armen.
aur, " day " (?) ; Hiibschmann, A. St., i. 55), stand by themselves.
As the change from winter to summer is expressed by formations
from the root vas, "to light up" (cf. above, p. 301), so the same
root serves to express the change from night to day. From, ves, us,
on the one side Sans, vdsard "the whole day," is formed, on the
other the Indo-Germanic name for the oft-sung, rosy-fingered
dawn (Sans, ushas, Zend ushanh, G. •^ws, also rjpi, " early," avpiov,
" morrow," Lat. aurw-a, Lith. auszra).
In Gothic the early morning twilight is called uhtvo, a word
rightly compared with Sans, aktu, " light, day," G. aKiTt's, " beam,"
Lith. anksti, " early." Thus we get an original form nqt-, which
one is reluctant to dissociate from the above-mentioned nqt- =
Sans, aktu, "night": noqt- = Sans, ndkta, which is phonetically
identical. Indeed, a connection in meaning also can be shown to
be probable. On closer investigation we find that Goth, uhtvo, as
J. Grimm {Myth., ii.^ 708) remarked, means "the very earliest
moi'ning twilight, really the last moment of the previous night "
{(.vw)(ov, St Mark i. 35). From this fundamental meaning the
Sans, aktu, G. uktis " first beam of morning," were developed. In
the primeval period therefore, on my view, there were two stages
of "gradation" {Ablaut) of this stem side by side : noqt- ior the
black night, nqt for the end of the night, so that we here have an
* Attempts have recently been made to connect Goth, dags with Sans, dhan
{cf. Bugge, B. B.,xiv. 72; J. Schmidt, Pluralhildungcn, p. 151). In that case
the relation of Sans, drru, "tear" : Goth, tagr, is analogous.
DIVISIONS OF THE DAY. 313
instructive example of the genesis of a gradually developing
" contradiction of meaning " (night-day). In exactly the same
way, it would seem, Germ, morgen, Goth, manrgins must be con-
nected with O.S. mruhiati, "become dark" (Lesser liuss. zmrok,
"twilight"), and Germ, ddmmerung with Sans, tcimas, "dai'kness "
(Kluge, m. W., S.V.).
In their names for evening the Indo-Germanic languages differ.
Sans, doshci, " evening, darkness," and Zend daosha ( : Sans, dusk,
"become bad;" cf. G. oXor] vv$, Od., xi. 19) correspond, as do G.
lairepa and Lat. vesper, O.S. veceru and Lith. wdkaras. The last
two equations appear to be connected with each other, and with
O.I. fescor (borrowed from vesper 1) and Armcn. giki; although their
phonetic relation has not yet been explained.
The Teutonic, O.H.G. dband, A.S. d^fen, O.N. aptann (Goth.
sagqs, " sinking of the sun ") are wrapt in complete obscurity.
In Greek the late afternoon, inclining to evening, was designated
by hi.tX.rj (Homer : t^ws, fjiea-ov rj/j-ap, SeiXrj). As the day begins
with the evening for the Greek, and aftei'noon is the end of the
day, at the conclusion of which the sun reaches his " end " in a
sense, one may conjecturally think of a connection between the
hitherto unexplained Scl-Xtj (Set'-eXo?) with the Teutonic zied, zei-t,
zei-le. Aristarchus read in Od., vii. 289, SeiAcro t rjeXios (instead of
Svcrero), which would then mean "the sun neared his end."
Of an}' further division of the day in the primeval period there
is no indication whatever in language or in facts. And that
cannot be regarded as unintelligible. At a time when the
members of a community devote their lives mainly to one occu-
pation, and that the very monotonous business of cattle-breeding,
the need for an exact division of the day is obviously still far
removed. The few terms that are formed are derived from the
daily round, and are necessarily tied up with concepts, which at a
higher stage of culture fall into speedy oblivion.
Such names for the times of day, corresponding to the primeval
period's world of ideas, may be found possibly in : Sans, sam-gavd,
" forenoon " = " the time when the cows are driven together,"
G. ^ov-XvTov-he. = "the time when the cows are loosed," Sans, sdijd
(•.sd, "to bind"), "evening," and ahhipitvd, "retiirn home and
evening," Lith. pietm ( : Sans, pitii, "food"), "mid-day," and
others.
Finally, as we have in this chapter occasionally cast a glance at
the culture of the Finns, for purposes of comparison, we may
mention that in this family of languages also the names for the
day, derived fi'om the sun and the day-light, differ ; whereas the
names for niglit is the same in the East Finnish as in the Baltic
Finnish (Ahlqvist, loc. cit.).
CHAPTER VII.
FOOD AND DRINK.
Man and Beast — Flesh Diet — Vegetable Diet — Salt — Use of Milk in the
Primeval Period — Mead — Beer amongst the Xortheru Indo-Europeaiis,
Wine amongst the Southern — Sura and Soma amongst the Indo-Iranians.
An acute observer of human life (R. V. Iheriug, Gegemvart, No. 37,
1882) has recently developed the idea with much ingenuit}', that
eveiy usage with which custom has surrounded man's gratification
of the animal needs of eating and drinking is due to the endeavour
to conceal, or aX, least to disguise, the community of nature
between man and the animals in this point. Undoubtedly, how-
ever, the feeling which is at the bottom of this endeavour is
extremely modern. Primitive man feels that he is an animal with
the animals, and the language of the Vedas still groups man and
the animals together under the woi'd ^jrtfava.s -.jxigu, "cattle." Man
is dvixjdd 2xicundni, "the two-footed animal," by the side of the
cdtusIi2Kid, " the four-footed," a mode of expression which (cf. Umbr.
rhqnirsus, " bipedibus," by the side of x>^iur2)ursus) perhaps goes
back to the primitive Indo-Germanic period. Accordingly, the
oi'iginal Indo-Eiiropean language does not offer different expres-
sions for the gratification of hunger (Sans, ad, " eat ") and thirst
{jod, hiho) in man and the animals, and it is only gradually that
the individual languages develop special tenns for the two, while
even then they do not attain to such a sharp distinction as there
is in German between essen 2L\idi fressen, trinhen and scnifen.
However, the care which man bestows on the choice and pre-
paration of his food and drink has alwaj-s and everywhere
afforded a just conclusion as to the degree of culture which he has
attained. The /xeXas ^cd/aos of the still semi-barbarous Spartan
did not suit the taste of any Athenian of the time of Pericles, and
the Grsecised Roman of the empire turned up his nose at his
boorish grandfather and great-grandfather, "whose words reeked
of onions and leeks" (Varro, ap. Nonium, p. 201, 5). As, there-
fore, the way in which the physical needs of man are satisfied
stands in a certain relation to the development of intellect and
civilisation in a nation, it will be particularly interesting here to
put together what can be ascertained hj the aid of language and
ANIMAL AXD VEGETABLE FOOD, 315
the history of culture about the food of the prehistoric ludo-
Europeans.
"Whether animal or vegetable fare was the first food of man is a
question which has often been discussed, and to which an answer
can be given with no more certainty than to the question whether
a preponderance of animal or vegetable food has the more favovir-
able influence on the intellectual and physical develoi)ment of a
nation. The facts of ethnology (c/. Th. Waitz, Anthropolorjie der
KaturvUlker., p. 62, /.) appear rather to show that everywhere that
food is best for a nation (as for the individual) which best cori-e-
sponds to its organism as conditioned by climate and mode of life,
and that intellectual advance can be found as well amongst
vegetai'ian as amongst meat-eating peoples. Now, as on the one •
hand it is probable (rf. above, p. 301) that we have to look for the •
original Indo-Germanic home in a temperate climate, which points "
to an animal diet ; while, on the other hand, we find that, even in •
pre-historic times, the transition from a pastoral life to a foi-m,
primitive certainly, of agriculture took place ; a combined animal
and vegetable diet therefore seems a 2^'>'iori probable for the .
primeval age.
The Indo-Europeans all make their appearance in history as •
meat-eating peoples, and only among the Hindus did animal food,
as early as Vedic times, give w-ay more and more to a milk and
vegetable diet (cf. Zimmer, Altind. Lehen, p. 268), obviousl}'
because of the climate. Two terms there are, however, which
a])parently go back to the original Indo-Germanic language. They
are, first Sans. Icravya, Jcrav'is, G. Kpeas, Lat. ca?'o, -^O.H.G. hreo,
words which originally, as the closely connected Lat. cruor, O.S.
l-ruvi, O.I. crii, "blood," show, stood for the raw (O.H.G. ro from
"^hro) and bleeding meat ; next, Sans, mdthsd, Armen. mis, 0. Pr.
mensa, Lith. miesa, O.S. vieso, Goth, mim'^* possibly an original
term for prepared meat. For that the elements of cookery were
known to the Indo-Eui'opeans will hardly be questioned. Never-
theless, the equation Sans. ^j«c (Vedic "roast"), Zend ^Jrtc (used
of animal sacrifices), G. ireo-o-w, Lat. coquo (cocti/e, " brick," O.S.
2^eka, Lith. Irpii, Corn. ^:>6'/>fr (pistor), on which this opinion is
based, originally only means roasting on a spit (Sans, plla, G.
6/?fAds). Compared with this mode of preparing meat, which
seems to have specially ap])ealed to the taste of the primitive age, ^ fl^ ^
boiling in water is a modern art, with which, for example, the .^.
Homeric Greeks were not yet acquainted {cf. Hermann, Lehrbuch 't-*^'-^''
der Griechischen Antiquitdten, iv. p. 228). Hanc primo assam~^'^x
("roast"), secundo elixam ("seethed"), tertio e jure uti coepisse / ...j^,^,^^
nattira docet, says Varro {cf. Hermann, oj\ cit., p. 228). If, there- , *
fore, the root />rtc in the primitive age meant nothing more than .,'-6wx
"roast," then the Sans, i/ns, yiUha, hat. jus, Lith. jiisze,O.S. jvc/ui, fj,-^^^J^
* Perhaps tlie obscure av5p6-fxeoi (xi/wfxol ii'Sp6-fxeot, " nior.sels of huniaii ,
flesh ") belonf^s here, and has taken tlie general meaning of " i[ui honiinis est " /vM^ fji
— fieos from *ixrios, */nr/(Tos woukl then be eounectetl, first with Ved. ace. sing. . ^
was and Lith. ?/u's« (neither nasalised; cf. J. Schmidt, A'. Z., xxvi. 399,/.). " '^'^
C/., iurther, Lat. mcmhrum ivoui * racitisrom.
r
3l6 PKEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
originally can only have meant the fat which exudes from the
roasting meat, not broth in the proper sense. The maiTow* of the
bones, a favourite dish with all carnivorous savages (cf. Lubbock,
Prehistoric Times, p. 246), may have been regarded as a special
delicacy, as it still was by Homer {IL, xxii. 501). But, if the
Indo-European already knew how to use fire in the preparation of
meat, still this does not exclude the coexistence of a taste for raw
flesh (Sans, dind, G. ci/xo?, I. 6m), a taste which, as is well known,
modern civilisation has not wholly overcome. Of the ancient
Germans, at any rate, this is expressly stated by Pomponius Mela
(iii. 28). According to this writer our forefathers enjoyed their
raw meat either fresh (recens), or when they had pounded it soft
with their hands and feet. Indeed, even the first Viking law had
to expressly forbid the eating of raw flesh. " Many men," it says,
" still keep up the custom of wrapping raw meat up in their
clothes, and of thus seething it, as they call it ; but that is more
like a wolf's way than a man's " (Weinhold, Altn. Lehen, p. 148).
Amongst the Hindus, however, only demons and magicians are
regarded as kravyad, " eaters of raw flesh ; " but the Hindus of
the Rigveda had already attained a much higher stage of develop-
ment than the Geimans, when on the threshold of history.
As regards the animals which served the original Indo-Euro-
peans as food — naturally a pastoral people drew first on their herds
(neqtie mulhim frumento sed maximam parte lacte atque pecore
< (" their herds ") vivunt, says Ceesar, iv. 1, of the Suevi). To them
would be added, though not often, the spoils of the chase, as was
the case Avith the ancient Germans, according to Tacitus {recens
fera). On the other hand, it is striking that only twice in Homer,
and then in the Odyssey, are wild animals mentioned as food —
wild-goats (ix. 154) and a deer (x. 157) — and both are occasions
on which nothing else was to be had. In the Rigveda, where the
hunting of wild animals is mentioned more than once, the use of
the products of the chase as food appears to have been wholly
unknown. So apparently, in primitive times, men went hunting
• rather to destroy the dangerous enemies of herd and home than
• for the use they hoped to make of the booty {cf. above, p. 251)
An excellent clue to the animals used as food by the Indo-
Europeans is afforded by the earliest information we can find as
. to the animals used as offerings (G. Upfia, " cattle for slaughter ").
Thus, among the Hindus the horse, the ox, the sheep, and the
goat are mentioned as victims ; amongst the Greeks and Romans,
oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs ; though in ancient Italy it was
regarded as sinful to kill and eat the plough-ox {cf. J. Marquardt,
Das Privatlehen d. RiJmer, p. 413). The sacrifice of horses, and
the eating of horse-flesh implied thereby (Weinhold, Altn. Lehen,
p. 145), we, with V. Hehn (p. 48), regard as a ciistom which spread
at a relatively late date through the northern peoples o-wing to
Persian influence (W. Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 469). Birds are
entirely excluded from offerings in the more ancient history of the
* Sans, majjdn, Zend mazga, O.S. mozgu, O.H.G. marg.
VEGETABLE FOOD. 317
Indo-European peoples, a fresh proof that birds were not tamed in
the primeval age. That fish were unknown as food in the primeval
age we have already amply explained elsewhere {cf. above, p. 118).
As vegetable, in addition to animal, food, the earliest period
knew wild fruits ((((/irstia j'oma, Tac, Germ., c. 23). Those names,
which are etymologically identical, have been given above (p. 275,/.),
and we must add to them, it can hardly be doubted, the acorn
(Lat. gJcuiK, (}. /SciAavos, O.S. ze/adl, Armen. kalin). At any rate,
the Arcadians in their low stage of development ai'e expressly
called l3aXavr](j)dyoL, " acorn-eaters," and Pliny is aware (xvi. 5. 6)
that occasionally in times of fiimine a bread is made out of the
meal of acorns {cf. Helbig, Die Italiker in tier Poehne, p. 12, f.).
As agriculture spread, cereals came more and more to rank
among the necessaries of life. Not unfrequently in Indo-Gei'manic
languages corn or some one species of grain is called food or the
means of life, koit' e^o;^7;v. Thus, O.S. zito belongs to ziti, " to
live," O.I. ith, "corn" (G. irtT-vpa, "husk, bran"): O.I. ithim,
"eat," O.S. 2iii-ati, Eng. oat (*cdt-, *oit-) : G. elS-ap,* "food."
Cf. also Lat. pd-bulum = 0.}i.G. fuo-tar (*pd-dhro) : Tra-reo/Aai,
" eat," tfec. The corn, having been cut with a sickle-shaped knife
(up7r>; = 0.S. sriqiu), was trodden out by the ox, and roughly
separated from the chaff. The grain thus obtained was either
roasted (Sans, hlirajj = G. ^pvyou, Lat. frtgo), and then eaten, or
was ground {mohre) in a primitive hand-mill, consisting of two
blocks of stone, or rather crushed in stone mortars (tttio-ctw, Lat.
pinso ; cf. p)i^tor, "baker," Sans, pish); the meal thus pi-oduced
was kneaded into a doughy mass and then baked. Prepai'ations
of this kind were the Jcai-ambhd of the Hindus ; the /xa^a, the
every day food of the Greeks ; the ■jroXro'i =puls of the Greeks
and Italians {cf. K. F. Hermann, Privataltertilmer, p. 214,/.; J.
Marquardt, Das Privatleben der Burner, p. 398; Zimmer, Altind.
Leber., p. 268,/.).
Though we cannot say that bread, in the proper sense, was
made in the primeval age, as even the ancients knew perfectly
well {cf. Marquardt, oj). cit., p. 399), yet the elements of this art
are of a high antiquity. Certain expressions in the Pamir
dialects f show that in Persia originally cakes of dough were
buried under the hot ashes and thus baked or roasted {cf also
G. cjiwyu), "roast" = A.S. bacan, "bake," Lat. /oc-ws, "hearth").
Possibly it was a bread of this kind which was designated by the
equation, Lat. libuvi {*cleibho) = Goth, hlaifs {*cloibho). O.S. chlebu
and Lith. klepas are loan-words. | Cf. also G. irXdOavov : O.H.G.
Jtado, " sacrificial cakes."
* Cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat., xviii. 17. 44: "Quippe quum Germaniii; populi
serant earn (avenani) ncqiie alia ptilte vivant."
t Mingani naglian, "bread," from ni and kan, "dig" (properly "the
cakes buried under the liot ashes and baked"), Beloocliee naghan,, Arnien.
nkanak {cf. Lagarde, Armen. Stud., p. 113), Pers. ndn, &c., occurring all over
West Asia (Toiiiiischek, Pamir D., p. 63).
:|: Kozlovsky has recently given a diiierent account {Archiv f. slav. Sjn:,
xi. 3. 386).
3l8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
It has been supposed that the Indo-Europeans of the oldest period
were not acquainted with the condiment salt (dvepes ov8k uXecra-i
fjL^jjLLy^ivov etSap eSovai, Od., xi, 122), as neither were the ancient
Epirotes (Pans., i. 12) nor the Numidians, who lived pi'incipally
on milk and the produce of the chase, and were not acquainted
with salt or with anything else to tickle the palate (Sail., Jti[/., 80).
This is taken to be proved by the facts, first, that the etymologi-
cally equivalent names for salt are confined to Europe* {cf. above,
p. 40,/.), G. aAs, Lat. sal, sallere = *sald-er€, Goth, salt, O.S. soil, O.I.
scdann ; next, that this mineral, which seems so indisj^ensable to
us, was unknown even by name, as well to the most ancient
Persians {cf. W. Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 149) as to the Hindus of
the Rigveda {cf. Zimmer, Altind. Lehen, p. 51). It is in the Athar-
vaveda that the term lavaud, " the moist " (sea-salt), first occurs.
In the oldest prose salt is called sdindhavd, "from the Indus."
On the other hand, J. Schmidt {Die Pluralhildvngen der idg.
Neutra, p. 182, /.) has recently shown that the Indo-Germanic
names for salt go back to a primitive paradigm said, saln-e's, and
since a change of stem, such as occurs between the nom. *sdl-d,
*sal-i (Lat. sale), and the gen. *saln-es, elsewhere occurs only in
neuters which come down from the original language, the existeuce
of the word in the primitive period is very probable, in spite of its
absence from the Indo-Iranian languages, which would have lost
the word in the same way as Lithuanian has. Under these
circumstances we leave the question whether salt was known to
the Indo-Enropeans before the dispersion, or did not become
known until European times, open for the present, especially as
we shall return to it in another connection (ch. xiv.).
We may, however, remark here that the same name for salt as
in Indo-Germanic recurs amongst the Finnic- Vgrian peoj)les over
a tremendous area (Finn suola, Weps. sola, Mordw. sal, &c.), and
the question as to the historical relation of a correspondence such
as this requires investigation {cf. Ahlqvist, p. 54).
When the Indo-Europeans, while they were still, all or most of
them, closely connected, made their fii'st acquaintance with salt,
they may particularly have used it as did Patroclus in the Iliad
(ix. 212), to sprinkle and spice the meat roasted on the spit.
Associated \vith the gifts of Ceres, the ^€109 aAs {cf the viola salsa
of Numa) soon became a favourite offering to the immortals.
Passing to what the Indo-Europeans drank, we will first speak
of milk and the way it was used in the primeval age. Names for
milk (given above, p. 124), etymologically equivalent, do not ex-
tend beyond groups of languages : only one equation (O.Pr. dada-n
= Sans, dddhi) connects Europe and Asia. Again, it is remarkable
that the idea of milking found different expression in the European
languages (d/ieXyw, Lat. mulgeo, I. hligim {mligim), O.H.G. milchu,
O.S. mluza) and the Asiatic {duh). Nevertheless it will not be
doubted that the Indo-Europeans, who all ajapear in history as
yaXaKTOTpo^owre? as early as the primeval age, used for food the
* The Armenian alone {al) agrees, here again, with the European languages.
MILK AND CHEESE. 319
milk of their herds, their cows, sheep, and goats (in individual
cases — as, indeed, among the Persians of the Avesta ; W. Geiger,
Ostirrm. Crdttir, p. 228 — their mares). For other uses of milk
two etpiations seem of importance: first, Sans, sdra, "curdled
milk," (jf. 6p6<;, Lat. semiii, "whey," O.S. si/rii, "cheese," Lith. siirix;
next. Sans, afijana, hat. ■unf/tieiihcn, "ointment," O.H.G. ancho, nnco,
Alem. anke, "butter" (J. Grimm, Geschichte d. D. Spr., p. 1003),
I. imb (from *ing), " butter ; " by the side of which we may place
Sans, sarins, " butter," G. Cypr. eA.</)os, " butter," IXttos • eXaiov,
(TTeap, Hesych. (J. Schmidt), Alb. ffja/j^e, "butter" (G. Meyer, B. B.,
viii.). The question is — What are we to understand that these
equations represent in the primeval period ?
The most primitive mode of making cheese is that of the Turko-
Tataric tribes, the so-called kurut, " a method of curdling milk
which has turned and is coagulated : this is dried in the siui, in the
form of small round cakes, and is generally used on long journeys ;
powdered and soaked, the kurut produces a kind of Airan = sour
milk" (H. Vambery). Now, this mode of making cheese seems as
a matter of fact to have prevailed amongst the Teutons into historic
times. In conflict with Ctesar's statement (vi. 22) that cdsetis — but
what does he iinderstand by this word as applied to the barbarians ?
— was a Teutonic food, Tacitus {Gervi., c. 23) speaks only of "lac
concretum," "coagulated milk;" and Pliny {Hist. Xat., xi. 41. 96)
says expressly: "Mirum barbaras gentes qufc lacte vivant ignorare
aut spernere tot saeculis casei dotem, densantes id alioqui in acorem
iucundum et pingue butyrum." Further, the only genuine Teutonic
designation for cheese, O.N. ostr (Finn jw-i/.sfo, " cheese "), as belong-
ing to Lat. jMS, "broth" {cf. above, p. 315), points to a liquid mess,
to precisely the sour milk made out of the kurut.
Even in the Rigveda only a skin of sour milk, not cheese in the
proper sense, is mentioned (Zimmer, AltinJ. Lehen, p. 227) ; and in
the Avesta, too, payofshuta : payanh, " milk " = Pamir D. j^di, pdi,
poi, "curdled milk," "curds," can very well be understood of lac
concretum.
A glance into the Homeric daiiy is afforded by the Cy clop's cave
{Od., ix.). Cheese is here called rvpos, a word which cannot be
explained, at any rate has not yet been explained, by anything in
Tndo-Germanic. Under these circumstances it is perhaps not too
bold to see in this word an early intruder from the languages of
the North Pontine Scyths, and to derive Tvp6<; from the Turko-
Tataric turak, Magy. turd, " cheese," which has also found its way
into Slavonic (O.S. tvarogii ; Vambery, loc. cit., p. 94; Miklosich,
Et. W.). Perhaps Pliny {Hist. Nat., xxviii. 9) regarded the com-
pound l3ov-Tvpov as a Scythian word. The Lat. cdsctis is a quite
obscure word, which made its way at an early period into the
Teutonic languages (O.H.G. chdsi, A.S. cyse ; cf. also L caise), along
with an improved method of making cheese.
The above equations seem to indicate that even in the primitive
period men already knew how to disengage the fatty constituents
of milk, not indeed for the purpose of eating them, but for smearing
320 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
(Sans, lip, G. d\ot<^7; = O.S. 7:)r?7e;92'?, "ointment") the bair and
anointing the body. For this use of butter, as well as of animal
fat, I may refer to V. Helm's remarks, p. 138, jf., as regards the
facts, and for the philology to the transitions, cited, from the mean-
ing of butter to ointment. To them may be added O.S. masJo,
" butter " and " ointment " (mazi, " ointment," mazati, " to smear "
: G. fie-fxayixivT], /xayet's, etc.), and O.H.G. seifa, A.S. sdpe, " the soap
oi'iginally used by the northern peoples to colour the hair " = Lat.
sebum* {*sce-hum), " fat, tallow." The southern peoples therefore,
the Greeks and Romans, brought their predilection for anointing
the body down with them from the primeval period, except that
amongst them the more worthy oil and precious foreign spices
early drove out the primeval use of grease and fat. Though here,
too, the primeval period has left evident traces behind it. An
ancient word for ointment in Greek is jxvpov. There can be no
doubt that this, to begin with, belongs to the Hebr. mor, Aram.
murrdh, " sap of the Arabian myrrh," from which it is borrowed.
But the Greek expression also occurs with initial o- [crixvpov), which
finds no support in the Semitic languages. I assume, therefore,
that in Greek two different elements have been amalgamated, a
Phenico-Semitic and a native element ; and that in Greek there
existed from ancient times a a/jivpov or *cr/u,epoj// " ointment,"
" grease," which correspond to O.H.G. smero, " fat, grease," Goth.
sj/iairyr, "fat," O.N. smjor, I. smir, "marrow." But, whereas, the
northernf peoples and the Indo-Iranians (Sans, ghrtd, Zend raoghna,
" butter," Parsee raogan, Pers. roghan, Pamir D. ri'ighn, rogJiun,
lire.) carried the primitive process to butter-making in the proper
sense, the Greeks and Romans having become acquainted with the
Semitic olive-tree and its fruit entirely gave it up.
In any case we have to conceive the preparation of milk in the
primeval age as standing at a very low level ; for, as a glance at
neighbouring peoples is enough to show, the manufacture of butter
and cheese is too elaborate and lengthy a process for wandering-
nomads ; and even for anointing they prefer to use the fat of sheep,
pigs, and horses. Thus, the Finnic word for " butter," voi, really
means fat, and the names given to cheese in the languages of this
people are nothing but loan-Avords from German or Slavonic (c/.
Ahlqvist, op. cit, p. 5, /.).
Only, the mild refreshment of milk by no means sufficed to slake
the thirst of oui' prehistoric ancestors. We find that most peoples,
even the most primitive savages, endeavour by manufacturing
an intoxicating drink from roots, herbs, flowers, itc, to procure a
short respite from earthly cares ; and our Indo-European fore-
fathers cannot have failed to discover the poetry of intoxication.
Indeed it is not improbable that the national vice of drunkenness,
* On Lat. sd2)0, cf. author's EandelsgescJiiclite u. WarenJcunde, i. 88.
t Another pan-Teutonic expression for the making of butter is O.N. Jcirna,
Eiig. churn, A.S. cyrnan, M.H.G. kernen, "to butter," of unknown origin.
O.H.G. butcra, &c., does not occur before the tenth century (Khige, Et. W.,
s.v. ).
MEAD. 321
wliich Tacitus found existing among the ancient Germans, may-
have been a bequest from prehistoric times {cf. W. Geiger, Ostiran.
Kultur, p. 229). The drink with which the primeval age intoxi-
cated itself was mead : Sans, mddhu, " sweetness, sweet drink and
food, mead," later, also, "honey" Zend madhu, "sweet drink"
(perhaps the hauma; W. Geiger, p. 23), G. fxWv, " wine " (cf. /xWrj,
"drunkenness "), O.H.G. meHi, O.S. medti, "honey, wine," Lith.
midus, "mead," medus, "honey" (Kurschat), O.I. mid, "mead"
(^mesce = *medce, " ebrietas "). The meaning " honey," which this
series of words may take in numerous languages, and the idea of
drunkenness developed from it by these peoples, shows that we
have here to do with an intoxicating drink of which tlie most
essential constituent must have been honey. The fmidamental
Indo-Germanic form of this stock of words is *medhu, for which a
root can only be found in Indo-Germanic if we assume that by the
side of the medh, to which *medJm takes us back, there was also a
med, which then corresponds to Sans, mcul, "enjoy oneself," mdda,
"intoxication." Special terms for honey* (G. /xe'Ai, ^Xittw, "to
take the honey," Lat. met, Goth. viili\i, O.I. mil, Armen. melr), for
wax (G.. Krjp6<;, Lat. cera, Lith. kdi'is ; O.S. vosku, Lith., wd^zkas,
O.H.G. tvahs), and for the bee (O.S. capii = G KrjcfiT^v ; O.H.G.
treno = G. T€v-6py]vr], rev-OprjSwv, Lac. Bpoiva^) O.H.G. bini : Lith.
hltin, O.I. hech ; O.H.G. imhi : Lat. apisl) are first to be found
in the language of the European group of peoples, whose abode
we must conceive as in a woody country (ch. iv.); where they came
across bees and wild-honey. The undivided Indo-Europeans may
have got the honey necessary for their *medhu from neighbour-
ing peoples in the way of commerce (ch. x.). Possibly also the
word ?
In striking proximity, phonetically, to the Indo-Germanic is the
common Finnic-Ugrian term for honey : Esth. mesi, Wot. and Weps.
mezi, Liv. vioz, Mordv. med, Tscher. mil, Syrj. ma, Ostj. mavi —
a stock which does not seem to be due to boiTowing from any one
single Indo-Germanic language {cf. Ahlqvist, loc. cit., p. 43 ; Toma-
schek, Auslaml, 1883, p. 703). In the present condition of our
knowledge one dare not conjecture more than this. As the Indo-
Europeans gradually advanced to agricultural life and to permanent
habitations, mead (which held its place longest in the abodes of
the Slavonic peoples, which are admirably adapted for agriculture)
was more and moi'e driven into the background by more elaborate
drinks, amongst the imdivided Indo-Iranians by soma (Zend haoma)
and sura (Zend hura), amongst the Europeans by beer and
wine.
Amongst the northern nations of Europe beer, the brown-
coloured, goes far back into prehistoric times, and Greek and
Roman writers have transmitted to us many barbarous names for
it. Thus the Thracian ^pvTov, Ptconian irapapir) (Hecat., fr.
123 M.), the Illyrian sabaja, Celtic Ko'p/xa ( = I. ciiirm), &.c. The
* I think we may assume a second Euroj)ean expression for honey in O.H.G.
seim : G. alfi.v\ios, "honey-sweet" {K. Z., xxx. 463).
X
0--
PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
history of this subject lias been treated by V. Hehn with his
accustomed mastery. Only as regards the Teutons sundry errors
made by this scholar requii-e explaining. In spite of the informa-
tion given us by Tacitus {Germ., 23: "Potui humor ex hordeo aut
frumento in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus"), V. Hehn
regards the enjoyment of beer as relatively recent amongst the
Teutons, and borrowed from the Celts, Here he adopts the views
put forward by J. Grimm and Wackernagel, according to which
the German hie7' is borrowed from the M. Lat. hibere, and the
North Teutonic ale from the Lat. oleum also. I need hardly point
out that at the present day there is hardly a student of language
Avho accepts such an explanation.
The primitive Teutonic O.H.G. hior, A.S. heor, O.N. hjorr is,
according to R. Kogel's attractive interpretation, to be explained
as "barley-juice :" A.S. heo, O.N. hygg, "barley, grain." The
fundamental Teutonic form of the latter is *bevo, with which the
above-named Thraco-Pseonic (Trapa) -^t(F)r; seems as though it
could be combined. So too, perhaps, the ancient Gallic brace
(Pliny, Hist. Nat., 18. 7. 11), "spelt," "malt," "beer" (Russ.
hraga, " drink of barley and millet"), is to be connected with the pre-
viously mentioned equation, Lat. /istr, "spelt" (pp. 284, 293); and
in the case of the ancient Gallic, Kop-jxa, Span, cer-ea (Pliny, 22. 25.
82), cervesia, cervisia, we have obviously to start from a primitive
cer-, " barley," which seems to be the base of the G. KpL-Orj also (cf.
above, p. 292).
The North Teutonic, O.N. ol, A.S. ealu, however, go back to an
old t- stem *alut (A.S. ealod^, ealeda), which also appears in the
Finn, olut, and excludes all idea of borrowing from oleum. This
also makes it probable that the Lith. alus, " beer," 0. Pr. alu,
" mead," O.S. olu ai'e loans from the Teutonic, from which again
come the O.S. mlato, Finn, mallas (O.H.G. malz, O.N. malt, A.S.
mealt).
A likely interpretation of *alut-, as well as of '''maid-, is yet to
be found. The expression for brewing, again (O.H.G. briuwan,
O.N. brugga, A.S. breovan), is pan-Teutonic. With it the above-
mentioned Thracian jBpvTov may perhaps be attached. Finally, a
joint name for dregs (0. Pr. dragios, O.S. drozdije, O.N. dregg ;
J. Schmidt, Verivandtschaftsverhdlt., p. 37) unites the Lithuanians,
Teutons, and Slavs.*
The Indo-Europeans of the north of Europe then at an early
period made the acquaintance of beer in addition to the primitive
drink of mead. In the meantime, however, the people of the south
of Europe had come into possession of a cultivated plant which
was destined to be of incalculable importance, first for their own
national life, and then for that of the rest of Europe — the vitis
vinifera, the vine.
* A Teutonic word, as yet unexplained, for some kind of drink (cider, &c. ),
and which is also translated hy pocidum, fiala, &c., is O.H.G. ltd, A.S. U^,
Goth. leV?u {cf. Schade, AM. fF.). I compare G. &-\ii(r-ov (from *a-\€iT-jo-i'),
"beaker." Cf. aAso Zend raetu, "fluidity."
WINE. 323
Touching the acquaintance of the Indo-Europcans with wine,
two conflicting opinions have been held up to the present time.
According to one the European names for wine, Lat. vinum, drc,
are primevally related both to each other and to the Sans, vends,
" dear," an epithet of the soma drink deified by the Indians.
According to this, wine was known in the primeval Indo-Germanic
period. The principal representatives of this hypothesis are A,
Kuhn and A. Pietet, the author of Origines Indoeurope'ennes.
According to the other view the European words collectively are
to be derived idtimately from the Semitic, yEthiop. ivain, Hebr.
ja'ifi, (fee, from which it would follow that the Indo-Europeans had
to thank the Semites for their acquaintance, directly or indirectly,
with wine and the vine. This is the view of V. Hehn amongst
others.
Now, I believe, that neither the one view of the subject nor the
other accounts for all the facts of the case, linguistic and historic ;
and I will therefore venture to put forward a third theory with
regard to this subject, important as it is for the whole history of
culture. It may in a sense be termed a compromise between the
two already mentioned views.
It is necessar}^ to point out in the first place that in the case of
the North European names for wine, O.I. fin, Goth, vein, O.S.
vino, there is certainly no phonetic test to compel us to regard them
as borrowed from the Lat. vinum. As, however, historical and other
evidence suflSces to demonstrate the gradual spread of wine from the
south to the north of our quarter of the globe, I share the opinion
of all philologists that the above-mentioned North European names
for wine are actually due to borrowing from the south, and also
that the Celtic* fin comes from the Lat. vinum, as does also the
Teutonic! veiyi from which again Slav, vino comes.
Things are quite different the moment we turn to the Balkan
and Apennine peninsulas. We never here discover an age which
presumes ignorance of the vitis vinifera. The Homeric poems in
their oldest portions display perfect familiarity with the wine and
its use. The stem oZvo- is employed with extreme frequency to
form proper names (place names and names of persons). Above
all no one has answered the question how the initial F of Foivos
can be explained out of the J of the Hebr. ja'm ; for it is to this
word, and not to the Arab and ^Ethiopian tvain, that we must look
on the assumption that the G. Foivos is a loan from the Semitic.
Indeed, the Semitic forms themselves cannot be provided with a
satisfactory root from the Semitic family of languages (A. Midler,
B. £., i. 294).
* In Liv., V. 33, ff., it is an essential part of the Celtic mifcration-myth that
it was the wine imported from Italy to them that induced them to invade
the promised land.
t Cf. also O.H.G. tiniidemdn from Lat. vindcmidre, O.H.G. Idrwein from
Lat. I6ra, most from Lat. mnstuin, hchJuiri from Lat. *bicarium, chelih from
Lat. calix, IdgcUa from M. Lat. lagellum, calcatura, "wine-press," from Lat.
calcatara, prcssSn from Lat. pressa, torcul from Lat. torculum (Franz, Lat. -Horn,
Mem. im AhcL, p, 72.)
324 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
In Italy the Lat. vino- has spread through all dialects. Cf.
Umbr. vinu, Osc. Viinikiis = Vinicius, Volsc. vinu. The vine itself
has been certainly traced in the lake-dwellings of the Po long
before any Greek immigrations (Helbig, loc. cit, p. 18); and
though in ancient sacrificial ritual offerings are made of milk and
not of wine (Hehn, p. 65), this only shows the priority of milk
as a drink, which is indisputable in our view also.
While, then, the assumption that it was through the Greeks that
wine became known to the Italians is not required on any grounds
whatever drawn from the history of culture, it is from the point
of view of language by no means admissible. On the contrary, the
idea that Lat. vinum is a loan-word from the G. Folvos is opposed
by most serious phonetic difficulties, on which 0. Weise {Die Griech.
W. im Lat., p. 127) has rightly insisted.
Vt-num (from *vi-no or *vei-no) rather attaches itself to vi-tis,
vtmen, vi-tex, and — exactly like the G. Fot-vos — to the Indo-G. root
vei, " to twine," so that vi-no means first " creeper," then " fruit of
the creeper," finally " drink made from the fruit of the creeper."
What V. Hehn (p. 467) alleges against the possibility of this
development of meaning is shipwrecked by G. otvr], which in
Hesiod means "vine," but in later language = otvo?.*
But if we are on the one hand warranted in thinking that the
equation vinum = Foivos is due to primeval affinity, yet on the other
we share the suspicions expressed by V. Hehn against the assump-
tion that wine was used in any prehistoric epoch of the Indo-
European peoples. We, too, are of opinion that the cultivation of
the vine implies a stage of settled life which it is impossible to
ascribe to the Indo-Europeans with the semi-nomad habits which
they had not only in prehistoric but in the earliest historic
times. Under these circumstances there seems to me to be only
one possibility logically left open : the Greeks and Italians must
have made the acquaintance of the vine in its wild state, and
therefore in its original home.
On closer inspection we find that the equation vinum = Foivos is
not confined to the Greeks and Italians, but is shared by all the
peoples that have or had their roots in the north of the Balkan
Peninsula. This holds of Albanian, the last linguistic remains of
Illyrian, where the vine is called vene, vere, a word which is not
due to borrowing from the Latin (G. Meyer, Alb. Gr., p. 104 ;
Grober, Grundriss d. roni. Phil., i. 810); it holds, further, of the
Armenian gini ( = *vini; Hiibschmann, A. Stud., p. 25); and the
ancients (Hdt., vii. 73, and Eudoxus ap. Eustath.; cf. Zeiass, Die
Deutschen und die Nachbarst, p. 259) expressly assume that the
Armenians were akin to the PhrygianSj who again are designated
airoLKOL Twv ®paKwv (cf. ch. xiv.) Here belongs, too, the Thracian
yaj/o? {Suid., i. 1. 1071) probably, if we may venture to regard it as
an error, in writing for *yivos (*FtVos).
* Cf. further in Hesych. yi^r, viSv [Ft-J-ri, Ft-j-6) ' tV d/xireXoi' and vi6u
{Fi-j-6) ■ avaSevSpdSa (wild vine).
THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE VINE. 325
Again, a second designation for wine, and for unmixed wine,
seems to cling to the north of the Balkan Peninsula, i.e., the
G. ^oAts (first in Archilochus, Bergk, fr. 78), with which are con-
nected : Macedonian KciXi^os, Thracian ^t'Aai [Orient, u. Occid., ii. 721,
and P. de Lagarde, Ges. Abh., p. 279), and possibly a Sabine *fali,
" wine," which may be inferred from the Lat. Falemus ager* the
land of wine famed in antiquity (author, K. Z., xxx. 484).
Like language, tradition also carries us to the districts north of
Hellas proper as the starting-point of the ancient cultivation of
the vine. In the earliest times {II., ix. 72 ; Od., ix. 196) Thrace is
designated as the principal place for the export of wine ; and,
according to the tradition of the ancients, the cult of Dionysus was
spread over the whole of the north of the Balkan Peninsula, even
amongst the wildest Thracian tribes.
Finally, on the question of the original home of the vine we can
appeal to the unprejudiced investigations of natural science. It is
A. Grisebach, perhaps the greatest authority on the geography of
plants, who in his work. Die Vegetation der Erde, i. 323 — certainly
without any reference to historic research by means of philology,
for his aversion to it is well known — expressly designates the dense
forests of the Pontus and Thrace up to the Danube, a district
particularly rich in creeping plants, as the original home of the
vitis vinifera. However, I adduce this argument last because I
am well aware that other distinguished naturalists regard the vine
as indigenous to other districts, especially to the south of the
Caucasus, between the Caucasus and the Black Sea, or between
the Caucasus and the Hindu Kush {cf. De Candolle, Kulturjrfianzen,
p. 236,^, and Ferd. Cohn, Die Fjianze, p. 298); and because, as
far as I can see, no conclusive argument has been produced by
naturalists in favour of the one argument or the other. But, apart
from this, the facts given above entitle us, I believe, to draw the
following conclusions : —
The Greeks and Italians made the acquaintance of the vine in
a prehistoric epoch in which they still dwelt along with the
peoples of the northern Balkans, the Illyrians, Thracians, Mace-
donians, and the Armenians, who subsequently migrated to Asia.
They designated it by a formation in -no- from the root vei, " to
twine " (*voi-no, *vei-no), which root occurs amongst the other
Indo-Europeans as well. The scene of this is probably to be placed
to the north of the Balkan Peninsula, where the cult of Dionysus
is testified to from the oldest times. As the Greeks and Italians
gradually sepai'ated from their brother-nations, and left tliem in
the north, the vine (from the grape of which a finer drink was
continually produced, as life became more settled and fixed) may
have spread further and further over the Balkan and Apennine
peninsulas, following the footsteps of the groups of tribes which
still held together. In these peninsulas it was found on the one
* W. Deccke {Die Falisker, p. 22, ff., Strassburg, 1888) interprets the
names Fnlcrii and Falisci as dwellers in towers or on pile-buildings (Lat. /a/a,
" wooden scaffolding ").
326 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
hand by the Phenician traders, on the other by the Greek colonists ;
though they doubtless were able to instruct the natives on many
points in the cultivation of the plant and the preparation of the
drink.
When and where the Semites first came in contact with the vine,
what is the relation of Hebr. jaHn : Arab, and iEthiop. wain — a
stock of words in which Assyrian and Babylonian have no share*
— what was the relation of the primeval Egyptian viticulture to
the Semitic — these and others are open questions, to answer which
is beyond the limits of this book (c/. F. Hommel, above, p. 98).
We have now to dwell for a few words on the two already men-
tioned drinks which the Indo-Iranian peoples share, the surd
(hura) and soma (haoma). As to the composition of the former we
know nothing. The St Petersburg Dictionary gives as the
meaning "divine drink," "brandy." It is noteworthy that both
the Tataric and the East Finnish languages have a term for beer
with a very similar sound : Wog. sara, Wotj. and Syrj. sur, Ung.
ser, Tscher. sra, Tatar, sra (Ahlqvist, p. 51).
Touching the soma — which is conceived by both peoples, not
only as a drink but also as a god who grants to both peoples
abundance of wealth and posterity, and is most intimately
connected with the cults of both peoples (Spiegel, Die Arische
Periode, p. 168, ff.) — careful botanic researches have been made at
the instigation particularly of R. Roth (Z. d. D. M. G., xxxv. 680-
92) on the mountains of the Hindu-Kush and in the valleys of
the Oxus by both Russians and Englishmen for the representative
on earth of the divine soma plant {yam hrahmdnah viduh, " which
the priests know "), but for which the modern Hindus and Parsees
use various substitutes. It was hoped that in this way a safe
datum might be obtained for the question as to the original Indo-
Iranian home. Unfortunately, however, all the investigations as
yet undertaken have failed to produce any tangible result (c/. on
this. Max Miiller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas,
P-222,/.)
* Assyr. inu, "wine," according to a communication from F. Hommel, is
only estalilished in the late national lexicons, and is certainly a loan-word
from Aramaic-Hebrew. Wine in Assyrian is kardnu (G. Kapoivov). The
Semitic karmu, "vineyard," gupnu, "vine," 'inabu, "grape," still have the
general meanings of "arable-land," "stock," "fruit," in Assyrian and Baby-
lonian {cf. F. Hommel, Die S2»~achgeschichtl. Stellung cles Babylonisch-
Assyrischen).
CHAPTER VIII.
CLOTHING.
Clothing of Skins — The Ecnoncs — Tanning antl Plaiting — Terminology of
Weaving and Spinning — The Materials for these two Arts — Comparison of
the Teutonic Dress according to Tacitus with that of the Greeks according
to Homer — Tattooing — Ornaments.
That the Indo-Europeans even before their dispersion, wherever
their home may have been, no longer went about in paradisaical
nudity, is shown by the root ves, "to clothe," which runs through
nearly all the languages of our family of speech, and has given
birth to numerous terms for clothes and clothing oneself in those
languages (Sans, vdstiian, vdsana, vclstra, vdsdna, Zend vaiih,
vanhana, vastra, G. evwfjit, cI/Aa, iadi]';, Lat. vestis, vestio, Goth.
gavasjan, (fcc). The opposite conception of nudity is designated
by the equation : Sans, nagnd, O.S. nagu, Lith. nugas, Lat. nildus
{*nogv-ido), Goth. naqa])s, O.I. nocht.
That a cattle-breeding people such as the Indo-Europeans were
did not fail to utilise the skins of their slaughtered cattle, and of
the wild animals they killed in the chase, is readily understood,
and is expressly testified, as regards the northern Indo-Eiu'opeans,
the Britons, and Teutons, by Cajsar (B. G., v. 14, vi. 21) and
Tacitus (Germ., c. 17). The Goths had become so habituated
to this clothing of hides that no sooner did they get back from
the Roman court, where they did not dare to appear in their
national garb, than they once more wrapped themselves in their
sheep-skins {av6i<; iv rois kwSioi? elai ; Beckmann, Beitr. Z. G. d.
Erf., V. 1. 26). The clothing of sheep-skins thus expressly testi-
fied to in the case of the Goths can be ti-aced back to the earliest
recorded Teutonic times. In agreement with Caesar ("German!
pellibus aut parvis renonum tegimentis utuntur "), Sallust
puts down the renones as the national garb of the Teutons
("German! intutum renonibus corpus tcgunt" and " vestes de
pellibus renones vocantur "). That this word has nothing to do
with O.N. hreinn, " reindeer," is well known. I take renones to be
for *vren-6n-es — for the initjal vr, scarcely pronounceable to Latin
lips, may or miist have been simplified to r — and identify it with
(j. vren in iroXvpprp'es, Sans, nrana and vrn- in ap-qv, a.pv6% dpi'ctos.
In Greece, too, sheep-skins were called dpvaKi'Sts.*
* A stem *vren-cn is also indicated by G. apv-d-ffi.
328 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
For in Greece, too, tribes left behind by the advance of
culture, and the lower strata of society, long remained faithful to
the original dress of hides. Thus in Phocis and Euboea garments
of pig-skin continued to be worn (Paus., viii. 1. 5); the Ozolian Locri
wrapped themselves in untanned hides (Paus, x. 38. 3) ; herdsmen,
helots, and slaves w^ore the so-called SicjiOepa (J. Miiller, Privat-
altert, p. 396).
Language, too, offers numerous pieces of evidence for the
presence of the original dress of skins: Goth, snaga, "garment,"
is compared with much probability by A. Bezzenberger with G.
va.Ko<s, "fleece" (/caTw-va/c?;, " a slave's garment"); the Teutonic
stock, Goth, paida {ga-paidon, Ivhv^iv), O.H.G. pheit, O.S. peda,
agrees exactly with G. ^airr], " garment of goat-skin ; " the G.
cti'-ot;-?, CTL-crv-pa, "i^ ctTro Sep/Aarwv avppairTOfxevrj ^XavL<s," is obviously
a reduplicated formation (cf. TL-Orj-vrj) : o-Ss, " swine " (cf. the above
cited passages of Pausanias) ; G. aKevrj, "clothing," belongs to the
same root as G. o-kG-tos, Lat. scil-tum, "leather;" indeed, we need
have no hesitation in connecting even the G. 7re-7rA-o-s itself and
the Lat. pallium (^pT-njo) with the pan-European equation, Lat.
2^ellis-=0.}i.G.fel.
That a way was found out at an early time of making the stiff
leather soft and supple by means of various manipulations is
probable in itself; though the terms for tanning diverge in the
various languages (Sans, mid, G. Siif/eiv, Lat. depsere — a loan —
Germ, gerhen*). The primitive methods of an early tannery are
depicted by Homer {II., xvii. 389, ff.) : —
w5 3' OT ai'i]p ravpoio ;8oos fxeyaXoio fioeirjv
Xaolcnv 8(1)7] Tavv€LV, fxeOvovcrav aXoKpTJ.
oe^d/x(vot 8' apa Tolye Stacrravrcs Tavvovcrt
kvkXoct , a<f>ap oe tc ik/xcis t^S?^, 8vvu 8e t aXoL(f)rj,
TToXXwv iXKovTwv ' Tai/DTttt 8e T6 TTttcra 8ianp6.
A joint term for leather is possessed by the Celtic and Teutonic
tongues: O.H.G., ledar = O.I. lethar {*le-tro : Lat. al-utal).
However, the Indo-Europeans were by no means limited to the
skins of animals for making clothes.
In addition to tanning, two other primeval modes of preparing
materials can be detected, felting and plaiting. The former — the
art of laying the wool of sheep or other woolly animals in layers,
sprinkling it with w^ater, and converting it by means of the glutin-
ous fat into a compact mass, and finally pressing and fulling it —
is especiidl}^ familiar to the nomad peoples of the Turko-Tataric
stock. That it was, however, known to the Indo-P^uropeans also,
is clearly indicated by the equation (confined, indeed, to Europe) :
G. TTtAos, "felt," laSLt. p>illeus, O.H.G.,^/2;, 0."^., plust%.\
* The meaning "tanning" is developed out of "treading" in Sans, carma-
mud, Litli. minti, "tread, tan" (Fick, B. B., iii. 165).
t The iihonetics of this series are not yet fully cleared up. O.S. 2)l^isti
points to iKl-d-ti, Q.Yi.G:. filz to pel-do ; lLa.t. pilleus (so in the best MSS.)
WEAVING. 329
The art of plaiting, however, proved more important and more
pregnant of results in the case of the Indo-Germanie faniily of
peoples and languages. Here nature may have played the part of
instructress to man, for twining plants and the interlacing twigs
of trees must have directed primitiveman to this important art.
The Indo-Germanic root for it is prek, as the following combina-
tion clearly shows : G. ttXckw, Lat. plecto, O.H.G. Jiihtu, O.S.
2'>(etd, plesti {pleH-, root preq 1), Sans, pra^na, " plaiting, basket-
work " (cf. also Sans, rdjju, " cord, rope " : Lith. rezgii, " plait ").
The art of plaiting, however, as I have shown at greater
length in my Handelsgeschichte und Warenkunde, contains within
itself, in embryo, the art of weaving and also of spinning : " If the
latter springs from the art of producing braids of hair, bands, and
such things by simple twisting, and without using a cross-thread,
the former most siiggests the art of the basket-weaver, wlio in his
craft has learnt to employ the cross-thread. As a matter of fact,
it is impossible to di-aw the line sharply, either historically or
technically, between spinning and weaving on the one side and
plaiting oi\ the other. The inhabitants of most of the South Sea
Islands understand perfectly well how to use a loom, but not to
spin ; they use strips of bark for weaving."
After these preliminary technical remarks we betake ourselves
to the terminology of weaving and spinning in the Indo-Germanic
languages, in the hope of obtaining some data for answering the
question, how far the Indo-Europeans had developed the two arts
before their dispersion.*
A. Weaving.
The following groups of etymologically corresponding words,
arranged according to the frequence of their occurrence, may be
distinguished : —
1. Indo-G. ve (vei) : Sans, vd, " weave " (cf. Whitney, Ind. Gr.,
p. 266), otu, "woof," umd, "flax," G. rf-Tpiov, "warp" ("weaving
instrument," c/! vrj-rpo-v, "distaff" : vtw), d-Fw-ros, "wool" ("weave-
able;" cf.Xv-ro-s, " looseable "), Lith. wd-ras, "spider," O.H.G. wd-t,
O.N. vd-(t (woven), " raiment," Lat. ve-lwn, " wrap, cloth." Also
Indo-G. *vejeti, Sans, vdy-ati, "he weaves," O.S. su-vi-to, "linen,"
srnla," cord," navoj, " liciatorium," 0.1. Ji-gim, "weave"('?).
2. Indo-G. vebh : Sans, drna-vdhhi, " wool-weaver " = " spider,"
Zend uhda, " woven," Pamir D. ivaf, M. Pers. hdfain, Osset.
wafun, "weave" (Tomaschek, Pamir D., ii. 124,/.), G. v^atW,
cau be explained as being from pil-deus {sallerc from *saldcrc ; cf. above,
p. 293).
* Plaiting, spinning, and weaving are treated of by V. Hehn, pp. 460,/.,
480-83. In addition to the linguistic errors of this scholar, noticed above on
p. 294, note, the following require correction: O.S. a-tiiku, "woof" : G.
avTiov, 0. ll.G. repa, "vine": Goth, skaiula-rnip, O.S. lipa, Lith. lepa,
"lime-tree" : G. \4ireiv, O.H.G. lou/t, " bark," Lat. lia'um{" indubitably ") :
Russ. and Pol. hjko, " bark," and others. These, amongst other things,
occasion the low opinion V. Hehn has of Indo-Germanic weaving.
330 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
v4>i^, v^avTLKtj, v(fiao-La, v<fiaaLi, i<fiv<f)i], O.H.G. weban, A.S. ivefan,
O.N. vefa, "weave," O.N. veftr, veptr, "woof," A.S. we/t, ikc,
M.H.G., ivift, "fine thread," A.S. wef, O.H.G. z/^eM "woof."
3. G. KpeKO}, "weave," 'KipK-q, "weaver," KpoKrj, "woof," KepKt's,
" shuttle," O.S. kromo, "loom " (Benfey, G. W., ii. 315).
4. G. drrofxai, " weave " {*nT-jofjiaL), avriov, " a portion of the
loom " (Sid^ofxxii, inorganic like cr<^a^w by the side of acftarTw,
Biaa-jxa, acr/xa), Sans, dtka (expressly termed " woven," vyutd, in
the Rigveda) = Sans, adhka (*nt-kd), " garment." The Alb. end,
ind, " weave," is regarded by G. Meyer as an early loan from G.
avTLov, Mod. G. dvTt {Berl. Phil. W., No. 7, 1887). I had com-
pared it — erroneously — w'ith Lith. dtisti, " weave," audimas, " web "
(aztd from *and ?).
5. Lat. texo, textor, textura, textrinum, tela, " warp," suh-temen,
"woof," O.S. tukati, "weave," a-tuku, "warp," tukalij, "weaver;"
though phonetically it is more probable that the Lat. texo
is to be connected with Sans, tahsh, " prepare artificially "
(F. Miklosich, Lex Palceoslav.'^, 1016), while the fundamental
meaning of O.S. tukati, "to weave," is preserved in tuk-nati, " thrust
in " (Miklosich, Et W., p. 368).
6. G. TttTTTyis, -qr-, " cover, woven," Mod. Iran, tab, " spin, weave "
(Mod. Pers. tdftah, tdftik, tiftik; cf. Tomaschek, ii. 142). Never-
theless it would be possible that in Ta77->;s we have actually
a Homeric loan-word from Iranian civilisation {cf. poSov : 0.
Pers. *varda, Xdpiov : Mod. Pers. Idleh, o-dvSaXov : Mod. Pers.
sa7idal).
Looking back at the equations just discussed, it seems to me to
follow with great probability, especially from Nos. 1-4, that even
in the original language tennini for weaving as distinguished from
plaiting had been developed ; and this allows us to infer that some
advance had been made in the art. This advance — which lead to
the differentiation of the linguistic expressions for weaving and
plaiting — can only have consisted in the discovery of a primitive
apparatus designed to facilitate the preparation of the raw material
for the weaver, male or female. If we examine the terminology of
the loom in the Indo-Germanic languages — I have given it in its
main outlines in Handehgeschichte und Warenkunde, i. 172,^. —
we are struck by the frequent employment of the root std to
designate not only the loom as a whole, but also the warp, and
finally the weaver himself {cf. G. l(tt6<;, "loom," o-t^/awv, "warp,"
Lat. stamen, Lith. stdkles, " loom," O.N. vefstatr, Sans, sthdvu
" weaver "). From this we may infer that the oldest Indo-
Germanic weaving apparatus stood upright, and the person weaving
worked standing {larov iiroix'^crOaL), a conclusion to which Ahrens
had come from a comparison of the Greek and Italian loom with
the ancient Norwegian, without reference to philology {Philologvs,
XXXV. 385,/.).
More I do not for the present venture to infer on philological
grounds about the construction of the most ancient form of weav-
ing apparatus. If we might trust the further conclusions of the
SPINNING. 331.
scholar just mentioned, we should include amongst the features of
the oldest form of loom, stretching the warp with whorls, weaving
out and thickening the web with the airdOri. We may remark
further that in the Finn languages the essential elements of the
primitive weaving ap|)aratus, the woof and warp, as well as a kind
of weaver's spool (really a rod with which the woof is thrust into
the interstices of the warp) have native names (Ahlqvist, loc. cit.^
p. 86).
B. Spinning.
1. G. veo) (vtJ^o), VTjdis, xepvrJTLS, vrj/xa, V7}(rL<s, vrJTpov), Lat. neo
(nemen, netus), "spin," O.I. snimaire, "spindle," snim, "spinning"
{B. B., xi. 91), O.H.G. ndan, " sew," Goth. ne]>la, " needle," &c. The
same change of meaning occurs in Lith. werpii, " spin," tvarpste,
"spindle": G. pairrw (Frir-j(o), "sew."* The Indo-Germanic root
of the G. v€w, ewT] was sne (ne), and literally meant " to plait," as
is shown by Goth, snorjo, " basket," O.H.G. snuor, " cord, band,"
O.I. snathe, " thread," &c. There was also a root snei (nei)^\ike vei
by the side of ve — which is preserved in O.S. )ii-ti, nista, " thread,"
and Sans. 7ii-vi, "apron" ("something spun"); cf. W. Schulze,
K. Z., xxvii. 426.
2. Sans. I'cirt, " to spin," Modern Pers. karttnah, " web for
spiiming," Pamir D. crt (Tomaschek, ii. 77), I. certle, "glomus"
{B. B., ix. 88). The original meanhig "to plait" appears in
Sans, kdta {cf. also crtdmi, " fasten together "), Lat. crates, G.
KapraAos, Krpros, Goth, haurds, Lith. krdtai, " zither," Pr. kurto,
"hedge."
3. O.S. pr^sti, predeno, ^' vyjfj-a," preglica, " spindle," Lett, prest,
" spin with the spindle." Fick (ii.'^ 689) regards " twist " as the
fundamental meaning, from which comes Lith. sprdndas, " nape of
the neck."
4. Although presei'ved, as a verb and in the sense of neo, only in
the Teutonic Goth, spinnan, etc., still this verb is implied by a
large stock of words which must start from the fundamental mean-
ing of " spun thread." They are G. -n-rjvLov, "the thread of the
woof rolled on the spool " {*2Jn-njo), Lat. paiinus, " cloth " {*pn-no),
Goth, fana, " cloth," O.S. opiona (*7>o«-). This gives a verbal form,
■spen : pen, the oldest meaning of which, " to plait," is retained in
the Lith, pinu, plnti.
5. Finally, a lost verbal root, req or rek, " to si)in," seems to me
to be implied in G. apKav-q ' to paya/xa, <5 tov o-nj/xova ey/caraTrAcVoucri
8ta^o/x£i/at (Hesych), apKvs, "net," and dpdxvrj, "spider," which I
connect with the Teutonic term for the distaff, O.N. rokkr, O.H.G.
roccho (*rtckka from *rukna, *rugnn = ap»cai'7;). O.H.G. rocch, "coat,"
&C., naturally belongs here (cf. jnuinus : irrjviov). Cf., further,
K\-(i)Ooi, "spin " : Lat. colus, "distaff."
Reviewing the terminology of spinning in the Indo-Germanic
* In Sanskrit, vdrpas, "treacheiy nr(ifi<o," li'longs here. Analogous is O.
(coTTu/uo. Kdffffvfia, " leather sole," '• luoiting. i'.itrigue" : sico, " sew " (OsthotV,
M. v., iv. 139).
332 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
languages it is impossible to doubt — especially when one compares
it with the terminology of weaving as set forth above — that series
of words, identical in form and meaning, and running through
the whole, or nearly the whole, family of languages, like the
derivatives of the roots ve and vebh are absent. The meaning
of "plaiting" coexists with that of "spinning," and possesses
infinitely more vitality in these words than was the case with
terms for weaving. The inference is that the need of distin-
guishing the art of spinning from that of weaving arose later
than the desire to find different linguistic expressions for weaving
and plaiting.
Nevei'theless the primeval period, even, may have discovered
the instrument which constitutes the first stage in the advance
from plaiting to spinning — the spindle. This seems to follow
from the equation : Sans, tarhu (Vedic), Iran. s-tarJch (Pamir D.;
Tomaschek, Centralas. Stud., ii. 77), G. arpaKro's, Alb. tier, "spin."
Anyhow, the names for spindle which it contains are of extreme
antiquity. The root on which they are based, terq { = Lat. torqueo,
"twist"), is altogether lost in Indo-Iranian, and in Greek only
preserved with a final labial (rpeTrw, " turn "). Further, the mean-
ing of the suffix -TO- in the G. a-rpaK-Tos (from *sm-trq-to) is
ancient, for it cannot mean "that which is turned round together"
— that gives no sense — but must mean "turning round together"
(cf. tX7]-t6-<s, "enduring;" Brugmann, Grundriss, ii. 205, _/'.).*
It is noticeable, even though it carries no great weight, that
the name for whorl is in many languages transparently formed
from the root vert, " to twist " : Sans, vartana, varttdd, Lat. verti-
cillus, O.S, vreteno, M.H.G. wirtil, \. fertas.
Touching the material for spinning and weaving no doubt is
possible, and we can accordingly trace these arts in their essential
features back to the primeval period of the Indo-Germanic world.
Inasmuch as the sheep was known to the Indo-Europeans —Sans.
dvi, G. ot9, Lat. ovis, Lith. awis, O.S. ovica, Goth, avi-, O.H.G.
ouwi ; and as its wool has identical names in all Indo-Germanic
languages — Sans, urud {*vl-nd), G. Xavos, Lat- Idna {v[nd), vellus
{*vel-no), Lith. wilna, O.S. vluna, Goth, vidla, Cymr. gulan, Armen.
geX-vian ;\ and, finally, as all Indo-Germanic peoples are familiar
with the preparation of w^ool when they first make their appear-
ance in history, there is no reason to deny the pi'imeval Indo-
* An exact analogy is offered, according to Bezzenberger in his Beitrdge
(iv. 330), by the fundamental meaning of G. riXaK&r-n (Lith. lenktuve, "reel,"
Unkti, "how, bend, incline").
+ The root is vel, and I will take the opportunity to point how it can,
on the root-determinative theory, be grouped with other roots of related
meaning : —
vei, "weave," Sans, vd, vdyati.
ve-bh, "weave," O.H.G. ivcban, &c.
ve-s, "to clothe," Sans, vas, &c.
ve-l, "wool," Lith. wUna, &c.
In the reverse order, and with vowel increase, the combination of sounds vc or
vo would appear in ov-i, "sheep," Lat. ovis, &c.
INDO-EUROPEAN COSTUME. 333
Germanic period of this textile material, in spite of certain technical
difficulties raised by its mode of preparation. The history of flax
and hemp has been handled above (ch. v.). The word for flax is
identical in all the Indo-European languages of Europe, and is due
to primeval connection. As early as Tacitus {Germ,., 17) linen
garments were known amongst the Teutonic women, and this is
confirmed by Pliny {Ilist. JVat., xviii. 1. 2).
So, too, Cfcsar (B. 6., iii. 13), mentioning the hide-sails of the
Veneti, expressly insists that it was not "propter lini inopiam
atque eius usus inscieutiam " that the sails were made of hides.
In Homer, again, the Parcre, who spin the threads of fate, were
conceived as spinning flax, not as in later times wool : —
vcTTepov aire ra TreLcrerai acrcra ol Aura
yctvo/xei'o) i-rrii'Tjae Xtvw, ore fitv tckc fxrjrrip.
It, therefore, appears to me an arbitrary assumption on the
part of V. Hehn that this Xivov must have been first impoi-ted
from Asia, or that Xivov properly meant not flax but bark
{Kultur2ifinnz€n, p. 141 ; cf. above, p. 294, note). We may, how-
ever, admit that when the Greeks had entered their new home,
which was not well adapted for growing flax, the use of flax gave
way to that of wool {Handelsgeschichte und Warenkunde, i. 191).
I think, thei'efore, we have a right to conceive the materials
used by the Indo-Europeans for clothes (several equations for
which we have already come across*) as made out of linen as well
as from wool, at any rate in the case of the European branch.
The question now remains for discussion whether anything
can be ascertained as to the shape and nature of Indo-Germanic
clothing. As we must assume that with change of abode and
climate it soon altered and necessitated new expressions ; and
further, inasmuch as an enormous amount of borrowing took
place betweexi the nations, both of modes of dress and of the
names for them — for fashion inclined to change in ancient as well
as in modern times — it may seem as though it would be impossible
to carry our investigation into matters of detail.
For all that, I believe the essential features of Indo-Em'opean
costume, at least, can still be traced.
Tlie locus classicus as to Teutonic costume is, as is well known,
the much disputed and, luifortunately, higlily disputable 17th
chapter of the Gerniania.\ Tlie most important clauses run:
" Tegumen omnibus saguni fibula aut si desit spina consertuni :
cetera intecti totos dies iuxta focum atque iguem agunt. Locupletis-
simi veste distinguuntur, non fluitante sicut Sarmata) ac Parthi
sed stricta et singulos artus exprimcnte Nee alius
* I may add to tlieni: Sans, drdpl, "mantle" : Lith. drapand, "dress"
(F. drap is remarkalile, but unexplained), Sans, mala (Rgv. ), "raiment"
(according to B. R. : mid, " to tan " ?), Lith. mdlas, " line cloth " (G. fxaW6s,
"fleece," G. \dnrri, " garment ": Lith. Id/jos, "piece of clotli, patch," O.S.
2)latlno, "linen" :0.^.faldr, "mantle" (J. Schmidt).
t For the literature on this chapter, cf. 13aumstark, Ausfiihrl. Erldutening,
&c., p. 584,/.).
334 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
feminis qviam viris habitus, nisi quod feminse sa3pius lineis amicti-
bus velaiitur eosque purpura variant partemque vestitus superioris
in manicas non extendunt, nudse brachia ac lacertos ; sed et
proxiraa pai-s pectoris patet."
From this passage we derive the following information : First,
the sagum, a piece of woollen cloth, fastened with a fibula or thorn,
was common to all the Teutons. The Gallo-Teutonic word (c/.
Diefenbach, O.E.) has not yet received an explanation. If it is
of Teutonic origin, it might belong to the pan-Teutonic, O.N.
segl, A.S. segel, O.H.G. stgai {*seg-la), which, however, is only found
in another stage of vowel gradation. For the change of meaning
the statement made by Tacitus (Hist., v, 23) would then be im-
portant : "Et simul aptse lintres sagulis versicoloribus haud
indecore pro velis iuvabantur." That the sagum, which for the rest
was also worn in Rome, consisted mainly of wool is shown by its
ramifications in the Romance languages : Sp. pr. sai/a, It. saja, F.
saie, M.H.G. set, O.I. sdi (Diez, p. 280), which all alike stand for
woollen stuffs.
Second, whereas the sagum was worn by all, the locupletissimi
alone were in possession of a tight garment (vestis) fitting close to
the body. "When Miillenhoff translates vestis by " material for an
under garment," and accordingly assigns it to all Germans, this is
an assumption which is made by the fiimous Teutonic antiquary
on the strength of other considerations not drawn from language
or the chapter we are concerned with, and in which I am unable
to follow him.
Third, the women wear the same costume as the men — this can
only mean " tegumen omnibus sagum fibula aut si desit spina
consertum " — excepting only that with them more frequently than
in the case of the men, the place of the woollen sagum was taken
by the linei amictus. The rest, owing to the obscurity and
ambiguity of the expression, successfully defies, perhaps forever, a
completely satisfactory explanation. The passage is usually taken,
as though partem vestitus siq^erioris were the same as partem
vestitus superiorem, to mean that the women wore a sleeveless
under-garment, a sort of bodice. In opposition to this, Baumstark
{loc. cit., p. 589) inquires ; "Whether vestitus superior is beyond all
dispute the garment of the upper part of the body, and could not
also mean the over-garment; finally, whether the vestitus {superior)
absolutely must be something different from the amictus ? "
Following up this suggestion, and taking vestitus superior as nothing
but a variety of expression for the a7nictus mentioned just before,
we get a totally different meaning. There is no mention whatever
of an under-garment in the case of the women ; all that is said is
that they do not continue the part in question (partem) of the
over-garment (vestitus superioris) into a sleeve as the Roman women
did.* Anyhow, this affords a better explanation of the exposure of
* "If the tunic had sleeves, a sleeveless stola was worn over it ; if, on the
contrary, the under garment was sleeveless, it was usual to wear a stola with
sleeves over it " (Guhl und Koner, Leben der Griechen und Bomer, p. 615).
HOMERIC COSTUME. 335
the upper and fore arm and the adjoining portion of the bust, than
we get on the assumption even of a cut-out garment, over which
we have to imagine the sagum or lintei amictus to be worn. How
considerable a display of feminine charms is meant by the historian
is shown by the addition of the significant words, " quamquam
severa illic matrimonia."
Be the women's under-garment what it may, in any case we learn
from Tacitus' words that the great mass of male Teutons were
content with the woollen sagum, and otherwise were naked, cetera
intecti*
Now, this statement of Tacitus agrees in all essential points with
the most recent conclusions on the most ancient costume of the
Greeks, especially with the acute observations of F. Studniczka
[Beitrcige zur Geschichte der altgriechischen Ti-acht, Wien, 1886).
According to them, the costume of the most ancient Greeks
consisted of nothing more than the ^Xaiva of the men ( : ;)(Aa/AV9,
scarcely originally connected with Lat. kena) and the ttcttXos (c/.
above, p. 328) of the women, both woollen garments, and in all
essential points similar to each other. " Both consist of simple
pieces of woollen material, manufactured on the primitive weaving
apparatus ; there was absolutely no cutting out or stitching in
them ; they were made into garments by being merely wrapped
round the body and fastened with fibulce." This primitive costume
was retained longest by the Greek women. Even in Homer a
woman wears nothing but the TreVAos (^apos). This appears most
clearly in the toilette of Calypso (Od., v. 228, ff.) : —
ijlxo<; 8' r)piyeV£ta (fxxvr) poSoSaKTuXos 'Hw?,
avTi)(^ 6 fxlv ^Aaivai/ re ;i(tTojva re f.vwT 'OSvcraeus,
avrr] o dpyvcfieov cftdpos fieya ei'Kuro vv[x<^yj
XeiTTOv Kol ^api€v, Trept 8e ^(Lvrjv /3aAer' l^v2
KaXy]v )(pvaeLr]v, K€<fiaXy 8 icjivirepOe KaXvivTprjv.
This costume survived into historic times in the dress of the
Spartan girls (illustrated in Studniczka, loc. cit., p. 7, figs. 2 and 3).
The over-garment, reaching to the feet, is thrown from left to right
round the body and fastened at both sides of the neck. Thus the
left side of the body is covered, but in such a way that a loop-hole
is left for the left arm ; on the right the edges hang down without
meeting. The fore and upper arm are quite bare, and proxima
2)ars pectoris patet (fig. 3). If our conjecture above as to the
vestittts suj^erior of the Teutonic women is correct, this dress of the
Spartan girls affords an illustration to it. Only after their contact
with Oriental civilisation did the Greeks come to know the linen
tunic — at first only worn by men — which they designated by the
Semitic word ^^trwi/ ( = Hebr. Icetonet; see author's Handelsgeschichte
wul Warenkunde, i. 193). Other names for Egyptian and Semitic
linen stuffs also gradually began to establish themselves in Greece,
* Ancient monuments afford but little material for deciding the question as
to the costume of the Teutons in the times of Ciesar and Tacitus.
336 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
such as the 666vai ( = Hebr. ethun), perhaps also <^apo5 : Egypt.
pddr, "linen" (Studniczka, loc. cit., p. 89, or to (f>dpai, "to weave,"
Hesych.*)
Finally, ancient Italy presents considerable conformity. First,
the toga ( : ter/o, " cover "), which corresponds to the X'^aiva (or
rather the ttcttAos) and to the sagum of the northern peoples, was
originally worn here too by men and women without distinction
{Non., p. 540. 31 : "Toga non solum viri sed etiam feminee
utebantur"). Further, the tunica {*ctunica : ketonet) likewise is
borrowed from Semitic civilisation, and likewise was not an indis-
pensable garment in antiquity (GelL, N. A., vii. 12. 3 : "Viri autem
Romani primo quidem sine tunicis toga sola amicti fuerunt").
See, further, Baumeister, Denkmdler, s.v., toga.
On a review of these facts it seems extremely probable that the
original gai-ment, at any rate of the European branch of the Indo-
Germanic family, was a piece of woollen or linen material worn
equally by both sexes (a custom for the existence of which in
primitive stages of culture there is ample evidence) : that it was,
in imitation of the hides which were the earliest clothing of man,
thrown round the shoulders like a mantle, and there fastened with
fibulce or thorns ; and that originally no under-garment was worn
beneath it. It is possible that the place of the latter was taken in
the primitive period by a loin-cloth (not mentioned indeed by
Tacitus), such as is seen on ancient Greek monuments (Studniczka,
p. 31) or in ancient Rome was worn in place of the tunic (cinctiis,
subligaculum, campestre). Studniczka has an attractive conjecture
(p. 31, n. 10), that the use of trousers which the northern peoples
affected more and more is connected with this. Their discovery,
at any rate as far as Europe is concerned, seems to be due to the
Celts, as is indicated by the series of words, which spread by
borrowing from west to east: Celt, braccce, O.N. brdkr, O.H.G.
bruok, Russ. braki.
As showing that the idea of using a girdle had been developed
in the primitive period, the equation : G. ^(Lvw/xi, t,wvrj, ^w/xa, Lith.
justa, "girdle," O.S. po-jasu, " ^wvrj," Zend i/dsto, "girdled," is
important.
Protection for the feet, again, was early provided. Cf. G.
Kprj7rt<;, Lat. carpisculum, Lith. kurpe, A.S. hrifeling, O.N. hrijiingr
(Kluge). An important equation in this respect is : Lith. aukU,
"foot-strap" (also autas) : Zend aothra, "shoe," aothrava, "gaiter"
{*au-tlo : Lat. itid-uo, ex-uo). Covei'ings for the head have already
been mentioned in part iii. ch. x.
In this attempt to establish the main features of Indo-Germanic
costume, we have confined ourselves to a comparison of the most
important European peoples, because here the salient facts are
clearer, and have been more thoroughly investigated than in the
* With ipapai ' vcpaifdv, irXeKety might be connected N.S. brdo, "licium,"
B. briUlo, Less. Russ. berdo, "weaver's comb" {*ber-do), O.H.G. bor-to, " seam,
border (woven"), O.N. bordi. Bezzenberger, indeed, has compared Lett.
buras, burvas, "little sail " (Fick, Vergl, IV., ii.^ 165).
ORXAMENTS. 337
case of the IiKlo-lraniuii peoples (rf. on the Iranians, "W. (!eiger,
Osth'an. Kii/tnr, p. 224, f.; on the Indians, Zinnner, Alluulisches
Leben, p. 2Gl,^f.). It would seem that liere we have to do with a
more advanced stage in the evolution of dress, inasmuch as over
and luider garments here always appear together. But the future
has yet to bring us a precise account of the history, especially of
Indian dress, in the most ancient times.
This chai)ter suggests various things which require cleai'ing
up. The history of hairdressing, a matter of great importance in
manners and customs, might have been mentioned ; the question
of the tattooing, of which we have evidence in the case of several
Indo-Germanic i:)C0ples {cf. V. Hehn, p. 18, /"., and above, p. 88),
might have been discussed, and other points. Unfortunately we
must refrain from entering on these subjects.
AVe may remark in conclusion that all sorts of ornaments for the
decoration of the person may have been discovered in the primeval
period. An important equation in this connection is Zend minu
(Sans, manil), G. /acivvos, Lat. monile, O.C. /Ltavta/<r/s, I. vucince, O.S.
monisto, O.H.G. menni, which belong to O.H.G. viana, "mane,"
Sans, mdni/d, I. muiu, "neck," just as O.S. grivma, "necklace" :
^/■M'a = Sans. r/i'tva, "neck." The most important material in the
manufacture of such pi'oductions of primitive art may have been
copper.
CHAPTER IX.
dwelling;-
"Wagon-Dwellings — Terminology of "Wagon -Building — Undergroiiud Hal lita-
tions— Indo-Germanic Huts — Their Materials — Their Oldest Form — Door
— Window — Hearth — Stalls.
The ancients knew that a great portion of the north of Euroi^e
was occupied by a semi-nomad population, whose only dwellings
were their wagons, on which they conveyed their goods and chattels,
wives and children, to fresh settlements and pastures new. This is
stated most unanimously, with regard to the east of Europe, about
the Scyths and Sarmatte, whose wagon-life is one of their most
important characteristics : —
" Campestres melius Sc}-th;e,
Quorum plaustra vagas rite tralumt domos,
Yivunt et rigidi Geta;."
{Hor., c. iii. 24.)
But the same custom is to be found amongst peoples undoubtedly
Indo-Germanic. Thus, the Bastarnre, the first Teutonic tribe to
make its appearance in history (about B.C. 200), carry their wives
and children on wagons with them (Miillenhoff, D. A., ii. 104,/'.).
So, too, the Suebi could without difficulty set their dwellings on their
Avagons, and go off with their herds where they listed. The dwell-
ings of the Cimbri, which likewise were on their wagons ("domus
plaustris impositpe "), were defended bv the clogs when their owners
fell (Pliny, Hist. Nat, viii. 40. 61), kc*
After what we have said above (ch. v.) about the unsettled
mode of life amongst the other Indo-Europeans, and about the
weakness of the ties that bound them to the soil on which they
settled, there can be no doubt that the use of wagons as dwellings
is a trait from the life of the primeval period which the northern
tribes preserved. Nor can we wonder if we find a tolerably
extensive terminology for wagon-bixilding in the original language.
To say nothing of the fact that nearl}' all Indo-European languages
* The most frequent term for the travelling wagon of the north is the Lat.
carrus, probably itself a barbarous word (above, p. 263). Cf. O.I. carr, O.H-C^.,
cliarro, also Kapafia ' rj eVi ttjs o/xa|7js- (rK7)V7i and Kupapvfs ' ol ^kvOikuI oIkoi
(Diefeubach, O.E.). In war these carri were used as a defence, carnVju.
THE WAGOX. 339
]jlaiiily use the root veyh to designate the wagon (Sans. ViiJiana,
G. oxqt^oi, oxo's, O.H.G. waf/cm, O.S. vozii, Lith. wezimas, 0.\. fen
(*ve(j-n), we find agreement in the names of the following portions
of the wagon : —
AVheel : Lat. rota, Lith. rCitas, O.H.G. rml, O.I. roth, Sans. nWw
("wagon").
Wheel: Sans. caTcrd, G. kvkA.os, A.S. hveol (s^-f-ry /J)— without
reduplication : O.S. l-olo, O.N. hvel*
Axle : Sans, nksha, G. a^wv, a[j.-a$a, Lat. aj'is, O.H.G. a/isa, O.S.
est, Lith. aszls.
Nave : Sans, nabhi, A.S. ?irr/w, O.H.G. ?i«irt, 0. Pr. nabis.
Linch-Pin : Sans, dni, O.H.G. hin, A.S. lynes, O. Sax. hinisa,
(Pick, 7>'. Ji., vi'i. 95).
Pole: Lat. tenia (^Heicsmu), O.H.G. dthmla, O.N. ])/.s/, A.S. (111x1(1).
Yoke : Sans, i/tiffci, G. ^nyov, Lat. mguin, Goth, jiil-, O.S. i,j/o,
Lith. jnngas, Cymr. iov.
In this collection, it will be observed, there is no equation for
the spoke of the wheel (Sans, ard, G. Kvr'nxy], Lat. radnis. O.H.G.
speihha). The terms for felloe also divci'ge, except G. tTv s, which
correspond exactly to Lat. vitris (lit. "withy"). Perhaps O.H.G.
felf/a, "felloe" belongs to O.'H.G. felawa, "withy" (above, p. 271).
This indicates that we must conceive the primitive wheel as being
without spokes. In the oldest times the only way known of making
a jjaiv of wheels was to hew them and the axle-tree connecting
them all in a piece out of one and the same tree-trunk : and it
must therefore be regarded as an advance when — obviously before
the dispersion — the art of nianufactiu'ing the axle-tree separately,
and of fastening it into the tijmpamim by means of a linch-pin, was
discovered.
The picture we thus get corresponds to the description given by
the ancients of the B.om-M\i)Iau>itriun : " The wheels of the ]//austruvi
have not spokes, but are tympana which are of a piece with the
axle-tree, and are surrounded by a rim of iron. The axle-tree turns
roiuid with the wheels ; for the wheels are fastened by the spindles,
i.e., the most projecting part of the wheel " (Probus on Virg., G'eorg.,
i.). The Teutonic wagon drawn by cattle, which is represented on
the triumphal column of Marcus Aiu'clius, must have been exactly
the same (cf., e.g., Felix Dalm, Urgeschichte der germ, tind romctn.
Yolker, ii. 161).
The acquaintance of the Indo-Europeans from of old with the
art of wagon-building may be regarded as a distinctive characteristic
of this family of peoples, which marks them off alike from the
neighbouring Finns and the tribes of Turko-Tataric origin. Every-
thing in the Finn languages relating to the art of wagon-building
is of Slavonic or Teutonic origin (Alilqvist, KidturiciJrter, p. 125).
So, too, according to Vambery {Primitive Kidtur, p. 128), the wagon
has been a foreign invention to the Turks of all times. From
* The short quantity is guaranteed metrically.
340 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Ijvimeval times the inhabitants of the Asiatic steppes have employed
the camel instead to cany on its patient back, tent, wife, and child.
The Indo-Euro^jcans however, who, as we saw on p. 267, did not
enjoy the acquaintance of this valuable beast of burden, which is-
wagon and horses all in one, were at an early time driven to invent
the wagon, a sme qua non of their wandering mode of life.
Assuming that we may regard the Indo-Europeans during theii*
migrations as a/xafoySiot, like the gypsies or any other wandering
people, ^^ve are confronted with the further question what their
habitations were like when they made settlements — settlements
which tended to become more and more permanent, the more the
Indo-Europeans devoted themselves to agriculture.
^'^Here we have first t6 speak of the subterranean dwellings, i.e.,
dwellings dug in the eartli, the existence of which is recorded
amongst numerous Indo-Germanic peoples, and which afforded pro- '
tection alike against the summer's heat tind the winter's cold. Such
habitations were still known in the Avesta under the name of kcda *
(: kan, " dig '"'). This wordjiiay be the' source of the usual term for
house in modern Persian {kacl, kqdaJi) and in the Pamir dialects
(I'ed, ced, Szc.) ; cf. Tomaschek, Pamir D.,'n. 11. We have similai*
statements as to the Phrygians in Vitruv., ii. 1. 5. Amongst the
Armenians, too, Xenophon {Anah., iv. 5. 24) found Karayctot oIkioll.
n.^heir entrance was like the opening of a well, widening downwards.
JFor the cattle, which were also taken below ground, lateral shafts
were driven. Human beings descended by a ladder.
Of the Teutons, Tacitus {Gervi. 16) says: "Solent et subterraneos
specus aperire eosque multo insuper fimo onerant, subfugium
hiemis et receptaculum frugibus, quia rigorem frigorum eius modi
locis molliunt, et si quando hostis advenit, 'aperta populatur, abdita
autem et defossa aut ignorantur aut eo ipSo fallunt quod quserenda
sunt." This statement is further confirmed by Pliny (Hist. Nat.,
xix. 1. 2): "In Germania autem defossi atque sub terra id opus
(texendi) agunt " (above, p. 333).
The old Teutonic name for this kind of subterranean dwellings
and weaving-rooms was O.H.G. tzXuc ; and to this 6.?cy Uing is the
name given in NiLrnberg, d%ing iii, Augsburg, to ayC^lai;Jike
weaving-room. NoNv^as Tacitus expressly speaks of these dwellings
being covered hyjimus, nothing seems more obvious than to regard
tunc, "textrina," as identical with O.H.G. tunga, "stercoratio,"
"maiuiring" (AVackernagel, Havpts Z., vii. 128, ff^. Only, on
closer examination, it seems extremely suspicious that the Teutons
.should designate a kind of dwelling by a word which originally
meant simply " excreta/'^^manuring was probably not known as
* Perhaps O.S. kasta, "house, hut, tent," from *kont-ja, also belongs here.
It may be remarked that the Finn name for house is exactly the same as in
Iranian : Finn kvta, Esth. kuda, Mordv. kud, Tscherem. kuda. Is this a case
of borro^\-ing ? Ahlq%-ist (p. 10.3, ^f.; cf. also above, p. 45) does not observe
this resemblance. Anyhow, the Finn, sauna, Esth. saun, &c. , "subterranean
dwelling," is genuinely Finn.
IW(
SUBTERKANEAX DWELLINGS. 34 1
carh-as Tacitus (Rautcnborg, rr(,gr.,\x 15,/'., Hamburg, 1880)— and
not by a derivative from the word. It seems to me, therefore, more
reasonable to separate, as (iniff (Spjxichschatz) wished to separate, the
two Old High German words, tunr/rt, "dunging," and time, "dwell-
ing dug in the earth." The latter can be referred to an Indo-
(Jermanic dhujh-. With this we could then connect the hitherto
unexplained stock of words, G. ra^-po?, " trench," tu^os, " grave,"
BaiTTw, " dig," " biu-y " {*dhn.(jh-j(>'), in a perfectly regular manner a^
regards both phonetics and meaning.* O.H.G. tunc wowXd then be
ecpiivalent to gruohe, with which it is occasionally synonymous
(Wackernagel, loc. cit., p. 131).
The construction of subterranean dwellings is very frequently
mentioned as characteristic of the ^cytlujui tribes,! "whose comfort-
able winter life receives idyllic treatment at the hand of the poet ; —
" Ipsi ill defossis specubus secura sub alta
Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora totasque
Advolvere focis uliaos igniciue dedere.
Hie noctem hido dueunt et pocula la4i
Fermento atque aoidis imitantur vitea sorbis.
(Virg., Gcorg., iii. 376,/.)
Of course, the poet of the metropolis had never visited dwellings of
this kind, ,the dark side of which is vividly portrayed on the
strength of modern analogies by V. Hehn (p. 471, /.). On the
contrary, these A'erses are a piece of the romance which classical
writers are so fond of casting over the barbarous norths
The Greeks also have transmitted several terms for this sort of
cave-like dwelling (J. Muller, Privataltert inner, p. 339) : yvirai,
yvirdpta, </)wAcot ( : fallo, " hiding-place "), rpwyXat, o~7nj\aLa. Of
these yi'Tra (glossed by Hesychius with KaXv^r), " hut," OaXdfjirj,
"room," and rj Kara yrjv oikt^o-is) recurs in Teutonic; and with it I
connect O.X. kop; "hut," A.S. cofa, "room," M.H.d kohe, "stall,"
O.HXi. c/m/jisi, "hut" {*[/npa). The fundamental meaning will
then be " subterranean hole." Cf. above, Zend kata : Mod. Pers.
kad, "house." O.S. zupiste, "cumulus, sepulcnun," itc, is to be
kept separate. U
IC~^o much for the subterranean dwellings of the Indo-Europeans.
It is, however, beyond tlj^ ])ossiliilities of doubt that they were
already acquainted witli the bcginui.igs of the art of building huts
and houses. This is directly indicated by such equations as : Sans.
dnmd, Armen. fun, G. 8d/iAo?, Lut. domus, O.S. damn, O.I. aur-dam,
"prodomus" : 8eyLi.f.i, Goth, timrjan, "joiner" (but see above, p. 272);
Sans. ff/V", G. KuAta, Lat. cella, Teut. halla ( : celdre, O.H.G. helan);
* Cf. Curtiiis, Grdz.*, p. 502; J. Schmidt, Voc, i. 164. Schade {Ahd. IF.)
comivii'- ' ■1 rJiincier : Litb. dcukli, "cover," which is phoneticallj-
jiossib: lOt give tlie eliavacteristic sense to tunc, "subterranean
dwellii , iir exi>laiiation does.
f'E'.'^' ■ ToTs Kifj.fX€piois irpoffoiKuv (prjffi avrovs iv KaTayeiots oiKiais
olKflv, U : ■ ^ov(Tiv apyiWa? (Strabo Ji. 351).
''Apy ■ ..a ■ oiKriua MaKeSoviKhv, owep depfxaii'ovTfs \ovovTai (Suidas). Cf, L.
Diefeub.ich, 0. K, p. 91. 233,/.
342 TREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Zend civarem, "door," Armen. dnrn, G. 6vpa, Lat.forea (also for 2im),
O.S. dviri, "door" (dvorii=fornm), Lith. dkrys, Goth, dai'ir, O.I.
doriis (Sans, dvdr- (?); cf. above, p. 108,/.); Sans, uta, Zend dithya,
Lat. antce, "door-posts." Further, two pan-Indo-European roots
are unanimously used in the original sense of "cover" to afford
designations for the house (and roof). Thus, root ster/, teg, Lat.
tego : G. crreyos, reyos, O.I. teg, Lat. tectum, O.N. ]Kih, Lith. stdgas ;
and also a root (jleit, qIit-0. Sax. Mtdan, "cover," "shut" : Goth.
hlei]wa, "hut" (O.N. hU]>, "door"), O.S. Uetl, "domus, cavea," L
dethe, "roof" (cliath, "crates"). Perhaps G. kXktlt], kKlctlov,
KXicnds, " hut, tent," also belongs here.*
As, however, it is obvious that most of these expressions are just
as applicable to marble halls as wooden huts, and that they accord-
ingl}^ tell us nothing of the natui'e of the Indo-European house, we
must look for other means of information if we \\'ish to be more
precise.
Now, I believe that with regard to the most ancient Indo-European
hoiises two positions can be established, first that the materials of
which they were built consisted merely of wood, basket-work, and
loam, and not of stone ; next, that the most usual, if not the most
ancient form, at any rate of the European hut, was circular.
Turning our attention first to the former point, we find that the
facts are naturally simplest and most transparent in the case of the
northern peoples. According to the statement of Tacitus {Germ.
16), the Teutons were ignorant of the use of bricks and mortar:
"Materia ad omnia utuntur informi et citra speciem aut delec-
tationem." Similarly, Herodian says (vii. 2) of Maximinus : " He
burnt down (anno 234) the whole district (of the Alemanni, Chatti,
Hermundiiri) for the fire readily consumed whole dwellings,
as owing to the absence of stone and bricks they are made entirely
of wood," tkc. {cf. Baumstark, Aiisf. ErL, i. 566). Basket-work, too,
was employed, as linguistic evidence indicates. Thus, in ,01d
High German, wcint, " wall," stands by the side of Goth, vanchis,
" withy," in Gothic itself the wall is called vaddjus (O.N. veggr),
which, coming from *voj-U'S, may belong to the root vei {f'vej-eti)
mentioned in the previous chapter on p. 329, Avith the original
meaning in this case of "plait." f Again, we ought perhaps not to
separate, as Kluge {Et. W.^) does, Goth, laufs, "leaf," ttc, and the
O.H.G. louha, "hut, tent, room," which has found its way into
Middle Latin {lavpia) as well as into the Romance languages
(Lomb. lohia, It. loggia); cf. Rautenberg, loc. cit., p. 11. The
* Feist {Grundriss dcr gotischen Etym.) differs and compares, after Curtius,
Goth. hJija and hlci]>ra by the side of KKialr) with kx'ivoi.
+ Goth. baurgs-vaddjtisre7xos,gruudic-vaddjus Oe/xiAioi^. The factharmonises
with the above explanation that the Teutonic fortifications on the triumphal
column of Marcus Aurelius (F. Dahn, Urgeschkhtc, ii. 172) are obviously made
of basket-work at the \ipper end. Tlie Lat. te.vo occurs in the sr me sense as
the root vei would here be used. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, vi. 261, of the • lost ancient
temple of Vesta : —
" Qure nunc fere vides, stipula turn tecta videres,
Et paries lento vimine textus erat."
31ATERIAL OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN HOUSE. 343
straw-voof is mentioned liy I'liny {IlUt. Xaf., xvi. 3G. 64) as a
jieculiarity shared by all the northern peoples: " Tegulo caruux
liariindiniun donuis suas septentrionales populi operiunt, durant<[UO
ievis tecta talia."
What indirectly proves that stone hnildings were luiknown to
the Teutons is the fact that nearly all terms relating to this new
art are derived from the Latin. A reference to the collections in
AY. Franz (L((t.-rom. Elemeiite im A/fkor/ul., Strassburg, 1884) will
here suffice. Cf. O.H.G. mura = niurus, ziegal — teijula* mortere =
viortar-ium, pfost = jiostis, ^^AiZaW =^ji7arMte', turri = ttiri'is, scintcda
= sc(mdula, 2{fo7-zih=2^(^'*'t'''^'^^^j chalch = calx, &c. In the year 356,
indeed, Julian found amongst the Alemanni, between the Rhejn
and the Main, Mliole villages built on the pattern of the Koman
villa (F. Dahn, Un/eschichte, i. 56, from Amm. Marc).
Even before coming luider the influence of Rome, the Teutons,
had perhaps stolen some glances at the Celts' mode of Iniilding, as
is indicated by the loan of the Gotlu l-flikn, "tower, upper stoi-ey,
lianquctinti-liall," from (Jail, reliction, "tower" (Stokes, Jjc/tn'ff/c,
ii. 100. 108).
The state of things among the Slavs is similai'. That the
Veneti built houses even in the first century B.C., in contrast to
the Sarmatse, in ^:)/«tt.s^?'0 equoque viventihus, is stated by Tacitus
{Germ. c. 46). What miserable aflfixirs these houses continued
to be even centuries later is shown by what Procopius says {B. C,
iii. 1 4) about the SKXaySr^vot and "Avrai {oIkovctl 8e Iv KaXv/Sais
otKTpais 8ucrKr]fX€voL ttoXXw /jlIv o-tt aXXr'jXwv). Here, too, language
shows that we are only to think of wooden structures, for " there is
no pan-Slav expression to warrant the assumption that the primitive
Slavs understood the art of building with stone" (Krek, Einleihimi -,
p. 145). In this respect the Slavs are rather puj^ils of the classical
])eoples on the one side, and of their Teutonic neighbour on the
other ; but we need not disciiss this further. Thus, e.;/., O.S.
2>li)iixta corresponds to G. ttXlvOo^, O.S. izvisti to M.G. ao-^eo-ros,
O.S. tremii., "tower," to G. Tepe/xvov, O.S. Jclalcil to Germ. cUa/c/i,
Russ. cic/ell to Germ, ziet/al, &c.
It is very remarkable that a term for the house as a wliole
(O.S. hyza), which I'ecurs in all Slavonic languages, was borrowed,
and that at an early date, from Teutonic (O.H.G. hds, ikc., of
luicertain origint). O.S. hlovu, "stall," Jdevina, "house," are
probably of similar origin (0. Sax. Jdeo, O.N. hie, Goth, hlijx).
In the south of Europe also, in spite of the splendour of the
marble with which we are dazzled, unmistakable traces of the
primitive hut structure have siu'vived. " When the Greeks and
* The Goths had a native word, skalja, which is rather to be connected with
aKtWw, "dry, parch," than with, aKaWw, "dif;," as it is by Feist {loc. cif.).
t The usual dorivation of O.H.G. hils and hiittc is from G. KtvOw {otuv o-e
56fx.oi K€Kvdw(ri Kal iravKal, Od. vi. 303). C/. also Ka\v0r} : KaXinTu; G. KaAia,
Lat. cella : celarc, &c. The fuiidauiental foiiu would tiien be *kiU-lo. Fuist
(/of. clL, p. 58) objects that "a jiarticiple in -/</- never has an active sense." Hut
this is not correct. Cf. ]5rur(niann, (wntndriss, ii. '206, and above, p. 332, I
therefore regard the interpretation of A((s just mentioned as still possible.
344 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Italians immigrated into the two classical peninsulas, they knew no
other form of dwelling than the hut made of straw, twigs, and
loam." The archaeological evidence for this assertion has been
given, es})ecially for ancient Italy, by W. Helbig in Die Italiker in
der Poelmf, p. 45, _f. It further receives the support of linguistic
observations. Thus loam and not stone buildings are clearly
implied by the relationship of G. Ter^o?, " wall," tolxo<s, " wall,"
with Sans, de/u, "thrown up earth, wall," with O.N. deu/, "dough,"
Goth, deir/an, "make out of clay," Lat. finger e,figuhis, "potter."
The G. o/)o<^y?, "roof" {-.Ipi^o,, "cover," O.N. rdf, rdfr, "roof,"
O.H.G. 7-afo, rdvo, "beam"), is identical with 6po(f>o<5, "rushes," just
as in Latin culmen, " roof," is one with cuhmis, " straw."
Amidst these straw-thatched and rush-covered huts of loam and
wood in the Balkan Peninsula rose the work of Phenician masons,
the stone palaces of Greek chieftains, such as the excavations at
Tiryns have revealed to the wondering gaze; for centui'ies, and
even in the Homeric age, the model which was imitated, though
not with complete success, in the houses of the Greek avaKxes. In
view of the undoubted dependence of the Greeks on the orientals
for the art of building, it is a characteristic feature in their
linguistic attitude towards the intrusions of foreign culture (cf.
above, pp. 74, 146), that they confine themselves almost entirely to
the resources of their own language in providing for the termin-
ology of building. Either the old Indo-Germanic expressions were
transferred to the new conceptions {Ovpai, -n-poOvpaL, Swfxa, 8d/xos,
7rpo8o/Aos), or new terms were fashioned by simple means out of
the materials of the native tongue (thus jxeyapov, "men's room,"
lit. "the great," virepwov, " upper storey," lit. "the upper"). But
few expressions are open to the suspicion of being Semitic, for
instance, perhaps, KtW,* "pillar" = Heb. hijjun, "statue," and
Xeaxv, " a sort of piiblic inn" = Heb. lishekdh, " shrine in a temple,"
"room in a stronghold," " banquet-room. "f
The linguistic attitude of the Romans towards Greek culture
differed from that of the Greeks towards Semitic civilisation ; and
a very considerable number of Greek termini, belonging to a more
advanced stage in the art of building, were taken over by Latin in
the co\irse of time (0. Weise, loc. cit., p. 193, //'.).
Finally, the Indo-Iranians of the oldest period were also quite
ignorant of stone buildings. In the epoch of the Atharvaveda the
■*■ But an Indo-Germanic etj-mology is not wanting : G. kicoj' = Armen. siu/i
(Hiibsclimann, A. Si.,- p. 49).
t The only possible derivation of AeVx'? from the Greek, that is from
'"Kex-(TK7i : A.6X0S, " bed," Goth, ligan, takes ns back to the same fundamental
meaning of "inn" {cf. ivdax'" fi"om *i:aQ-(TKw ; i\Ieister, Die Gricch. Dialekte,
ii. 50). Leist (Grdco-'ifansche llcchtsgcschichtc, p. 119, /. ) regards \e(Txv ^s
meaning "the house of the community " = Sans, sabhci from, the beginning,
witliout regard to the fact that the oldest passages mentioning the \e(rxv
in Homer and Hesiod do not agree with this. A beggar wouhl certainly
not go to the "house of the communit)'" to spend the night there {Od.,
xviii. 327). I regard the municipal meaning of the word as a later meaning
therefore ((/. author's Handdsgcsdiiclite und Warcnkunde, i. 29,.^.).
SHAPE OF THE IXDO-EUROPEAN HOUSE. 345
Indian house was a purely wooden structure, which is described
liy Zimnicr {Altmd. Lehen, p. 153) as follows: "Pillars — four in
number — were erected in the solid ground, and stays were placed
obliquely against them. The corner pillars and foundation pillars
were fastened together by roof beams. On them were placed long
bamboo rods, to act as spars for the lofty roof. Between the
corner pillars various posts, according to the size of the house,
were also erected. Straw or reeds were used in bundles to fill
the interstices in the walls, and to a certain extent to line the
whole. Nails, clamps, cords, and straps served to hold the whole
together."
A very similar appearance may have been presented by the
house of the Avesta, about which, however, we know but ver}'
little {cf. W .Geiger, Odiran. Cti/tU7\ p. 216) ; though the ancient
Pei'sians already knew how to burn bricks (Zend isJdi/a).
How lightly built and tent-like, at any rate, the house of the
Avesta people was is shown by a passage of the Vendidad to which
(leiger {loc. cit.) refers, where in the case of a man who has died
from home two alternatives are mentioned as possible : either
to take the corpse to the dwelling or the dwelling to the corpse.
The second of the two positions stated above, viz., that the
usual form, at any rate of European huts, was circular, may be
more briefly dismissed. If it is correct, we shall not go f;ir wrong
in regarding it as an imitation of the felt-covered, circidar tent
of the nomad.
The Teutonic huts represented on the triumphal column of
^Marcus Aurelius are round. So, too, Strabo (p. 197) describes
the dwellings of the Belga3 : tous 8' olkovs (k aaviSojv koL yeppMv
t)(OvaL fxeydXov^ ^oAoctSct?, opocfiov ttoXvv e7rt/3aXAoi/TC?. The primi-
tive form of the Italian hut, again, has been shown by H el big
to be roiind ; and as the ash urns from the neci'opolis of Alba
Longa are obviously intended to represent the round huts of the
living, so, too, the prehistoric dome-shaped graves of Mycena%
Menidi, and Orchomenus are to be regarded as but reproductions of
human dwellings — of the " circular tent," and " semi-subterranean
huts of earth " (Helbig, loc. cit., p. 50 ; J. Midler, Privataltert.,
]). 341). Possibly a Grrcco-Italian name for the original circular
structure of wood has survived: I compare Lat. fain, "wooden
tower, structure of wood " [cf. on this word, W. Deecke, Die
Falixker, p. 24, and above, p. 325, note), with the Greek ^o'Aos,
which means both "circular structure, and dome-shaped roof,"
but whose meaning in the Homeric chieftain's house is not indeed
quite clear (J. Miiller, loc. cit., p. 352). Anyhow, the word always
indicates a circular structure, and also a round temide (Guhl and
Koner, Das Lehen der Griechoi und liiimev^, p. 48), and it is
precisely this word (^oXoeiSr;?) that Strabo uses to represent the
circular huts of the Celts. For the rest, it may be that Oa.\afxo<s
also is, as Vanicek conjectured (Et. W., p. 395), connected with
66Xo<;. A higher opinion of the Indo-Germanic house is taken by
Pi. Henning in his pithy treatise, Das deutsche Ilcms in seiner
346 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Jiintoj'isc/ien Entwiclchmg (Strassbury, 1882). He regards the
primitive type as preserved in the "East Teutonic" liouse, which
according- to him corresponds in all respects with the Greek
dwelling-house. "The East Teutonic house, too, has an open,
roomy entrance-hall in front, the northern name for which has a
counterpart in nearly all the Aryan languages {cf. above, p. 311,
on halla, the Indo-Eurupean counterparts of which have, however,
other meanings). Behind it there lies again a fairly squa,re room,
open up to the roof, with the hearth in the centre, and a smoke-
hole in the ceiling. Even the internal arrangements agree : the
seats are arranged along the .two sides, and the bed stands in the
fixr corner of the chamber" (p. 108). Attractive as these ari^ange-
ments are, it is just in this quarter that the possibility of similar
but independent develo])ments is particularly strong.
Pei4iaps we ought not to credit the primeval period witli only
■one type of house-structure. It is conceivable that the round hut
was the dwelling of the ordinary man, while moi'c spacious block-
houses were built for the kings and chief men in the form described
by Henning.
We shall, however, return to this subject in ch. xi.
We conclude this chapter with some scattered remarks on the
internal arrangements of the Indo-Germanic hut.
The names for window in Indo-Germanic languages exhibit as
much diversity as the names for door do agreement {cf. above,
p. 342 ; the nature of the door is illustrated by Goth, liailrch,
O.N. hurCt, "door"-=Lat. crdtes, "basket-work.")* Windows,
therefore, cannot have been an essential feature in the Indo-
Germanic dwelling. When the tribes of the north made their
acquaintance with this idea — perhaps not until they came in con-
tact with the south {rf. the loan of Lat. fenestra to High German)
—they designated it with W'ords meaning eye, opening : O.N.
vind-atifia (Eng. ivind-ow^ivind-eye), Goth. emga-daiWo, O.S. okno.
Naturally thei'e was nothing in the shape of a chimney to carry
oft' the smoke from the fire on the hearth : it had to find its own
Avay out through natural or made holes in the roof, which Avas not
sepai'ated from the room by any ceiling. According to Alemannic
law, a new-born child is coimted to have lived if it has opened its
eyes and seen the four walls and the roof We are reminded of
these times when some languages seem to conceive the roof as
black and soot-begrimed (Goth, hrot, "roof" : O.H.G. o'tioz, G.
jxeXaOpov : fieX-ds ; cf. also Lat. atrmni : ater — according to others
from Zend dtar, "fire").
Precautions must have been taken at an early period to confine
the fire to a certain place in the hut. Perha])s we may place here
the — certainly doubtful — equation: Goth, au/ms, O.H.G. ofa)i = G.
tTTvos, "oven": Sans. uJcIkX, "vessel." Cf, further, Goth, azgo,
" ashes " = G. ia-xapr], "hearth," just as Sans, asa, "ashes" (Sans.
* A Gi'iijco- Italian equation for tlie door-key is G. KXTjis-^Lat. cJdvis,
"key." Its original character is shown by tlie I. cI6i, " nail," which corre-
sponds exactly. Cf. also Lat. cldvus, " nail "
CATTLE STAJXS. 34/
nxJifn, " fireplace ") = Lat. dra, Umbr. am (O.H.G. essa)* On
Vesta ('Eo-Tia), sec above, p. 129.
How foi'cigii the notion of a rcu'ularly heated room was originally
to the whole noi'th is sliown by the circinnstancc that the expres-
sion for the idea, though its origin is not yet ascertained, was
taken over by the Teutonic (O.H.G. .^Uiba), Romance (It. i<tvfa),
and Lithu-Slavonic (Lith. stuha, O.S. istiiha) languages alike.
"Whether special stalls wex'e erected to protect the cattle from
winter in the primeval period may i-cmain an open question.
Some eqiintions such as G. yttavSpa — Sans, mfmdird, A.S. box, O.N.
bi(K, Goth. bans-fK = G. ((n;)^eto9 (author in A". Z., xxx. 483) seem to
point to it. In general, however, in winter the domestic animals
cither shai'ed the human habitation, as was the case amongst the
Armenians (cf. above, }>. 340), or wintered in the open, in protected
spots and folds, in which case many beasts, often whole herds, may
have perished from lack of food, tlie attacks of prowling beasts of
prey, and from cold.
* OsthoS {Be itr, v. Paul u. Braunc, xiii. 39fi) differs to some exteut.
CHAPTER X.
TRAFFIC AND TRADE.*
Exchange — Buying and Selling — The Stranger — Origin of Guest-Friendship —
Dumb Baiter and Sale — Barter and Exchange in Language — Fords and
Roads — Did the Indo-Europeans dwell by the Sea ? — Navigation.
The idea of exchanging some of one's own possessions in order
to get something of another's goods is snch an obvious one that
we may assume its existence in ever}' stage of culture. Such
exchange, however, is still far removed from the method of regular
purchase, which clearly consists of the two phases of buying and
selling, and only comes to deserve the name in the proper sense
when a metallic standard of value, money, comes into play. In
barter the purchaser is also the seller, and vice verm ; we can,
therefore, hardly be surprised if the mercantile terminology of the
Indo-European languages still betrays evident traces of the
primitive state of things.
The idea of barter is expressed in the Indo-Germanic languages
by the root mei, which appears in Sans, me, mdyate, desid. mitmte,
in the Lat. miinus, " (return-)gift," mutm^e ( : *moi-ta), in the Lithu-
Slav. mainas-mena, "barter," etc. The object given in exchange
for something — later the " purchase-price " — was designated in the
original language by *vesno (Sans, vasnd, G. wvos, Lat, venuvi, O.S.
ve)io, "dowry" (orig. "purchase-price"), Armen. ^m). The verbs
derived from this substantive (Sans, vamay, "to higgle"), are
divided equally between the conceptions of buying (G. wveo/xat,
Armen. f/nein) and selling (Lat. venire, vhivmdai-e, O.S, veniti). The
meaning is more uniform in the series : Sans. Jcrt-na-mi, I, crenim,
G. TrpLufxaL, "buy;" cf. also Lett. Jcreens, h-eena nduda, "present to
the bride " (literally, "purchase-price," like O.S. veno, Bezzenberger
in his B., xii. 78) ; though here, too, we have by the side of I,
crenim, "buy," the related creccaim, "sell" (Wiudisch, Beitrd{/e,
viii. 38).
How late, especially in the North Europe, the need of dis-
tinguishing beetween buyer and seller was felt, is best shown by
"■' This chapter is based on the more detailed treatment of the subject in my
book, Linguistisch-historische Forschuncjcn zur HancMscjeschichte unci TVairn-
lunde, i. {Die Ursprilngc des Handcls und Wandcls in Eurojm), Jena, 1886.
I here give a resume of the results arrived at there, and take the opportunity
of adding some fresh observations.
THE PRIMITIVE STANDARD OF VALUE. 349
the Teutonic stock of words : Goth, kaupun, O.N. kaupa, O.H.G.
choufan, A.S. cet'qnan, which cxpi-esses "the whole business of
exchange " (buying, selling, trafficking). I believe I have shown
on p. 88 of my book that we here have to do with early loans
from the Latin, and that the oldest meaning of the Teutonic words
was "doing business with a onijto;" especially as I cite the close
analogies ottered by the O.H.G. manj/dri, A.S. mangere, O.N.
iitanf/ari, " mercator," A.S mangian, O.N. 'inanr/a, "negotiari,"
ike, borrowed from Lat. viango. Again, the native Goth, hugjan,
A.S. hycgdn, which is not yet satisfactorily explained, have, besides
the regular meaning of "buy," also that of "sell" ('/. the O'/osmr
?:u Ulpliilas von Gahdentz-Lohc)*
Naturally, the terminology of exchange was increased by expres-
sions derived from the fundamental notions of " give " and "take."
Thus, on the one hand, Sans. ^j«ra-c?«, " exchange," Lith. ixirduti,
"sell," G. aTToStSoo-^at, O.S. irrodati, "sell;" and on the other, Lat.
emo, " buy " = Goth, nima, "take," Lith. imli, O.S. ima, L -em
(Bezzenberger).
It is, however, a natural consequence of all exchange, that in
the coiirse of time, and in various districts, those objects take a
prominent jjosition in commerce, which are desii'ed by all alike,
and which at the same time are adapted to become the standard
of value for all other wai'es. After what has been stated above
on ]). 260, and in Handel sgeschichte und Warenkunde, p. 113, /^'.,
in more detail, it is impossible to doubt that as early as the
])rimeval period, and also in the oldest times known to history,
the cow was the special standard of value amongst the Indo-
Europeans ; and, indeed, this was only what was to be expected in
the case of a pastoral people depending almost entirely on the
})roduce of its herds. If we add to this, that a decimal system of
reckoning, up to at least a hundred, had been developed — the
terms for the numeral " thousand " diverge in different groups
(Sans, mhdsra, Zend hazahra, G. -xiXiot, Goth. ]>usundi, O.S.
tysqlta, Lith. tuLstantis ; cf. above, p. 125; Lat. mille, I. mile) — if
we further reflect that there is a uniform identical designation in
the Indo-Germanic languages (Sans, maud, mi-me, G. ixerpov, Lat.
me-tior, Lith. miera, O.S. mera ; cf. also Goth, viitan, G. ^ue'Si/xvos,
Lat. inodiu!<, etc.) for the idea of " measuring " and " measure," for
which primitive man undoubtedly employed, in the first place, the
bodily measui'cs afforded him by nature — finger and span, arm and
* These words have been last discusseil by Max Miiller, Biographies,
p. 76, ./f. He conceives the fuiulamental meaning of the A.S. byajnn to be
" to bend or break otl' a piece from a coil of gold " (O.N. baugr : Goth. hiiKjar,
"bend"). But as " bending " is not " breaking," and as in jiaying hy pieces
from a coil everything tnriis on the hitter, I cannot regard this cxidanation
as tenable. It still seems to me more })robable that Goth, bugjan, " buy "
{bauhta), belongs to biugcni {bung), "lieud," in the same sense as G. truXfw,
ifiTToXdo}, iruXioixoi does to ir4\a), " twist," as Lith. wcrczius, " have com-
mercial intercourse" : Lith. uxrtii =^La.t. vcrto, "turn ; " so that the develop-
ment of meaning was: "turn aside," "betake oneself," " hold intercourse,"
" hold commercial intercourse." See below.
350 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
arm's length ("ell," "fathom'"), foot and pace — then it must be
admitted that all the conditions necessary for a primitive system
of exchange ^vere forthcoming, even in the primeval period.
Our first concern here is the trade developed between members
of one and the same tribe ; bnt the question presents itself whether
regular conmiercial relations with the members of foreign tribes,
whether of Indo-European blood or not, are conceivable in the
primeval period.
Primitive man only regards those who belong to the same tribe
as himself as enjoying common rights with himself ; the stranger
is defenceless and has no rights ; indeed, as stranger and enemy
are identical in the views of the primeval period, it is a meritorioiis
work to kill the stranger and offer him to the gods, or make a
slave of him. This primitive morality can still be recognised
tolerably plainly in the Indo-Germanic languages.
A friend is one who belongs to the sib or the tribe : O.H.G.
v'ini, "friend," is connected with O.I. coihnex, "aflfinitas," ///te, "the
tribe;" Lat. ctvix, "the fellow-citzen " {cflvis. hosti^que, "friend and
enem}'- "), belongs to the Teutonic stock ^heiwa (Goth, heiva-frmija,
"house-master," A.S. htivmi, etc.), the fundamental meaning of
which evidently is "sib," "familia," and in Sans, reva has taken
the meaning of " dear, chai'ming, lovely, beloved ; " finally, G.
</)t'Ao9, "friend," is acutely, if boldlj-, com2)ared to Sans, sahha,
"assembly," Goth, sibja, "sib" (*cr^-tAos), by Baunack (Studien
avf dem Gehiete des Griechischen und der arischen Sprachen von J.
u. Th. Baunack, i. 25, Leipzig, 1886).
In the opposite way, a series of words which in milder times
have assumed the meaning of "guest," "guest-friend," undoubtedly
had in the primeval period a much more sinister and threatening-
sense. Thus, G. ^eVvos {*^ev-lPo-<s), " guest-friend," originally meant
"enemy," "foe," and is probably to be derived from Sans, ks/um,
l-^lianoti, " he injiires ; " the Slavo-Teutonic words, O.S. gostt, Goth.
gasts are identical with Lat. ho^tis, fostis, "stranger," "enemy;"
hos2)es {^hosti-pets), " protector of strangers," first comes to mean
" guest-friend." If we add to this, that even in ancient Teutonic
times the slayer of a stranger was not pursiied and banished, and
that the foreigner could claim no wer-geld (Grimm, RechUalter-
tiimer, p. 397, ff.); if we further consider how often in Indo-
Germanic languages the idea of " unhappy, abandoned," &c., is
expressed by terms derived from words for " homeless, sibless "
{cf, O.H.G. elifento, Eng. w7-etch = A.S. vrecca, "outlaw," Goth.
un.nhji.^, G. acjtprjrwp, tfec), it miist be admitted that the comparison,
which I have recommended before now, of I. cegi, aegid, " guest "
{*poig), with O.H.G. feigi, O.N. feigr, ttc, with the fundamental
meaning of " moribundus," deserves attention.
The view entertained by tlie primeval period that the stranger
had no rights, was not discarded as a principle until the teaching
of Christianity. It was, however, at an early age tempered by
the growing conviction that the stranger, as such, did indeed con-
tinue to be exlex, but that the divine ordinance {fas) made it a
GUEST-FRIENDSHIP. 35 1
duty — more and more reeognised as a liumaii law (k(s) — to protect
tlie life and property of the stranger, and receive him as a guest
at the sacred tire of the liearth. What then is the liistoric rehition
of these two ways of looking at things — persecuting strangers and
honouring strangers 1 What motives originated the ev$evLa of
liistoric times and the d^ena of primitive ages?
I have endeavoured to give the answer to this question in '"y-K-j oTS^'^
hook IIcoide/Ki/eschichte und }Varenkiinde, i. (1886), and to show I
that it is probably merely the necessities of trade that awoke the r,o>rt^'^^
conception of guest-friendship in the breast of man. In the ex- \. co^
change of presents, which is indissolubly bound np as a duty of
6€yu,ts with guest-friendship, I recognise a memory and a symbol of
the exchange of wares, which was the occasion and the real object
of guest-friendship connections.
Shortly after me, Rudolf von Ihering dealt with the same sub-
ject in the DeuUche A'undschau (1886-87, vol. iii. April-June ^
1887; Die Gai^ffreiuuhrJuift im Altni.wn, p. 357,/:, 420,/.). ^^
It is a source of pleasure to me to have come to practically the
same conclusion about this extremely important factor in ancient
life as this scholar. He, too, gives as a main result of his investiga-
tion (p. 412): "The sentiment which summoned the gucst-fi'iend-
ship of antiquity into being, and made it what it was, was not of
a moral but a practical nature, not the disinterested love of
humanity, but the selfish desire to make commercial intercourse
possible and safe ; without the safeguard of legal protection,
international traffic in times when the stranger had no rights,
would have been impossible." I further agree with Ihering that
the form and character of the guest-friendship of the classical
countries have been influenced by the example of the Phenicians —
wo may think of the crt'/x^oAov of the Greeks, tessera hosjntalis of
tlie ilomans, and the chlrs al'li/rhotli, "the sherd of guest-friend-
ship," of the Carthaginians. Only I cannot go so far with. Ihering
as to regard guest-friendship as absolutely or exclusively the
invention of Phenician trade. The institution of guest-friendship
is by no means confined to Europe : it is found all over the globe,
and in the most widely separated stages of culture (C. Haberland,
Die G'asffreundschaft cnif niederen Knlturst'iifen, p. 281, /"., Aus-
land, 1878), and is nearly always bound np with the exchange of
gifts between host and guest. It appears to me therefore quite
possible that the Phenicians, as soon as they arrived in Greece,
found the inhabitants at any rate })artially accessible to strangers
whom it was their interest to do trade with.*
In tlie primeval Indo-Gernianic period, at any rate, the stranger
was regarded as a man without rights and as an enemy. This is
to be inferred not merely from the linguistic evidence given above
* A totally ilifTercnt view, as wc saw on p. 142, above, is taken by Leist,
wlio in his new bonk, Altarisches Jus Gcntiinn, too, "refjards the jiecnhar and
characteristic injunctions (amongst tlie Indians, Greeks, and ItaUans) of
luunanity towards guests,' beggars, and suppUants as undoubtedly connected in
their history."
352 PREHISTOllIC ANTIQUITIES.
but from numerous traces, left in liistory, of the d^ei/i'a of our fore-
fathers, especially in the north {cf. on this, loc. cit., p. 6,/.).
It might, therefore, appear as though it were impossible to talk
of commercial intercourse between the Indo-Europeans and foreign
tribes in the primitive period. But this conclusion would be
erroneous. In addition to the ti'ade which guest-friendship made
])ossible, there are two yet more primitive forms of barter, which
we may designate as dumb barter, and the begiimings of fairs.
The former takes place when the one party deposits his wares at a
certain fixed place and then withdraws, whereupon the purchaser
appears, places his quid 2>ro quo by the side of the wares exposed,
and in his turn disappears as quickly as he can. If his equivalent
is taken, the business is done ; if not, the purchaser is bound to
add to the goods he offers (Kulischer, Der Handel (mf ^9ri»n7n'f?z.
Kultur&t'ufen Z. f. Volkerps. u. Sprachw., x. 378, Jf.). Fairs stand a
stage higher. Two tribes agree that at a certain time in a neutral
place war's alarms shall cease in the interests of trade. Weapons
are laid aside, and the dealers come together under the protection
of the fair's truce.
In spite, then, of the hatred of foreigners, and the fact that the
stranger had no rights, the Indo-Europeans even of the primeval
period may have carried on traffic with other tribes, though in a
13rimitive and xmcomfortable style, and in this way may have come
into possession of the products of foreign culture (such as copper,
honey, timber, &c.). This conclusion, that a certain amount of
traffic, for purposes of trade, took place in the primeval period,
finds support in philology. At any rate, it is remarkable that even
in the original language one and the same root ^^e?^ must have
been used to express both traffic and trade. The former notion
is expressed in the Sans, /x/r, 2^ip(''>'th "to transport," Zend ^x/r,
"bring across," G. Trepdta, "travel through," so, too, irp-^acro} (Od.,
ix. 491) = *7r/D7yK;;'co, Goth, faran, fargan ; the latter notion is ex-
pressed in Sans, pan, panate, "buy" (from par-n ; Brugmann,
Grundriss, i. 213), G. irepdoi, iripvyj^i, TmrpdcTKO}, I. renini (*2^e'r-7iim),
reccim, "sell," Lith. 2^i'f'-kth "buy." It is probable, therefore, that
the Indo-Germanic meaning of this root was " to go (away) on a
journey, for purposes of barter."
O.H.G. wantalon, "to hold intercourse": tcantalod, " vendit,"
amandehniga "negotium," G. dfieLfSecrOai : Lat. migrare, and others
{cf. above, p. 349, note), are similar but belong to a later age.
We have seen above in ch. v. that the Indo-Europeans before
their dispersion probably spent their lives on the steppes. The
interruptions to commerce therefore consisted at that time not in
the necessity of forcing a painful path through dense primeval
forests, but mainly in the necessity of providing safe transit at
fixed places across the rivers, by which we must conceive the
original country to be traversed.
It is, therefore, not perhaps a mere accident that the Indo-Ger-
manic word for ford : O.H.G. v%irt, Celt, -ritum, Zend pereUi,
"bridge" (Lat. 2'>orti<'^), G. Trdpo?, is derived from the root 2^er just
THE INDO-EUROPEANS AND THE SEA. 353
mentioned. A ford therefore was originally " the place of cross-
ing (mainly on business)." Again, the most widely spread Indo-
Germanic word for path, Sans, pdnthds, pdthas, Zend pathan, G.
TTttTos, Lat. pons, Osk. pont-tram, O.S. patl, Armen. hun, often
takes the meaning of ford or foot-bridge,* as in Armenian and
Italian : the direction of the roads on which the primeval people
travelled may have been mainly determined by the position of the
fords.
In this connection another question, of importance for the com-
mercial life of the Indo-Europeans, presents itself, i.e., whether
we are to regard the primeval people, before their dispersion, as
dwelling by the sea.
What is certain at any rate is that primevally related words for
the sea appear for the first time in the European languages.
Thus Lat. mare, Gall, more, I. muir, O.S. morje, Goth, mai'ei, Lith.
mares ; f and Lat. lacus, I. loch, 0. Sax. lagu : Greek abstains from
both equations. C/., further, G. aXs, Lat. sdlum, I. sal, lit.
"salt" {cf. above, p. 318,/.).
This suggests that the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion
were not in contact with the sea. The circumstance that we have
to picture Indo-European navigation to ourselves as in a very
rudimentary condition, agrees with this. There are only two
things, in the matter of navigation, which have identical names in
Europe and Asia : they are, rowing (Sans, aritras, aritram, G.
iperr]^, eper/Ao?, TpLT^prj^, Lith. Ir-ti, ir-klas, I. rdm, Lat. remus,
triremis, ratis, O.H.G. ruodar, &c.), and that which was rowed, the
boat (Sans, ndu, 0. Pers. ndvi, Zend dp6 ndvaydo, " navigable
rivers," vaSs, Lat. navis, O.I. noi, Armen. nav, M.H.G. naue, O.N.
'naust, "moorings "). I have endeavoured to show above on p. 278,
that the later stock of words in the primitive period designated
nothing more than a tree-trunk hollowed out, a so-called "dug-out."
When, however, we call to mind the extent to which the termi-
nology of wagon-building — an art near akin to that of boat-making
— was developed even in the primeval period (p. 339), we cannot
but ascribe a certain weight to the silence of philology in this
instance. It is in the European languages that a uniform
designation is to be found first for a new portion of the ship,
the mast: O.H.G. mast, O.N. mastr = Lat. vidlus (*mazdo). For
the rest, here too there is great divergence in the names for
such things as sail, yard, anchor, helm, keel. As a rule fishing
appears in close conjunction with the beginnings of navigation,
indeed often is the starting-point of it. It must, therefore, be
once more insisted upon that in the vocabulary of the original
Indo-European language there is neither a collective term for the
general notion of fish, nor an individual name for any particular
* As the stock of words mentioned belongs to root pent, "to go" (O.H.G.
fendo, "pedestrian"), then "to find" (Goth. Ji)i]>a7i, I. itaim), so I. dth,
'.'ford," is to be connected with Sans, at, dt-ati {d : a), "go."
t The inchisionof Sans, driia, amavd, "wave, flood " (Bury, £. B., vii. 341),
is very unsafe.
Z
354 • PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES,
kind offish * {cf. above, pp. 118,/., 317). Nor can primitive names
for the directions of the wind, which would need to be carefully
distinguished for purposes of navigation, be discovered, except the
uncertain Lat. caunis = \j\t\\. sziaurps, O.S. severu, "north wind."
To this must be added the fact which I have set forth in detail in
Handelsgeschichte unci Warenkunde, i. 43, ff., that linguistic evidence
shows the higher development of navigation to have taken place
in historic times amongst the European members of the Indo-
Germanic family, and to have originated in two parts of oar
quarter of the globe, where the geographical conditions were such
as of themselves to foster the evolution of shipping. The two
places are — first, the east coast of the Balkan Peninsula and the
island world of the Mgeaxi Sea, occupied by the Greeks ; second,
the sea-board of the Baltic, the ancient home of the Teutonic
tribes. As the Greeks taught the south of Europe their nautical
terminology, so in the north the Teutonic world gave many
hints in this subject to the Romance peoples on the one hand,
and on the other to the Finnish, Lithuanian, and Slavonic
tribes ; which, again, in another direction betray the influence of
the Grseco-Byzantine marine, and thus in a way complete the
circle.
* Here, again, it is only when we come to European that we find : Lat. piscis,
I. iasc, Goth, jisks, G. Ix^vs = Lith. zuuHs. But in Indo-lranian we have
, Sans, matsy a ^Z^ndi masya; cf. also Goth. na^i = Lat. nassa, "net."
CHAPTER XL
THE CULTURE OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS AND THE PREHISTORIC MONU-
MENTS OF EUROPE, ESPECIALLY THE SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS.
General Character of tlie Swiss Lake-Dwelliucrs — Oldest Stations — Metals and
Weapons — Cattle-Breeding, Domestic Animals — Agriculture — Food —
Clothing — Dwellings — ■ Pottery — Wagon-Building and Ship-Building —
Ethnological Conclusions.
Having in the previous chapters sketched the most salient
features of the material civilisation of the Indo-Europeans, we wish,
before passing to their moral cultiu-e as disclosed in the family,
state, and religion, to make a brief pause, in order to compare the
the results which we have thus far obtained from philology and
history with the stage of human culture brought to light in our
own quarter of the globe by the archaeologist's pick and shovel.
For the purposes of such a comparison, however, there can be no
doubt the most extensive material, comprising as it does all phases
of an original civilisation, is offered, more than by any other
prehistoric monuments in Europe, by those dwellings which are
called "pile-dwellings" from their mode of structure or "lake-
dwellings," and which have been discovered in larger and lai'ger
numbers in East and West Switzerland (though not confined to
this country) since the year 1853, when attention was first
attracted to them owing to the lowness of the water in the lakes.
In the opinion of those best acquainted with the lake-dwellings
there is no reason to imagine that new and unlooked for discoveries
will contradict the results of the investigations already made and
compel us to make any essential corrections in the picture we ai"e
now warranted in forming of these ancient settlements. We may,
therefore, conclude that we have this little world of ancient culture
in all material points now before us.
Nevertheless for our purpose difficulties are forthcoming fi-om
another quarter. The number of the Swiss lake-dwellings
steadily increased for centuries, and the presence of different
stages of culture in them has never been disputed ; but, whereas, at
one time it was explained as the result of frequent changes of
population, now the tendency is to regard it as the outcome of
the development in successive ages of one and the same people's
356 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
civilisation. The difterences in the various stages of culture
manifest themselves in various ways, but most clearly in the
metals employed by the lake-dwellers. There are settlements in
which the inhabitants are entirely in the pre-metallic age ; some
in which pure copper appears, others in which bronze makes its
appearance — and there are evident indications that both metals
were worked on the spot — and finalh' there are not wanting settle-
ments which betray the existence of a developed manufacture of
iron.
Under these circumstances it is clear that for our object we
must start from those settlements which show themselves alike by
the artificial objects found in them, and by the plant and animal re-
mains they contain to be the oldest representatives of the civilisation
deposited in the lake-dwellings. Thus treated the formidable
number of lake-dwellings melts away considerably; and there are
only left to represent the class described : the lake-dwellings in
Lake Moosseedorf, the pile-structure at Wangen on the Bodensee,
and the fascine structures at Wauwyl, to which may then be
added, as perhaps of more recent date, the pile-structure in
Pfiiffikon Lake at Robenhausen and the settlement of Niederwyl.
It is then the state of culture shown by these remains that will
form the basis of our investigations. Their scientific description
is to be found in the reports on the lake-dwellings [Mitteilungen
der antiguarischen GeseUsckqft in Zurich, i.-vii.) by F, Keller,
the original discoverer of the lake-dwellings and the careful
compiler of the finds. He found a most fortunate and zealous
co-operator, especially for the west of Switzerland, in V. Gross
{Les Protohelvetes ou les premiers colons sur les hords des lacs de
Bienne et JVeuchatel, Berlin, 1883). For judging the animal
remains of the lake-dwellings, Riitimeyer's book, Die Fauna in
den Pfahlbauten der Schweiz, Ziirich, 1865, is of most importance,
for the plant remains Heer's treatise. Die Pjianzen der Pfahlbauten,
Zurich, 1861. The best course for us to follow in our account
will be that observed by us when describing the culture of the
Indo-Europeans.
A. Metals and Weapons (cf. part iii. ch. x.).
We came to the conclusion on p. 239 that the primeval Indo-
European period was still practically in the Stone Age, and that
the only metal known was pure copper. Whether, and how far,
this metal was employed in the production of isolated weapons
(swords) and implements as well as ornaments, was a question to
which philology and history seemed scarcely able to give a decisive
answer.
Similarly, in the three first-mentioned lake-dwellings, not a
trace of any metal whatever is to be found. On the other hand,
stone and bone implements were yielded by the lake-dwelling of
Wauwyl to the number of about 500, of Moosseedorf more than
3300, and of Wangen not less than 5800 (Lubbock, Prehistoric
METALS AND WEAPONS. 357
Times, p. 194). Now, whereas previously the general opinion was
that the Stone Age thus brought before us was immediatuly suc-
ceeded by the use of bronze instruments, partly manufactured in
loco, partly imported froni abroad, more recent finds, as we must
repeat, have shown more and more clearly that the use of unmixed,
raw copper intervened between that of stone and that of bronze.
Thus in Ilobenhausen, which otherwise belongs to the Stone Age,
a copper axe and melting-pot have been found ; and articles of
copper such as axes, daggers, fish-hooks, arrow-heads, hammers,
ttc, have been found not only in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland,
but also of Upper and Lower Austria, as also in Bohemia, Moravia,
Hungary (for which a copper period had been previously assumed),
in North (Jermany, on the Khine, ifec, in such numbers that M,
Much, in his already mentioned book. Die Kupferzeit in Europa
und ihr Ver/uiltniss zur Kulttir der Indo-Germanen, AVien, 1886,
altogether denies the existence of a purely neolithic Stone Age in
Europe (p. 183), and considers that copper was used, not only for
ornaments but also for weapons and tools, right through the so-
called recent Stone Age, by the side of stone and bone implements
(p 181).
I am not in a position to pronounce an opinion as an expert on
the truth of this view. I can only point out that, should it be
confirmed, this is not inconsistent with what has been discovered
about the primeval Indo-Germanic period ; for in any case the'
number of copper finds made within the limits of the Stone Age
are relatively so small, that they cannot materially affect its sub-
stantial character as a non-metallic age.
In the case of weapons, to which we now proceed, we found that
the primeval Indo-Germanic period was absolutely destitute of
weapons of defence (except perhaps for shields of wood or leather),
but possessed on the other hand, in the way of offensive weapons,
bows and arrows, clubs, hammers, axes, sling-stones, lances, and a
short fighting knife.
The state of things in the most ancient lake-dwellings is
exactly analogous. Of defensive armour, such as helmet and
corselet, there is naturally not a trace ; nor have I ever come
across the mention of a shield, but this, in view of the perishability
of wood, may be accidental. As for offensive weapons, Wauwyl
alone yielded 43 stone axes, mostly of serpentine, 36 small flint
arrow-heads, 200 flint flakes (for lance-heads or fighting knives),
20 unwrought stones used as hammers, 85 sling-stones (Lubbock,
Joe. cit., p. 196; cf. also p. 13). In the same way Moosseedorf
offers numerous knives, saws, lances, and arrow-heads of flint
(Report ii. 119). !Many specimens of oak clubs have been found
in Wangen (Report ii. 146), Robenhausen (Report v. 169), Meilen
(Report i. 78). Two bows of yew, 5 and 3i inches long, were dis-
covered at Robenhausen (Report v. 169). On the other hand, I
have only found lance-shafts of oak, from 6 to 8 inches long, men-
tioned in Nidau (Bronze Age); Report ii. 146.
We have yet to mention a much-discussed fact in connection
358 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
with the lake-dwellings. Amongst the articles of stone found, a
not insignificant number of objects have long occupied the atten-
tion of geologists and historians of culture alike. They are stone
wedges, stone axes, and one knife-blade, which are made, not of
stones native to Switzerland or neighbouring countries, but of
nephrite, jade, and chloromelanite, minerals closely related to each
other, but belonging, in the opinion of numerous geologists, to
formations which never occur in Europe, and are principally found
in Asia. Granted that this opinion is correct, these remarkable
finds admitted of being explained in one of two ways. Either
they were regarded as evidence of a primeval and far-reaching
trade between the lake-dwellings and the eastern sources of neph-
rite, for which a parallel, though scarcely an adequate one, was
found in the circumstance that flints worked in Switzerland
frequently came fi-om fairly distant qiiarters (the south and centre
of France). Or the articles of nephrite were considered to have
accompanied some tribe of man that had migrated from the interior
of Asia to Europe. The latter view was upheld particularly by
H. Fischer, who has devoted to it an extensive volume (JVephrit und
Jadeit nach ihren miner alogischen Eigenschaften soivie nach Hirer
tirgeschichtlichen und Ethnographischen Bedeutung., 2 Aufl., Stutt-
gart, 1880). Max Muller takes the same standpoint in his
Biographies of Woi^ds (Appendix ii., "The Original Home of Jade ").
Only, in recent times, totally different conclusions have been
reached, mainly owing to the researches of A. B. Meier {Die
Jadeit und Nephritohjekte aus Asien, Oceanien, und Afrika, 1883).
It is becoming more and more clear that articles made of nephrite
are distributed over nearly the whole earth, that the raw material
occurs both in Europe (in the " Leipziger SandgTube " a piece of
38 ko. was found) and in America, and that Asiatic nephrite never
completely agi-ees in structure with the European. In fine the
polytropic origin of the minerals in question has inci'eased in
probability.* Here, again, the philologist is not permitted a
definitive opinion : he can only point out that, in the present stage
of the question, the presence of nephrite in the lake-dwellings
should not be employed to prove ethnological conclusions, of any
kind, as Max Milller has endeavoured to use it most recently.
B. Cattle-Breedixg, Domestic Animals {cf. above, ch. iii.).
The foundation of Indo-Germanic economy was cattle-breeding.
The most ancient group of domestic animals consists of the cow,
the sheep, the goat, and the dog. The pig and the horse were also
known ; but it is probable that the domestication of the pig, in
which the Aryans originally took no part, did not take place until
after the separation of the Indo-Europeans, and after the time when
the European peoples, still closely connected together, had made
some advance in the way of agriculture and permanent settlements.
* A short resume of the nephrite question is given by A. Rauber, Urge-
schichte des Menschen, i. 34, ff. (18S4).
CATTLE-BREEDING — AGRICULTURE. 3 59
As regards the horse, the most probable thing is that herds were
bred in a half-wild condition in folds. The ass, mule, cat, and all
kinds of poultry were still wanting.
The state of things we encounter in the lake-dwellings in this
respect is surprisingly similar. Here, too, in the oldest times the
reliable contingent of domestic animals consisted of the cow, the
sheep, the goat, and the dog. Riitimeyer {loc. cit., p. 119, _/".),
recognises two varieties of the wild-pig, the ordinary wild-boar,
and what he calls " the marsh variety." No traces of the domestic
pig were to be found in Wangen and Moosseedorf ; the first signs
of the domestication of the pig — and that the marsh-pig — manifest
themselves in later lake-dwellings in ever-growing quantities, in
Wauwyl and Robenhausen. Riitimeyer believes that from these
facts he may draw the conclusion " that in the oldest lake-dwell-
ings the pig as a domestic animal is not forthcoming, but that in
the later periods of the Stone Age it does appear, and in ever-
increasing numbers."
Remains of the horse, of our modern domesticated variety, have
been detected beyond a doubt in the oldest lake-dwellings ; the
only thing remarkable is the frequency of other domesticated
creatures' bones compared with the uncommon scarceness of this
animal's. The significance of this fact is uncertain (c/. Riitimeyer,
ioc. cit., p. 123). In any case it is clear that the horse must have
taken a different position in the economic life of the lake-dwellers
from that of the cow, sheep, and goat.
The ass (except for one perfectly isolated find ; Report vii. 56),
the mule, the domestic cat * (Riitimeyer recognises the wild-cat,
loc. cit, p. 23), and poultry certainly were not amongst the
animals bred by the most ancient lake-dwellers. Cf. the table on
pp. 360, 361.
C. Agriculture (above, eh. v.).
For the oldest epoch of the primitive Indo-European period
no indications, or extremely few, can be foiind to show that
agriculture was followed at the same time as pastoral life. On
the other hand it is indubitable that the European peoples were
still in close contact with each other at a time when important
advances had been made by them in the matter of agricultiu'c.
There is some probability that they cultivated wheat, barley,
and millet ; flax, but not hemp ; in the way of leguminous plants,
perhaps peas and beans ; of liliaceae perhaps the onion ; but the
last two may be regarded as by no means certain. The cultiva-
tion of fruit-trees was unknown to the primeval period.
So, too, the oldest lake-dwellers tilled the soil to a certain
extent. The species of grain that have been found are, however,
taken to imply that they were grown in forest soil that had
not long been cleared, and was still poor in the Bronze Age
* The mouse — the field-mouse, not our house-mouse — has been detected
(Kiitiiueyer, Fauna, p. 24).
36o
1
PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Domesticated Animals in the most Ancient Perioli
Periods inferred from Languages.
Historii
The Finns on
reaching the
Baltic.
The Turko-
Tatars.
The Original
Semites.
The Primitive
Indo-Euro-
peans.
The Sumerians.
Cattle.
Goat.
Sheep.
Dog.
Pig.
Horse.
Ass.
Mule.
Camel.
Cat.
Fowl.
Goose.
Duck.
Dove.
?e.xpresses doubt
as to the domes-
tication of the
animal in ques-
tion.
known.
Finn, penikka,
Esth. peni, &c.
known.
C/.Ahlqvist,Die
Kulturworter in
den westfinni-
schen Sprachen,
Kap. i.
Alt. oj, Vig.
at, &c.
Turk, kojun,
(5ag. koj, &c.
it, et, at.
at.
esek, exik, esik.
Turk. katirC^).
Vig. tobe, Cag.
tiive, &c.
?
•>
•>
Cf. H. VAmb^ry,
Die Primitive
Kultur des tur-
ko-tatar. Volkes,
p. 188,/. Very
unsafe, see p.
46 above.
bakaru, tauru.
inzu.
kabsu, rahilu.
kalbu.
parasu, siisu{?).
himdru, atdnu.
gamalv.
Cf. A. V. Kremer,
Se7n. Eultiirent-
lehnungen, Ausl.,
1875, p 1, /.;
F. Horamel, Die
Namen d. Sduge-
tisre b. d. Siid-
semiten.
Indo-G.
Indo-G.
Indo-G.
Indo-G.
European.
Indo-G.
Cf. above, ch. iii.
gild.
uz.
udu.
likku.
anshxi.
)
tu.
Cf. F. Hommel
Die vorsem. Ktil-
turen, p. 400, /.
In the way of
domestic birds,
Hommel men-
tions the raven
and swallow as
well as the dove.
(Moringen) ; Eeport vii. 65. In the oldest times, three kinds of
wheat, two of barley and of millet, were cultivated. Rye and oats
were entirely unknown, and do not occur until the later dwellings
of the Bronze Age, e.g., in Moringen (Report vii. 63). Whilst hemp
was entirely unknown (Christ in Riitimeyer's Fauna der Pfahl-
hauten, p. 226 ; Report vii. 65), flax was grown in the oldest times.
Heer's view that the species of flax cultivated was the linum
angustifolhtm, and therefore implies importation of flax-seeds from
the coasts of the Mediterranean, is opposed to that of the botanist
Christ [loc. cit., p. 226), who on the contrary regards the flax of
the Swiss lake-dwellings as a variety indigenous to Central
Europe {cf. also W. Helbig^ Die Italiker in der Poehne, p. 67).
Of other field and garden fruits, the pea alone occurs in the Stone
Age (Moosseedorf) ; beans, lentils, and the garden-poppy appear
in the Bronze Age (Report vii. 63, 64). The grains found are
exclusively summer crops (Report vii. 65). I have never found the
cultivation of the rape or onion mentioned. The vine is wanting:
in its place we have the so-called " virgin's bower " (clematis
vitalba), which was used for basket-work.
DOMESTICATED ANIMALS.
361
OF THE IXDO-EUROPEANS AND
Neighbouring Peoples.
Swiss Lake Dwellers.
1
Epochs.
Pile-Dwellers
of the Plain of
the Po.
Stone Age.
Bronze
Age.
Nidau.
First appear- ^
auce in Europe 1
of non-Indo-
European 1
domesticated ,
animals.
Indians of
the Kig-
veda.
Iranians
of the
Avesta.
Greeks of
Homer.
Wauwyl.
Moossee-
dorf.
gd, va<;S,
gdo.
jSovs.
very common. very
very
very
dhenu. Ac.
common.
common.
common.
aj(L
bilza.
all
known. known.
known.
common.
dvi, I'trd.
inaAsha.
ots.
less known, j occa-
\ sional.
known.
common.
{■van.
upd.
KVIOV.
two species.
known.
known.
known.
<7V?.
common.
doubtful.
...
common.
Prehistoric.
iu:va.
axpa.
ITTTTOS.
two species.
known.
doubtful.
common.
ijanlahhd,
khaiu.
ovos (?).
very doubtful.
After Homer
laxabha.
ushtra.
r)ti.Covoi.
and Hesiod.
Pre-Homeric.
About 450 A.D.
in Italy.
trkauaku.
parodars.
XV"-
Time of Theog-
nis 2d half of
bth century).
?
?
Beginning
of 5th century
amongst the
Greeks.
Cf. H Zimmer,
Cf.
Cf. W. Helbig,
Cf. Sir John Lubbock, Pre-
Cf. V. Hehn
Altind.Leben,
W. Geiger,
Die Italiker in
hi-xtoric Times, p. 202); also
KuUurpflanzen
p. 221, uahtra
Oitiran.
d.Poebne,p. 14.
Rutinieyer, Die Fauna der
wild Ilattstiere,
is a butfalo-
Knltur,
The differences
Pfahlbaiiten.
3 Auflage.
bull. "Mule"
p. 343,/.
are determined
ai'vatard does
by the quantity
not yet ap-
of the bone re-
pear in the
mains of the
Uigveda (V).
various species
found.
" The only variety of fruit-tree known, the wild-apple, teaches
us that the cultivation of fruit-trees was absolutely unknown "
(Report vii. 65). Implements clearly designed for agricultural
purposes have not yet been brought to light. The archaeologists
{cf., e.g., Report iii. 112), therefore, conjecture that bent tree
branches still filled the place of the plough. Cf. what has been
said above, p. 287, about the Indo-European plough.
D. Food (above, ch. vii.).
The food, at any rate, of the European members of the Indo-
Germanic family was — in accordance with the two foundations of
their domestic economy, cattle-breeding and agriculture — a com-
bination of animal and vegetable diet. They enjoyed the flesh of
their herds, and also perhaps, in a secondary degree, of beasts of
chase. The ai't of roasting on spits was known. Common names
exist for greasy broth, and for the marrow of bones, which is
still a dainty with Homer. Fish seems to have been despised
as food.
362 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
In the way of wild vegetable food the ancient Germans used
the fruit of uncultivated varieties of trees. There is evidence of
the use of acorns as food amongst the Greeks.
As agriculture advanced, cereals more and more came to be
used as the support of life. The art of pounding the grain and
grinding it with a hand-mill was known. Roasting and baking
had been invented ; but how far they had been developed is
doubtful.
In this department of culture also the picture presented by the
oldest lake-dwellings coincides with perfect accuracy, with one
remarkable exception soon to be mentioned. Here, too, the first
place is taken by the flesh of animals of the chase and of domesti-
cated animals (here in this order). " A constant characteristic of
his (the lake-dweller's) cuisine is the fact that all bones containing
marrow or other edible contents are greedily despoiled even of this
scanty content" (Riitimeyer, Reports iii. vii., note 1). To meat — as
to the prepai'ation of which I have foand no information — fish must
be added as an undoubted element of the lake-dwellers' diet ; and
herein for the first time we come across a point of no small
importance, which, according to our view, has nothing to correspond
with it in the primeval history of the Indo-Europeans. In the way
of vegetables, carbonised wild-apples (and also pears) have been
found in some quantity in the Swiss lake-dwellings. They were
cut in pieces and apparently stored for winter consumption
(Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 217). Acorns cut in two, pared,
and burned were found in Moringen (Report iii. 63). In the
pile-dwellings of the Po, also, acorns were found in large quantities
stored in earthern vessels ; so that it is probable " that they were
intended not as mast for swine but as food for human beings "
(Helbig, loc. cit., p. 17).
Finally, the information as to the use of cereals, which were
ground by stone corn-crushers, is put together by Lubbock (loc.
cit., p. 216) as follows : " Still more unexpected was the discovery
of bread, or rather cakes ; for their texture is so solid that leaven
appears not to have been used. The cakes were round and flat,
from 1 to 15 lines in thickness, and had a diameter of from 4 to
5 inches (according to Heer the crushed mass was made into a
paste and baked between two stones). In other cases the grains
seem to have been roasted, coarsely ground between two stones,
and then to have been either stored in gi-eat earthern vessels or
slightly moistened and eaten." Cf. also Heer, Bemerkungen iiher
die Landwirtschaft der Ureinwohner unseres Landes, Report iii.
111,/.
E. Clothing {cf. above, ch. viii.).
The Indo-Europeans were no longer limited as regards clothing
to the hides of animals, however much these may have survived
in the costume of historic times. The arts of plaiting, spinning,
and weaving were known, though to what extent is doubtful.
Still, a term for spindle may have existed in the original language ;
CLOTHING. 363
and philology indicates that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted
with a primitive weaving apparatxis. Their materials were sheep's
wool and flax, which along with other cultivated plants was known
to the European members of the Indo-Germanic family.
In form the original dress was extremely primitive. It consisted
probably of nothing more than a piece of woollen or linen stuff
shaped like a hide : it was fastened at the shoulder with a thorn,
and may have been confined by a girdle at the waist.
Sewing was known.* Shoes were in use. Ornaments were
worn.
Turning to the culture of the lake-dwellers we find that here
too the arts of winding, plaiting, spinning, and weaving had been
developed to a certain extent. The practice of the first two arts
is shown by numerous strings and cords manufactured by twisting
together thin twigs, rushes, reeds, straw, &c. Mats made out of
strips of bark have also been found. The most important thing,
however, in the industries of the lake-dwellers was the flax they
grew, which was found not yet made up in Wangen and Roben-
hauseu. That the art of twisting it together into a thread was
understood is rendered probable by the discovery of quantities of
clay in spindle whorls + on the one hand, and is directly proved on
the other by the bundles of yarn and thread discovered in Roben-
hausen. These constituted the material for the manufacture of
the by no means infrequent pieces of linen, which again were
found in Robenhausen. Some of these showed no advance on
basket-work. " They consist," so runs the description of one of
them, " of thin cords of flax (made two strands twisted together)
lying parallel together (the warp). Across and through these
cords similar coi'ds of flax are twisted, at a distance half an inch
from each other (the woof). The whole makes not indeed a thick
and stiff", but for all that a very tough piece of basket-work."
Other pieces of stuff again betray greater skill, and cannot have
been produced, in the opinion of experts, without some kind of
simple weaving apparatus, such as the Zurich riband manufacturer
Paur has constructed by way of experiment. Cf. on the whole
question the appendix, Flachsindustrie cmf den Pfahlbauten, Report
iv. U,/.
Woollen cloth has not as yet been found in the lake-dwellings,
although the sheep is one of the animals domesticated by the most
ancient lake-dwellers (Riitimeyer, Fauna, p. 127, note) — a second
instance of discrepancy with the hypothetical culture of the Indo-
Europeans. J The rags that have been discovered teach us nothing
* Sans, siv, G. Kaaavw, Lat. sua, Goth, sinja, O.S. sija, Lith. sUncii.
t In some the spindles were still sticking (V. Gross, Les Protohdvitc,^, p. 101).
+ Nevertheless, Herr M. Much writes to me on this subject: "Wool is a
material which only survives for any length of time under peculiar circum-
stances: as a rule it perishes, and that very speedily. If its absence in the
finds from the burying-fields of Hallstadt were to be made a criterion of the
weaving of the time, there would be but very scanty indications of anything of
the kind. As it is, however, a not inconsiderable quantity of woollen stuff was •
found in ' the Old Man ' of the Hallstadt salt-mine. Its preservation is due to
364 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
of course as to the shape of the dress. Keller only remarks {loc.
cit., p. 20) : " That close examination of the woven articles had
revealed to him only one single instance of a hem made by the
aid of a needle, and never a seam or the least indication that the
stuff had been cut out, and this suggests the conjecture that these
fabrics were rather employed as wraps generally than intended to
fit separate parts of the body."
The nature of the leather remains, which only permit us to
conclude with certainty that they were artificially prepared, allows
of no conjecture as to their original purpose (Report iv. 23).
F. Dwellings (c/. above, ch. ix.).
During the wanderings of the Indo-Europeans the wagon was at
once carriage and house to them ; on the other hand, during their
settlements, which came to be longer and longer the more they
turned from pastoral to agricultural life, two kinds of habitation
can be traced back to primitive times — the hut and the sub-
teiTanean dwelling dug in the earth. In connection with the
former there can be no doubt that we must keep our minds clear
of any idea of stone buildings, and conceive the materials as simply
basket- w^ork, wood, and loam. As to the form of the Indo-European
hut, it seems to have originally been circular, although possibly
even in the primeval period rectangular buildings of the block-
house kind were not excluded. The entrance to these habitations
was by a dooi\ Windows did not exist.
The attempt to draw comparisons from the lake-dwellings here
encounters almost insuperable difficulties, for the simple fact that
the fire, w^hich has destroyed most of the lake-dwellings, or the
other elements which have contributed to their destruction, have
left nothing but the piles on which the huts stood. In Keport ii.
p. 135, F. Keller gives the following conjectural description of the
lake-dwellers' huts : " Thus much is certain, that the walls were
perpendicular poles with withes woven in and out between them ;
and that to keep out the wind and the rain a layer of clay, 2 or
3 inches thick, was spread over this basket-work both inside
and out. That the ground-plan of mau}^ huts was circular is
beyond all doubt on the floor in the interior of the hut,
also, clay was spread, forming a sort of flooring and a good founda-
tion below. In the middle of the hut w^as a sort of hearth made
of rough slabs of sandstone. The roof, which in the circular huts
was conical, consisted doubtless of bark, straw, and rushes, remains
of which have been found in the mud in several places." Only,
more recent investigations seem to have shaken the assumption
tlie fact that it was saturated with salt and completely imbedded in the clay-
salt, so mnch so that these woollen fragments look quite modern and have even
retained their colour to a certain extent. All these stuffs are of sheep's wool.
In the graves they had utterly disappeared, although the position of the
brooches on the skeletons points to the inference that the corpses were buried
in their clothes. Comparison with the marks left on the rust of iron objects
then showed that their clothes had consisted of exactly the same woollen stuff
as came to light in the choked up shafts and galleries of the Old Man."
DWELLINGS. 365
that the hike-dwellings were circular ; and the eighth Report, p.
6, pronounces in favour of a rectilinear airangement of the walls
as necessitated by the construction of the foundations.
Under these circumstances we may be permitted to leave the
lake-dwellings for a moment and turn our eyes to a series of other
monuments which are of undoubted importance for the history of
the European house. I mean the so-called " house-urns " which
have been discovered in Italy, Germany,* and Denmark, and
which in spite of many differences of detail yet resemble each other
in the important points that, " as a receptacle for the remains
gathered from the funeral pyre, an earthern vessel of the shape of
a house was employed, and that this house always possessed a large
practicable door which could be closed from without by means of
a cross-bar " (Virchow, Uehei' der Zeithestimmimg der italischen und
deutschen Hausurnen, Sitzunc/sherichte d. Akad. d. W. zu Berlin,
p. 1008, 1883).
As for their appearance, Helbig {Die Italiker in der Poehne, p.
50) describes the Latin " house-unis " of the necropolis of Alba
Longa as follows : " The urns represent roundish huts, the walls of
which we must imagine to be composed of loam, twigs, or other
perishable material. The roof seems to have consisted of layers of
straw or reeds, and to have been held together by ribs, which in
the real house obviously were made of wood. The compluvium
characteristic of the later Italian house is wanting. To let light
in and smoke out, the doorway seems to have served instead — and
also a small triangular sort of dormer-window, which is shown by
some of these bui-ial-unis in the front slope of the roof, by others
in the back."
As regards the German urns also, both those shaped like a bee-
hive or an oven, and the real house-urns, Lisch, who first
examined these antiquities scientifically {Jahrb. d. Vereins f. Meck-
lenburg. Geschichte, xxi. 249), comes to the conclusion that the
circular was the original form of these urns. " A glance over
these urns suffices to make one involuntarily see that in their
shapes we have the evolution of the ancient dwelling-house traced
before us. The oldest form of house, undoubtedly, is given by the
urns from Burg-Chemnitz and Rcinne, which have the door in the
roof, as is the case frequently in the dwellings of primitive peoples
for the purposes of protection against wild beasts ; t the occupant
entered by means of a ladder which he pulled up after him, and
thus had a defence the more in the steep, smooth walls. Those
round houses which have the door in the wall,;}: like the urns of
* The last in the spring of 1887 at Unseburg. Cf. Magdeburg ische Zcitung
(Beiblatt) of 7th January 1889.
t Perhaps it is more probable that the portion of the house below the door
in the roof is to be supposed to be dug in the earth. Cf. below on the
Mardell.
+ The closest resemblance to this type (Lisch, p. 247) is afforded by the
barbarians' houses on the triumphal column of Marcus Aurelius, except that
their doors — there are absolutely no windows here either — are longer and
narrower than in the urns.
366 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES;
Kiekiudemark aud Klus, are certainly younger. The youngest is
represented by the urns from Aschersleben : this house was rect
angular, with a tall, steep roof of straw, a striking prefiguration of
small country cottages of the present day." Various hypotheses
have been put forward to bring the Italian and German house-
urns into direct connection with each other : borrowing from Italy,
and on the other hand a Teutonic origin for the Italian antiquities,
have both been suggested. However, I consider Lisch's view that
these house-urns are the independent creation of the two peoples,
and that they are an expression of the type of European hut
. inherited from primeval times as still the most probable.
y' To return to the lake-dwellings, the custom of using piles for
the foundations of huts is, as is well known, by no means'" to be
considered as confined to these prehistoric structures. I will not
reiterate the often-discussed analogies to this kind of building,
which are to be found amongst the most widely separate peoples
{cf., e.g., Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 181, /.). I will only
intimate that R. Henning in his above-mentioned book, Das
deutsche Haus, shows that pile foundations were specially ffer
quent in Frankish and Upper German territory, " These lofty,-
wooden structures on which the houses rest, afford an interesting
parallel to the lake-dwellings of Moore -and the Swiss lakes"
-==■ Finally, there is a steadily growing tendency to identify the,
\ subterranean dwellings, which we have already mentioned, and
^ the occurrence of which amongst Indo-European peoples is sup:
ported by abundant literary evidence, with certain monuments in
Europe, especially with the so-called "funnel-pits" or "mardelle."
Their character as dwelling-pl^diigs has been most recently discussed
by F. S. Hartmann {Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, xiii. 237, jf., 1881),
with especial reference to southern Bavaria. According to Hart-
mann, as a rule they exhibit a circular form, are from 2 to 4
metres deep, and have a radius of 11 to 15 metres.' They seldom
run into a funnel-shape : they are generally basin-like excavations,
as a rule being merely the foundations of the d\\*ellings, while above
them rose the huts, which were naturally round, but as to the con-
struction of which nothing more; is known. A very interesting find
of this description, as Herr M. Much informs me, has been made in
the prehistoric settlement in the so-called Turh^ HedoubtSit Lengyel,
not far from Fiinfkirchen in Hungary. Here, subterranean dwel-
lings are dug in the solid earth. " They are circular, not much
higher than a man can st»hd in; the entran9e was through a
small opening, probably by mearis of a perpendicular climbing
pole. In the floors of the excavations, remains of pottery, we'avers'
weights, and the traces of cattle were founds
" Funnel-pits " of this kind have been discovered not only in
Germany, France, and England, but also in Switzerland (Hart-
mann, loc. cit., p. 242), and as it may be regarded as at least very
probable that when the Swiss lakes were populated by lake-
dwellers, the dry land was inhabited at the same time, we may
POTTERY, WAGONS, AND BOATS. 367
very well picture to ourselves the pile-dwellings in the lakes and T
the funnel-pits on the land as existing together. , "^^^ ^ ,
G. Pottery, Wagon-Building, and Boat-Building.
That the potter's art was practised, not without the aid of the
potter's wheel indeed, in the most ancient lake-dwellings is known.
It must also be supposed to have been known to the oldest culture
of the Indo-Europeans. True, we have but fragments of a primi-
tive verb expressing the action of the potter (Goth, deigan, " to
make of clay " = Lat. /$rM/i<s, " "pottQv" fingere, technical term for
the potter's work: Sans, dih, "rub over, bedaub, besmear"); but
the Indo-Europeans must have been acquainted with it, as is
shown by a not inconsiderable number of common names for
vessels. The most important are : Sans, caril, O.N. Jiverr, I. core,
"kettle," Sans, kumhhd, "pot" = G. KvfA./So';, Sans, gola, "ball-
shaped water-jug " = G. yai;Ao9, "milk-pail," Zend taahta, Lat. tenia,
Lat. vas = Goth, has, kasja, " potter," O.N. bida, Lat. fidelia, G.
TTt^os {B. B., iii. 97), I. cilornn {^kelpurno), Lat. calpar, G. KoXirq,
koXttl's (Stokes, K. Z., xxx. 558). Again, the potter's art amongst all
Indo-Europeans stretches back, enveloped in myth and story, to the
remotest times ; above all, in matters of ritual, the exclusive employ-
ment of earthern vessels was long retained both in Greece and Italy.
As for wagon-building, which had been carried to a certain
degree of perfection in the primeval Indo-European period, nothing
analogous is offered by the lake-dwellings ; extremely few objects
have been found in the older stations {e.g., a yoke in Fenil ; Gross,
Protohelvkes, p. 19), which indicate with any certainty that the
lake-dwellers employed wagons.* However, we must bear in
mind on the one hand, Miat ai-ticles of wood are ia^nd but
very rarely compared witB articles of other materials, in the
remains of the lake-dwellinls ; and on the other, that even if the
lake-dwellers were acquain^d with wagons, they had very few
opportunities of using them," as their intercourse undoubtedly and
naturally was conducted- mainly on the water-ways.
That the lake-dwellers, like the Indo-Europeans, moved along
these ways in huge "dug-outs," propelled by oars and not by sails,
is shown by the " dug-outs " themselves, which have been raised
from the bottom of the lakes (Report vii. 57). "
No one can look over the parallels drawn above and avoid the
conviction, that in spite of some divergent and some obscure
points, still in the main and on the whole the civilisation that
confronts us in the oldest monuments of Switzerland is the same
as that which we have inferred by means of pliilology and history,
to have characterised the undivided European branch of the Indo-.
Germanic family. This leads to the further conclusion that the
* Portions of wagons, made of bronze and pointing to importation from
Etruria, have been found in the lake-dwellings in the Neuburg Lake. Cf.
Report viii. 43,^.: "Etruskische Streitwagen aus Bronze in den Pfahl-
bauten,"
368 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
oldest inhabitants of Switzerland may ethnologically have belonged
to the Indo-European family — a conclusion which as we saw
above was, and at that time was bound to be combated by earlier
students, such as Misteli, (above, p. 28) and Schleicher (above,
ditto).
But though the lake-dwellers may have been ludo-Europeans, it
by no means follows that they must have been ; for the objection
that the culture, which we have claimed, ethnologically speaking,
as Indo-European, may once have covered large portions of Evirope
and have extended to peoples of other races, is possible in itself,
and can only be partially refuted. It applies to the Finns, who
are readily regarded as the original inhabitants of Europe, and
who, to the most recent times (c/. F. Dahn, Urgeschichte d. germ,
und rom. Volker, i. 6), have been thought to have populated the
lake-dwellings of Switzerland. Such an assumption however is,
from what we learn about the original culture of the Finns from
the evidence of philology (c/. above, p. 45) and history [cf.
Miillenhoff, D. A., ii. 39), quite moribund. These peoples may have
been found by the Indo-Europeans in Europe, but certainly not in
the Swiss lake-dwellings {cf. K. Miillenhoff, loc. cit., ii. 54).
The case is different with those pre- or non-Indo-European
peoples, who are rightly thought to have once widely occupied the
south of Europe, the Iberi, Ligurians, Raeti, &c. What we know
about the original culture of these tribes (cf. L. Diefenbach,
0. E. ; W. Helbig, D. Italiker in der Poehne, pp. 30, 35, ff. ;
and H. Kiepert, Lehrbuch der alien Geographic passim), is so
uncommonly little and dubious, that it seems impossible to
demonstrate that the culture of the Swiss lake-dwellings could not
have had its counterpart amongst them — although individual facts
seem to indicate rather that it had not than that it had.
This uncertainty compels us to sum up the results of this
chapter thus : That first the culture of the Swiss lake-dwellings is
practically identical with the culture common to the European
members of the Indo-Germanic family (above, p. 131, and below,
ch. xiv.); and that secondly, from this point of view, there is
nothing to prevent our assuming that the most ancient inhabit-
ants of Switzerland were a branch of the European division.
In abrupt contrast to the "neolithic " culture revealed in the
lake-dwellings stand the "palaeolithic" finds in the caves of
France, Belgium, Germany, &c., the fauna of which (cave-bear,
mammoth, rhinoceros) belong to a period in the world's history
that has passed away in Europe. The rudiments of human culture
here presented to us are far below the most ancient state of things
that we can discover amongst the Indo-Europeans. Here alone
we have a stratum of culture, which in point of archaeology, is
indubitably either non-Indo-European, or pre-Indo-European.
CHAPTER XT I.
FAMILY AND STATE.
Hypotheses as to the Evolution of the Family — Our Object— I. Imlo-Germanic
Names of Kin : 1. Father, Mother, Sou, Daughter, Brother, Sister —
2. Paternal and Maternal Uncles and Aunts, Nephew, Cousin, Grand-
parents, Grandchildren — 3. Relation by Marriage — Explanation of the
Facts Ascertained — The Indo-Germanic Family Agnatic — II. Indo-
European Marriage, Position of the Indo-European Woman : Purchase —
Rape — Marriage Ceremonies — Man and Wife — Sacrifices Common to the
Two — Polygamy — Levirate — Adultery in the Husband and the Wife —
The Father's Right of Exposure — The Widow — III. Family and State :
The Joint Family — The Bratstvo and the Sib — Blood Revenge — The
Tribe — Regal Power — Had the Indo-Europeans a Common Name ?
On the very threshold of European tradition, in Homei', we are
met by a conception of marriage than which modern civilisation
has conceived nothing purer or more affectionate. "Exrop (says
Andromache, II. , vi. 429) arap a-v /xoi ia-cn Trarrjp koI Trorvia /xrjrrjp
r]8e Kao-iyvr/TOS, crv 8e jj-ol ^aXcpos TrapaKOCTr)^ ; and in the Odyssey
(vi. 182) we further have : oii p-cv yap tov ye KptLacrov koL dpctov rj 66'
6fio<f)pov€OVTe vorip.a(Ti oXkov c^tov dvrjp .rjSk yvvrj : —
" For nothing sure more goodly or better may be found
Than man and woman holding one house with one goodwill."
(Morris. )
And yet, like every other human institution, this relation of
husband to wife must have started from some lower beginning
not wholly raised above the level of brute-life. The question is
whether we are yet in a position to determine with some degree of
clearness the Hues of its evolution.
The usual theory of this process of evolution assumes that in the
history even of the human family there was a stage of promiscu-
ous sexual relations, i.e., a state of things in which within a certain
community any man might have sexual relations with any woman.
In view of the consequent uncertainty as to the paternity of any
child, it naturally came about that the child was counted akin
not to its father but to its mother ; and this accordingly is the
root of that phase in the life of the family which is known as that
of "maternal rights" or "female descent." On the other hand,
according to this view, the transition to monogamy and male
descent is afforded by polyandry, i.e., the joint possession in
marriage of one wife by a number of men, usually related to each
37© PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
other, an institution which is supposed to have left traces of its
existence in the shape of the levirate amongst peoples that have
reached a higher level. The relation of the child to its father then
gradually came to be better recognised, and then entirely superseded
that of the child to the mother, while only quite at the last was it
recognised that the child was equally related to both parents.*
Against this, or similar views, various objections, not without
reason, have of late been raised, especially by C. N. Starcke {Die
primitive Familie in ihrer Entstehung unci EntivicMung, Leipzig,
1888). Starcke seeks the explanation of the various forms of
human marriage, not so much in the sexual needs of primitive man
(which in his opinion would never have resulted in marriage) as
in the needs of his domestic economy; he needed a slave, a house-
keeper, to keep what he owned together. Then came the wish,
based on practical and on religious reasons, to have children.
Whether they were of his begetting was a point to which he gave
no weight, as everything which the woman belonging to him pro-
duced became his property. It was only by slow degrees that sexual
life became, first for the woman, then for the man, focussed in
marriage. " Maternal rights " or " female descent " are regarded
by Starcke as being frequently a later device, which, however, has
nothing to do with reflections as to the alleged uncertainty of the
child's paternity.
Fortunately, it is not our business to take up a decided attitude
with regard to the far-reaching problem here touched upon. Our
object is much humbler and much more limited : it is to sketch a
picture of marriage and the organisation of the family in the
primeval period of the Indo-Germanic peoples ; and the only reason
we had for briefly mentioning the disjDuted questions connected
with the origin of human marriage generally, was that, as we shall
hereafter see, they occasionally crop out in the field of our investi-
gations. We shall, however, endeavour to keep our investigations
free from speculations as to the primeval condition of man, and to
base them on the foundation of purely historic, and especially
linguistic, research.
Though this reduces the extent of our task, yet the materials
for it are so unusually abundant that we must begin by renouncing
any attempt even approximately to exhaust them within the limits
of this work. We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to a close
examination of some points especially important for judging the
Indo-European family and its evolution.! We begin with a con-
* Gf., amongst others, Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation, p. 50, ff., 1875;
and, recently, F. v. Hellwald, Die menschliche Familie nach ihrer Entstehung
und naturlichen Entwicklung, Leipzig, 1889.
+ I can the better do this because I learn from Prof. B. Delbriick that he
will shortly publish a detailed study of the Indo-European family. In a con-
versation on this subject, it appeared that we certainly coincided as to one
point of great importance iu judging of the organisation of the Indo-European
family, i.e., the original significance of the names for relatives by marriage.
This is a welcome confirmation of the correctness of our several investigations.
Delbriick's work has since appeared in the Abh. d. K. S. Gesdlschaft d.
JVisS., XXV.
INDO-EUROPEAN NAMES OF KIN. 37 1
sideration of the Indo-European names of kin, in the hope that
from them we may learn something further as to the organisation
of the Indo-European fiimily.
I. Indo-European Names of Kin.
We begin the discussion of Indo-European names of kin with a
group of persons whose designations have proved remarkably
tenacious of life, both as regards form and meaning. They are
the names of —
1. Father, Mother, Son, Dawjhter, Brother, Sister.
Father : Sans, jntdr, Zend pitar, Armen. hair, G. irar^p, Lat.
2xtter, I. athir, Goth, fadar.
Mother : Sans, mdtdr,* Zend mdtar, Armen. mair, G. furiTqp, Lat.
mdter, I. mdthir, O.H.G. vmotar, O.S. mati — Lith. mot^,
" woman " {mdtyna, " mother "), Alb. motr^, " sister."
In addition to these organic formations, the Indo-European
languages are pervaded by names for father and mother of a more
onomatopoetic character. Thus : —
Father : Sans, tdtds, G. Terra, Lat. tata, O.H.G. toto, &c. (Grimm,
W., ii. 1312), Lith. tetis (also teivas), Alb. tate^ — G. arra,
Lat. atta, Goth, atta, O.S. otici, Alb. at.
Mother : Sans, nana (G. vdvva, v4vva, " aunt," paternal and
maternal), Alb. nme ; O.H.G. ama (Lat. am-ita, "aunt,"
paternal ?), Span. Port, ama, Alb. eme ; Lat. mamma. Alb.
meme^ (G. fj-dfji/xr], generally " grandmother ") ; also O.N.
mdna, O.H.G. muoma, " matertera," Dutch moeme, Lith,
momd, O.H.G. 7nuoia = G. fxaia.
It accords with the affection of the east European languages for
diminutives, that they are just the tongues in which the old names
for father and mother have been either driven out by these child's
words or have changed their meaning.
A common name for the two parents is not to be ti'aced in the
Indo-European languages. This conception is expressed in the
separate languages by words such as G. tok^cs, yovets, Lat. parentes,
Lith. gimdytojei, "the begettex'S," Goth, heruxjih (cf. Sans, bhartri,
G. dvTL<f)dpa), O.H.G. eltiron, "the old ones," and so on. Goth.
fadrein, " parents," literally " fatherhood," is interesting. A.S.
fe\igen also is collective : —
Son : Sans, sunus, Zend hunu, G. vv<; {v-ju), Goth, sunus, Lith.
suniis, O.S. syni'c— Sans, putrd, Zend i^uthra, Osc. puklo.
* The older language still has hhartri, "mother" (Av. ). This. may be
compared with the Syrac. ayTt-<pdpa " fir)Tpvid., Hesych., as this yields a *ipdpa,
" mother."
t J. Schmidt {K. Z., xxv. 34) regards this series as developed out of *plaUi
{:p{e)tir).
372 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Daughter : Sans, duhitdr, Zend dughdhar, Armen. dustr (ustr,
" son ; " Hiibschmann, A. St., 47), G. Ovydrrjp, Goth, dauhtar,
Lith. dnhte, O.S. dusti.
Brother : Sans, bkrdtar, Zend brdtar, Armen. cXbair (G. (fipip-rjp '
dSeXi^os, Hesych.), Lat. frdter, I. hrdthir, Goth, hro^ar, Lith.
hroterelis, O.S. bratru.
Sister : Sans, svdsar, Zend qanhar, Armen. k'oir (G. eop, see below),
Lat. soror, I. siur, Goth, svistar, Lith. sesv, O.S. sestra.
Whereas the Latins have not a trace left of the Indo-European
word for " son " and " daughter," in the place of which they use
filius, filia, " suckling " (according to G. Meyer, however, = Alb.
hir, hil'e), the Greeks have lost the old expressions for brother and
sister, except in certain survivals. They are replaced by dSeXc^os
(Lac. a^iXi^Tjp, in suffix resembling the other names of kin), dSeX^?;,
" sprung from the same womb " (cf. also o/Aoydcrrojp, ayda-Top^s •
dSeA-c^ot 8i8u/xoi, 6yd(TTU)p, Sans. sodara = sa + udard, "belly," Osset.
Dig. dnsuu'dr — an + suwdr, " womb "), and the obscure* Kacriyvy)To<i,
and also simply Kacns.
We shall deal hereafter with (^iprjT-qp, the original meaning of
which has almost entirely faded. Now for a word as to the above-
mentioned eo/3€s = Lat. sorores.
Hesychius interprets top by Bvydrrjp and dvei/^ios, copes by
Trpoo-j^Kovres, cnjyyevet?. The explanation of the three last meanings
seems to me to lie in comparing the Lat. consohrini {*consosr-mi).
This word originally meant the children of what is called in German
a Geschwister, i.e., originally a pair of sisters (O.H.G. gi-sivistar, O.D.
gisustruon), then the children of two brothers (fratres patrueles,
sorores patrueles), and of a brother and sister (amitini, amitince ;
cf. Co7'p. Jur. Civ., xxxviii. x. 1). So too, I take it, copes origin-
ally meant " sisters," then " sisters' children," " children of brothers
and sisters" (dvci/^tot). For the absence of any mark of derivation
we may compare Homeric Kamyvqio-;, orig. " frater," then also
" fratris liberi " (consohrini, dvexpioi). This degree of relationship,
then, is what is meant by copes = Trpoo-r/Kovrcs, o-Dyyevets.
What may have been the meanings of the roots of these names
of kin is a question which we refrain from pursuing for reasons
already given (p. 139,/.). The only thing certain seems to me
to be that the Indo-European name for son comes from the root
sH, "beget, bear" (Sans, su, "genitor" and "genetrix").
It seems to me at least not improbable that the Indo-European
name for father, *p(e)-ter, goes back to the same root, or was at
an early time assimilated to it, as the name for spoixse and lord,
* Katri- seems to go back to *kn-ti, and may belong to I. cetiie, " the first "
(from O.S. *ken, "begin;" Miklosich, ^<. JF.), so thAt Kaa-iyvrirus, Kacriyy-fiTT},
" first-born," male and female, would = brother and sister. Cf. Horn, yvwros,
"born"= "brother," and colloquialisms such as German " inein dltester,"
" meine iilteste." Nevertheless, Greek itself does not offer a trace of any such
fundamental meaning as "first-born ;" and, accorilingly, this comparison is
only given faut de mietix, for the comparison of 0. Eng. hyse, "boy," throws
still less light oil the meaning.
NAMES OF KIN. 373
Sans, pd-ti, G. tto-o-i-?, wliicli we shall discuss subsequently. This
root is perhaps preserved in the Sans, pa, " protect," so that the
2mtria pofestas of the father and husband is shown on purely philo-
logical grounds to have been the guardianship of his family.
2. Brothers and Sisters of the Father and Mother, Nephew,
Cousin, Grandparents, Grandchildren.
The names of kin discussed in the previous section were charac-
terised by considerable conformity in their formation, for with the
exception of the Indo-European name for son they all have the
suffix -ter or -er. Their stability of meaning, again, only suffered
in isolated exceptions.
Things are quite different with the circle of relatives whose
appellations we now turn to. There is no uniformity in the
formation of their names, and the meanings of these names of kin
seem to have been in a state of continual flux. We will first try
to take a comprehensive glance at the most salient facts, and then
see whether an explanation can be found.
The series which shows most uniformity in form and meaning
is that of the names for the father's brother : Sans, pitrvya, Zend
tiUryo (Bartholomse, B. B., x. 271), G. Trdrpois, Lat. patruus, O.H.G.
fatureo, A.S. fcedera.
There is no Indo-European term for mother's brother. In
Sanskrit we have nidtuld (perhaps = *??irt^rt-^?</;5^« ; cf tdta-tulya,
"father-like," "paternal uncle"), in G. fjL^Tpw<s (modelled on 7raTpa)9,
later also = " maternal grandfather "), in Armenian k'eri ( : k'oir,
"sister").
The European languages, however, very frequently form the
name of the mother's brother from a stem which also designates
the grandfiither or grandmother. To this belong Lat. avus,
"grandfather" : avunculus, Goth, avo, "grandmother," O.N. de,
"great-grandfather" : O.H.G. oheim, A.S. edin, O.F. em (formation
obscure) — Lith. aivynas, Pr. aivis, O.S. itj, ujka, all "avunculus" —
M. Cymr. eivi-thr, 0. Com. eui-ter, "uncle," I. aue, "grandchild"
(Stokes, however, connects it with G. TraFts ; B. B., ix. 87).
This change of meaning from grandfather to mother's brother
finds a parallel in that from grandftither to father's brother, as
shown in the following series : —
O.S. dedu, "avus," G. ttjOt], "grandmother" — Lith. didin,
"father's brother" (ded^, dhlzius), G. ^€109 (from *Orj-Jo),
"paternal and maternal uncle."
Cf., further, Lith. strujus, " old man " : O.S. stryj, stryjct,
"])atruus" (Miklosich, Ft. W.).
The complement in many respects to the change of meaning
depicted in the two preceding groups is offered by the name of kin
which is the most widely distributed in the Indo-European lan-
guages of all the names we have to discuss in this section, for it
374 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
combines the meanings, of "grandchild" and "nephew," and also,
has the general meaning of " descendant."* It is the Lat. nepos
and its stock : —
Sanskrit : ndpdt, ndptar, " descendant in general, son, especi-
ally grandson," used in the older language mainly in the
general sense, in the later only in the sense of " grand-
child" {B. R.) — ncqjti, "daughter," "grand-daughter"
(Zend najiti).
Iranian: Zend najmt, "grandson," N. Pers. navdda, " grand-
son," rert^:)^^, "kindred."
Greek: veVoSes (assimilated to ttoi;?), "brood," d-v€i//to§, "child
of brother or sister" (d-j/cTr-cr-, s as in O.S. nestera from
*nep-s-tera or = d-veTTT-jo), vcoTrrpat ' vlwv ^fyarepes, Hesych.,
" grand-daughtei's " (for *ve7roT-pat ?).
Latin : nepot-, " grandson," later also " nephew."
O Teutonic: A.S. nefa, "grandson," "nephew," O.N. nefe, "kins-
man," O.H.G. nefo, M.H.G. neve, "sister's son, rarely
brother's son, also vmcle, then kinsman in general "
(Kluge); O.N. nipt, "sister's daughter, niece," O.H.G. nift,
M.H.G. niftel, Goth, nipjis, "cousin," O.N. nidr, "descend-
ant " (*niptjo), &G.
Old Slavonic: netiji, " ne\)hew," nestera, "niece."
Old Irish : nia, "sister's son."
A glance at these facts shows that the meanings " nephew,"
"cousin," &c., only occur in the European languages, to which,
again, the change of meaning from grandfather to uncle is
confined.
The Indo-Iranian languages have developed an expression of
their own for brother's son : Sans, hhrdtrvya = Zend hrdtuirya {cf.
Bartholomte, B. B., x. 271).
This in my opinion practically exhausts the agreements to be
found in the names of this degree of kindred ; but a few words
must yet be said as to the sisters of the father and mother, and
grandparents and grandchildren.
The names of the sisters Trpos Trarpos are generally sharply dis-
tinguished from those Trpos /xr^rpos in the individual languages.
Thus in the Lat. amita : matertera, in the Teut. O.H.G. haaa,
A.S. /afw, O.F. fethe : O.H.G. muoma, A.S. modrie, Dutch mddder,i
O.S. strina (: stryj) : teta, tetka. In Greek no clear distinction
seems to have been made between such words as Oda, rrjOt.'i, vdwrj.
The names of the grandparents, apart from the cases of agree-
ment cited above, do' not point to the existence of any primeval
forms. Either the grandfather and grandmother were simply
called the old ones: O.H.G. ano, area = Lat. anus, "old woman,"
* E. Leumann's attempt {Festgruss an 0. v. Bblitlingk, p. 77, 1888) to show
that the fundamental meauing of nc-p6t- is "orphan" ("unprotected") is not
very illumining.
t The last two agree in formation with G. yurjrpuia, Armen. mauru, which,
however, mean "step-mother."
NAMES OF KIN. 375
O.S. haha, "grandmother," or compounds sucli as Sans, mdtayiiaha,
G. ft€yaA.oyu,T/T7//3, /AT^TpoTraTwp, I. senvidthir, were employed. G.
TraTrrros is a child's word ; Zend nydka = 0. Pers. nydka, N, Pers.
niyd, is obscure ; cf. 0. Pers. apa-nydka, "ancestor." On the other
hand, we can point to a special agreement between German,
Slavonic, and Lithuanian in the name for grandson, O.H.G.
eninchil, O.S. viinuku, Lith. anukas, which is rightly inter-
preted as "little ancestor" (O.H.G. ano). O.H.G. diehter,
"grandson," is derived from Sans, tiic, " posterity," by the addi-
tion of the suffix -ter, which is used in names of' kin"(Kluge) ;^ cf.
*nep6t, "descendant," "grandson." The other names for grandson
and great-grandson, such as Sans. 2idut7-a, 2)rapdutra, O.H.G. fernevo,
G. titwi/o?, etc., offer nothing of interest. O.S. *shiru, "great-
grandson," is compared by Miklosich (Et. W.) with hith. 23rakurej is,
" ancestor."
3. Connection by Marriage {Affinitas).
I lay down a proposition at the beginning of this section, which •
I hope to show to be correct in what follows, and which if correct
seems to me to contain an extremely important clue to the compre-
hension of the ancient Indo-European family. That is to say, I
am convinced that only the connection of the daughter-in-law with
the husband's relatives, and not the connection of the son-in-law
with the relatives of the wife, can be established by Indo-
European equations.*
The yoLing pair, whose union connects two families, consists of
the daughter-in-law (relatively to the man's parents) and the son-
in-law (relatively to the wife's parents). We find that the former
alone has a just claim to be descended from Indo-European times.
The daughter-in-law is called : Sans. snushU, N. Pers. sundr
(Spiegel, A. Per., 88 T), Osset. nost'd (cf. Hiibschmann, Osset. Spr.,
p. 52), Armen. mi, G. wos, Lat. nurus, O.H.G. snura, O.S, snucha,
Alb. nuse.
In Celtic and Lithuanian (rnarti) alone does the word seem not
to be established. Although incapable of proof, the old-fashioned
interpretation of the Indo-E. *snusd as " female son" (^simu-sd) is
probably right.
In contrast to the name of the daughter-in-law, the names
for the son-in-law only coincide in those languages which are
closely connected together : in Indo-Iranian, Sans, jiiindtar = Zend
ia»M?<ar (connected with jd/Mt, "related") ; and in Lithu-Slavonic,
Lith. zentas = O.S. z^tt, to which probably Alb. douhr, "bridegroom,"
also probably belongs. The root of both stocks of words is gen,
Sans, jdriati, Zend zizananti, " beget," to which (cf. gen-us, gigno)
belongs also the Lat. gener,\ formed upon socer and */ev-er (which
subsequently became levir, under the influence of vir). G. ya/xy3pos
(*ya/A-po) is the "wedder" (ya/xe'w). Tent. A.S. dtuni, O.H.G.
* A. Fick {Spracheinheit, p. 270,/.) had a presentiment of this fact.
+ The assumption that ge^ier is described from *<jcmro { = yaij.pp6s) is sup-
ported by no analogy whatever.
37^ PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
eidum, most probably = s/)ores«s (from A.S. d\>, O.H.G, eid), inas-
much as Goth, liugan, " wed," also seems connected with I. luge,
" oath." Expressions, therefore, such as kinsmen, begetter,
pledged, were employed to express the relatively new idea of " son-
in-law."
From the children we now turn to the- parents-in-law : —
Father-in-law : Sans. Qvdgura, Zend qasura, Armen. skesr-air
("mother-in-law's husband"), G. iKvpos, Lat. socer, Goth.
svaihra, O.S. svekrii* Lith. szeszuras, Alb. vieher, Corn.
hveger.
Mother-in-law : Sans, gvagrit, Armen. skesur, Lat. socrus, O.S.
svehry, G. iKvpd, Goth, svaihro, Alb. vieJufc, Com. hvigeren.
This word can accordingly be established to exist in all Indo-
European languages, and obviously is compounded of the pro-
nominal stem sve and kuro-. The latter may still be compared
with G. KvpLo<;, so that the sense is as Curtius {Grdz.^, p. 136)
maintains, i8tos Kvpio<i\ (i.e., of the *snusd). The word .is in
several of the separate languages- used indiscriminately of the
husband's parents and the wife's ; but there is no lack of clear
indications that this was not an ancient, or at any rate not the
primeval, use of the word.
In Homer, e/cupos, eKvprj is used only of the husband's parents,
whereas there^is a special word for the father of the wife, ircvOepo?
( : Sans, hdndhu, " kindred, association, kinsmen "). The same
state of things prevails, or prevailed, in Lithuanian, where the
obsolescent sze'szuras is, or was, only employed for the man's father,
whex'eas tiszivis (Lat. uxor = I. *6ksver) is used of the wife's. Finally,
the tables of South Slavonic names of kin given by F. Krauss {Sitte
und Brauch der Sicdslaven, p. ^,ff., Wien, 1885), clearly indicate that
the words svekrii, svekry, were employed exclusively to designate
the husband's parents (c/., p. 8 : 12, 13). The wife calls her
spouse's relatives svekrbina, the husband his wife's tazhina (p. 3).
This agreement of three branches of the Indo-European family
of speech must, however, necessarily mirror the original state of
things ; for if we wished to assume, say, that cKvpo's from the
beginning designated alike the man's father and the wife's, and
that only in later times did individual languages indulge in the
luxury of distinctive names, we should have to regard it as a
wholly inexplicable freak of chance that three totally different'
linguistic areas (Greek, Lithuanian, Slavonic) came to use iicvpo? in
the same limited sense as "husband's father." The reply that
there may have been even in the primeval period two distinct
terms, Iku/dos for the husband's father, and a lost, iniknown x for
the wife's, is invalidated partly by what has already been said and
jiartly by what follows.
* The k instead of s in the Slavonic words is remarkable.
t Every woman according to Greek law must have a Kvpios ; this in the
case of an unmarried woman was the father or nearest blood-relation, of a
married woman the husband.
NAMES OF KIN. 377
The Indo-European equations expressive of affinity, which still
remain, refer simply to the connection of the wife with the man's
relations. They are : —
Husband's Brother : Sans, devdr, Armen. taigr, G. Za-qp, Lat.
levir, Lith. dewer-ls, O.S. deveri, A.S. tdcor, O.H.G. zeihhur.
Husband's Sister : G. yaXws, yoAows, Lat. glos, O.S. zluva ; cf.
Phrygian : yaAAapos • ^pvyiKOV ovofxa (sc. ovyyeviKOv),
yc'Xapos ' a8e\<t>ov ywi], Hesych. In Sanskrit the word
cannot be established ; here the man's sister is called
ndndndar, nanandar (I. ander, " young woman " T). Cf. also
Lithu-Pr. nidsza, moazo.
Husbands' Brothers' Wives : Sans, ydtaras {ydtar, " wife of the
devdr ") ; G. dvdrepe';, Lat. janitrices, O.S. jetry, " fratria ; "
the husband's brother's wife : Serb.-Croat. jetrva, Bulg.
jetorva; brothers' wives are jetrve to each other (Krauss,
loc. cit., p. 9), Lith. inte, " brother's wife," Lett, jentere.
I regard, then, the position taken up at the beginning of this
section, as proved.*
We have accordingly to start from a state of things in the
family organisation of the ancient Indo-Europeans, in which the
notion of relation by marriage was developed solely as between
the wife and her husband's kinfolk. The wife's family might
then indeed be counted as "allied by friendship" (G. K-qSearrj'i,
"any relation by marriage," "son-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-
law," vevOepoL, ol rrj's Kopr]? yoveis, Hesych., &c. ; Crete, Gortyna
KaSca-TaL, " blood-relations," especially of wives, Kr/Se/u-oVfs ' ol Kara
i-mya/jiiav otKCtoi, Hesych. Ki^Sev/xa, "affinity," &c. : kt^Scios, KT/Stcrros,
" dear," South Slav, prijateljkina, "the wife's kindred generally " :
O.S. p7-ijateli, "friend;" cf. Germ, freundsehaft = "kindred," like
M.H.G. wiuntschaft, "affinity," Nibelungen, xxxvii. 2160 B.) ; but
it was not regarded as related. When married, a woman left the
circle of her own kindred and entered that of her husband; but
her new connection severed her previous family ties, it did not
create fresh ones between her kindred and her husband's. The
wife vanished, so to speak, into the house of her husband.
This, however, is intimately connected with the fact that, slight
as was the connection which the bride and young wife formed
between the two families, the blood-relationship which was cstab-
• * Against its correctness the only thing, as far as I know, that can be
alleged is the by no means certain equation : G. ae\ioi " oi aSf\<(>as yvvaTKas
f<TxVK6Tes, a't\toi ' (Tiiyyafifipot(V{esych.) = O.N. svilar, "the husbands of two
sisters " (Vigfusson, Kluge, K.Z., xxvi. 86), in so far as it gives e.xiiression to
relationship by marriage, as existing between men. But, lirst, this equation
is confined to Europe, and can, therefore, prove nothing as to tlie oldest
primeval period ; next, it is quite possible to conceive such a degree of relation-
ship arising between members of one and the same family, that is su]«posing
one starts from the Joint Family or House Community (on which see below).
The a.f\tot may have been originally brothers, for instance, who married
sisters. Max Miiller compares Sans, sydhi, "wife's brother," with de'Aioi (but
cf. (^ydld).
378 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
lished, when the wife became a mother, between her relations and
the children of herself and her husband, was regarded by the Indo-
Europeans, at any rate at first, as equally slight. It is, accordingly,
in my opinion, no matter of mere chance that the Indo-European
languages have an identical name for the father's brother but not
for the mother's; and, generally, that merely cognatic degrees cannot
be authenticated by primeval equations.
This hypothesis, however, of a primitive Indo-European family
organisation based on a strictly agnatic principle — a hypothesis to
which we have been led by purely linguistic considerations, is
opposed alike to the wholly unfounded assertion (promulgated
by Bachofen, Antiqtiarische Briefe* particularh^) that the Aryans
still lived in promiscuity, counting kinship only through the
mother ; and to the conclusions of Leist {Grdco-italiscke Rechts-
geschichte) who explains "the cognatic conception of the family,
resulting from ohsequium to the parents, as the primeval Aryan
form." Based on this is the conception of a narrow circle of
relatives, corresponding to the Lat. consohrini, the G. dyxtorets
(regarded by Leist as cognatict), and the Indian Sapindas, which
Leist considers to be " the oldest and far the oldest " conception
which the Greeks and Italians inherited from their forefathers.
His overestimate of the antiquity of the cognatic conception
of the family amongst the Indo-Europeans compels Leist to treat
a series of Roman legal institutions, based on a strictly agnatic
system, such as the ancient Eoman law of inheritance, as being
recent innovations in Roman law. We only mention this to give
some idea of Leist's fundamental position, as it is of course no
possible part of our design to follow a jurist further in the
juridical field.
Although the idea of affinity with a wife's relations, and the
cognatic conception of the family based thereon were foreign to
the primeval period, the question may yet be put whether the
rudiments and beginnings of both were not present if not in Indo-
European, at any rate in pro-ethnic times. Appeal may be made
to the names for son-in-law which coincide in certain groups of
languages (above, p. 376), for through him the amalgamation
of the man's family with the wife's was effected. In Lithuanian
and Slavonic alike the jjronominal stem svoi- is used to designate
affinity, f A Slavo-Prussian equation, G. ttstl, "socer" = Pruss.
tistics, probably originally meant Trci/^epo's, not iKvpos {cf. Krauss,
loc. cit., pp. 12, 1.3, though also p. 8).
Above all, in support of the antiquity of the cognatic concep-
tion, the fact may be appealed to that most European languages
* Cf., on the other hand, the author in Deutsche Litz., 1886, No. 27.
+ C/., on the other hand, F. B. Jevons, " Kin and Custom," Journal of
PKilology, xvi. 99.
X Cf. Lith., sicahie, "wife's sister" {laigonas, "wife's brother"), sicainius,
"sister's husband," O.S. svoitl, "affinis," svatU {*svojatu), and so on; cf.
Miklosich, EL W., p. 332. In Teutonic, O.H.G. ga-siuto {*swci-), "levir,"
probably belongs here.
NAMES OF KIN. 379
have made themselves names for the mothei*'s brother from the
same stem *avu-, though certainly with different formative suffixes
(Lat. av-unadus, M. Cymr. eiu-ither, O.H.G. 6-heiin, Lith. atv-ynas,
O.S. *av-jo = uj).
The original meaning of this stem *avo or *av-n (Lat. avun-
culus, Goth, avcm-y Cymr. *aven-tr = etvithr) must be assumed to
be not grandfather in particular, but forefather generally.
Anyhow, no terminology distinguishing with precision between
the ascendants of the fiither and the mother can, as we have seen
(p. 374), be traced in the original language. This, again, may be
a consequence of the position which the old people plainly held in
the f\imily. When father and mother became old and weak,
useless for work or war, when power and property passed to the
son, it was in accoi'dance with the hard and cruel mode of thought
common to primitive man, that these old people should be viewed
as somewhat superfluous portions of the general household. It is
only at a higher level of cultux'e that the duty of affection towards
parents, which culminates in the divine injunction, "Honour thy
father and mother that thy days may be long in the land," comes
to modify the dread which the ancients felt for "oppressive,"
"loathsome," "doleful," "pernicious" old age, and which made
them welcome a release from it.
The custom of putting a violent end to the aged and infirm
survived from the primeval period into historic times not un-
frequently amongst the Indo-European peoples (c/. Diefenbach,
Vijlkerktinde und Bildungsgeschichte, p. 247,/.). It can be authen-
ticated in Vedic antiquity (Zimmer, p. 328), amongst the Iranians
(the Bactrians* and Caspian peoples), amongst the ancient Germans,
the Slavs, and Prussians (Grimm, D. R., p. 486, /. ; Weinhold,
Attn. Lehen, p. 473).
We do not draw the conclusion fi'om this kind of statement that
the violent removal of old people was a universal Indo-European
custom ; but we should regard such a view (c/. Hehn, above, p.
35), for all that, as nearer the trvith than Leist's view touched
upon above, according to which ohsequium from relatives of a
certain degree of kinship towards the j^'^'^'^f^tes was a primeval
institution of the original Indo-Europeans.t
If, however, the stem avo- originally meant "forefather in
general," this would correspond to the fixct that the original
meaning of *nep6t-, as shown by the above collection of instances
(p. 374), was, in all probability, " descendant in general."
* Cf. Strabo, c. 517 : robs yap aireiprtKSTas 5to yrjpas fj voaov ^wvras
■wapa^aWfcrOat rpf(po/xfvots Kvalf firlrr]Sfs irpos tovto, ot)s ivratpiacrras
KaKflcrdai rrj irarpcfa yKwrrr). The stateJiieiit in this form is hardly creiiible ;
it, therefore, seems to me not improbable that Strabo is liere making a confusion
■with the ancient Persian funeral rite of the Sagdtd (is.V. sag, "dog," did,
"look"), in accordance with which a dog was brought to tlie deceased in
order that its glance might light upon the corpse {cf. W. Geiger, Ostiran.
Kullur,^. 264,/.).
t On the allied subject of the worsliip of the dead, and offerings to the
dead, see ch. xiii.
380 PKEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Perhaps in the agnatic family the word was applied to any
descendant not a filius, i.e., to the grandson, great-grandson,
and also the nephew (relatively to the- patruus). When in certain
European languages derivatives from avo- came to be applied to
the mother's brother, the stem *nep6t- took the same direction,
and was used to express relation to the mother's brother and the
mother's sister (c/, above, p. 374).
In a paper entitled "Germanische und moderne Rechtsideen im
recipierten romischen Recht.," ii. {Z. f. vergl. Rechtsw., iv. 227, f.),
Bernlicift rightly infei's from the change of meaning to be traced
in the words avus and nepos, just spoken of, that "relation through
the mother became much more prominent amongst the European
peoples." He adds : "It may be conjectured that the influence of
the conquered aborigines made itself felt. There are at the
present day widely scattered peoples who only count relationship
through the mother and her kinsfolk; and many indications inti-
mate that the aborigines, whom the Indo-Europeans on their entry
into Europe gradually subdued, cherished views of this kind " (?).
I am of opinion that there is no need to resort to any such
hypothesis, which is incapable of proof as regards the northern
peoples particularly. It seems to me that the closer relationship
established between the husband's family and the wife's can be
better explained by the growth of more refined feelings generally,
and by a change in civilising influences particularly. A stage of
culture, in w^hich the idea of relationship or affinity with the kins-
folk of the mother or wife has not yet spiamg up, seems to me most
conceivable in the case of nomad life, such as we must imagine to
have prevailed in the oldest epoch of the primitive Indo-European
period (ch. iii.). The distance in space between the pastures and
the constant change of abode precluded the amalgamation of
families of agnatic structui-e.
Things change as soon as the tribes take to agriculture and to
more permanent abodes. This took place in the Indo-European
w^orld at a time when the European peoples on the one hand were
still ethnically united, as were the Indo-Iranians on the other. It
is noticeable in this connection that the idea of connection by
marriage is expressed in Latin by affinis, affinitas, which need only
mean "neighbour," "neighbourhood." Hesiod, too, gives the
advice ( Works and Days, 700) : rrjv Se iMoXia-ra ya/teiv -^ris aeOev
eyyvOL vaUi. Were the TrpocrrjKovTe'i originally "aifines," "those on
the border" (cf. Leist, Grdco-it. Rechtsgesch., p. 103)? I should be
inclined to think that it was those families that settled, even if at
first only for a time, on the same soil, amongst whom the idea of
relationship with the wife's family would most readily develop.
It is also in my opinion possible, indeed, that the development of
the cognatic conception of the family and the idea of relation by
marriage may in its beginnings go back to prehistoric times in
Europe, and that yet the fundamentally agnatic character of the
family, inherited from the primeval period, was not materially
affected thereby (cf., further, section iii. below).
mAlRRIage and the wife. 381
II'. Indo-European Marriage, Position of the
Indo-European Wife.
Indo-European marriage was based on the purchase of the bride.
This fact appears clearly and plainly enough amongst most Indo-
European peoples, and amongst some continued in its effects up to
the threshold of the present. Aristotle {Pol., ii. 5, 11 ; ii. 8, p.
1268 h, 39) says expressly : tovs yap dp^^atovs voyaoDs Aiav aTrAoiis
cTvat Kat ^apf3apiKOv<s ' i(Ti8r]po(f)OpovvT6 re yap oi "EXXrjvc'; koL ras
yvvoLKa's iiovovvTo. In the Homeric age a maid was called
aXcf)€aiftoia, " a girl who bx'ings her parents a good price," and
rightly, for on occasion considerable gifts, diretpeaia eSva, were
given to the father of the girl (cf. IL, xi. 244): —
TTpliiO CKardv j3ov<i Swkcv, tTrctra 8e ;;^iAt vTrearr]
atyas bfxov kcu ot?, to. ol acrTrera iroLfxaivovTO.
The custom of bride-purchase prevailed throughout Teutonic
antiquity, and it can scarcely be believed that Tacitus in the well-
known passage of the Gennania (c. 1 8 : Dotem non uxor marito sed
uxori maritus offert) is not referring to this. Not w^ith equal cer-
tainty, however, can purchase be established on Roman soil as the
oldest form of marriage. The original custom, of which the sym-
bolical process of coemptio has preserved a reminiscence, yielded in
the very earliest times among the Romans to the purely religious
confarreatio, which contained no notion of purchase. On the other
hand, we certainly again find marriage by purchase among the
(Indo-G.) Thracians (Hdt., v. c. 6), for their chief Seuthes can say
to Xenophon (Anab., vii. 2): 2oi 8e, w Eevoc^wv, koL Ovyarepa Swo-w
Ktti et Tis croi ecTTL Ovydrtjp, (Lvyjao/xaL ©paKtu) vofjua.
The case was the same amongst the ancient Lithuanians, as we
learn from Michalonis Lituani de Morihus Tartarorum, Lituanorum
et Moschorum fragmina ed. Grasser Basilice, 1615, where it is stated
on p. 28 : " Quemadmodum et in nostra olim gente solvebatur
pareutibus pro sponsis pretium quod krieno ('purchase-money for
the bride': Sans, kri-nd-mi, Lett, kreens, kreena ndiula, 'a, present
to the bride') a Samagitis vocatur" (above, p. 348). So, too,
the custom of purchasing the bride prevails partially, or did pre-
vail, amongst the southern Slavs, where the price of girls reached
such a height at the beginning of the present century in Servia,
that Black George limited the price to be paid for a girl to one
ducat (Krauss, loc. cit, p. 212, ff.).
Again, amongst the Hindus, marriage by purchase was by no
means unknown, as Strabo indeed was aware, for he informs us (c.
709) : " They man-y many wives purchused from their parents,
giving a yoke of oxen on receipt." Strabo here means the fourth
of the eight Hindu forms of marriage, the Arsha form, according to
which the bridegroom sends one or two pairs of oxen to the bride's
father, a gift to which Manu and other lawgivers assign a symbolic
382 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
meaning, in virtue of which they counted the Arsha iorm as one of
the legitimate modes of marriage (Jolly, Ueber die_ rechtliche
Stellung der Frauen bet den altern Indern, Sitzungsberichte d. phil.-
hist. Kl. d. Milnchner Alcademie, p. 420, jf., 1876). In Vedic times
the bride had to be won by rich presents to the future father-in-law
(Zimnier, Altind. L., p. 310).
As, therefore, the bride was purchased from her father in the
primeval period, it is obvious that the idea of a dowry or portion
could not have yet come into existence at that time. Linguistic
expressions for it were generally developed out of words which
originally designated the purchase-money given for the bride, and
then gradually came to be employed in the sense of dowry. The
coui'se of evolution in this department of civilisation obviously is
that first the price paid is retained by the father, then in milder
times returned along with the maiden as her portion, until finally
the parents' contributions to the bride superseded the bridegroom's,
or reduced it to a mere form.
This may be supported by a reference to the Homeric Ihvov,
ecSvov, which probably exactly corresponds to the West Teutonic
*wetmo (A.S. iveotuma, O.H.G. tvidamo; Kluge, Noinin. Stamnib.,x.).
In the Homeric diction the ISva are nearly exclusively presents to
the bride or her parents. MvaecrOai and c8va go together. In Od.,
viii. 318, Hephaestus demands his eSva back because his wife has
been faithless. The father and brothers of Penelope wish her to
marry Eurymachus: —
b yap 7repi/3aXXet ctTravras
fj-vrjcTTrjpa'; Swpotcrt Koi e^w^eXXev eeSva. (xv. 18.)
Only in one or two passages of the Odyssey (i. 278, ii. 196) is
the word used of the dowry (cf. Kirchhoff, Die horn. Odyssee, p. 243).
So, too, in Teutonic, the Burgund. ivittimo, Fries, ivitma, A.S.
weotuma, O.H.G. widuvio, Germ, ivittum are in their origin old
words for the price paid for the bride, and are therefore synonymous
witli Longob. meta, O.N. mundr, &c., and have only later partially
taken different meanings* (Grimm, R. A., p. 424; Schade, Altd. W.).
In Slavonic the veno — Sans, vdsna, " bride-price," which corre-
sponds to the words in the last paragraph, has come to be
frequently used dos, which was imknown to older ages ; or foreign
words, such as G. TrpotKiov ( = O.S. priMja), Ital. dota (Dalmatia),
Turk, miraz (Bosnia), have been employed (Krauss, loc. cit.,
p. 272,/.).
In the case of the Irish tindscra, also, Windisch (/. Texte) gives
as the evolution of meaning : "(1) Purchase-money given for the
bride, demanded by the parents, by the maiden herself; (2) dowry
brought to the husband."
Side by side with the custom of bride-purchase there runs
through Indo-Germanic antiquity another extremely primitive form
* Further Ungnistic evidence for the purchase of the bride amongst the
Teutons: O.S. buggean (Eng. buy) ti brudi, O.N. kojia mundi keypt, "law-
fully acquired wife," M. Lat. mundium, O.N. mundr, " purchase-iirice. "
MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE. 383
of marriage, which to the present day survives amongst many
peoples either in real earnest or as a mere symbolical presence
(Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 72, /.), marriage by captui-e
(81' dpTray^?). According to Dionysiiis of Halicarnassus (ii. 30) this
was at one time customary throughout ancient Greece, and, as
every one knows, was retained by the conservative Dorians {cf.
Rossbach, op. cit., p. 213) as an important symbol in the marriage
ceremony until late times. Even among the Albanians of to-day,
as J. G. V. Hahn relates (Albcmesische Studien, p. 146), during the
wedding dance, the bridegroom suddenly rushes to the bride, takes
her by the hand, and dances with her, while the guests sing : —
" The ravens stole a partridge,
What will he do with the partridge :
With her he will dance and play,
With her he will spend his life."
So, too, traces of the capture of the wife are to be found amongst
the ancient Prussians and Slavonic tribes.
The Hindus also had a special name for marriage by abduction :
the rdkshasa form, which was confined to the kshatriya or
warrior caste.
If, then, as seems to be the case, bride-purchase and man'iage
81' dpTTayiys both go back to the primeval Indo-Germanic age, the
question arises. What is the historical relation of these two forms
of marriage to each other ? Naturally, conjecture alone is possible.
It might be supposed that marriage by purchase prevailed within
the tribe or between friendly tribes, whereas capture was practised
against hostile tribes. It seems to me, however, more probable
that even before the dispersion of the peoples, capture may have
been volatilised into a purely symbolical and formal part of the
marriage ceremony, as which alone it existed in historic times
also,* in contrast to marriage by purchase. Marriage by capture
would then belong to the very earliest age of the primeval Indo-
European period, when we must conceive the ties of neighbourhood
and kinship to have still been loose, and the nomad groups of
pastoi'al and patriarchial families to have still been hostile to
each other. Anyhow, a period in which wives were obtained by
capture affords the best explanation of the above-described agnatic
structui'e of the Indo-European family, and its non-recognition of
affinity with the wife's relations. The requisite conditions for such
affinity only came into existence when capture was driven out by
purchase.
The Indo-European root by which the idea of marriage was
expressed is vedh : ved (on the change between the media and
media as2nrata in the final letter ; cf. Brugmann, Grundrisn, i. 348).
To it belong on the one hand the above-mentioned ISvov, A.S.
iveotuyna, on the other Lith. wedii, O.S. vedn, Zend tipa-vndhayneta.,
" he would marry," Sans, vadhti, " young married woman." The
* Cf. Leist, AUarischcs Jus Gentium, pp. 126, 130.
384 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
fundamental meaning is preserved in the Irish fedaim, "I carry"
(fedan, "a team"). Cf. also Sans, vdhate, "he carries him a wife
home," vahatu, "wedding," Lat. uxorem dw^ere, G. yvvaxKo. ayecr^at.
In the same way O.S. sag-ati, "ya/ieij/" (Miklosich, Et. W.), is to be
connected with G. -^yclaOai, " to lead " (Lat. sdgire), Goth, sokjan.
These pieces of linguistic evidence seem to point to the existence
even in the primeval period of the custom of ceremoniously con-
ducting the bride home (on a wagon drawn by oxen, according to
the picture given by a celebrated wedding-hymn in the Rigveda,
X. 85) ; and it is not improbable that out of the numerous Indo-
European wedding customs, of which in some cases we already have
copious examples,* a series of other instances might be put together
in which the Indo-Iranians and Europeans agree with startling pre-
cision — in fine that it is possible to infer what was the ceremonial
of marriage amongst the Indo-Europeans. Such an attempt has
been made quite I'ecently by two students, by B. W. Leist, Altarisckes
Jus Gentium, p. 144, /"., Jena, 1889, and by L. v. Schroder, Die
Hochzeitsqebrduche der Esten und einiger anderer finnisch-ugrischer
Volker, Berlin, 1888.
Leist is of opinion that the agreement amongst the individual
peoples allows us to distinguish three stages in an Indo-European
marriage. In these, again, he discerns a worldly side and — in har-
mony with his view that the forefathers of the Indians, Greeks, and
Romans had given " their legal conceptions a sacred ritual garb
even in the primeval period " — a sacred ritual side. These three
stages according to Leist are: (1) Betrothal (Indian wooing,
Teutonic betrothal,! G. eyyuT^o-is, Lat. sponsio (more remote) ; G,
vvfifjir] : Lat. nupta, nubo proves the Grgeco-Italian custom of
veiling the bride ; Indian offering of cows). (2) Contract (Indian
pdnigraha?ia, " clasping of hands," carrying thrice round fire and
water from right to left, ofi'ering of butter and rice on the hearth
of the bride's father, sitting on the bull's hide ; Latin dextrarum
coniunctio, manus mancipiumque, binding aqua et igni, carrying
round of fire and water, from right to left, panis farreus, con-
farreatio, sitting on the hide). (3) Completion (Indian lighting
the wedding fire, which is conveyed by the bridal procession from
the house of the bridegroom's father to the new dwelling, offerings
of food ; Latin domum deductio, offering of swine).
* Cf., e.g., for the Indians, E. Haas, Die Heiratsgehrduche der alien Inder
nach den GrhyasMra ; Weber, Ind. Stvd., v. 267, #.
t It is indeed incorrect for Leist to say (p. laO, note 7) : "The idea of
wooing can be traced in language as far back as the ancient Aryan period,"
and to appeal in support of this to G. /reie?i = Sans, prt, " enjoy." All that
can be said of course is that there was a verb in the original language for " love,
enjoy, be gratified," out of which the meaning " woo" has been evolved in
Teutonic, though only in Dutch there (Kluge'*, p. 94). Cf. above, p. 142.
It may rather be conjectured that in prehistoric times the root perk, lit.
"to ask," was used of the wooing of a maiden ; cf. Armen. harsn, "bride," Lat.
procus, "suitor," Lith. pirszlys, South ^\. prosci, "wooer."
For the rest no distinction in language was originally made between
"bride" and "young woman;" cf. Sans, vadhu, G. vvp.(pi], O.H.G. brat,
Lith. martl, O.S. nevesta.
MARRIAGE. 385
In the last two points we have confined ourselves to reproducing
the Indian and Italian parallels because we cannot regard the
parallels adduced by Leist from Greek culture, at any rate as far
as ritual is concerned, as in the least convincing. As part of the
Greek wedding ceremonies not a single offering is mentioned in
Homeric times, and only one in later times, the Trpoydfiia, TrporeActa,
which was made on the actual day of marriage, and which was
followed by a feast in the house of the bride's father.
Touching the points of agreement between the Indians and
Italians — so far as they are of a ritual character — the answer to
the question how far they are actually connected, or how far they
are the result of independent though similar evolution, will depend
whether and in what measure we can venture to ascribe fixed
ritual institutions in general to that primeval period in which no
separate Indo-Roman or Indo-Graeco-Roman development can be
assumed to have taken place (above, p. 242). For instance, the
parallel, say, between the panis farreus of the Romans and the
rice-offering of the Indians (stage ii.) cannot be the outcome of
actual connection, because offerings of this kind necessarily imply
a stage of settled agricultural, not pastoral, life ; and the latter
is the only mode of national life which can be shown to have
prevailed when the Indians and the Romans wei-e still connected
together.
A totally different direction is followed by Leopold v. Schroder's
investigations, as the title of his book indicates. He undertakes a
comparison of Indo-European marriage ceremonies with those of the
Finnic-Ugrians, especially of the Esthonians, and finds that they
entirely agree. At the same time he does not close his eyes to the
fact that many usages, in which the Indo-Eui'opeans and the Finns
agree, are also to be found amongst other widely-removed peoples,
and consequently suggest that the parallelism in their evolution is
casual. Only, he comes on p. 202 to the conclusion, " that whereas
we find isolated instances of the recurrence of one custom or another
amongst this people or that, we never come across the whole series
of customs described, or even of a considerable portion of them —
save only amongst the Indo-European and Finnic-Ugrian peoples."
Being rightly convinced that the two families of speech have no
genealogical connection with each other (c/. above, p. 105), Schroder
finds the explanation of the above fact in the assumption that the
Indo-Europeans and Ugro-Finns occupied contiguous abodes in the
primeval period. Further, in later times, individual Finnic peoples
were exposed to the influence of individual Indo-European peoples.
Our opinion is that Schroder has made out a case of some
probability for his views. We are the more inclined to this opinion
because, in the course of our narrative, we too have come across
cases of probable connection, both in culture and language, between
the Finns and Indo-Europeans (cf. above, pp. 306, 318, 321).
The notion of " husband " was expressed in the original language
by a word which designated the married man as lord and master :
Sans, pdti, " lord, master, husband," ddmpati, " house-master,"
2 B
386 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Zend paiti, G. ttoo-is, "husband," Sco-Tro-njs* = Sans, dampati,
" house-master " {Lat. ^wfes^rt.s, and so on), Goth, -/ajj^s, hrup-fa^^s,
" lord of the bride or young woman," Lith. j)citSj " husband, married
man."
On the other hand, the wife is reaUstically conceived as the
'* childbearing woman : " Sans, gnd, Zend ghena, G. yvvq, ^avd
(also [xvdofjiai, " I take a wife," and the hitherto unnoticed Hesychian
d-fxvd-fjiov<; ' tovs iyyovov; = " from the same woman "), I. hen, gen.
7)ind, Armen. kanai-k\ " women," O.S. zena, Pruss. genno, Goth, gi^io.
That this stock is to be separated from the root gen, " gigno," seems
to me indeed improbable, in spite of Bnigmann [Grundriss, i. 345),
though a satisfactory explanation of the gutturals in these words
is not yet forthcoming {cf. J. Schmidt, K. Z., xxv. 129). A forma-
tion peculiar to Indo-Iranian is Sans, strt = Zend stri (s-tr-t), prob-
ably belonging to Lat. sero, sa-tor, " begetter."
The wife's bosom in which the lord of the house lays the seed of
a legitimate progeny is identified by the rude conception of the
primeval period with the wife herself; and it seems to me not
improbable that this mode of thought is at the bottom of the
remarkable fact that in several instances the names for the womb
are formed on the same analogy, as regards suffix (G. yacr-Tyjp, Lat.
ven-ter) as the names of kin. Cf. also above, G. d8£A</)o?, ofjioydcrTtop,
&G., and Homeric expressions such as evveaKacSiKa ixiv fioi lrj<; €k
vijSuos ( = i^s eK ywaiKos) rjaav {II., xxiv. 495).
The relation of man and wife then is characterised by language
as that of "master" and "bearer of children." The question
arises whether we can learn anything further fi'om language and
tradition about the relation of the married couple to each other.
There seems to be a tendency at present in favour of the
assumption that the position of the Indo-European woman was a
relatively high one. This proceeds partly on the much-discussed
equation, ^di.n^. pdtnt, "lady, wife" = G. TroTrta (also Seo-Troiva, which
however has no Sanskrit counterpart, *dampatnt), and partly on
the circumstance that in the e.irliest periods of antiquity the wife
appears as sharing sacrifices with her husband, both amongst the
Indians and the Romans. How slight the weight is of this
equation I have already (p. 141) indicated.! As for the common
sacrifices of the married pair, on the one hand it must not be
forgotten that no parallels are forthcoming amongst the North
European peoples — which makes inferences as to the primeval
period very suspicious — and on the other it is advisable to enquire
whether indications are not to be found that this partnership in
sacrifice only grew up during the separate evolution of the peoples
mentioned. Anyhow, both amongst the Indians and the Italians
* Others compare SeawSr-ns : Sans, jdspati, O.S. gospodl, and interpret it as
"lord of the progeny" {jds-); cf. J. Schmidt, K. Z., xxv. 15,/.
+ In the same way that pdt7ii may have originally been a meaningless
feminine to pat is, so is Goth. *frauj6n (0. H.G. frouwa) : frduja, "master"
(cf. svaihrd : svaihra, arbjd, ni]>j6). Following a suggestion of Kluge's, I
would connect Goth, frauja with Sans, purva {*pf-vo). The fundamental
meaning would then be " the previous, the first."
POSITION OF THE WIFE. 387
there are, as it seems, particularly important sacrifices from which
the presence of womeu was strictly excluded. In Italy this is the
case with the offering to Mars j)^^^ bourn valetudine (" mulicr ad
earn rem divinam ne adsit neve videat quomodo fiat," Cato, De Re
Rust., c. 83), in India with the Pravargya ceremony — the Oatapatha
Brahmana enjoins : " When the Pravargya ceremony is being per-
formed let the wife (of him offering the sacrifice) veil her head."
Cf Henrici Jordani Vindicioe Sermoriis Latini antiquissimi,
Regimontii, 1882 (with R. Garbe's communications).
I believe, then, that this kind of argument does not suffice to
establish the view that the Indo-European woman, though inider
the potestas of the husband, was yet on an equality with him. I
am rather of opinion that everything we know of the primitive
conditions of marriage amongst the Indo-European peoples — so
long as we do not constrain our gaze to remain fixed on the
advanced views to be found in Homer, in the Indian Sutras, and
the somewhat idealising Germania — everything, I say, indicates
that the pOwer acquired by the man over the wife, through purchase
or capture, was in the primitive period no empty legal form, but a
hard and cruel reality against which our modern sentiment rises
in revolt. I am further of opinion that the simplest explanation
of the absence, already alluded to, of an Indo-European name for
the wedded pair is that the modern view — according to which
marriage is identity of interests, supported by law, church, love,
and custom — was foreign to the primeval period, when the man
was absolute master, and the wife, acquired by capture or purchase,
merely a servant and bearer of children.
To begin with, it was not until after the separation of the peoples
that the purer form of monogamy was evolved from the primeval
polygamy. We still come across undoubted cases of plurality of
wives in the hymns of the Rigveda,* especially in the case of
kings and great men (c/". Zimmer, Altind. Leben, p. 324,/.; Geldner,
B. B., ix. 327, on Sans, kshoni, "wife"), Herodotus (i. 115) expressly
states of the ancient Persians : yafxeovat. 8' l/caoros avTu>v TroAAas
fjL€v KOvpiStas yuvaiKa?, ttoWw 8 en TrA.evi'as TraWaKo.^ KTuyvTai.
Amongst the Teutons at the beginning of their history we still
come across plurality of wives as the exception in the West (Tac,
Germ., 18), and as the rule in the North (Weinhold, Altn. Leben,
p. 219). As regards the Gauls, again, in Caesar (B. G., vi. 19:
" Et cum pater familise inlustriore loco natus decessit, propinqui
conveniunt, et ejus de mortesi res in suspicionem venit, de uxoribus
in servilem modum qusestionem habent") the passage Seems to point
to polygamy. Or how else is the pluval uxoribus to be understood ?
Indeed, as the ancient Indo-European custom was for the wife i
to come into the possession of the husband by purchase, it is hard
to see why there should have been any hesitation about obtaining
* Even in later times in India the law did not limit the number of wives ;
thon2;h the custom of being content with one legitimate spouse grew. The
joint sacritices of man and wife seem to have had some iulhieuce here {c/.
Jolly, loc. cit., § 13).
388 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
a second or third wife in the same way — whetlier because one wife
was insufficient for the main object of ancient wedlock, viz., obtain-
ing male progeny, or because the growing wealth of the owner
necessitated more work and more supervision, or because it was
desirable to form fresh family connections.
It will, however, be well not to imagine that polygamy flourished
to any great extent in the primeval period, for it is obvious that
the desire to possess several wives, who had first to be purchased
and then to be maintained, could only be realised by the rich.
Usually a second wife would only be taken in default of children,
or of male children. It is interesting to observe that from this
point of view bigamy is permitted, inasmuch as a substitute for
the wife {naviiestniea) is allowed, amongst the southern Slavs to
the present day. A vivid account of the proceedings in such cases
is given by Krauss, loc. cit., p. 228. As to plurality of wives
amongst Slavonic grandees, cf. Krek, Litg.^, 362.
But even when the cause of the childlessness was conceived to
be in the husband, the primeval period seems to have been pro-
vided with a means to furnish the house with legitimate children.
Amongst Indians, Greeks, and Teutons w^e find the rude custom
that the husband may obtain progeny from his wife by means of a
substitute, who was originally perhaps the husband's brother {levir,
whence levirate) ; cf. Leist, Altarisches Jus Gentium, p. 105; Grdco-
itah'sche Hechtsgeschichte, p. 46; Grimm, H. A., p. 443. At any
rate, «uch a custom seems to me to fit in excellently with the
Indo-European view of marriage. The wife belongs to the man,
body and soul, and what she produces is his property, as much as
the calf of his cow, or the crop of his fields. The husband there-
fore regards the child of his wife and another man as his own,
provided only it was begotten with his will. The same conception
of the husband's absolute right of property in the wife accounts
for the Scandinavian's offering the marriage bed to his guest
(Weinhold, Altn. Leben, p. 447).
It is part of the same circle of ideas, that the naive feeling of
antiquity saw nothing morally objectionable in a married man's
having to do with other women, whereas adultery in the woman
was punished with the severest penalties, because it was an.
infringement of the man's right of property. The Homeric hero
speaks without shame of his concubines ; Agamemnon {II., ix.
128,^.) promises the wrathful Achilles seven Lesbian women in
addition to Briseis, whose bed he solemnly asseverates he has
never approached, and twenty of the most beautiful Trojan women
after the capture of Troy, and finally his own daughter (dvacSvov)
as lawful wife. The position of the wvrjTrj or ^ovpiKrrjTrj -n-aXXaKis
is generally unquestioned b}' the side of the KovpiSir] aXo)(o<;. The
practice of putting w^omen taken in adultery to death has left no
traces in Greece ; moral death, atimia, was substituted (drt/Awi/
T-qv TOiavrrjv yi^vatKa Koi rov ^iov d^twrov avTij TrapaaKevdl^wv).
In Cyme the adulteress was taken through the town on a donkey,
and then exposed on a stone (K. F. Hermann, Lehrhuch der Griech.
ADULTERY. 389
R. A. herausg. v. Th. Tludheim., p. 18). The husband demanded
his eSi'a back (above, p. 382), and might slay the adulterer taken
in flagranti* (Hermann, toe. cit, p. 37, note 5).
Precisely the primitive point of view is preserved in the legal
conception of ancient Rome, as presented by Cato in G'elL, 10. 23 :
" In adulterio uxorem tuam si prehendisses, sine iudicio impune
necares (until the lex Julia de adulteriis) : ilia te, si adulterares
sive tu adulterarere, digito non auderet contingere, neque ius est "
(Marquardt, Privatlehen, p. 65).
The case is the same amongst the Teutons of the North
(Weinhold, Altn. Lehen, pp. 248, 250). The husband is allowed
the most unrestricted concubinate, the woman taken in adulteiy
may be put to death along with her paramour. Somewhat
milder, and amounting to the same thing as the Greek atimia,
is the punishment awarded to the adulteress amongst the West
Teutons according to Tacitus {Germ., ch. 19) : " Paucissima in
tam numerosa gente adulteria, quorum poena pra;sens et maritis
permissa : accisis crinibus, nudatam, coram propinquis expellit
domo maritus ac per omnem vicum verbere agit." On the other
hand, it is ordained by the Lex Visig., iii. 4. 4 (Grimm, B. A.,
p. 450) : " Si adulterum cum adultera maritus vel sponsus occi-
derit, pro homicida non teneatur."
Again, according to the customary law of the southern Slavs,
the injui-ed husband may kill the adulteress and her paramour on
the spot. Occasionally in the folk-songs the woman is doomed to
be torn to pieces by horses (Krauss, loc. cit., 511, 566).
In ancient India concubinage and polygamy can seldom be
sharply distinguished. I have no information from ancient
sources as to the treatment of the adulteress. In the later law-
books (Jolly, loc. cit., § 12) adultery in the woman is naturally
a legitimate ground for putting her away. Further, she is to
be supplied only with bare necessaries, her hair is to be cut (cf.
Tacitus, above), she is to be badly clothed and kept to the lowest
kind of servile work.
But the despotic nature of the husband's rule over the wife
comes out almost more clearly in the custom, common to the
Indians, Romans, and Teutons, according to which it lay with the
father to " take up " (to/tere, suscipere) the child his wife bore to
him, and thereby to decide whether it should live or die, i.e., be
exposed. Amongst the Teutons it is impossible to doubt that the
decision depended solely on the will of the fathert (Grimm. E. A.,
p. 455; AVeinhold, Altti. Lehen, p. 260). In ancient Rome the
father's right to sell his child or put it to death is to be regarded
as following fi-om the patria 2^otesta>t (Marquardt, Privatlehen,
pp. 3, 81).
* On the very instructive provision of tlie Gortyna code, cf. F. Biicheler,
and E. Zitelmann, Dan Recht von Gortyn, p. \Q\,ff., 1885.
t The clause in Germ., c. 18: " Numeruni liberorum finire
flagitium habetur," is very remarkable, auJ at absolute variance with the
rest of our information.
390 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Things are not quite so clear amongst the Indians. A passage
in the Rigveda* (v. 2. 1 ) may, according to Ludwig (Bigveda, vi.
142), imply that in India too the mother "gives" the child to
the father; and a passage in the Taitiirtya-Samhitd (Zimmer,
Altind. Lehen, p. 319; Ludwig, Rigveda, v. 568) mentions the
exposure of daughters, and implies the custom already mentioned
by the child taken up by the father. When, on the other hand,
the Sutras expressly mention the father and mother as those who
have the power to give, to sell, and expel their sons (c/. Leist,
Altar. Jt<.<< Gent, p. 115), we shall scarcely go wrong if we consider
this provision not as anything primeval, but as simply the con-
sequence of the gradually growing view that man and wife were
the two halves of one and the same body (c/. Jolly, loc. cit., p. 437).
In Greece, too, ty^rpicr/Aos, "exposure in earthern vessels," was
very widely spread, as was the sale of children, which was not
forbidden by law even till Solon's time (Plutarch, Solon, 23. 13).
In Thebes, alone, exposure was forbidden by a strict law, though
sale was allowed instead, in case of extreme poverty (yElian, V. H.,
ii. 7). That the will of the father (not of the two parents) is to
be regarded as exercising the final decision as to the life or death
of the child can scarcely be doubted, although it was limited at an
early period by the necessity of consulting the sib or a family
council. In Sparta, where from a certain age the child ceased to
belong to the parents and become the property of the State, to
y€\'vqd€v ovK ^v KvpLo<s 6 ■ya'vrjcra's (as he was therefore elsewhere)
rpe^etv, "but twv ^I'AeTwj/ ol Trpecr/SyTarot decided whether the child
should be raised (Plutarch, Lycurgus, xvi.); similarly at Rome the
child had to be shown, before exposure, to Trevrc ayhpaui tois
eyyicTTa olkovctl (Dion., Hal., ii. 15).
Besides children who were weak, sickly, and of doubtful legiti-
macy, it was generally daughters — who were a "grief" to the
Vedic world (c/. Zimmer, Altind. Lehen, p. 320) — that were
exposed. The same sentiment as to daughters pervades jGreek
(Hermann-BliiDmer, Privatalt., p. 282), Roman (Marquardt, Privat-
leben, p. 3), and Teutonic (Weinhold, Alt7i. Lehen, p. 260)
antiquity, and is not ill adapted to throw a streak of light on
the primitive view of women.
Finally, the character of Indo-FAii'opean marriage equally
waiTauted the master of the household originally in exercising
the same right of sale and death over the wife herself as over the
children {cf. as to the Gauls, Caesar, vi. 19, "viri in uxores sicut
in liberos vitae necisque habent potestatem ; " as to the North
Teutons, Weinhold, Altn. Lehen, p. 249 ; as to the Romans,
Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, p. 20). But this hardship was the first to
be alleviated, owing to the sympathy of the wife's family in the
fate of their blood-relation.
The closest connection, in my opinion, subsists between the
house-master's unrestricted right of property in his wife and the
awful doom which in Indo-European antiquity awaited the sur-
* Kumdrdm mdta yuvatih sdmuhdham giihd Mbharti nd ddddti pitr'd.
THE WIDOW. 391
viving wife, the widow (Sans, vicl/uivd, Lat. vidua, I. fedb, O.S.
vldova, Goth, viduvo*). It is no longer possible to doubt that
ancient Indo-Germanic custom ordained that the wife should die
with her husband. This custom has its origin in part in the wish to
provide the deceased in his grave with everything wliich was dear to
him in life ; and partly was designed to make the life of the house-
father safe on all sides (cf. Caesar, B. G., vi. 19), and to render him
an object of perpetual care and anxiety to his family. The custom
of burning widows, among the northern Indo-Europeans, has been
exhaustively treated before now by V. Hehn (p. 473,/.).
Amongst the Hindus, even in the time of the Rigveda, milder
customs prevailed, as is shown by a hymn (x. 18, 7), in which the
following words of comfort are spoken to a wife mourning over her
husband : —
" Arise, wife, to the world of life ;
Fled is his spirit by whom thou sittest,
Who took thy hand and wooed thy heart ;
Thy marriage with him is ended."
(Geldner-Kaegi, 70 Lieder.)
Zimmer, however {Altind. Leben, p. 329), rightly points out that
this passage only shows that the burning of widows was not usual
in the home of the poet who wrote the lines. In the Atharvaveda,
on the other hand, the custom is designated primeval {dhdrma
purdnd). The fact, again, that it was retained by the Brahmins
shows that we have here much more probably to do with an insti-
tution hallowed by antiquity than a capricious innovation of the
priestly caste. As to the position of the widow in later times in
India, see Jolly, loc. cit., ^ 14-17.
When sentiments had become more humane, traces of the old
state of things still showed themselves in the prohibitions issued
against the second marriage of widows. Such was the case
amongst the West Germans (Tacitus, Germ., c. 9, m qiiibiis tanUim
virgines 7iubuHt), and also in ancient Greece (Trpo'repov 8e Ka^co-r^/cet
Tttis yvvat^lv ctt' dvSpl aTO^avdvTt ^rjpev€Lv, Paus., ii. 21. 7).
In objection to our view of the original position of the Indo-
European wife, we may be asked, if it is coiTect, what was the
difference between the Indo-European wife and the female slave,
whom we must imagine on genei'al grounds, if not on the evidence
of language, to have existed in the Indo-European family? To
* It is customary to connect Greek rjidfos, "young man" ("widowed"?),
with these words (?).
When Krek {Einleitung^, p. 55) alleges that, if our assumption that
widows were burnt in the primeval Iailo-Euroj)ean period were true, there
could be no Indo-European word for widow, we must answer first that for the
interval between the death and the solemn burial of the husband a name
would be necessary for the wife or wives left by him, and next that we need
not regard the practice of putting widows to death as a rule without excep-
tions. We may imagine, for instance, that a widow of a man who died
without issue was allowed to contract a " levirate marriage " in order to raise
up seed to the dead man. Cf., indeeil, Rigveda, x. 40 : " Who puts you to
bed, as the widow does the brother-in-law, the wife the husband in their
common abode ?"
392 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
this we would answer that the distinction between the two must
have been at once very fine and very important : very fine, inas-
much as we cannot imagine the sphere of the Indo-European wife
to have practically diff'ered from that of the slave-gii-1 ; very im-
portant, inasmuch as the legitimate progeny obviously could only
be obtained from a legitimate wife, and the latter, according to the
view that universally prevailed amongst the ancient Indo-European
peoples, could only be drawn from amongst the free membei's of
the tribe, who were bound together by one tongue, one faith, one
law. This, in the most ancient times, at once gave the wife the
advantage over the slave-girls and concubines of the house, and
provided the basis on which might be developed the nobler view
of the position of woman that characterises most Indo-Europeans
even in early stages of civilisation.
Tempting as it would be to discuss a series of other points of
importance in the history of the Indo-European family, such as
the most ancient testamentary arrangements or the question
whether blood-relationship prohibited marriage,* &c., we now
* We may, however, give in a note some facts on the subject : in the
Avesta the marriage of kin is lauded as a pious and meritorious work. "'The
most pious of the pious is he who remains faithful to the good religion of the
worshippers of Ormuzd, and who in his family fulfils the sacred duty of
wedding kin" (W. Geiger, Ostiran. Kultur., p. 246). Cambyses and other
Persian kings married their sisters.
In the well-known song of the Rigveda (x. 10), Yami appears in support
of the marriage of brother and sister, while the opposition is personified in
Yama. Buddhist legends mention various cases of the marriage of brother
and sister. In the older literature marriage with the daughters of the
mother's brother and sons of the father's sister are permitteii (Weber, Indische
Stud., X. 75). Subsequently, the prohibition, especially of the marriage of
Sapindas, becomes more strict (Jolly, loc. cit., § 5. 2).
In Homer, the marriage of brother and sister, strictly speaking, is to be
found only in myth. Cf. the example of Zeus and Hera, Diomedes married
his mother's sister, Alcinous his brother's daughter (Buchholz, Rfalien, ii. 2 ;
19.) Marriage with half-sisters on the father's side (not on the mother's) was
also allowed in later times (Hermann-Bliimner, PrivataUcrt, p. 261).
On the other hand, amongst the Romans it was not customar}' for the
woman to marry out {cnuhere) of the gens; but alliances between persons
under the same patria potestas, even to the degree of cousins, were ncfarioc et
incestce nuptice. This was relaxed in later times (Marquardt, Privatkbcn,
p. 29).
It is hard to discover what was the original state of things amongst the
northern Indo-Europeans, owing to the early spread of the prohibited degrees
of the church.
It is further to be noted that ancient prohibitions of marriage within
certain degrees do not seem to have been based on observation of any of the
consequences asserted by modern lunacy doctors to follow on such marriago^.
In this connection a passage of Plutarch's MoraUa is instructive: —
Pint. , Quccst. Rom. , 108. Aia ti Se ras iyyvs yevovs oii yajxovcn ; irorepov av^eiv
rols yd/j.ois ^uvAo/jievoi ras olKetSTrjTas, Ka\ (rvyyevtls iroWovs eTrtKraffOat,
SiSSvTes fTepois koI \ap.Pavovr€s Trap krepoiv yvvaiKas; ^ (po^ov/xevoi Tas ev
To7s ydfj.ois TO)!' (TvyyevCoi' Sia(popas, uis Kot to ^vaa S'lKaia irpoffairoWvovaas ',
fj TToWwv ^oriOwv ras yvvaiKas dpwvTes 5t aaSevnav Seofievas, ovk efiovXovTO
Tos iyyvs yivovs avvoiKL^iiv, oirus h.v oi &ySpfs aSiKojatv avras, ot crvyyevels
^oTiQoiffiv . It jiresents the most various conjectures as to the reasons of the
obvious diff'erence between the views of the Greeks and the Romans on this
point, and yet makes no mention whatever of physiological considerations.
FAMILY AND STATE. 393
break off tliis subject in order to turn our attention to certain
political and social organisations of wider extent than the family
amongst the Europeans.
III. Family and State.
That the most ancient forms of government amongst Indo-
European peoples are based on the organisation of the family is
an established fact. It is not, however, so much our pui'pose here
to trace in detail the process by which the state was evolved from
the family, as to discuss how far this process may be conjectured
to have been carried in the primeval pei'iod. As far as the evi-
dence of language is concerned this is not easy, for, as we remarked
on p. 140 above, all equations refeiTing to the political life of the
Indo-Europeans possess such elasticity of meaning, that it is
difficult to determine their original sense.
From what lias already been said, the Indo-European family is
best conceived as resembling the Roman familia, ?>., as consisting
of the women, children, and slaves under the potesfas of a single
house-master. The wife came into the " hand " of the house-
master by capture or purchase, in mantis venit, as it is put in the
Roman phrase, which is, perhaps, connected in fact and in ety-
mology with the Teut. mtmdhim (from O.H.G. nnmt, " pi'otection,"
" hand," vmnt-horo), which again expresses the same idea. The
agnatic exclusiveness of the Indo-European family, as regards those
outside it, and the despotic power exercised within its limits by
the man over his wives and children have already been described.
The question now presents itself, how many of the descendants
Trpos Trarpos were included in the primitive family ? Amongst
various Indo-European peoples, especially the Indians, Greeks, and
also the Teutons, a custom is found to exist, in the most ancient
times, in accordance with which, when a son marries he leaves the
paternal house, kindles a hearth-fire of his own, and founds a new
home. Leist (Grdco-italische JiechtSf/eschichte, p. 64 ; Altar. Jus
Gent., p. 34) regards this as the original practice, for he will not
allow that the primeval period had any " patriarchal character "
whatever. I must, however, confess, that though such a speedy local
dissolution of the Indo-European family is conceivable at a higher
stage of culture, when pennanent agriculture and private property
in land are known, I cannot imagine it as existing in nomad or
semi-nomad life. I am, therefore, more inclined to look for the
original type of the Indo-European family in another organisation,
the existence of which is authenticated in the case of many Indo-
European peoples, though it is wholly ignored by Leist, that is, in
the joint family of the Hindus, the Irish Sept (Maine, Lectures on
the Early History of Institutions'^, p. 79, /.), and above all in the
Slavonic " House-Community."
Such a house-conununity (called amongst other things zadi-nga)
consists, according to Krauss' description {Sitte und Brauch bei den
Siidslaven, p. 64, ff.), of a body of about sixty or seventy members,
394 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
who are blood-relations, to the second or third degree " of course only
on the male side." At their head is a house-administrator (usually
domah'n), who is indeed paid the greatest respect, but who is not
to be regarded as the master and owner of the family property,
like the Roman ^>a?er/a??^^7^as. The family property is rather the
joint property of all the male adult members of the household.
The house-community dwells together, indeed ; but the real
house {ognistije, " the place of the fire ") is occupied solely by the
house-administrator and his family, whilst round it in a horseshoe
crescent are grouped the apartments, which are only bedrooms,
of the other members. Meals, which it is the business of the
doma6ica to provide, are taken in common. The men eat first,
then the women consume what is left.*
That we are, however, justified in regarding this arrangement as
the original Indo-European practice, follows from the fact that
traces of it have been preserved more or less clearly in Greek and
Roman antiquities also. In Rome it seems to have been by no
means uncommon for blood-relations to dwell together. It is told
of M. Crassus that he was brought up in a little house with two
brothers. The brothers had wives, while their parents yet lived.
And all sat at one and the same table (Plut., M. Crass., i.). We
need only allude to the sixteen JElii: "Quibus una domuucula erat
— et unus in agro Veiente fundus " (cf. for this and further, Mar-
quardt, Privatlehen, p. 56).
In Greece, a Homeric example of the joint family is aflPoi-ded by
Nestor's household. Various instances from Attic law are cited by
Jevons in the paper already mentioned, " Kin and Custom " {Journ.
of Philol., xvi. 102, /'.). But it is amongst the Dorians that the
original state of things is reflected with especial distinctness. In
Sparta the indivisibility of the kXtjpo^, which is not to be regarded
as a new arrangement, but as the primeval form of property in
land, compelled brothers to live together on the undivided heritage.
The eldest was indeed the real heir, eo-rioTra/Awv, and the others,
married or unmarried, partakei's and sharers in the use of the
family property (c/. Leist, Grdco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 78).
If Polybius (xx. 6) here talks of polyandry and community of
wives, it is, it seems to me, because he has misunderstood the
ancient house-community. Possibly his statement is due to his
having observed " that where several generations and households
live together, there is a tendency to a certain licence and disorder
in the relations of the sexes," as is expressly repoi'ted of the
Russian izhd {cf. F. v. Hellwald, Die menschliche Familie, p. 509).
The same explanation, I should be inclined to conjecture, will
apply to other statements about polyandry amongst Indo-
* Separate meals for the two sexes, at any rate on festal occasions, seems to
have been the primeval practice. It prevailed in the Teutonic world. Cf.
Niebelungenlied (B.), 1671 : —
Ndch getvonhcite d6 scieden si sich dd;
Rittcr wiwL frouwen die giengen anderswa.
In Homer, too, the women usually take their meals in their own rooms.
THE JOINT FAMILY. 395
European peoples, e.g., Cajsar (v. 14) about tlie ancient Britons:
" Uxores habeiit deni duodcnique inter se communes et maxime
fratres cum fratribus parcntesqxie cum liberis ; " and Herodotus
(iv. 103) about the (Thracian'?) Agathyrsae : i-KiKowov Se twv
yuvatKwi' Ty]v fu^iv ■Troievi'Tai, iva KacnyvrjTOi t€ aXAryAwv tojcri /cat
oiKrjioi iovTi'; 7ra»'T€s /Liryrc <j>06i'(o fjLrjT c'x^^' )(p€wvTaL es dAArjAous.
I am of opinion, therefore, that we shall be nearer the truth if
we conceive the Indo-European family rather after the fashion of
the Slavonic house-communities, than on the model of the later
divided family — with this exception, that in the place of the South
Slavonic house-administrator, we must imagine the stringent
pote.9tas of the Roman house-father, which indeed manifests itself
much more decidedly in the Russian house-senior than in the
South Slavonic domncin.
When the house-father died all his rights went to the eldest
son ; especially were the women of the family, the mother and
sisters, under his guardianship. This seems to have been the
ancient Indo-Germanic system. Thus a Vedic hymn says: ^'Ushds
(the dawn) bares her bosom to men, as a maiden, who, having no
brother, yields herself with the less reserve to her husband." So,
too, among the Teutons, Kriemhilt is under the protection, not of
her mother, but of her brother : —
//• pfldgcn drt kwiegc edel unde rich —
Bill fr owe was ir svcster : die helde Mtens in ir pflegen,
just as in the Roman family, after the death of the father, the
sons of the family had the tutela of the mother and sisters
(Mommsen, Romische Geschichte, i. p. 59, 7th ed. ; Eng. trans,
pop. ed.. History of Rome, i. 60). In Greece, too, sons who had
man's estate were Kvptoi of their sister and widowed mother.
Hence, a specially close connection between a sister's children
and their mother's brother, their uncle. Sororum filiis, says
Tacitus {Germ., c. 20), idem apud avunculum qui ad patrem honor.
In this connection, which finds such a simple explanation in the
brother's importance in the family, I cannot trace any indication
that community of wives was primeval, and that the children con-
sequently belonged to the relations of the mother.
In spite of this prominent position of the mother's brother in the
ancient Teutonic family, the patrtms distinctly comes before the
avunculus, the agnates before the cognates, in testamentary suc-
cession ("Si liberi non sunt, proximus gradus in possessione
fratres, patrui, avunculi," Germ., 20), which once more confirms
our assumption that the organisation of the family w-as agnatic in
the primeval period, and speaks equally clearly against Bachofen's
theories (c/. Brunner, loc. cit., p. 89).
It is a question what word was employed in the original language
to designate the conception of family, which, as the facts of the
case have shown us, existed. The individual languages seem to
diverge widely. In Italian, the Umbrian famedias, Osc. famelo
{famel, " servus "), Lat. famelia (famul) may be connected with the
396 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Sans, dhciman, "place of abode, home, especially the place of the
sacred fire, kinsmen, body of connected persons generally," &c.
{B. R.) ; cf. also One. faamat, "habitat." In Teutonic, the stem
hiw-, hiwa- is mainly used to designate the members of the house-
hold: Goth, heiva-frauja, "house-master," A.S. hired, hhvrobden,
"family," O.H.G. htrdt, "marrying," O.N. hju, hjun, "man and
wife," "servants of the house," hyske, "family," A.S. hiivan, pi.
"servants," O.H.G. hiwiski, "family, menials," O.H.G. htun,
"married pair," "domestics," (fee. This Teutonic stem hhv-, hiiva-*
exactly corresponds to Lat. civi-s, the original meaning of which
may have been "the individual joato- familias" in his relation to
the civitas.-\
In Greek, the concept " family " is expressed by oTko?, olKereia,
o/jLoa-LTTvoi, "companions at board," o/xoKctTroi : ktjttos (Aristotle, PoL,
1. 2); and also by 7raTpa="the society imder the power of the
TTttT^p" (cf. Gilbert, Griech. Staatsaltertumer, ii. 302). IlaTpa and the
Lat. familia both show a tendency to widen their meaning so as to
include the tribe (Mommsen, Roin. Staatsrecht, iii. 1, p. 10, note 2).
In the Veda, the word dMman, already cited, is used for the
family, as also grhd, "house;" in the Avesta nmdna, amongst the
ancient Persians mdniya is used.
It seems, therefore, almost impossible to establish a primeval
term for the concept "family." However, if one remembers the
primeval equation already mentioned, Sans. dd'mpati = G. S^cnroTri's,
Indo-E. '''dem-s-poti, "pater familias," and if one reflects that the
stem dem-, dovio-, in Sans. damd,X in Lat. domus, in G. 8o/xos
{especially in the plural) is used in nearly all Indo-European
languages to denote the household, the family, it seems not im-
probable to me that in Indo-European the house-community was
designated by *dem-, *domo-, and the pater familias at its head by
*dem-s-poti-s.
We have now to trace the further evolution of the family in the
* For the development of the meaning of the Teut. hiwa-, compare the passage
in the Germ., c. 20 : " Dominum ac servum nullis educationis deliciis dignoscas :
inter eadem pecora, in eadem humo degnnt, donee setas sepuret ingenuos,
virtus agnoscat."
+ In the same way, Lat. qiciris and ciMa seem to have originally meant
"house-master," "society of house-masters." The latter (from *qoi-ria) is
connected with G. Koi-pavos, O.H.G. M-r, M-rero; qiuris {*qi-ro) may be
related in the way of vowel gradation to *qoi-ro. Cf. Mommsen, Horn. Staats-
recht, iii. 1, pp. 5,/., 89/.
J On this word B. R. remarks: "The word in Sanskrit has no other
derivation than from 1. dam ('compel'), and yet means the spot where a
free man rules, dominion, jurisdiction over house and home. That it is not
the building that is meant is shown by the usage of the word. If this is the
right derivation, and, as can hardly be doubted, G. Sojuos has the same deriva-
tion as damd, the former must no longer be referred to 8efiw." We have the
choice, it seems to me, between regarding the Indo-E. domo- either as first a
building (cf. above, p. 341), and then as the sphere of a man's rights, or vice
versa, as first the sphere of a man's rights and then as a building — a choice
which does not admit of decision.
Touching the remarkable S6fjioi in the sense of " family," compare what has
been said above about the South Slavonic house-community's dwellings.
THE BRATSTVO. 397
primeval period ; and here, again, we shall start from the state of
things found amongst the southern Slavs ; for our opinion — to be
supported by arguments shortly — is that here, in tlie mountains of
Herzegovina and Crn agora, the original form of the Indo-Europeau
tribe and family has been preserved with almost absolute fidelity.
The intermediate link between the house-community described
and the tribe [pleme) is here the bratstvo, "the brotherhood." *
A bratstvo is foi-med, when the blood-brothers of a house-com-
munity separate, but still continue to form a political (territorial)
and religious (common tutelary hei'o) organisation, possessing a com-
mon landed estate. Every ira^s^yo has its family legend in honour
of the common ancestor.
The number of the members of a hratstvo varies from 30 to 800,
which however only includes the men capable of bearing arms.
These fight side by side in battle. The head of the bratstvo is chosen
by the bratstvenici. He is the leader of the bratstvo in war, its
political representative in peace, to some extent its judge and the
leader of the public assemblies. In the latter, only the heads of
households have a seat and vote, the rest simply have the right of
acclamation. The bratstvo has usually the exclusive occupation,
according to its numbers, of one or more villages.
The bratstvenici regard themselves as bound to one another in
respect of all things. This is ptirticularly the case in the matter of
blood-revenge. Marriage within the bratstvo does not seem to have
been usual originally. A marriage makes all the bratstvenici of the
young wife 2^riJate/Ji "friends " of the husband's bratstvo.
The name of the bratstvo is derived from that of the common
ancestor, and is added to the full name of the individual. Thus a
man may be called : Jovo Petra (father) Markova (grandfather)
Jankoviia (house-community) Kovacevica (bratstvo).
No\v, there can, in my opinion, be no doubt that the G. <^prjTpr]
and the Lat. gens stand, or originally stood, on the same level with
this South Slavonic bratstvo.
The original conception of the G. (fyparpia has already been
rightly recognised by Gilbert (Griechische Staatsaltertiimer, ii. 303),
when in opposition to the view expressed by Dicajarchus (Miiller,
Fr. H. G., ii. 238) that the ^parpia was a religious organisation of
families connected by marriage with one another, he very justly
says : " But this explanation does not accord with the meaning of
the word cf>paTpLa, which is applied in the sense of brotherhood first
to a body of brothers united by their common origin, and then,
in the course of its advance and development, to their male
descendants, ^parpia accordingly can hardly have originally
diftered in meaning from iraTpa ('family') in its extended sense of
the sib. And as a matter of fact the ramifications of the family do
not spread, as Aristotle also points out, wider than the sib ; for
marriage, to judge from its original forms — capture and purchase —
when it took place between members of two different sibs scarcely
seems to have constituted any close connection between those sibs."
* Cf. Kraiiss, loc. cit., p. 32.
398 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
In Homer the <f)pi]Tpr) (bratstvo) is a subdivision of the <l>vXov
(pleme). The (fip-^ropa fight side by side, like the bratstvenici : —
Kpiv avSpas Kara cjivXa, Kara <fiprjTpa<;, Ayafxe/Jivov,
ws <f)p7jTprj (f>pijTpr]<j)L aprjyr), cj>vXa hi (jivX-ois.
{IL, ii. 362.)
That man is originally a.(^p-qjiap (cf. Goth, unsihjis) Avho belongs to
no sib, dvccTTtos who belongs to no family [11., ix. 63, and above,
p. 350). Unfortunately, we learn nothing more from Homer about
the important and primeval institution of the ^p-qTp-q. In later
times it was incorporated in various ways in the organisation of
the state (cf. Busolt, " Griech. Staats- und Rechts-altert.," in I.
Miiller's Hcmdbuch, iv. 1. 20).
The common ancestor of the bratstvo or pleme calls to mind the
rjp(ji<i eTTwwjU.os of the Cleisthenean tribes.
The Lat. gens corresponds to the South Slav, bratstvo, and G.
(fip-qxprj in their original significance.* " The etymology of the
word is transparent : it is based on the notion of procreation, and
that in the legal sense of the act which gives the father authority
over the son. Hence the two ideas of the family and of the sib :
the former consists of the free persons under the authority of a
living ascendant, the latter of those free persons who would have
been under such authority, had no death taken place." The mark
of the sib is the nomen (/entile, the name of the common ancestor,
which, like the name of the bratstvo, is added to the name of the
individual : Qu. Fabius Quinti = Quintus of the Fabian c/ens in the
potestas of Qu.f The members of the sib are called (/entiles, also
patres, " house-fathers," and j^'^tricU. They are divided in Roman
testamentary law into sui, adgnati (with assignable gradus), and
the other gentiles. The ancient political significance of the gens
was lost in that of the state ; and its legal sphere was limited to
private life, to the law of property and of ritual. In the former
respect the gens collectively became the depositary of the land-
laws (Mommsen).
Coming to the Teutons, we have to mention the gentes cogna-
tionesque and the familice et propinquitates (cf. above, p. 289), to
which, according to Caesar (vi. 22), the common arable-land was
allotted by the 2)rincipes and magistratus, and which according to
Tacitus (Germ., 7), like the Slav, bratstvenici and the Homeric
<f)p-^Tope<;, formed a turmam or cuneum in battle.
That the Teutonic sib (Goth, sibja, hio])s, also slahta, fara,
chunni), as long as it was an agrarian and military unit, is to be
* Cf. Th. Mommsen, Rmnisches Staatsrecht, iii. 1, p. 9, ff.
T lu Indo-European each individual man, as is well known, enjoyed an
appellation, which usually was a very sonorous compound (Sans. Kshe-
marcy'a = O.H.G. Heimrich, Sans. Satyagravas = G. 'EreoKXris, Sans. Deva-
datta = G. Ai6Sotos) ; cf. A. Fick, Die griech. Personennamen, Gottingen,
1874. From the agreement of Greek and Teutonic, we may perhaps infer that
the name of the father played its part in the son's appellation, in that one
member of the father's compound name was reproduced in the compound
name of the child, e.g., Aivo-Kparris, son of Aiuo-kKtjs, Walt-bert, son of
Wald-ram {cf. Brugmann, Gruiidriss, ii. 1. 32).
THE SIB. 399
conceived as having been purely agnatic, seems to me to be per-
fectly self-evident. For how could the unity of the sib be main-
tained, if relationship on the female side had been regarded as
constituting a bond of kindred 1 Brunner rightly calls attention
(D. R., p. 80) to the agnatic character of the Teutonic tribal
legend (Manus and the descendant of his three sons, lugviionen,
Istviionen, Herminonen). I, therefore, entirely agree with the clear
definition of the Teutonic vioeg given by Rosin, Der Begriff
der Schwertmagen, p. 50, Breslau, 1877. According to this
authority, in the purely agnatic mcEg, the character of which be-
came gradually obscured by the " ever-growing respect paid to
kinship through the female side," the sword-kin, the spear-kin, and
lance-kin, simply mean the male members of the sib, the spindle-
kin, distaff-kin, and play-kin, the female members.
The primitive Teutonic suffix expressing the connection of the
individual with a sib, was -inga, e.g., O.N. Ylfingar, A.S. Wyljingas,
M.H.G. Wiilfinge. The transition of the sib-communities (gentes
cogtiationesque) into local organisations is admirably indicated by
the employment of this suffix to denote the inhabitants of a district
or town, e.g., A.S. Centingas, Idumiiigas, &c. (Kluge, Nomincde
Stammh., § 26). The case is the same when Attic demes are
named after a sib {Philaidai, Paionidai, Butadai, like 'ArpdSat,
&c.) ; for the village-community (kw/mt]) is nothing but the sib or
(^prjTprj become a local habitation.
In Asia, Herodotus divides the Persians into numerous yivrj,
such as the IlacrapyaSat, Mapa</)iot, MacTTTtot. These yevq, again, are
divided into the <j>prJTpri with which we are familiar. Such a
(^prjTpyj of the Ilao-a/ayaSat were the 'A;;^at/>tei/tSai, from whom the
Persian kings were descended (i. 125). In the language of the
cuneiform inscriptions, such a (^prjTpr) is called vHth, in the Avesta
vis, " sib, village," in nomad life the clan, on which the modern
organisation of the Afghans is based (W. Geiger, Ostiran. Kultur,
p. 425, ff^. In the Rigveda vIq, as it seems, frequently means a
combination of several sibs : the individual sib as a settlement is
called grcima and vrjdna, as a couimimlty jdnman. The wider and
the narrower term alike is used in a military sense also (Zimmer,
Altind. Leben,-p. 158, jf.).
The question now is what appellation may have established
itself in the original language for the sib and the clan. The
word for a body of persons bound together by kinship or neighbour-
hood, which is most widely spi'ead in the Indo-European languages,
and the most tenacious of life, is one already mentioned in some of
its forms: Sans, w'p, O.P. v'ith, Zend vis, G. Vik in Tpi;^aiK€s *
* Od.,xix. 177 :—
AcDpiffs T6 Tpix,diKei SiOL Te Xli\a(Tyol.
Hesiod, Fr. vii. : —
ouviKa Tpi<r<r)]u yaiay skcis irdrpris iSaaarro.
Were the *&pri-YtKiT, 0p^i'/ces also possibly the " four-clanned ? " Opa =
400 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
(also oiKos = Sans. vegd), Lat. vicus, O.S. vise, Lith. v.nhz- (in
witszpats), Goth, veihs, I. fich (Corn, gwic), Alb. vise.
I am of opinion that this was the original term for the sib, so
far as it required to be designated as a settlement (Sans, vig,
" enter, settle ") on a common pasture-ground. This, the original
meaning, is most faithfully preserved in Ii-anian. In Sanskrit, as
also in the G. Ft/c, it has extended its meaning so as to designate
the canton. In the Lat. vicus, Goth, veihs, O.S. vist, Corn, gwic,
which practically mean the viDage, the natural and almost inevit-
able change of meaning has taken place : the settlement on a
common pasture-ground has become a settlement on common
arable-land, the sib village : Sans, grama, G. koj/a-^ (according to
Aristotle, the stage intermediate between ot/cos and ttoAis) = Goth.
haims, Lith. kanas, 0. Pr. cai/7nis.*
If this is correct, we get the following stages of evolution in the
primeval period : —
Dem-, clomo-, "family" (joint family), dera-s-poti, "pater
farnilias."
Vile-, vtk-, " sib " (as a settlement), vik-poti " sib-master " (Sans.
vig-pdti, Zend vtspaiti, Lith. u'ieszpats).
In addition to the last equation, in which the sib is regarded as
a settlement, as we have said, there may have been other names in
the primeval period which referred rather to the sib as a com-
munity of kinsmen. In this sense such words may have been used
as Sans. jVmrt, G. ycvos, Lat. genus, O.H.G. chutini, or Goth. kno])S,
O.H.G. chnuot, clinuosli = G. yvwrd?, " consanguineus," "brother"
(c/. (^piqTp-q : f rater).
The assembled kinsmen were perhaps originally designated by
the Goth, sihja, O.N. Sif, " goddess of the family and marriage " =
Sans, sabhd, " assembly house " t (cf. above, p. 344). Finally, we
have yet to mention an equation which belongs here, Longob.
fara, "sib" (Paul., Diac, ii. 9, also "a division of an army,"
O.H.G. fara kisez = castrwn, Burg, faravianni), which I derive
from *pazd, and compare with G. iraos, Tnr]6<s, " relation," TrawTai,
" (Tuyyevcts, oiKeloi" (Hesych.), and Lat. pdricida, parricida (pdzd :
pazd). Accordingly, I, with Brunnenmeister {Das Totungsver-
" four : " the aspirate may be due to the spiritus asper in the middle of the
word (cf. G. Mej'er, Gr. Gr."^, p. 209). As to Tpa="four" (rpaireC^a), cf. J.
Schmidt. K. Z., xxv. 43,#.; cf. further, A. Fick, B. £., iii. 168.
* This change of meaning natui'ally frequently repeats itself. Thus the
Teutonic /ftra, mcegS, &c., originally names for bodies of kinsmen, come to be
applied to local divisions [cf. Brunner, H. G., p. 84).
The transition is in the opposite direction, from the locality to the com-
munity, in the Teutonic words: O.H.G. do)f, A.S. ])Oi-p : Goth. ])aurp, "arable-
land." Cf. also Cymr. tref "village" (Attrchates), and also Lat. tribus,
Umbr. trifu, "part of the common fields, common field" ("community").
On this word, cf Mommsen, Rom. Staatsrecht, iii. 1. 95.
t Some compare O.S. sehru, "free farmer," here also. The fundamental
meaning would then be " one of the sib in a farming village-community ;" cf.
also above, p. 350.
WER-GELD. 401
hrechen im a/triim. Recht, Leipzig, 1887), regard the latter as the
" murderer of a kinsman." *
Having discovered in the vik-es the most ancient and tenacious
})olitical organisation of the Indo-Europeans, we may venture to
consider that in the vik-eR resided the power of the law, also, which
afforded the individual protection to life and limb. The solidarity
of the sib, as we have already intimated, is shown not least
strikingly in the obligation of the blood-feud, which forms part of
the conception of the sib in relation to other sibs. This most
})rimitive form of penal law can still be detected amongst all Indo-
European peoples,! amongst some only in faint traces, as in the
case of the Indians and Romans ; in the case of others, as the
(j! reeks, Teutons, and Slavs, it appears in fidl force in their early
history, while it survives to the present day amongst the Afghans,
Albanians, and some Slav peoples. But wherever this institution
is found, we also find the possibility of buying off the revenge of
the injured sib by means of wer-geld, and thereby of averting the
evil consequences of a feud which otherwise would be transmitted
from geiaeration to generation. Thus we have in Homer : —
Kttt fxiv Tis Tc KaaLyi'TjToio (jiovrjo^
7rou'r]v T] ov 7rai8o9 iSe^aro re^vr^wTOS'
Koi p 6 fiev iv 8>;/xa) fxevcL avrov ttoAA aTroTtcras,
Tov Se T iprjTverai Kpahirj koX 6vp.b<; ayqvwp
TTOtvrjv he^ajxevov. {^^-j ix. 631.)
With regard to the Romans, the sentence of Tacitus (Germ., 21)
applies : " Suscipere tam inimicitias seu patris sen propinqui quam
amicitias necesse est ; nee implacabiles durant : luitur enim
homicidium cei'to armentorum ac pecorum niimero recipitque
*Thc olijections wliicli R. LoeJiing {Z. f. d. gesamte Strafrechtsto. , vii.
655) makes to the equation ttijJj and pdricida, which was first put forward by
Frohde {B. B., viii. 164), and to which I add the Taut, fara, will not hold
water. True, irrjoj means kinsman generally, and affinis in particular ; but
our inquiries have shown that if a primeval equation to denote the sib can
be found amongst the Indo-Europeans, it can only be of agnatic character.
Consequently, if one member of f^uch an equation is used by some one language
to designate a non-agnatic relative or affinis, this must be a secondary mean-
ing ; in other words, the G. tttjJs must once have been identical in meaning
with Lat. ijriit.Uis.
Precisely the same applies to the Teutonic words, 0. H.G. nidg, A.S. mccg.
The A.S. maijit, who fight side bj' side, and are answerable for the behaviour of
the nurg in the fight (Beowulf ed. Heyne, 4 Aufl. v. 2887), can only be taken
as originally equivalent to the Roman genu, for which 1 again refer to Rosin's
work (above, p. 399). And yet Goth, megx has taken on the meaning of
" son-in-law," and O.N. mdgr that of " relative bj' marriage, son-in-law."
To this must be added that the comparison of parricida with pcrprram, &c.,
]iut forward by Mommsen {Rom. Stoats re cht, ii. 1-, p. 528), and approved by
Lcening {loc. at., p. 661), is quite untenable as a piece of philology.
As io pdricida : parrictda, compare Schweizer-Sidler, Gr. d. lat. Spr.^, p. 56;
F. Stolz, Lat. Gr., p. 168. Frohde's e.xpliination o{ pdricida is also followed
by G. Meyer, Gr. Gr.-, § 223.
t F. Miklosich, Die Blutrache hei den Slaven, Denksch. d. Wiener Akad.
phil.-hist. Kl., xxxvi. 127, jf.
2 c
402 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
satisfjictionem viiii versa domus." In the A vesta, too, murders are
pimished by fines (shaeto-cina/iho), or sometimes compensated for
by the offer of young girls (ndiricinanho) ; W. Geiger, Ostiran.
kultur, p. 453. And as Roth {Z. d. D. M. G., xli. 672) has also
discovered traces of the wer-geld in the Veda, where it is designated
by vaiyri, vaira-deya, vairaydtana* which corresponds to the
Teutonic words, A.S. vere, M.H.G. ^vere { = OM.Q. tverar/elt), we
shall perhaps not go far wrong if we regard the possibility of
averting a blood-feud by means of a fine of cattle as dating from
Indo-European times.
The verb which originally connoted the exaction of revenge,
whether in blood or in the shape of a fine, was Sans, ci, Med.
cdye, Zend ci. G. Tlvojxai (from which also 7rotv77 = Zend kaena);
cf. Curtius, Grundzfi, p. 489, and Leist, Grdco-italische Rechts-
geschichte, pp. 321, 741.
That there were in the sib certain kinsmen, the nearest relatives,
on whom the duty of taking vengeance first fell, may be assumed a
priori. In Homer the obligation is mentioned as lying on sons,
grandsons, father, brothers, and cratjt the last an expression which
admits of no certain interpretation. Affines are never mentioned
in this connection. Once {II., xv. 554) an di/ci/ftos is mentioned:
this is Melanippos, the son of Hiketaon, relatively to Dolops,
the son of Lampos. Now, Hiketaon and Lampos were brothers
{IL, XX. 238), so that we have to do with brothers' sons. It is
clear, therefore, that our most ancient authorities only recognises,
or at any rate only mentions, agnatic relatives as under the
obligation of the blood-feud.
The question, whether and how far a primitive kind of justice
was administered within the sib, is one on which I cannot enter.
For offences against the community, such as theft, J &c., a common
and most terrible punishment may have been expulsion from the
community. In this relation we have a most remarkable equation
in Sans. (Vedic) paravrj = A.S. vrecca, 0. Sax, wrekkio, O.H.G.
reecho, O.N. reklcr.
The means employed for discovering the guilty were, even in
the primeval period, ordeals, especially by fire and water (A. Kaegi,
Alter unci Herkunft des germanischen Gottesurteils, Festschrift zur
Begrmsimg der xxxix. Versammlung deutscher Philologen u?id Schul-
mdnner in Ziirich, 1887).
The union of several clans (vik-es) produces a higher association
which we may call the canton or also the tribe. That such com-
binations were formed even in the primeval period for common
■ objects, and especially for military purposes, is extremely probable.
Only, it does not seem as though a fixed uniform name had
established itself at that time for these higher political units. In
* Delbriick differs in Leist's Altar. Jus Gent., p. 297.
t Etymologically connected with er-aipos and Lith. sweczias {*svet-ja-s),
"guest."
J Sans, stcnd, t&yd, "thief," Zend tavi, G. TTjrato (Lat. mustela, "stealer of
mice "= "weasel "), I. taid, O.S. tatt ; G. k\4tttw, Lat. clepere, Goth, hlifan.
THE CANTON OR TRIBE. 403
the Avesta we Hnd used to expi'ess this conception : zaatu and
dahhu — O. Pers. dahymh ; in Sanskrit the vi^ is followed by the
jdna ; in Gi'eek the tribe is called cf)v\ov, (f)vXr}, and also yeVo? ; in
Slavonic plenif ; the Teutons were divided into pagi = Goth, gavi,
O.H.G. goiiivi and civitates = Goth.. ])imla. The latter alone recurs
in the same or a similar sense in several western Indo-European
languages: Goth, yiuda, O.H.G. diot = 0.1. tiiath, Osc. tovta,
Umbr. tota, Lith. tautd, " district."
In Indo-European the expression vik- or vik-es must have served
to also express the combination of several clans. When such
combination took_ place, it became necessary to choose one of
the clan-lords (vik-poti) to administer the common business, and
above all to act as supreme commander. It is not impossible that
the equation, Sans, rcljan = Lat. irir, I. H, designated some such
office.
It is conceivable that the first beginnings of the oT;voi»cto-/i,os
of several clans round a common centre go back to primeval times.
Amongst the southern Slavs, as Krauss (loc. cit., p. 22) relates,
every ziipa (the district inhabited by a pleme) was bound to ei'ect
a sti'onghold for its own defence, in a spot adapted by nature for
the purpose. " The stronghold was the political centre, and in
ancient times also the religious centre of the whole zupa. Here
the elders of the zupa assembled for their common deliberations,
this was their base in war, their place of retreat in time of
attack." The same arrangement may have been known to the
primitive period, and may be indicated by the equation. Sans, pur
= G. TToAt?.
It is in clans, individual or confederated, that we must, we
believe, imagine the Indo-Europeans to have migrated and have '
been diffused. Even when the Indo-Europeans had effected the
transition to agricultural life, and the transformation of the nomad
clans into bodies of farmers and village-communities, even then
the period of their migrations over Indo-European territory had not
yet come to a close. We have in this work pointed out often
enough that their migrations reach up to and over the threshold
of history. It was obviously a common occurrence for a number
of village-communities weary of the work of agriculture, or led by
desire of better soil, to cut their crops, like the Helvetii of Cicsar,
pull down their lightly-built huts, pack child and chattel on the
wagon, with its team of oxen, and seek their fortune in a distant
land. The sweet word "fatherland" had no attractive sound
for primitive man, nor did it acquire it until a territorial basis
was supplied to the political unit in place of the tie of kin.* In
those wandering times people and army were one (O.H.G. /o/c; cf.
O.S. plu/cu, "troop," "army;" cf. also G. 8^/ios, " people " = O.I.
dam, "a king's followers;" Windisch, B. d. K. Sachs. G. d. W.
phil.-hut. KL, p. 246, 1866), and the clan-lord or reg- became the
commander or vnjevoda. It was in these times that the reins of
regal or princely power were drawn tighter, and it is perhaps not
* Cf. Maine, Lectures^, p. 72.
404 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
mere chance that the Shavonic tribes, whom we believe to have
remained nearest to the original home (ch. xiv.), were the longest
to remain in ignorance of regal power.*
I must unfortunately abstain from following the development
of these factors further, and can only conclude this chapter by
lightly touching on one question more, viz., whether the various
clans or confederations of clans, which we must suppose to have
existed in the primeval period, were united under one common
appellation. There ai'e not wanting scholars who maintain this
view, and who hold that the common name of the Indo-Europeans
was Aryans, which is inferred from the agreement of Sans, drya,
Zend airya with the native name of Ireland, l^riu, Erenn
(Zimmer, B. B., iii. 137). But granted the comparison is connect —
Windisch, Kelt. Spr., p. 139, doubts it — I would not venture to
draw such a conclusion from it. Turn where we may amongst the
European members of the Indo-Germanic family, everywhere we
find, be it in Greece or Italy, be it amongst the Slavs or the
Teutons, scattered tribes with separate and individiaal names : it
is only in quite late times that collective appellations appear, and
they are generally bestowed from without. That Indians and
Iranians alike call themselves drya, arya, airya, is just a proof of
their luicommonly close connection with each other, which is
without parallel amongst Indo-European peoples. The word-
stem in question — the original meaning of wdiich is, by the way,
quite obscure — may recur amongst other Indo-European peoples
(cf. Ario-vistus, I. aire, airech, " nobilis " = Sans, aryaka), but that
it was a collective appellation for the Indo-Europeans generally,
seems to me an unlikely thing, at any rate as soon as we come to
regard the original people as split into a number of tribes or
clans.
* Cf. Miillenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, ii. 34, /. The name for king
(O.S. kunegu, kUnezi) was borrowed in primitive Slavonic times from tlie
Teutonic (0. H.G. dmning, O.N. Jcmiungr). The Teutons, again, borrowed
tlieir Goth reiks, O.H.G. rihhi, &c., from the Celtic (I. ri.). The loan of the
Teut. -Goth. andbaJits, &c., from the Gallic ambadus, falls under tlie same head
as regards meaning and history.
G. ^px'^ = Goth. raginon (Frohde, B. B., iii. 13) and 1. fialth, "lordship,"
Goth, valda (O.S. vladu,, a loan ?) are primevally related.
G. $a(ri\€vs is not yet quite clear. A new interpretation is given by
Rezzenherger (^ciVr., ii. 174); he takes *0a(Ti-\o-s {^acrix-n, ^aaiKls) as the
foundation of jSao-iAei^s, and compares *fia(TL : Z,endjaUi, "hou.se," "family,"
Lith. gimtis, "natural kind," so that ^aa-iXe/is would be like O.H.G. chuning,
" clan-lord." Focal and Tvptravvos are perhajis foreign {B. B., xiv. 309).
CHAPTER X 1 1 T.
RELIGION,
Difficulty of the Task— I. A Short History of the Comparative Mythology
of the Indo-European Peoples: Max Miiller, A. Kuhn, W. Schwartz,
W. Mannhanlt, E. H. Meyer, 0. Gruppe — II. Imlo-Eurojiean Etymo-
logical Equations touching the Belief in the Gods and Cults : Conclusions
therefrom — III. Conchuling Remarks : Priest and Physician — Sacrifice —
Human Sacrifice — Mountain and Forest Cults — Question of Immortality
Ancestor AVorship.
Ix the infancy of a nation the ultimate questions as to its higher
spiritual life may be comprehended in the single inquiry : —
Had the original people a religion ?
Did the original Indo-Europeans wander over the face of the
earth, dull and indifiFerent, obej'ing appetite alone, j9?'coti ac ventri
oboedientes, burdened with the fear of phantoms, magic, and super-
stition in its thousand forms 1 Or had they raised their gaze to
the heavens above, with their terrors and their wonders 1 And if
so, in the sun that drives away the hostile night, in the lightning
which descends in fire upon the earth but foreruns the refreshing
rain, in the storm which bursts from heaven, uprooting high-
crowned trees, in the vault of heaven itself which stands above
the earth and never changes, did they but see mere natural forces,
now kind, now terrible 1 Or did the}' imagine beings in and
identical with the phenomenon itself, who sat to judge and punish
right and wrong, the incarnation of a moral order and a law
divine? Did they bow the knee in reverence and oft'er prayer
and song? Were sacrifices offered to avert the wi-ath of heaven or .
gifts made to get return? AVere there already people who had
succeeded in persuading others that they were the chosen inter-
preters and guardians of heaven's will ? And when earth covered
the corpse, or when the flames of the funeral pyre had ceased to
glow — both forms of burial were known to the Indo-Europeans
from of old — was all over with man, or did the spirit soar from the
body to join the spirits of sire and grandsires, and with them live
a life of blessedness 1
It is with some embarrassment that we undertake to give an
answer to these questions which are so easily put and so hard to
answer; for just now the history of the religion and mythology of
406 PREHISTOlllC ANTIQUITIES.
the Indo-Eiiropeaiis in the most ancient times is the subject of
views so different, and so fundamentally opposed to each other, that
it seems impossible at present to take up a safe and well-founded
position with regard to them. Nevertheless, it would be an in-
tolerable omission if the subject of religion were left undiscussed
in this work.
Our design is to put what we have to say on this matter in three
sections : in the first we shall endeavour to sketch with the utmost
brevity the outlines of a history of the Compai'ative Mythology of
the Indo-European peoples, as we intimated on p. 15. Next, we
shall subject those linguistic equations which bear on cults and the
service of the gods to an examination as to their value for purposes
of history. Thirdly, we shall append in a final section some
scattered remai'ks upon ancient Indo-European belief, and especially
on the doctrine of immortality.
I. A Short History of the Comparative Mythology of
THE Indo-European Peoples.
The founders of the Comparative Mythology of the Indo-
European peoples must be considered to be Max Miiller and
Adalbert Kuhn, whose views, however much they may frequently
diverge on details, have so much that is fundamental in common
that they may here be treated together. They are based on three
leading ideas, maintained by these two scholars : first the con-
viction, due indeed to the brothers Grimm, that myths have their
root not in any creation proceeding from a higher stratum of
society, say the priestly or the minstrel class, but like language
itself in the depths of the people's soul ; second, the conviction
that the most ancient form of the Indo-European belief in the gods
was to be found in the hymns of the Rigveda, some of which are
indubitably based upon the observation of natural phenomena, and
which came to be better known just at the time when both scholars
were in the prime of their working life ; third, the observation that
precisely these hymns of the Rigveda display so much resemblance to
the myths of related peoples, as regards both content and language,
that they must date from the time of the primeval Indo-European
period. A. Kuhn has endeavoured to establish cycles of Indo-
European myths of this kind in large numbers : suffice it to here
refer to his works on Gandharvas and Centaurs (A". Z.^ 1), 'Epti/us,
Saranyu (ib.), on Manus, MiVw?, Mann us (A'. Z., iv. 81,^'.), 'Ep/A-^s,
Sarama, Sarameya, Wuotan {Nanpts Z., vi. 117, ff.), Die Herahkunft
des Feuers mid des Gottertrankes (Berlin, 1859), and others.
Especial boldness in interpreting mythical names as referring to
natural phenomena is shown by Max Miiller, whose studies in
mythology and the history of religion may be found in his lectures
on the Science of Language, Essays, Introduction to the Com-
parative Science of Religion, Origin and Growth of Religion (London,
1880), &c.
A summary of what Max Muller now believes to be possible in
the matter of Comparative Mythology is given in his Biographies
MAX MULLER. ' 407
of Words, pp. 188-98 (Religion and Mjth). Here we come across
such equations as 'ATreAAwi/ = Sans, ajwrmivdn, "removing, opening,"
'AOrjvr} = Sans. ahand', "morning, day," 'A^^iAAovs = Sans.*«/iar_yM from
rt/irtr,"da3'," BptoTjis, if for *13apo-r/ts, the offspring of Brises, conquered
by Greeks given to Achilles = Sans, l/fsai/a, conquered by Fani, ttc.
The source of myth, according to both investigators, is to be
found in the nature of language itself. " It is," says A. Kuhu
(Die EntivickhiwisHifen cler MytlienhiUhmg, Ahh. d. Berl. Ak. d. W.,
1873), " a conclusion which is coming more and more to be
generally admitted that the foundation of mythology is to be
looked for in the domain of language, and that its most important
factors ai'c polyonymy and homonymy."
This multiplicity of expression, however, is due on the one hand
to the tendency of language to choose out one only of the properties
of any object, in the formation of substantives, as for example, when
night is termed dark, obscure, humid, <fec., and on the other hand
to poetical metaphor, as when beams of light are called reins,
fingers, hands, or cows. Originally men said " daylight has dis-
appeared, night is come," then with poetical metaphor, " the cows
have disappeared, the dark spirit of night has stolen them away."
Thus the original expression ceased by degrees to be understood.
Tales were told of the cattle of Helios, or of the cattle-lifting of
Cacus, ifec, and the myth was created.
Max Miiller's view is extremely similar ; it is summed up in the
sentence: "Mythology is but an old form of language." The way
in which he conceives mythological phrases to have originated may
be seen from what he says, e.g., in Growth of Religion, on the
auxiliai'y verbs. These verbs, such as "he is," "to be," "1 was,"
originally had a fuller meaning, and were equivalent to "breathe"
(Sans, as, ds-u, "breath"), "grow" (G. cjivoi), "dwell" (Sans. vas).
When, therefore, the ancient Aryans wished to say anything
. about the sun, moon, earth, mountains, or rivers, they could not
just say as we do, "the sun is there," or "it rains," they could
only think and declare, "the sun breathes" [suryo asti), "the rain
rains." Above all it was impossible for the ancient Aryan to do
anything but designate the objects he perceived as actively doing
something. The sun is the lighter, the warmer, the nourisher ;
the moon is the measurer ; the dawn is the awakenei", kc. " Here
in the lowest depths of language lie the true germs of what we
afterwai'ds call figurism, animism, anthropopathism " (p. 187).
What Max Muller takes to be the further course of myth-making
is exemplified, e.g., in the myth of A})ollo and Daphne : there was
in the original language a *dah-(md = Sd(f>vr], " she that burns "
("she that lightly burns"), a name at the same time for the dawn
and the laurel. Of the dawn the tale was told that the sun pur-
sued her. In course of time 8d(f)vr] in the sense of dawn was lost
from the lang\uige, and then the story came to be that Apollo (the
sun) had pursued a nymph named Daphne, who was thereupon
changed into a laurel by the gods.
The key-note running through the whole mythology of the
408 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Indo-European peoples is then, according to the views of Max
Miiller and Kuhn, that nature is viewed as endowed with life ;
and not least that a contest is waged, and an antithesis present
amongst them, whether in the tragedy of the thunderstorm, in the
shapes assumed by the clouds, or rather in the regularly recurring
change from day to night. " The main foundation of the religions
and myths of most Indo-European peoples," says A. Kuhn (Uber
Entioicklimgstufen, p. 126), "is the contest between the powers of
light and darkness, which, as is well known, has been carried out
by none of them fui'ther than by the ancient Bactrians. Their
tradition, like that of all the other Indo-Europeans, is permeated
by the final victory of light, whereby the powers of light become
the conquerors, whereas those of darkness are temporarily or per-
manently impi'isoned or subdued. That this final triumph of the
light must have come to be the general conviction of all the Indo-
Europeans at a time while they were yet one people, is shown by
the witness of their name for the gods, Avhich is a word derived
from the root div, ' to lighten,' and consequently is a proof that
they recognised and worshipped these powers of light as their lords
and as leaders of their lives."
These fundamental views of the two scholars named have recently
been the subject of attacks w'hich have been made from different
sides, and by specialists of equal authority, with the purpose either
of modifying the views of Max Miiller and Kuhn in important points,
or of totally overthrowing them. The school of Miiller and Kuhn
started to reconstruct the Indo-Europeans' religion from the oldest
literary monuments of the Indo-European peoples, from the Veda, the
Zend-Avesta, the Edda. Modern popular beliefs were only utilised
in a very secondary degree, and even then they were, in imitation of
Grimm, regarded as faded reminiscences of the ancient heathen gods
and heroes, who had been driven from the popular mind by Chris-
tianity. The popular story of the wild hunter and his furious crew
w'as the last remnant of the high and holy worship of Woden in
olden times. " The ancient god lost his confiding nature and his
familiar features, and came to be regarded as a dark and awful figure
to which there was still some power left. Dead alike to men
and their service, he sweeps through the air on his wanderings a
spectral and fiendish form " (J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, ii.^ 870).
As early as 1849, W. Schwartz had expressed dissatisfaction with
this view in a programme entitled " Der Volksglaube und das alte
Heidentum," and had endeavoured to demonstrate that so far fi-om
popular beliefs of modeni times mei'ely containing the fragments of
a higher mythology, they, on the conti-ary, had in many cases faith-
fully preserved the roots from which the higher deities that exercise
their sway in the Edda and elsewhere had originated. This opinion,
assisted by the steady growth all over Europe of the passion for
collecting the tales, stories, customs, and usages that still live
amongst the people, has gradually led to a new departure in
Comparative Mythology of which the most prominent i-epresenta-
tives in Germany are AYilhelm Mannhardt and Elard Hugo Meyer.
MANNHARDT — MEYER. 409
Mannhardt's renunciation of the line followed by Midler and
Kuhn is contained in the preface to the second volume of his Wald-
tmd Feld-kulte. " I cannot," he says on p. xvi, " help avowing that
in my opinion Comparative Philology has not yet borne the fruits
which in a too sanguine mood were expected from it. The only
certain results, at any rate, that have been obtained are limited to
a very few names of gods (such as Dyaus-Zeus-Tius, Parjanya-Per-
kunas, Bhaga-Bog, Varuna-Uranos, &c.), germs of myths, to which
may be added numerous analogies, which however do not necessarily
imply actual descent from a common origin I am afraid the
history of the science will have to describe them (such parallels as
Sarameya-Hermeias) rather as displays of ingenuity than as ascer-
tained facts," &c. On the other hand, it became more and more
clear to him that our handbooks of ancient mythology only contain
what the refinement of town life had made out of the original beliefs
of the people. " Now under this, the mythology of the learned,
there may be discerned just a mythology of the people, which
betrays the most startling similarities to the popular traditions of
the peasant of northern Europe." These analogies extend to folk-
tales, stories, and ciistoms, not less than to mythical personifica-
tions, to the "moss-folk" and "wood-lady" ( = Dryades), wild men
( = Cyclopes, Centaurs, Pan, Satyrs), " water-lady " { = Thetis), »kc.
In fine, all the spirits which, both in antiquity and in modern times,
haunt wood and plain and house belong to the set of original
ideas from wdiich many exalted deities or heroic figures, as can
still be proved, derive their origin. " Thus," concludes the work
referred to, " Schwartz' discovery that the popular beliefs of the
peasantry contain the germs of the higher mythology, in a form
that still can be immediately identified, is confirmed by important
analogies."
This same idea that the original Indo-European people believed
rather in spirits and demons than in gods, combined with the theory
of ancestor worship, which has of late been brought into prominence
particularly by anthropologists, and is maintained to have been
the source of all beliefs in the gods, is to be found in Elard Hugo
Meyer, editor of J. F. Grimm's Deutscher Mythologie, and since the
death of Mannhardt perhaps the greatest authority on mythology
in Germany.
In the opinion of this savant there are three stages in the
history of mythology, which Meyer terms the belief in departed
spirits, in spirits generally, and in gods (cf. Indo;/. Mi/then, i. 210,/.).
In the first period mythological thought begins with the idea that
the soul continues to live for some time after death, sometimes
residing in plants and animals, and can injure its enemies and
assist its friends. These souls require food. The oldest form of
sacrifice is the worship of the dead. This stage of belief, which
universally precedes animism, has been gone through by every
people on the face of the earth. In the case of some civilised
peoples, such as the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Romans, ancestor
worship has continued to form the kernel of their religion. This
4IO PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
period coincides with the stage in the history of culture in which
life is supported by hunting.
During the second period the ghosts tend more and more to
become spirits, first spirits of the wind, and then demons of the
thunderstorm and of the rain. From their midst individual spirits
with mythical names begin to detach themselves. Spirits of light
still remain in the background. The stage of culture is that of
pastoral life. The Indo-European peoples spent most of this period
togethei", the Grjeco-Indo-Persian peoples living together longest.
An example of this purely Indo-European belief, as it appears, is
sought by E. H. Meyer in the linguistic and mythical identity of
the Gandharvas with the Centaurs, whom he regards as demons of
wind and weather.*
The third period, in which individualised demons and deities of
light become gods, belongs to the time w^hen the Indo-European
peoples had separated, and had advanced to agricultural life and a
regular form of government. " When, nevertheless, we are sur-
prised by the similarity between two deities, belonging say to
two different Indo-Eiiropean peoples, this similarity is due to
the identity of the material produced in the earlier pei'iods and
used in the manufacture of the higher figure, and also to analogous
development, rather than to any common origin of the figure."
Thus the tendency of this departure in Comparative Mythology
was to dethrone the primitive Indo-European gods of heaven and
light, and to set troops of wind and weather spirits in their places.
We have now finally to mention an attempt designed to deal the
death-blow to the notion that the primeval period had any belief
of any sort or description in the gods, and to demonstrate that the
Indo-Europeans were totally without religion. It is what I conceive
to be a most important work, viz.. Otto Gruppe's Die Griechischen
Kulte und Mythen in ihrer Beziehung zu den Orientalischen
Religionen, of which as yet only the first volume (Leipzig, 1887)
has appeared. It contains two chapters, of which one consists of
a review of the most important attempts to explain the origin of
cults and myths, while the other deals w4th the most important
literary monuments from which the history of myths and cults is
derived. t
The correctness of the three fundamental positions, on which, as
we remarked above (p. 406), the hypotheses of Midler and Kuhn
rested, and which the Demonists had not at any rate in principle
renounced, is absolutely denied by 0. Gruppe. Mythology is not
the religious language of the people, it is the creation and the
pi'operty of the higher classes of society, it is conscious composi-
tion, a division of artificial poetry. The Rigveda — and here
* L. V. Schroder endeavours to find female bemgs of the same or a similar
kind in the Apsaras, Aphrodite, Swan JIaidens, &c. {Gricchischc Gottcr und
Hcroen, i. ]887); cf. above, p. 162.
t Cf. Bcrl. PMlologische Wochcnschrift, Nos. 29 and 30, 1888 (R. Fritzsche);
The Classical Eeview, Feb. 1888 (F. B. Jevons) ; Bcntsche Litcraturzeitung,
Ko. 14, 1888 ; Lit. Centralhlatt, No. 14, 18S9.
GRUPPE. 411
» Jruppe is following the path struck out by A. Ludwig, and further
j)ui'sued by A. Bergaigne — reveals to us anything but the sway of
the naive poetry of nature. In its oldest parts it abounds in a
" pruned " theology and in priestly refinements. For all that, it
remains the most important source for us, one in which we are
still able to find the origin of all religion and all mythological
expressions, in certain proceedings which subsequently came to be
called cults; for ritual is the source of all religion. The priest
pours streams of oil on to tlie blazing fire to hasten the dawn of day.
Tiiese sti'eams are called the eager cows wliich hasten to mate
with Agni. The latter, therefore, is placed in the bosom of his
own mother in order himself to beget himself (p. 455). Even the
Indo-Europeans before the dispersion, though they knew no gods,
went through certain proceedings, the source of subsequent
cei'emonies, with which certain ideas were associated that were
destined one day to become condensed into mythology or trans-
mogrified into dogma (p. 121). Thus, he says, of libations (p.
277) : " The cult was not merely associated with a revel, it actually
was the revel; the gods were worshipped by the intoxication of
the worshipper, the enjoyment of the intoxicating drink constituted
the act of devotion."
And third and last : Every pretended Indo-European name for a
god or gods, every pretended Indo-European name for any cere-
mony forming part of a cult, which Comparative Philology lias as
yet unearthed, is either phonetically unfounded or inconclusive
in meaning. The Indo-Iranian peoples are allowed "a limited
number" of "primitive ceremonies" for their primeval period /,— -^
(p. 125).
There still remains, and remains to be explained, the undeniable
agreement which the I'eligions show in their myths and cults, an
agreement, however, which stretches far beyond the region covered
by the Indo-European peoples. This shows that the resemblances
are not to be explained on any theory of inheritance, but are
rather due — and here we come to the real and final object aimed at
by Gruppe— to tremendous borrowing, owing to which "foi'ms of
I'cHgion from Asia Minor and Egypt were imported in large quan-
tities to Greece, to India, and to the centre and north of Europe."
The trutli of this hypothesis is to be demonstrated in the
volumes to follow, the present one is only designed to p.ave the
way for this theory, on which see sections 20-25 {Ueher die Mog-
lichkeit die Vererhwir/sfheorie diirch die Annahme nachtrdglicher
Uehertragung zu ersetzen).
Here we close our brief account of the currents and coiintcr-
curreuts which at the present day permeate the history of the
religion and mythology of the Indo-Eluropean peoples. As our
investigations have in all cases to take language as their starting-
point, we turn at once to the discussion of those Indo-European
equations which refer to cidts and the belief in gods, against
which, as we saw, objections were raised first by Mannhardt, and
then much more definitely by 0. Gruppe.
412 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
II. Etymological Indo-European Equations Eeferring
TO Cults and the Belief in Gods.
Anyone who looks over the considerable mass of equations which
have been accumulated referring to Comparative Mythology, and
observes that a scholar of the rank and influence of Max MuUer
still to the present day supports the largest part of them (t/. above,
p. 407), will agree with us that it is no mean service on the part
of 0. Gruppe to have been the first to point out quite clearly that
the linguistic science of the Comparative Mythologists is no longer
coincident with the linguistic science of Comparative Philologists.
Indeed, if one takes up a firm position on the ground of the phonetic
laws which up to now have been recognised as correct, one will
have to go so far as to believe that with the exception of a certain
number of agi'eements, which will be put together shortly, scarcely
one of the mythological equations as yet put forward is without its
difficulties, phonetic or otherwise.
The time-honoured equation of MtVcos, Sans. Jlcbiu, Teut. Mannus
is wrecked on the fact that the Greek word, to say nothing of its
termination, cannot be reconciled as regards its root-vowel with the
Indo-European *mami, to which the Indian and Teutonic words go
back. It is, therefore, no safer than the comparison of G. Kip/Sepos
= Sans, fdrvara, gahala, by means of which the dog of the nether
world is assigned to the primeval period. The Teutonic Wuotan
has been interpreted by means of the Indian vata, " wind-god,
wind ; " but in the first place the Sans, vata (*vntd) is connected
with the Eng. ivind, Lat. ventvs, which invalidates the comparison
with Wuotan.
Instead of G. 'Epivt's = Sans. Saranyii one would expect *'Epcivrs,
for G. Kei'Tavpo? = Sans, gandharvd, a *K€v6avpo<;, for O.N Lopto'r (a
god of Avarmth) = Sans, vrtrd, which some compare with a G. "OpOpo'i,
a *Vol]>urr. The equation of Sans. Farjdnya, Lith. Perkunas, to
which again O.S. Ferunu seems to belong, O.N. /Yoj/y^i, presximes at
the least that the Indo-European tenuis had declined into a media
in Sanskrit. An Indo-European fundamental form for G. Oi'pavos
= Sans. Ydrxnia even has not yet been found. The identity of
'AttoA^wv, 'ATretAwi' with Sans, saparycnya (above, p. 130): Sans.
sapary is questionable because of the e of Lat. sejjelio ( = sapaty).
The comparison of G. 'Ep/jtet'as = Sans. Sdrameyd separates the Greek
word from expressions of related meaning such as epp-atov, IpyuT/vet'?,
&c. The explanation of the Lat. Nejytunns by means of the Yedic
apdm na2)dt, " offspring of the water," might indeed have something
to say for itself were it not for the fact that it is just the insigni-
ficant portion of the Vedic phrase (napdt) which has been retained
in the Lat. Nejytihius. The Lat. Mars and his comrades JIdmers,
Mdvors can only be connected with the Sans. Marut by a series of
philological feats of legerdtmain, kc. I refuse, of course, absolutely
to have anything whatever to do with equations in which a deity's
name is explained by the invention of some Indian or other word,
stich as G. Nid^i; = Sans. *nyavd (Max Mtiller), or ''H<j!)at(n-o<; = Sans.
RELIGIOUS EQUATIONS. 413
*ydbh,eyuhta (L. v. Schroder, above, p. 162); for every one will
admit that for historical inferences as to the primeval period such
instances arc quite useless.
Now, it is indeed possible to make one important point in favour
of the above equations, and others of the same kind. It may
be said that mythical names are from the beginning enveloped
in marvellous and suj)crstitious ideas of the most varied description,
and that the possibility of popular etymology counteracting the
operation of phonetic laws is in their case particularly strong.
And that we admit.
Say that the agreement in mythical function between the
Sans, saraiiyu and the G. 'EptKus is striking, which is certainly con-
tested by Mannhardt : it would be quite possible that the form
*'E/Deti'i's, *'Epei'vus, postulated, was attracted by the G. ipivvo), and
became 'Epin's when the Erinyes became the furious goddesses of
revenge in Greece. But this is a path which craves very wary
walking. That the comparison of G. Kcvravpo^ = Sans, gmulharvd
is phonetically suspicious has been recognised both by E. H. Meyer
and also by L. v. Schroder. Both endeavour to effect the remedy
by means of a popular etymology, the former assumes {Indog.
Mythen, i. 16.5) reference to Kf.vT6u) and arjp {avrjp ; gandharvas =
" goaders of the air"), the latter {Griechische Goiter und Heroen,
i. 73) regards a popular connection with ravpos (" steer-hunters ")
as probable. Only, both scholars have omitted to note that if
the Sans gandharvd is to correspond to the G. Kevravpo's it must in
accordance with known phonetic law have appeared as *jandharva,
which would necessitate a change in the meaning of the Indian
word also. Now, though the assumption is one which would
probably give no difficulty to mythologists (c/. Sans, gandhd,
" vapour "), still it is plain into what a maze of hypothesis this
path leads.
As against these considerations consider what an enormous load
these hypotheses have to bear upon their feeble shoulders. In
the last new book (Leist's Altarisches Jus Gentium) the equation
il/a?M<-MtVws forms the text to a section {cf. § 39, /.), which is
designed to demonstrate that certain moral laws of the Indian
Manu (such as those of cleanliness, doing no injury, committing
no murder, no theft, no lie) constituted a sort of ethical code even
in the primeval period. Manu-'M.ivo)'^ was an ancient interpreter
of the divine law in the primitive Indo-European period. Truly,
a fact of the utmost possible importance, and decisive of the
whole question as to the view we are to take of the moral life
of the primeval period, if the collapse of the linguistic equation
— which yet should be "the kernel of the proof" — did not rob it
of its most important support ; and the equation J/(r?j?<s-MiVws
may be counted as one of the most treacherous of all that have
been put forward in Comparative ^lythology.
Another observation, again, thrusts itself on the notice of any
one who examines equations of the kind exemplified above, quite
apart from their suspicious or non-suspicious character phonetically :
414 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES,
it is clear that they are always confined to an extremely small
number of languages, those quoted above (with the exception of
Parjdnya, kc.) to two languages. The majority (7 : 12) of them
are placed to the credit of Greek and Sanskrit. This consideration
constitutes another objection to the validity of such equations as
proving anything about the religion of the primeval period, for it
may very well be that the Greeks and Indians had a set of myths
and religious beliefs in common, in which the other Indo-Europeans
never had any share, as indeed E. H. Meyer actually assumes
(above, p. 410); cf. also above, p. 130.
Absolutely nothing, of course, can be proved as to the primeval
Indo-European period by mythical names confined to the Indo-
Iranians, such as Sans, ydma — Zend yhna, Sans, vivasvant = Zend
vivanhvant, Sans. TO?ira = Zend mithra, Sans, aswra - Zend ahura,
Sans, soma = Zend haoma, Sans, apdm ndpdt = Zend apdm napdf,
Sans. vr^raAfm = Zend verethragna, Sans. ydtii = 7ien(\. ydtu ("hob-
goblin ") ; cf. Spiegel, Arische Periode, and also 0. Gruppe, loc.
cit., p. 86.
If we Avish to form a trustworthy opinion as to the religion of
the primeval period, we must, I believe, begin by laying aside such
equations as those described above. Having done this we have the
following which are phonetically safe, and which have this much in
common with each other, that they, one and all, originally designate
natural phenomena that have — some in several, some in only one,
linguistic area — attained to the dignity of divine honours.
Sans, dydiis, " sky," " god of the sky," G. Zeus, Lat. Jupiter,
Teut. Till, Zio.
Sans, ushds, Zend usha/ih, G. -^ws, Lat. aurora, Litli. auszrd,
Tetit. *austr6, A.S. Eostra (a spring goddess).
Sans, agni, Lat. ignis, Lith. ugnis, O.S. ogn% (G. irvp, O.H.G. fiur,
Umbr. pir, Armen. hur).
Sans, surya, svar, Lat. sol, O.N. sol, Lith. sdide, Cymr. and Corn.
heul, G. ■rjeXto<; (root sit, sav, "^su-r, *sv-ar, *sdv-el, *sdvl ; cf.
J. Schmidt, K. Z., xxvi. 9).
Sans. Tnds, Zend mdoifih, G. ix.y]vr], Lat. Mena, Goth, mena, Lith.
Menu ; cf. above, p. 306.
Sans, stdr, Zend stare, Armen. astX, G. ao-Trjp, Lat. stella, Bret.
sterenn, O.H.G. sterro.
Sans, vdta, Lat. ventus, G. dr/T7js, O.H.G. wint.
Sans, tanyatu, Lat. tonare, O.H.G. donar (also a thunder-god).
Sans, ndhhas, G. ve^os, Lat. nebula, O.H.G. nehil (O.N. nijiheim,
&c.), O.S. neho, "sky," I. nil.
Sans, ndkti, G. vv^, Lat. nox, kc, above, p. 312.
This list, obviously, might be increased, but what is given may
suffice to make it clear what sort of equations and agreements they
are that are safe in the field we are now treading. May we then
assume that these phenomena of nature, or some of them, enjoyed
divine honours in the primeval period ; or is Gruppe right in support-
ing the opinion (above, p. 142) that this was not the case, and that
MYTHOLOGICAL EQUATIONS. 415
in the primeval period even a dydus meant nothing more than the
vault of sky above the heads of the Indo-Europcans, agni nothing
more than the fire kindled by their hands.
Before assuming any attitude with regard to this question,
we have to answer the previous question, whether any equa-
tions whatever can be traced to the vocabulary of the primeval
period, which give unequivocal exfjrcssion to the divine and its
worship.
Here, too, there are series of words which agree indeed, but whose
agreement proves nothing as to their meaning, such as Lat. credo
(I. cretim), Sans, craddadhami, G. ;>^£a> (Lat. /undo, Goth, yhita),
Sans, hu* G. ^eynts, Sans, dhaman, and others which must be also
excluded. So, too, the root nem, " sky " (Sans, namas, " honour-
ing," Zend nemanh, I. nem, " sky," nemed, " shrine ; " cf. also G. ve/xos,
Lat. nemus), may have acquired its ritual meaning at a late period
(Sans, ndmati, " he bows "). There remains, howevei', a number of
equations, small but sure, which an extravagant scepticism alone
can maintain did not possess a religious significance that had
been developed as early as the primeval period. They are as
follows : —
1. Sans, devds,' hilt, deus, Litli. dieivas, O.L dia, O.N. tlvar,
" god," root div, Indo-E. dei-vo-s. Touching this equation, even
Gruppe (p. 121) admits that "the root div" (this, though, is
not the thing in question, but the clear-cut substantive deivo)
in the pro-ethnic period comprised some other ideas in addition
to the three already mentioned (light, sky, lordship), which come
somewhat nearer the later meaning of " god."f
2. Zend .?/7c;lfrf, "holy" (Sans, fvdtrd, "offering"), Lith. szwe/l-
tas, O.S. svetu, Goth, himsl, A.S.hilsel, O.N. husl, "oflferiij^."
3. Sans. 7/aj, " worship, dedicate, offer," Zend yaz, G. a^o/xat,
uyios, ayos (certainly only Grseco-Indo-Iranian).
4. Here I place, though with some misgivings, :{: the equation,
* This has a ritual sense also in the Armen. jaunem, " I dedicate," " offer,"
"sacrifice" (Hiibschmann, A. St., p. 40).
t G. 0eJy is to be separated from this series. K. Brugmaiin has recently
[BericlUe d. Kgl. Sachs. Gcs. d. W., p. 41,/., 1889) endeavoured to connect it
with Sans. gh6-'rd-s, " commanding reverence," a common epithet of the gotls.
The Teutonic word for god, Goth. git]>, O.N. goctii, 0. H.G. got, can be
compared either with Sans, hu, "olfer," or with Sans, hvd, "call" (the being
to whom the oflering is made or who is invoked). The comparison of Goth.
anses, O.N. o.v.v, with Sans. «,s7t, Zend ahhu, can scarcely be justified.
1 am inclined to attach the less weight to the e([Uation Sans, bhaga, "lord
of gifts," Zend bagha, "goil," Phryg. Zeus liayalos, O.S. bogS,, as proving
anything about the primeval period, because on tlie one hand direct borrowing
between the Slavs and the Scytho-Iranian- tribes is possible, and on the other
the separate lan(;u:igcs may independently of each other have called the deity
" the giver of all good things."
+ The dilliculty consists in this, that the law of the disappearance of the g
in the phonetic combination gm in Latin lias not yet been satisfactorily ascer-
tained {cf. Bruginann, Grundriss. i. 373). This scholar compares fldmen
(with Bugge) rather with Goth. bI6tan, "to ofler," or (with Momm.sen) with
flagrare. Schweizer-Sidler {Lot. Gr.), too, separates y?<i»icft from brahman.
4l6 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Lat. yidmen = S3ir\s. brdhman, hrahmdn, only I do not consider it
right to infer from it the existence of a word for priest in the
primeval period with as much certainty as Wackernagel {Der
Ur sprung des Brahmanismus, Basel, '77) and many others after
him have done. The Lat. fidmen, to judge by its formation (cf.
agmen, fiiimen, lumen), seems rather to have originally been a
neuter noun (otherwise we should have expected *Jidm6), and
tlierefore corresponds primarily to Sans, brahman, " worshipping."
Then, through the meaning "body of worshippers," "congrega-
tion," fl.dmen came to get the sense of " priest " {cf. J. Schmidt,
Die Pkindh. d. Indog. Nexdra, p. 24).
The number of Indo-Iranian agreements belonging to this class
is considerable, such as Sans, ndmas, Zend nemanh, " worshipping "
{cf. above). Sans, pra-vac, Zend fravac, " publish " (the sacred
doctrine), Sans, sam-lcar, Zend hahkar, " prepare the offering,"
Sans, hotrd, Zend zaothra. Sans, hdvana, Zend zavana. Sans.
prdbhrti, Zend frahereti, Sans, dpri, Zend dfri-vacahh, " benedic-
tion," Sans, stu, stuti, sfotdr, stoma, Zend stu, stuti, staotar, staoma,
Sans, prd^asti, Zend frasasti, "worship of the gods," Sans, gd,
gdthd, Zend gd, gdthd. Sans, mdntra, Zend mdthra, Sans, dtharvan,
Zend atharvan, Sans, hotar, Zend zaotar, &c. {cf. Spiegel, Arische
Periode, 30).
Obviously these Indo-Iranian equations prove nothing as to the
primeval period. In some, certainly dubious, cases, however, their
fundamental ritual meaning may extend beyond the limits of the
Indo-Iranians. If, for example, it is probable that Goth. </«]) is to
be traced back to "^ghu-to and belongs either to Sans, hit {hdvana,
Zend zavana), "to call," or to Sans, hu {hotar, Zend zaotar), "to
offer," this would indicate that Teutonic, too, at a very early
period, possessed a root gheu, ghu, with a meaning of religious
import.
I am, therefore, convinced that in the primeval Indo-European
period there did exist predicates expressing the divine. The
question now is whether we are to consider that the shining sky,
the sun, the fire, the dawn, the storm, the thunder were the
subjects of these predicates as early as the primeval period. Now,
I am of the affirmative opinion, and am moved thereto by the
following considerations.
In the case of two Indo-European peoples, one European and
one Asiatic, whose early condition has, we may venture to believe,
been preserved for us with peculiar fidelity, two authors, who are
unimpeachable and who came into personal contact with these
peoples, have declared in a perfectly unambiguous manner that
the worship of natural phenomena was the very foundation of these
peoples' religion.
First come the Teutons, of whom Csesar says {B. G., vi. 21):
" Germanimultum ab hac (Gallorum) cousuetudine differunt. Nam
neque Druides habent, qui rebus divinis prsesint, neque sacrificiis
student. Deorum numero eos solos ducunt, quos cernunt et
IXDO-EUROPEAN GODS. 417
quorum apcrte opibus juvantur, Solem et Vulcanum et Lunum,
reliquos ue fama quidem acceperuut." *
Next come the Persians, touching whom the statement of Hero-
dotus (i. 131) runs as follows : — dydXfxaTa fx-ev kol vr}ov<; Koi /Saifjiov^
ovK iv vofJiw TTOLevfxevov; ISpviadat, dXXa /cat tolctl ttouvctl fjiuipajv
i7rL(f)€povcn, dis /acv ifxoi SoKceiv, otl ovk dvOpioTrocfivea'i ivofxicrav lov^
Oeov'i KaTciTrep ol 'EAAt^vcs ctvat ' ot 8e vo/jLL^ovcrt All fxkv IttX to.
vij/rjXoTaTa twv ovpiwv dva(3aLi/ovT€<; 6v(TLa<i ep8eLV tov kvkXov irdvTa
Tov ovpavov Ala /caXeovTes ' Ovovhl Se T^Ato) re kol aeXyjvrj kol yfj koL
TTVpL Kol vSart KOL dvefxoL<; ' tovtolctl [x.\v 8rj p.ovvoL<jL BvovaL dp-^Of-v,
iiTLp.€{xa6y]Ka(TL Se koll rfj OvpavLij Ovuv irapd re 'Acrcrvptwv //a^oFres
Kol 'hpajBiuiV.
I believe these quotations need no commentary. I am of opinion
that they contain what we are to regard as the kernel of the
Indo-European, and also of the Indo-Iranian belief in the gods.
Next, however, it seems to me to be an unassailable fact that
in all Indo-European religions certain supreme gods and national
gods have been evolved out of natural phenomena. The most
illumining example is, after all, the series : Sans. Dydus, G. Zevs,
Lat. Jupiter^ Teut. Tiu^ Zio, Indo-E. *Dyeus.
The nature-power shows itself most distinctly in the Vedic Dydus,
which nevertheless carries the epithets pita, jdnitd, dsura. If it
is the case, as has recently been assumed {cf. v. Bradke, Dydus
Asura, Ahura Mazdd, und die Asura's, Halle, 1885), that in pre-
Vedic times Dydus was the name of the supreme sky-god, and only
faded away so as to become a mere designation for the visible sky
in Vedic times, and in consequence of excessive development of
the deva's, the personification of the sky cannot have gone very far
in that prehistoric period, else it would be ditiicult to see why the
meaning of " sky " should have got the upper hand again in later
times. Probably, however, dydiis meant nothing more in the
Indo-Iranian (as in the Indo-European) period than tov kvkXov
irdi'Ta TOV ovpavov, io Ovaia^ ipSovaL.
The same sense attaches to the equation, G. ovpavov {'AKfjLovL^rjs)
= Sans. Vdruna (Sans, dnnaii, Zend asman, " sky "), if this is
phonetically correct, f
* Sol,* Vulcanus, Luna are obviously only examples given by C.nesar, by
"reliqui" we are to understand, those deities "quos nou eernunt et quorum
aperte opibus nou juvantur," gods, therefore, such as Mars, Minerva, Mer-
curius, &c. Ccesar's statement is indeed inconsistent to some extent with the
words of Tacitus (Germ., 9). But I regard it as quite inadmissible to do as
J. Grimm {D. Myth., p. 92) and so many others liave done, and impute
error or superficial inquiry to Cajsar. It should be remembered tliat between
Cajsar and Tacitus are one hun(h'ed and fifty years, the one Inuuh-ed and fifty
years which saw the most important turning-point in the history of the
Teutons, their contact with Rome. Why may not the nature-deities of the
original Teutons in this s])ace of time have been more and more detached from
their original natural basis, in the presence of the l\oman worsliip of the gods ?
What tlie Teutons of tlie time of Tacitus conceived the Mars, Mercurius,
Hercules of the interpretatio Rommia to be, we are absolutely ignorant. Any-
thing anthropomorphic is expressly denied by the historian (ch. ix.) in the
most decided manner.
t Neither does A. Hillebrandt infer more from it {Varuna und Milra, p. 151).
2 D
41 8 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
In the Homeric world the Olympian is beyond a doubt already
both the national, political god and the moral ruler of the world
lilce the Varuua of the Vedic hymns. Yet he, of whom it is
expressly said that at the division of the world [11. , xv. 192),
Zeus t^ax' ovpavov evpvv iv aWipL koI ve(^iXr](TL,
cannot conceal his origin as a nature-deity. Amongst ancient epic
epithets those which refer to the actual, natural sky still pre-
dominate. Zeus is called the " cloud-compeller " (ve^eXT/yeptVa),
"rejoicing in thunder" (rcjoTri/cepawos), " waker of the lightning "
((TTepo7rr]y€p€Ta), " wrapped in dark cloud " (KeXatvec^Tys), " thunder-
ing on high " (ep'tySoiiTTo?, ipL^pifxeTT]^), " hurler of the lightning "
{aarepoTrrjTr']^), "brandishing the lightning's flash" (apyiKepavvos),
and amongst them are forms of such pi'imeval stamp as evpvo-n-a
Zeus, " broad eyed sky "* = ku'/cAos Atos.
Gradually an increase took place in the number of epithets
expressing the relation of the gods to the government of the
world and of mankind. To the epithets which already appear in
the Iliad, such as /xrjTiha, feVtos (only once), new ones are added in
the Odyssey, tKerr^crtos, epKetos, and in later times this class
developed tremendously (op/cios, dyopaios, fiovXalos, ttAowios, ovptos,
CTTOl/'tOS, &c.).
In the Teutonic world also *Tivaz (O.H.G. Ziu, O.N. Tyr),
although even here he was early specialised into a war-god, the
Mars of the mter2)retatio Romana (cf. the Afars Thingsxis repre-
sented as a warrior on the recently discovered English monument)
can be clearly recognised as a sky-god, and in particular as a svm-
god (the Sol of Csesar) of the primeval period (c/. HofFory, Dtr
germanische Himmelsgott, Nachrichten d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Gottingen,
p. 426,/., 1888).
Now, seeing that in several ancient Indo-European religions one
and the same natural phenomenon has developed into a great, into
the supreme, god, can we believe that the beginnings, at least, of
the worship of this god do not go back to the time of the common
origin of the related peoples ?
I am, therefore, of opinion, and in this section I am only con-
cerned to demonstrate its correctness, that even if we put aside
everything unsafe and false that Comparative Mythology and the
History of Eeligion have accumulated on this subject, we are, solely
from the consideration of perfectly trustworthy material, more and
more driven on all sides to assume that the common basis of the
ancient Indo-European religions was a worship of the powers of
nature practised in the primeval Indo-European period.
And, perhaps, yet other tendencies, from which in later times
systems of religion were developed in artistic and brilliant forms,
* Thus, according to J. Schmidt (Die Pluralhildungen der Indog. Neutra,
p. 400) : "Evpvoira (neuter) is shown by the formulae in which alone it survives,
especially in connection with the primeval accusative Zrjv, as an antiquity
of the first rank, which is not to be measured by the standard of later
epochs."
THE GODS OF THE PRIMEVAL PERIOD. 4I9
are to be assigned to the primeval period, although here the
imagination must be allowed greater play than it has enjoyed thus
far in these pages.
The distinction of grammatical gender had been made in the
primeval period. Consequently, inasmuch as the incipient process
of personification naturally was guided by the gender of the
appellation, there were at that time both male and female deities.
Dyaiis and Agni were male beings to the Indo-European, Usluis
(as early as the Veda, the daughter of Dyaus) was feminine. The
sun and moon were oppositely scxed, sometimes one, and some-
times the other playing tlie i)art of husband.*
But this brings the comparison of natural processes with human
much more closely home to the imagination of man. And on the
model of the earthly family, where the influence of the individual
disappears completely before the will of the lord and father, the
attempt is made by degrees to assign to the powers of nature also
their proper relative rank. The foundation of this is fixed in
nature itself. The hues and the glory of the young dawn are
killed by the rays of the mounting sun, the sun himself is hidden
from view by gloomy clouds, the might of the thunderstorm
speedily roars itself out, the sky alone day and night looks down
changeless as ever upon the earth beneath. And as all the natural
phenomena, which the eye of the Indo-European noted, took their
origin from the sky, the conception was suggested that the sky
was the father and sire: —
Sans. Dydiis pitH, G. Zeus iran^p (AeiTrarvpos " Of.o<; irapa Tv/x,^aiots
in Episus, Hesych.), Lat. Ju-piter.
In fact the combination of the word " father " with the word
" sky," which here appears, is so symmetrical and so close, that it
seems to me at least improbable to assume that it was first effected
by the separate peoples.
The children of "father-sky," the progeny of the sky and
denizens of heaven, may have been designated by : —
Sans, devd, Lat. deus, Lith. dieivas, O.N. tivar, " gods " ( : div,
" shine," as much as Dpdus).
Perhaps a mother was not thought of in the primeval period, as in
the human family she was not of much importance ; and "mother-
earth " may not have been added as a complement to " fi\ther-sky "
* "In the difference of the genders ascribed by the Teutons and the Romans
to the heavenly bodies, the difference in their conceptions of nature tinds its
clearest expression. To our forefathers the sun was a mild and gracious
woman, the silent moon brought to thi'ir minds the tingling frost of cloudless
winter nights. On the Mediterranean the moon was thought of as feminine,
the tender moon-goddess assisted all creatures in the hardest times of need.
The endless enchantment of southern moonlit nights as bright as day makes it
possible still to feel and understand tiie mytholoj^ical conception. Helios,
on the other hand, is the hard and rigorous lord whose darts deal death and
destruction. Before them fall the children of the mead, the children of men "
(Nissen, Ubcr altitaJischcs KUma, " Verhandl. der 34 Vers, deutscher Philo-
logen," p. 30, 1880).
420 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
until afterwards (Ved. 2:'rithivi! mdta, Kerthus terra mater, Szc; cf.
J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, i.^ p. 229, /.).
III. Remarks in Conclusion,
As then we credit the original people with a stock of religious
ideas, it follows that we may assume that certain rites and cere-
monies of a religious kind were practised in the primeval period.
I must, however, confess that I think their discovery is almost
entirely reserved for the inquirers of the future.
If there were priests at that time — and we certainly could not
obtain satisfactory linguistic support for the assumption * — it will
be well to conceive them rather as magicians, warlocks, and sooth-
sayers, than as preachers and guardians of divine precepts. One
department of these priests' functions certainly was the treatment
and healing of diseases {cf. Lat. medeor, medicus = Zend vimddanh),
which are universally regarded as due to the influence of evil
spirits. Physician, magician, and priest may have been identical
in the most ancient epochs of culture. In the Avesta we have by
the side oi icrva7-6-haes/iaza, " healing by plants," and hireto-baeshaza,
" healing by the knife," a mathro-haeshaza, " healing by spells,"
expressly distinguished ; and even in Homer (Od., xi. 457) the
blood streaming from the wound of Odysseus is stanched by incan-
tation (eVaoiSrJ S' alfxa KiXaivov ecrx^Oov). The same way of treating
wounds is known to Pindar (Pi/th., iii. 51).
These facts in the history of culture are faithfully mirrored in
the change of meaning which has taken place in the O.S. hajati,
hajci^ '"'' fabulari, incantare, viederi" Bulg. haja, " to pronounce
spells," and O.S. balija, " magician," balistvo, " remedy," Russ.
hachari, " physician," which are connected with </>77)U.i, fari (cf.
Miklosich, Ut. W., p. 5). In Slav, vraci, too, the meanings of
" physician " and " magician " run into each other (loc. cit., p. 395).
In Greek I have endeavoured (A''. Z., xxx. 465) to explain aKeo/xai,
ttKeo-Tos by comparing Sans, sam rdnsati, gastd, " solemnly recite."
The nature of such healing spells may be inferred from the
remains to be found in Teutonic and Indian antiquity {cf. p. 29).
* For Sans. hrdhmdn^'La.t. Jlamen, see above, p. 416. Much dust has been
raised by Kuhn's comparison of the Lat. pontifex with Sans. imtMkrt, which
has led to the Indo-European priests being regarded as either the preparers of the
path of ottering, or as the constructors of actual footpaths (Leist, Grdco-it.
Eechtsg., p. 182). Cf. Gruppe's well-founded objections {loc. cit., p. 130). In
any case, the totally different way in which the second element in the word is
formed makes the equation valueless for historical purposes. Sans. adhvaryU
are also interpreted as preparers of the way (Sans. Mhvan). Bury {B. B., vii.
339) compares the word, on the contrary, to Sans, mddhu, "honey" (referring
to the libation).
Two Indo-Iraniau terms for priests have been given above on p. 416. G.
Up6s, whence tepevs, still simply means in the Sans, ishird, "mighty,
lively " {cf. hpol Ixdves, Homer). A religious sense was subsequently de-
veloped in Upos as in Sans, brahman, brahvidn : barh, " strengthen " {B. B.).
The starting- [loint is the " uplifted " feeling of the pious.
Lat. sacer, sancio, sacenlos are irtifortunately obscure. Teutonic terms for
priests in J. Grimm, D. Myth., i. cap. v., and above p. 277.
MEDICINE MEN. 42 I
An early acquaintance with healing herbs and simples, especially
those made from poisonous plants, may have contributed to the
effectiveness of those mysterious spells. Cf. Zend vUhclthra^ " a
simple derived from poisonous plants," G. (ftdpfxaKov, Goth, lubjaleisei,
" art of poisoning, magic," O.N. li/f, " medicine, remedy." The
G. Ido/xaL, too ( : 109 = Sans, vishd), perhaps originally meant to pro-
vide with healing drinks, and so to heal.
Special names for the physician naturally do not appear until
late ; though the Indo-Iranian period seems to have rejoiced in
one : Sans, bhishdj, bheshajd, Zend haeshazya, N.P. hizilk (Armen.
hzisk). The following series is due to borrowing from west to east
in ancient times: I. liaig, "physician," Goth, /ckeis, O.S. /ekri,
" medicine."
Here, too, the notion of magician and sorcerer still appears in
M.H.G. Idchencere, Idchenen. On p. 165 above, we have seen that
the smith was equipped amongst other wonder-working arts with
that of medicine. In Homer the physician, the l-qTrjp KaKwv, is
highly honoured (ttoAAwv avra^ios aAXwv), and along with the fiavrts,
" soothsayer," and Te/<Twv is reckoned amongst the Srjfxiovpyot,
"people who exercise crafts useful to the whole people" (Od., xvii.
384). In the same way the td]csha7i (tcktmv), bhi^kdj, and brahmdn
are mentioned together in the Rigveda (ix. 112, 1).*
If, as is little likely to be doubted, offerings were made to
heaven in the primeval period to purchase its favour, appease its
wrath, inquire its will, or by way of returning thanks,! then
* In connection with the most ancient phase of the art of healing, it is
important to note that the Indo-Enropeans possessed a tolerably thorough
knowledge of their own bodies, and in this they may have been assisted by the
practice of sacrificing animals (above, p. 29). Possibly it is not accidental
that several coincident names for scab and pustules are found in the Indo-
Germanic languages {cf. Sans, dadru, Lat. derbi- in derbiosus, "scabby,"
Lith. dedervine, 0. H.G. zitaroh, Fick, i.^ p. 106; Sans. })d7)idn, Zend pdman,
Lith. saiisis, O.H.G. siurra, Fick. ii.^ p. 485), for this disease must have
been particularly common owing to the dirt and uncleanliness, which we are to
imagine attended life in the primeval period. Takmnn in the Veda is a fever,
TTjjceScoj/ in Greek, consumption. Cf., further. Sans, kds, Lith. kdKiii, O.S.
kaslll, O.H.G. huosto, "cough," Sans, vam, G. ffiew, Lat. vomo, O.N. voma,
"sea-sickness," Lith. witnti, "vomit."
A fresh (above, p. 17) collection and comparison of the Indo-European
names for diseases would be valuable, not only for the history of medicine, but
also for the general history of culture.
t J. Wackernagel's view that Indo-European offerings must have been
solely petitionary (Ucber den Ursprung dcs Brahmaniismus, 1877) seems to ine
incorrect. It is based on an overestimate of the importance of ideas peculiar
to India. Though even in India an obvious thank-oti'ering is jjreserved in the
dgrayanam, the harvest thanksgiving {cf. \V. Lindner, Fcstgi-^iiss a. 0. v.
Bothlingk, p. 79,/.).
Again, Wackernagel's a,ssertion that Homer is acquainted neither with thank-
offerings nnr expiatory sacrifices requires considerable qualifiration. When it
is said of ^Egisthus, after he has fully executed his crime {Od., iii. 274): —
iroAXa 5e /^Tjpf l/cije 6(wv (v\ Itpols fiwfiols,
■KoXKa 5' ayaXixar avri^fv, v<}>a.<T)xaTa re XP""'^" "^^
iKTiXiaas' (Jif-fa epyov, 2 oGiroTe (Kirero dvfif,
can anything but either a thank-offering or an expiatory offering be meant ?
422 PrxEHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
human sacrifice must have taken a prominent place amongst
them.
Amongst the northern peoples there is evidence for its existence
until late in the Chi'istian era {cf. J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,
p. 38) ; the Greek world of myth is full of this usage, and even in
real life, as in the case of the offering to the Lycsoan. Zeus, it
survived far into historic times. In Rome, too, men were offered
in ancient times (E. v. Lasaulx, Die Silhnopfer der Griechen nnd
Rlivier, Wiirzburg, 1841; Leist, Grceco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p.
257). Of human sacrifices in India an exhaustive account is given
by Weber, Indische Streifen, pp. 54-89. In the east and in the west
the idea that nothing but the offering of a human life can give a
new building any prospect of permanence has shown itself very
tenacious of life. " But a few years ago," R. Garbe writes to me,
" when the great railway bridge over the Ganges was begun, every
mother in Benares trembled for her children."
The gradual growth of the custom of selecting a criminal or a
maimed person for sacrifice must be regarded as a modification of
the original custom.
As for place, we may imagine those places to have been devoted
to the worship of the gods where the power of nature acted most
visibly and most immediately on the feelings of man, mountain
tops, as in the case of the Persians (above, p. 417), and of the
ancient Greeks, or groves and forests. We have already spoken
on the subject of the worship of trees amongst the European
branch of the Indo-Germanic family, of groves as the oldest
temples of the gods, of the seat of the highest god, the oak, the
primeval European tree (p. 277). Amongst the Indo-Iranians, too,
the idea recurs that the divine numen had its abode in the leaves
and twigs of sacred trees {cf. J. Wackernagel, loc. cit., p. 10) ; but
in the oldest records it is confined to the individual tree : the
idea of a whole grove devoted to the gods is, as far as I know,
originally foreign to the Indo-Iranians.
Finally, we may here briefly consider a question which appro-
priately comes at the end of our attempts to ascertain under what
conditions the Indo-Europeans moved on earth — the question, that
is, whether anything can be discovered as to the ideas of the
original people about death, and the state of man after death.
The state of things amongst the most important Indo-European
peoples as regards this subject is briefly as follows : —
1. Amongst the Indians, even in the Veda, a common abode for
the departed, a place of beauty, is known under the sway of-
Yama. The way to this world of the dead is guarded by two
dogs, called sarameycni, i.e., "belonging to Sarama, the messenger
of Indra." In later times they were designated gydnui and cabala.
In this world of the dead the pitdras, "the forefathers," spend a
blessed life, though they are connected with their relatives who
are left behind on earth, both the nearer (sapiuda) and the more
remote (samdnodaka), by a strictly regulated ancestor worship,
which comprises two kinds of religious ceremonies, the Pindapi-
THE NEXT WORLD. 423
tryajm, " cake-ofFerings to the manes " {pinda, whence sapinda),
and the grdddhas, " festivals in memory of the depai-ted," which are
associated with free gifts to the Brahmans. These offerings are
absohitely essential to the welfare of man in the next world.
Marriage, kinship, and testamentary law, therefore, are most inti-
mately bound up with this form of ancestor worship. Sons are
desired in order that they may make these offerings to the dead.
" To be a man's heir " and " to offer the dead man's meal " to him
are convertible expressions. Cf. for all further information, W.
Caland, Ueber Totenverehrung hei einigen der indog. Volker, Amster-
dam, 1888. The only objection to the primeval character of the
whole of this set of ideas is the single fact that the doctrine of
immortality is absent from the oldest portions of the Kigveda,
which, again, never mention either Yama or his dogs {cf. 0.
Gruppe, loc. cit., pp. 114, 241).
2. With the pitdras of the Indians, Caland compares, as indeed
many had compared before him (Justi, Geiger, &c.), the Fravashis
of the Iranians {ih., p. 48), a word which only occurs in the younger
Avesta. They, too, were at bottom the shadows of the departed,
glorified and wrapped in the radiance of divinities. E. Wilhelm
(" The Aryan Period and its Conditions, and the Cult of the Genii
in Ancient Erau," two essays, Bombay, 1888) only partially accepts
this view of these extremely many-sided beings ; in his account of
the Fravashis he starts rather from the genii than from the manes
of the Romans as Caland does.
3. In Greece the pessimistic view of the condition of the dead
after death, which prevailed in the Homeric world, is sufhciently
well known. Hades, whither the soul wins after, and only after,
burial, and which even in the Iliad is not without the figure,
nameless as yet, of the dog, is a place of teri-or and of awe. The
ancient Nekuia vividly depicts the shadowy, incorporeal life of
unconsciousness which the d/x.ev>;va Kaprjva of the departed lead
there. It is better to be a day-labourer on earth than king of
the dead. The verses of the poem (Od., xi. 566-631), in which the
shadows continue in Hades the occupations of their lifetime, and
in which a sort of hell for sinners is described, are rejected by
Wilamowitz {Horn. Unters., p. 204,/.), probably correctly, as later
interpolations (posterior to 600); cf. also Kirchhoff, Odyssee, p. 231.
Hermes first appears as veKpoTrofx-iros in the younger Nekuia, and
here for the first time comes in contact with the Egyptian Thoth,
"the advocate of the soul before the throne of Osiris."
Once in the Odyssey (iv. 561,^.) mention is made of the Elysium
in which the fair-haired Rhadamanthus reigns, where life flows by
pleasantly, and where there is no winter and no rain. To this the
Hesiodic conception of the Islands of the Blessed in Oceanns
attaches itself, where the heroes under the lordship of Kronos,
who in the Iliad still abides in Tartarus, enjoy a life without care.
Who can doubt that here we have, gradually appearing, a new
belief, which is only to be understood in view of oriental tales and
teaching (cf. Mullenhoff, D. A., i. 65)?
424 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
From all this we see that ancestor worship* and the cult of the
dead have no place in the Homeric world, and can have none.
We can, however, observe how in post-Homeric times {cf. Nagels-
bach, Nachhomerische Theologie, p. 407), even in the Tragedians, the
notion of the divinity of the souls of departed heroes becomes
gradually more defined. By this time a general cultus of the dead
(to. vofiL^o/jLeva, •^(iea-OaL koX evayt^etv) spreads more and more, and
has indeed many points in common with Indian and Roman ritual.
That the O^ol Trarpwot were these ancestors, worshipped as divinities,
as Caland conjectures, is beyond proof.
4. The state of things at Rome may be dismissed more briefly.
The belief in and worship of the dei parentes, the divi Manes, the
Lares, &c., are so engrained in the life of the Roman that, as
regards Rome, we have no reason to doubt that these ideas are
primitive.
5. As for the Teutons, the question as to their belief in a life
after death, and the worship of the spirits of the departed among
them, deserves fresh critical investigation. The main point to be
determined is the extent of the influence exercised on the Teutonic
world in this matter by Grseco-Roman or Christian views. Then,
and not till then, it might perhaps be possible to decide whether
such conceptions as that of the Norse Valhalla, of elfs and dwarfs,
— in which Kuhn indeed (K. Z., iv. 100) would see spirits of tribal-
heroes — of the Wild Hunter, All Souls' Feast, Hel, the goddess of
the dead, &c. — can be considered as belonging to the primeval
Teutonic period.
Proceeding to examine the historical conclusions which we are,
or are not, justified in drawing from the facts that we have thus
set forth so briefly, the first thing we have to insist upon once
more is, that all linguistic evidence which has been brought foi'ward
in support of an original Indo-European belief in immortality,
equations, that is, such as Ke/3/?epos = Sans, ^abala, f MtVws = Sans.
Mdiiu, '^'Epfi.rjs = Sdravieyd, Taprapos = Sans, taldtala is either so
demonstrably false, or at least so unsafe, that it cannot be
expected to throw any light on the question here under discussion.
The cardinal point seems to me to be whether the belief in the
continued existence of departed ancestors, and the duty of con-
tinuing to honour them by means of offerings to the dead, which
we have encountered in several quarters of Indo-European territory,
are so firmly rooted there from the beginning of all tradition, that
we are compelled, on the ground of the resemblances to be found
* The offering to the dead which is made by Odysseus, and which is a quite
isolated case, cannot be regarded as such.
+ As for the agreement between the Greeks and the Indians in the possession
of a dog in the netherworld, it may be remarked that the whole conception of a
trial of the dead, with Osiris as judge of the dead, a hippopotamus-like guardian
of the nether world, Anubis, the conductor of the dead, also recurs in ancient
Egypt (Diiraichen, Geschichte d. alien JEgyptens). Cf. as to Cerberus, J. van
den Gheyn, Cerhhre, Bruxelles, 1883. The Hgure of Charon, the ferryman of the
dead, is not vouched for in Greece until quite late (Wilamowitz, Kom. Untcr-
such., p. 2"25).
ANCESTOR WORSHIP. 425
in the modes of couceiving and practising ancestor worship, to
regard them as primeval, i.e., as Indo-European.
I am of opinion that this is not the case, at any rate not so
long as no satisfactory explanation of Greek ancestor worship,
quite apart from that of the Indians, is forthcoming. At present I
am at a loss to understand how it is to be made probable that the
idea of the continued existence of the departed and the necessity
of worshipping them existed from primeval times, and was not
gradually introduced amongst the Greeks. This may afford the
measure of the scepticism which the author feels towards the
books of Leist that have already been mentioned, and in which
the assumption that ancestor worship existed amongst the Indo-
Europeans, is one of the main pillars on which that scholar rests
his views as to the history of the family and of morality amongst
the Indo-Europeans. Even Caland in his careful investigation,
mentioned above, only goes so far as to infer that " the Indo-
Iranians ascribed divine power and glory to those who had departed
in the past," whereas he displays reserve in his treatment of the
question " whether the original Indo-Europeans conceived of the
departed as deified beings."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HOME.
Autochtliony and Myths of Migration — The Oldest Abodes of the European
Members of the Indo-Germanic Peoples: Slavs, Teutons, Celts, the Balkan
and Apennine Peninsulas — The Scene of the Joint European Culture
bounded by the Danube, the Carpathians, Dnieper, and Pripet — Original
Home of the Indo-Iranians in East Iran — Prehistoric Point of Union
between the East and West Indo-Europeans in the Steppes of South
Russia, about half-way up the Volga, the Oldest Name of which ('Pa) is
probably of Indo-European Origin — The Condition of the most Ancient
Indo-Europeans, and the Nature of the Steppes of Southern Europe — The
Question of the Scyths — Conclusion.
That the European members of the Indo-Germanic race, whom we
shall make our starting-point in the following discussion, regarded
themselves as autochthonous inhabitants of the lands they dwelt
in, is a well-known fact. According to ancient sagas as to the
origin of man, the Greeks were created by Deucalion from the
bones of " the great mother " (from stones) ; according to the
Hesiodic account the third race of men was produced from ash-
trees (eK /AcXicov) — both primeval ideas, as is shown indeed by the
Homeric verse (Oc?., xix. 163) : oi yap airo Spvo's laa-L TraXat^aTov,
ov 8' aTTo 7reTpr]<;, " thou art not sprung from the oak renowned in
story or from a rock."
The original inhabitants of Greece, Pelasgians, Leleges,
Kaukones, &c., were all regarded as y-qyevel'?, " sprung from the
earth," or TrpoaiX-qvoi, " antecedent to the moon," and certain tribes
like the Athenians particularly prided themselves on having
occupied their territory from all time (Herod., vii. 161).
Similar views were held in the north. According to the Scandi-
navian myth the name of the first man was askr, " ash," and the
Germans of Tacitus derived their origin from the god sprung from
the earth {deus terra editus; Germ., c. 2), Tuisco. And the historian
adds, it was improbable that Germany, informis terris, aspera coelo,
tristis cultu aspectuque, would ever appear a desirable goal for any
nation to migrate to.
By the side of these obviously original beliefs in autochthony we
meet amongst several Indo-Germanic peoples a series of myths of
migration, in which some have been fain to see reminiscences of
wanderings from a distant home. We mean the yEneas story of
MYTHS OF MIGRATION. 42/
the Romans, the northern naiTative of the Ynglinga-saga about
Odin's journey from Asgard to Tyrkhxnd through Gardariki
(Russia) to Saxland (Germany), the Troy saga of the Franks, and
many others.
Only, all these stories on closer investigation are seen to be so
padded with learned accessories, and in part so directly contradict
other saga traditions — it is only necessary to call to mind, for
instance, the contradiction to the journey of Odin, above mentioned,
contained in the account in Jordanis (c. 4) about the coming of the
Goths from Scandza (Scandinavia) — that it seems impossible to
extract any satisfactory kernel of historic truth out of this compli-
cation of learned and fantastic ideas.
We shall, therefore, attach but little weight in the following
discussion to such direct traditions amongst the separate Indo-
Europeans as to the origin of their respective nationalities. Our
object is to determine the geographical scene of the stage in the
history of culture which we have described in the previous pages, i.e.,
the oi'iginal home of the Indo-Europeans. We begin our analysis
of this subject with an attempt to fonn some idea of the ethnology
of our quarter of the globe in the most ancient times, and we start
with the north of Europe, with that race which at the present day
occupies the east of our portion of the globe, the Slavs.*
It is generally known that these peoples appear for the first
time in history in the first century of our ei'a under the name of
Veneti (Tacitus, Germ., 46) or Venedi (Pliny, Hist. Nat., ix. 96),
and their abode at this period can be made out with tolerable
certainty. On the one hand, they cannot yet have touched the
noi'th coast of the Black Sea, for this district was occupied by the
Persian Sarmatse or Sauromatpe ; on the other hand, they cannot
on the west have crossed either the Carpathians or the Vistula ; for,
as far as the river mentioned, Tacitus is acquainted with Teutonic
tribes, which partially, as in the case of the Bastarna;, extended
over it as far as the modern Galicia and farther ; and in the ancient
Getic or Dacian and Pannonian proper names, large numbers of
which have come down to us, no one as yet has succeeded in
discovering any trace of Slavonic. If then, in the beginning of our
era, the abode of the Slavs must be sought north of the Black Sea
steppes, and east of the Vistula and the Carpathians, it is also
probable that the same people was settled in the district mentioned
as much as five centuries earlier. Herodotus, who is the first to
give us any information as to the east of Europe, mentions to the
north of the (probably Persian) Scyths, who covered the lower course
of the four great streams, the Dniestei', the Bug, the Dnieper, and
the Don, several tribes, which he expressly designates as non-
Scythian. One of these was the Nevpoi, who are placed by the
historian near the source of the Dniester. According to Slavonic
phonetic laws, however, the Nevpot of Herodotus, as Schafarik has
* For the following I have been able to emjiloy an unpublished paper by A.
Leskien on the " Original Home of the Slavs," which the author with great
kindness has placed at my disposal.
428 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
recognised, correspond fairly well with the name of the town Nur
(cf. O.S. nurija ^'territormm"), which is situated on the bank of
the stream Niirzer, a tributary of the Bug (the confluent of the
Vistula). If, however, the Nrupot were Slavs, the same may be
assumed of the BovSivoi, who are described by Herodotus (iv. 108)
as a fair and blue-eyed e^vos eov /Ae'ya Kai ttoAAov yXavKov tc irav
Icrxypd's ecTTi Kat Trvppov, and whose home is placed in the
neighbourhood of the Neuri, in a wooded country abounding in
otters and beavers, as does the modern Pripet, the tributary
of the Dnieper (the Borysthenes ; cf. Kiepert, Lehrbtich der alten
Geographie, p. 342).
The oldest and the real home of the Slavs, therefore, proves to be,
as K. Miillenhoff" points out in more detail in D. A., ii. 89, the
district of the Middle and Upper Dnieper, west as far as the
Carpathians and the upper course of the Vistula, eastwards in the
direction of the Finns as far as the uppermost basin of the Volga
and the Don,
North of the Slavs, and intimately connected with them, the
Prusso-Lettish branch of languages was situated ; these tribes are
first mentioned as the ^stii of Tacitus (c. 45) on the amber coast,
then as the Galindse and Sudini of Ptolemy, the neighbours of the
Venedse. Miillenhoff {ih., p. 22) makes it probable that "the stock
collectively spread from the south or south-east, so that the swampy
district of the Pripet was once its natural boundary to the south,
and the original basis of its diffusion." An argument of J. v.
Fierlinger's {K. Z., xxvii. 480) tends to show, from the form of the
name 'Nevpoi, which is recorded by Herodotus, and in w^hich the
Balto-Slavonic phonetic law of the change of Indo-European ev, eu
into ov, ou (G. €7rAev-<7a, Lith. plduti, 0. pluti, plova) has not yet
taken effect, that the Balto-Slavonic branch still formed one
linguistic whole in the fifth century certainly.
Somewhat later are the first tidings of our own forefathers: when
the bold Massiliote Pytheas undertook his voyage of discovery in
the North Sea in B.C. B^5, he found that on the Rhine the nation
of the Celts "gradually changed into another, for which he uses
the indefinite term of Scyths. That he was the first Greek to
come across the Teutons is placed beyond all possibility of doubt
by the investigations of Miillenhoff,* at the same time Pytheas
himself gives the German name (though transmitted in a Celtic
form) of a German tribe, the Teutons, who two centuries later
w4th the Cimbri made their march of terror upon Rome. Thus,
then, we see that on the west, even in the fourth century B.C., the
Rhine was the boundary, at least near the coast, between the
German and the Celtic tongues.
But a careful examination of the names of the tributaries which
empty themselves into this river on its right bank, has been
undertaken by K. Miillenhoff {D. A., ii. 207, ff.), and shows that
the Celtic element in the interior originally stretched far beyond
* Deutsche Altc rtumshunde,\. , Berlin, 1870; cf. the interesting and brilliant
resume of this work by W. Scherer, Vortragc unci Aufsdtze, p. 21, /., 1874.
THE TEUTONS. 429
the Rhine, which itself probably rejoices in a Celtic name. The
names of the rivers Main, Lahn, Sieg, Ruhr, Embschcr, Lippe
are of non-German, Celtic origin. At least, therefore, the water-
shed separating the Rhine from the Weser was originally the
boundary between the Teutonic and the Celtic tongues ; the latter
of which, however, was probably heard as far as the mountain-wall
of the Harz, the Thiiringer Wald, and the Fichtel Range. The most
ancient neighbours of the Teutons here were the Volcce, whose
name afterwards provided a designation for the whole Celtic stock
(O.H.G. Walk, A.S. Vealh, O.N. Valir).
The first Teutonic people to appear on the stage of history in
the east are the Bastarnee, who even in the year B.C. 1J78, are
mentioned as auxiliaries in the army of the Macedonian king,
Perseus, in the war against the Romans. Their home lay on the
northern bank of the Lower Danube, where they are expressly
mentioned as eVr/Ati^e?, " comers from abroad " (cf. K. Zeuss, Die
Deutschen ^md die Nachharstdmme, p. 129). They may, therefore,
be justly termed the forerunners of the Goths, who followed the
same direction, but not until the second century after Christ {cf.
K. Zeuss, ib., p. 402), and whom at the beginning of our era we
have to look for in the district of the Vistula, whence they, or
tribes related to them, stretched probably as far as the Baltic
provinces and perhaps as far as modern Russia.
Further south, the Vistula from primeval times formed the
fixed boundary between the Teutonic and Slavonic elements.
The origin of the name of this river (Germ. Weichsel, Vixel, Slav.
Visla, Lat. Vistula), unfortunately can hardly be ascertained
with certainty. It is sometimes regarded as originally and
thoroughly Teutonic, sometimes as Slavonic, sometimes also as
Slavo-Teutonic (Miillenhoff, ii. 207; J. v. Fierlinger, K. Z., xxvii.
479). The last seems to be the most probable.
The original home of the Teutonic stock, therefore, proves to be
a district drained by the Oder and the Elbe (both German names)
in their lower and middle course, east as far as the Vistula, west
to the Weser, that is, the boundary of the Celts, mentioned above.
The westernmost Indo-Europeans in Europe from the oldest
times have been the Celts, who are mentioned as such even in
Herodotus (vi. 49 : oZ ecrxarot Trpos T/At'ou 8va/Jieo)v olKeovaL
Tu)v iv Tjj EupwTTT^). Their great development at one time on the
right bank of the Rhine has already been mentioned. The middle
of this stream's course is indicated as the centre of the Celtic
power by the fact that it was from this point, from the ancient
abodes of the Boii, who subsequently settled on the Upper Elbe,
that both the great Celtic expeditions, the march of Bellovesus
and Sigovesus took their start, the one spreading over the district
of the Rhone and the Western Alps to Italy, the other over the
Danube (Celto-Roman Danuvius, O.H.G. Tuonouwa, O.S. Dunavu ;
Miillenhoff, D. A., ii. 236,/.).
In Gaul itself, also, the Celts took possession of the north and
centre of the country earlier than of the south. Until the expedition
430 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
of the Iberian Celts the Loire formed the western boundary ; until
the expedition against Italy the Upper Rhone above Lyons formed
the southern boundary of the Celts (MlillenhoflP, ii. 240).
From the north we now betake ourselves to the south of our
quarter of the globe, beginning with the ethnology of the north of
the Balkan Peninsula, which will prove to be an important centre
of diffusion for Asiatic as well as European Indo-Europeans.
The wide stretch of country between the lower course of the
Danube and the shores of the ^gean and the Propontis was
occupied in antiquity by the tribe of the Thracians, which
Herodotus (v. 3) regards as the greatest of all peoples next to the
Indi. The scanty remains of the Thracian language {cf. P. de
Lagarde, Ges. Ahh., p. 278, /., and A. Fick, Spracheinheit, p. 417, /.)
are enough to establish traces of its Indo-Germauic character,
but not enough to define its position in the Indo-European family
more closely. Certain it is, however, that from hence a large
part of Asia Minor received its Indo-Germanic population. In the
first place, it is known that the Thracians themselves spread east-
wards over the strait a considerable distance towards Asia {cf.
Zeuss, Die Deutschen unci die Nachbarstamme, p. 258). According
to the unanimous opinion of antiquity, again, the Phrygians
emigrated from Europe and were originally connected with the
Thracians. The Macedonians remembered the time when (Hdt.,
vii. 73) the Phrygians, then having the name of Bpiyes, were
crvvoiKOL with them ; and by Strabo (c. 471) the Phrygians are
actually called airoLKoi twv ®paKu>v (cf. the other ancient authorities
quoted by Fick, ib., p. 408,/.). Nay, this eastern movement of
the Indo-Europeans from the Balkan Peninsula may perhaps be
traced still further. According to the information of the ancients
(Hdt., vii. 73, and Eudoxus ap. Eustath.; cf. Zeuss, ib., p. 257), the
Armenians, again, were most closely connected with the Phrygians,
so that this people also must once have had its abode in Europe.
The value of these ancient traditions is tremendously increased
by the fact that they are confirmed by an examination of the lan-
guages of the peoples mentioned. This is most clear in the case
of Armenian (variety of vocalisation ; European I), which not only
associates itself with the European languages in its phonetic
character, but also can show in its vocabulary a whole series of
terms peculiar to European culture (terms for plough, honey, salt,
wine, &c.). As to Phrygian, the extremely scanty remains of this
language (P. de Lagarde, Ges. Abh., p. 283 ; Fick, Spracheinheit, p.
411) pi'eclude any such certain opinion as in the case of Armenian;
but Phrygian also shows a richly developed e and I, and a close
connection with Armenian is at least probable (Hiibschmann,
K. Z., xxiii. 48). Within the limits of the European group, again,
Armenian ranks closest to the Lithu-Slavonic languages because
of its treatment of the palatal /.--series (above, p. 70), and the
same may be assumed of Phrygian (^eA,Kia, " vegetables," O.S.
zlaJcu) and Thracian ((iXai, " wine," above, p. 325).
The same remarks apply to the second branch of people occupy-
THE IMMIGRATION INTO GREECE. 43 1
ing the north-west of the Balkan Peninsula, the Illyrians; the last
linguistic remains of this branch are preserved in modern Albanian.
According to the probable opinion expressed by H. Kiepert {Lehrb.
d. alien Geographie, p. 240,/.), this tribe in pre-Hellenic times was
widely spread over Greece under the name of Leleges.
Cutting through these tribes there must have been a movement
of Indo-Europeans to the south, which in point of language betrays
no contact with Slavo-Lettish, Albanian, Armenian (Phrygian and
Thracian) in its treatment of the two palatal series, and which
gave ancient Greece its classic population.
West of the Thracian district in antiquity was the abode of the
Macedonians, whose language, in spite of the scanty remains in
which it is preserved to us (cf. A. Fick, Ueber die Siwache dtr Mace-
donier, Orient und Occident, ii. p. 718,/.), shows itself undoubtedly
to be Greek and nearly related to Doric. There has then rightly
been a tendency, gathering strength of late, to regard the tribe of
the Macedonians as the portion left behind in the north, of the
Greek people, whose original abode was at the foot of Olympus,
and perhaps even further north still. From this point then the
Greek tribes began gradually to I'adiate, first the lonians, then
the .-Eolians and Achseans, and finally the Dorians, whose migra-
tion concluded the Gi'eek tribal movements and set the final
stamp on the ethnology of ancient Greece.
A striking piece of linguistic evidence to show that the Gi-eeks
immigrated from the north, we have already made acquaintance
with, p. 273, above.
As, however, Greece received its Hellenic population from the
north, so it seems probable that the Italian tribes followed the
same direction, and breaking through or driving forward the
original lapygian and Ligui*ian population, occupied the Apennine
Peninsula. The advance of the Sabellian tribes southward, which
ran on into historic times, and gave Samnium, Campania, and
Lucania their Italian inhabitants, is rightly compared with the
Dorian invasion and regarded as the final movement. The ancient
power of the Umbrians in the north of the peninsula as far as the
foot of the Alps, which is testified to by tradition and story, also
deserves to be considered from this point of view. According to
this, tlie Latin tribe would have settled west of the mountains, in
the open plains (cf. Th. Mommsen, Romische Geschichte, i. p. 112,
/'., and Kiepert, ZeAr^Mc/i der alten Geographie, p. 382,/) at an
earlier period, and without leaving any traces. Finally, if W.
Helbig is right in his often quoted book, as in our opinion he is,
in saying that the lake-dwellings in the plain of the Po are settle-
ments " which were founded by the Italians during the most
ancient period of their occupation of the Apennine Peninsula," we
shall then have discovered the forefathers of the Italian tribes in
their original Italian home.
The most obvious path for the Italians to follow in entering
Italy is the wide and well-worn path of the nations around the
Gulf of Venice. Hither, according to those wlio believe in a closer
432 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
connection between the Greeks and the Romans, came the Itahan
bi'anch from the interior of Epirus, where, on this view, the Greeks
and ItaUans went through the phase of culture pecuhar to them-
selves (Hehn, ib., p. 54, /; W. Helbig, ^6., p. 98). We cannot
convince ourselves that such a Grjeco-Italiau period ever existed
' {cf. above, pp. 72, 129). Yet we also have discovered traces indi-
cating that the Italians had points of contact with the peoples that
are or have been rooted in the north or north-east of the Balkan
Peninsula, in proof whereof we point to what has been said above
on p. 322 about the history of wine.
All the peoples of Europe thus far mentioned must — such was the
result we came to in various passages of this book — once have
spent a period together in which they made a number of advances
in civilisation in which the Indo-Iranians no longer shared. Now,
is it possible to ascertain the scene of this joint European cul-
ture?
It is plain that theoretically there is no reason why this must
necessarily be sought in our quarter of the globe. It is, however,
also clear, that if there can be found in it a locality which satisfies
y all requirements, that is the place to which we must look in the
first instance. Such a locality certainly does occur, and only one
such locality, in our quarter of the globe.
North of the Pontus and the Caspian Sea stretches an ai'ea
twice as great as that of the France of to-day, the district of the
South Russian steppes, joining on the east the immeasurable
steppes and wastes that spread as far as the foot of the mountain
system of Central Asia, bordered on the north by the hilly, woody
country of Central Russia, and bounded on the west by the forest-
clad ranges of the Carpathians. The district thus marked out
diminishes in its northern dimension from east to west, and the
further west one goes the more it loses the characteristics of the
steppe — absence of hills and of trees — except in the parts close to
the sea. Indeed, the first outposts of the Cai'pathians appear on
the borders of Moldavia and Galicia. Forests of oaks, beech,
maple, alder, poplar, willow^, lime, birch meet us — though to no
great extent, and even then broken by broad, barren spaces — in
Ukraine, Podolia, and the south of Little Russia, and low forests
of firs and pines in the district of Kiev. In fine, the further north
or west we go from the grassy, leafless steppes^ the more the vege-
tation increases in strength and abundance until we are surrounded
by the densest forest of Central Europe, that of the Carpathians
and Volhynia.
Here, in these districts the fertile soil called " Tschernosem " or
" black earth," which gives the south of Russia its priceless value,
gave agriculture its first important part to play in the histoiy of
civilisation. As the Russian districts of Bessarabia, Podolia, and
Kiev (as also the neighbouring kingdoms of Galicia and Roumania
to the west) are amongst the granaries of Europe, so even in
antiquity many nomad tribes made the change to agricultural
life, the Kallipidse on the Bug, the "^KvOai apoTqp^s on the Bug and
THE HOME OF THE EUROPEANS. 433
Dniester, the ^KvOat yewpyoi on the Dnieper (cf. above, p. 285,
and Kiepert, Lehrhnch der a/ten Geographie, p. 341).
This ai'ea, therefore, bounded on the south by the Danube and
the sea, on the cast by the Dnieper, on the north by the forest
and swamps of Volhynia, on the west by the Carpathians, this,
and in ray opinion this alone, fulfils the conditions which we
require of the scene of the development of European culture.
If we picture to ourselves the European members of the Tndo-
Germanic family pouring along no matter from what quarter of the
interior of the South Russian steppes, the Cai'pathians on the
west, and the primeval forests on the north must have called an
imperative halt to the march of the advancing bands. Here the
nomads accustomed to the treeless steppes found themselves siir-
rounded by the vegetation of the Central European forest, and
were invited to develop a more exact nomenclature for the
various trees {cf. above, p. 271). Here the oak may have become
the abode of the supreme God, and the grove the temple of the
denizens of heaven [cf. above, p. 278,/.). Above all, the longer
the advance northwards and westwai'ds continued, the more closely
the peoples became packed ; and the more scarce in consequence
the pastures (which in this district are not too abundant) became,
the gi'eater was the compulsion on the nomad to put his unaccus-
tomed hand to the plough, which, fortunately for him, here struck
upon a fertile portion of the earth ; hence the simple and unforced
explanation of both the creation of a new terminology for the
Central European forest, and of that development of agricultural
language which is confined to the European branch of the Indo-
Germanic flxmily {cf. above, p. 283).
Further, another set of smaller points, characteristic of the
Exu'opean branch of the Indo-Germanic family, seem to find their
explanation here. In the district described, where the majority of
the Indo-European tribes were settled, the beech is indigenous ;
the Slavs alone ai'e to be conceived to have dwelt mainly or
entirely beyond this tree's easternmost limit, which cuts through
the country between the Dniester and the Dnieper- {cf above,
p. 273, /.). Here the immigrants may have come across the
honey, which was, perhaps, only brought to them in the way of
barter in the primeval period, and the insect that produces it, in
the forests of their new home {cf above, p. 321). Here, too, new
beasts of the chase, such as the buck and the roe {cf above, p. 248),
may have met them ; indeed, if we extend the incursions of the
lion but a little beyond the area in which they are actually vouched
for {cf above, p. 250), this ten-ible beast of prey, which j)robably had
wandered hither from Asia, may have assailed the cattle-drawn
wagons of the Indo-Europeans, as in after times it terrified the
camels of Xerxes. Here the Indo-Europeans may have had a new
world opened to them as they gazed for the first time upon the
sea {cf. above, p. 353), and if they had not made acquaintance
with the condiment of salt while tliey were yet luiited with their
Asiatic brethren {cf above, p. 318), here, in tlie swamps in which
2 E
434 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
most rivers of the steppes empty themselves^ lay the mineral in
tangible crystals before them.
Finally, it is from the locality just described that we can most
readily and most easily understand the movement of the separate
Indo-European peoples into their oldest historical abodes, as we
endeavoured to determine them above.
In the almost impenetrable primeval forest, which at that time
covered not only the back, but also the limbs of the Continent, the
beds of the rivers, and the coasts of the sea, must have been the
only and the welcome guides of the hosts on their forward march.
These therefore, we may take it, generally determined the line of
migration followed by the European members of the Indo-
Germanic race. And from what part of Em-ope do more roads of
this description lead, or in more various directions, than from the
locality which we have claimed as the place of the prehistoric con-
nection of the European peoples 1
Thus the Slavs and Lithuanians may have followed the Dnieper
up-stream, and thus have reached their abode described above on
the middle of this river's course, or rather north of the Pripet.
The Teutons following the course of the Dniester, and leaving the
sea to the south (above, p. 254, note), could cross over here to the
basins of the Vistula and the Oder. Advancing south of the Danube,
along the coasts of the Pontus, lUyrians and Thracians populated
the north of the Balkan Peninsula, thence to despatch kindred
tribes (Phrygians and Armenians) to Asia Minor.* Through
their ranks the warlike people of the Greeks forced their way to
their abodes at the foot of Olympus, where the Macedonians
continued to abide till later.
The course of the Danube, we imagine, was followed by the
Italians and the Celts, who continued together for some consider-
able time, and who, as it becomes every day more -probable that
they are closely connected in language, may be assumed with
probability to have passe.d through an Italo-Celtic period. The
Slav may have pointed the Italians the way to the Apennine
Peninsula, but the Celts marched further up the Danube,
thence to cross into the basin of the Main and the Middle
Rhine, where we find them in their most ancient historical
abodes. Here new relations bound them to the Teutons, now
their neighbours.
These are the most important Indo-European peoples who have
attained any historical significance, and thus have come to our
knowledge. No one will believe that they exhaust the number of
clans and tribes which in the course of their wanderings entered the
interior of this continent. Many may have been absorbed by other
Indo-Europeans, many by foreign peoples, whom we must imagine
to have existed especially in the west and south of our quarter of
the globe ; many may have perished in other ways. Amongst them
* Georg Mej'er {B. B-, x. 147) would count the Carians aud Lyciaus among
this section of the Indo-Europeans.
THE HOME OF THE IXDO-IRANIANS. 435
the oldest inhabitants of the lake-dwellings are to be counted, if
we are right in conjecturing them to have been Indo-European.
The Indians and Iranians can be dismissed more briefly than
was the case with Europe. It is beyond doubt, to begin with,
that India was populated by the Sanskrit people from the north-
west, a movement which is depicted in the hymns of the Eigveda
as being in course of progress. The Indians of this age, wTiose
principal abode is to be looked for on the banks of the Sindhu
(Indus), have as yet no direct knowledge of the Ganga (Ganges),
which is only once meutioned in the Eigveda. Nor do their
settlements seem to have reached as far as the mouths of the Indus,
as far as the Arabian Sea, at that time {cf. Zimmer, Altind. Lehen,
p. 21,/.). The gradual advance of the Indian tribes southwards
and eastwards is mirrored very vividly in the different divisions
and names of the seasons of the year in the more recent periods
of the life of the Sanskrit language, as we have shown in detail
above, pp. 304-306.
It is obvious, therefore, that we must locate the place of this pre-
historic phase of ludo-Iranian culture to the west, or, since the
migration into the valley of the Indus can only have followed the
ancient trade-route and path of the nations along the Cabul, to the
north-west of the Indus. But, as there are clear indications in the
history of the Iranian peoples {cf. Kiepert, Lehrbuch, § 57) that
the most ancient period of Iranian occupation was over " before
the conquest and occupation of the west of the Medo-Persian
ten-itory, lying to the east of the great desert," it seems to me
that from the nature of the case it is just this eastern portion of
Iran, the ancient provinces of Sogdiana, Bactriana, and the region
of the Paropamisus, to which we must look in the first instance for
the home of the Indo-Iranians.
If we imagine that it was from some, for the moment undeter-
mined, portion of the steppe district of Europe and Asia that they
migrated to this their new home, by the Aral Sea and up the
Oxus and Jaxartes, the mountains which they encountered, and for
which there is not wanting expression in the original Indo-Iranian
language,* must have restricted the extent of pasturage necessary
for nomad life, and have urged the inhabitants to till the valleys
which are frequent and extensive on the Upper Oxus and Jaxartes,
and adapted to farming ; while, on the other hand, the hilly, steppe
country in the neighbourhood which was only fit for pasture
determined the continuance of a nomad form of Ufe (Kiepert, § 55).
* Sans, pdrvata, parvati^ Zend paurvala, "hill" (whence Para:takenc on
the Upper Oxus).
Sans. ^i?j = Zend gairi, "hill " (only elsewhere in Slavo-Lett. ijora, gire,
" forest ; " cf. below).
Sans, minakd, "mountain nymph " = Zend MaSnaklva, proper name of a
mountain.
The forest, too, as would seem, gained in importance in the language of
the Indo-Iranians ; cf. Sans, vdna = 'AcxiA vana, Sans. vr]cshd = ZK\\i\ varcsha,
&c. The aVisence of identical names for the various kinds of trees will then
be explained by the reasons given above, p. 117.
436 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES,
In fine, the geogi*aphieal conditions were identical with, or similar
to, those which we found prevailing in the place of the period of
joint European culture. So, too, the influence of the soil on the
inhabitants must have been identical or similar (cf. above, pp. 284,
298,/.).
Here, in the valley of the Oxus and th« Jaxartes, above all on
the banks of the principal river of ancient Sogdiana, which the
immigrants first struck, the Polytimetos or Zerafschan, " the gold-
bearing," the Indo-Iranians, still united, may have learned the
first tidings of the gold which was unknown to the original period
{cf. above, p. 172).
The primitive abode of the Indo-Ii'anians was not situated by
the sea, and this is probable from the point of view of language
(Spiegel, Arische Periode, p. 27, /.).
Finally, we have here the simplest explanation of one of the
closest bonds that unite the two peoples, that is, their agreement
in a series of geographical names, especially names of rivers.* We
have here specially to consider : —
Zend ranha (Apd^';, sometimes probably the Jaxartes,! Syr-
Daria) = Sans, rasa (a mythical stream of the far north).
Zend harahvati {'Apax^oros, Arghanddh) = Sans, sdrasvati (Indtis,
Gaghar, and other rivers).
Zend haroyxi ("Apetos, HerirM) = Sans, sardyu (probably a river
of the Penjab).
As regards the explanation of these agreements, inasmuch as we
cannot in any case, after what has been said above, start from the
Indian rivers, there are three possibilities : either the names in
question were attached in the Indo-Iranian period to no fixed
localities, but still had a general meaning {rasa, "fluid," sdrasvati,
" district abounding in rivers ") ; or, they were names of definite
rivers of the original Indo-Iranian country, which was neither
Iran nor India, and wei-e transferred independently by both
peoples to the streams of their new abodes ; or, finally, the Iranian
give the Indo-Iranian meanings, because East Iran was the ancient
abode of the Indo-Iranians.
I confess that the latter opinion, represented and amply sup-
ported by W. Geiger, seems from the point of view of the present
work to be the most probable, and I, therefore, entirely subscribe
to the views of this scholar as to the original home of the Indo-
Iranians, which he thus sums up {Museon, p. 81, 1884): "Le pays
des Indo-Iraniens s'etendait des rives du Syr-Darya, vers le sud,
sur Bokhara, I'Afghanistan, et une partie du Baludjistan, jusqu'
aux frontieres du Pendjab (Zend hapta hindavo = Seais. sapta
sindhavas). Les Iraniens de I'Avesta habitaient encore en general
I'ancienne patrie aryaque."
Thus far then, in the question as to the original home of the
Indo-Europeans, we have obtained two fixed points from which we
* Cf. for further details, W. Geiger, Museon, iv. 1,/.
+ According to Justi, Zimmer, Geiger, and others.
THE INDO-EUROPEAN HOME. 437
must now try to advance with caution : they are the scene of the
period of joint European culture, bounded by the lower Danube,
the Transylvanian Alps, the Carpathians, and the Dnieper ; and
the original home of the Indo-Iranians in Eastern Iran.
Where, then, are we to imagine the common source whence these
two main streams of Indo-European national life alike spring ?
In order to determine it, let us fii-st follow a very obvious,
though at fii"st sight somewhat mechanical, line. Let us, that is,
start by assuming that in leaving the steppe district of Europe
and Asia, from which they came to their abodes as determined
above, both branches, the European and the Indo-Iranian, removed
equally widely, i.e., to equal distances, from their hypothetical
starting-point. Then a line drawn from the mouth of the Danube
to the middle of the Volga's course, say to the point where it
bends farthest eastwards, where the Samara joins it, will be equal
in geographical length to another line drawn from the latter point
to the Upper Oxus or Jaxartes. This, then, will bring us to the
south-east of Russia in Europe and to the Middle Volga as the
main artery of the original Indo-European home, and the question
presents itself whether the locality, thus provisionally assigned,
can be supported by further observations.
To begin with, I should like to refer to the description given
above on p. 266 of the pastoral life of the Indo-Europeans in the
most ancient times, from which it appeai-s that they were acquainted
with the horse (probably only semi-domesticated), but not with
the ass ami the camel. Now, as we found that the last two
animals can be traced back to the primeval period of those peoples
whose original abodes are certainly to be looked for in Asia, viz.,
the Semites and the Turko-Tatars, and as we also saw that these
animals whether wild or tamed, became known to the Indo-Iranians
before they separated, and w^hen they entered Asia, I am con-
sequently of opinion that the absence of the ass and the camel, to-
gether with the presence of the horse, in the pastoral life of the
Indo-Europeans, is in favour of our looking for the original abode
of the Indo-Europeans rather in the European than the Asiatic
portion of the steppe district.
Further, the locality proposed by us for the original home of
the Indo-Europeans, affords the simplest explanation of the mani-
fold points of contact between the Finns and the Indo-Europeans,
in language and in habits, to which we have referred in various
passages of this work. We have called attention to the difficulties
of this yet unsettled question on p. 103,/.; but thus much may be
conceded to W.Tomaschek, the champion of this theory, that there is
considerable probability in favour of the prehistoric contact between
the Finns and the Indo-Europeans which he assumes. Cf. also above,
p. 385. Now, north of our hypothetical home for the Indo-Europeans,
on the Middle Volga, we at once enter the district occupied as far :\s
the Ural by the Finns from the most ancient times (Mlillenhoff,
ii. 75). Above all, we should be inclined to count amongst the
loans "from the Finnic world to the Indo-Europeans the knowledge
438 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
of copper, a metal which in the mountain-gorges of the metal-
hferous Ural has been worked from the remotest times by peoples
(Tschuds) whose ethnology cannot be determined exactly, but
who probably belong to the Finn race (cf. above, p. 187, and
Peschel, Eurojm, p. 126).
Finally, I believe I can show it to be probable that the river
which, in our view, was the principal stream of the original Indo-
European home, long before it was called the Volga, or Adel, or
Idel (amongst the Turks), or Rau (amongst the Finnic Mordwins),
bore a name of pximeval Indo-European stamp. The ancients
(Ptolemy) first have recorded, as one of the names of the Volga,
'Pa, which coming from *'Pa-F-a undoubtedly reproduces the
above-mentioned Finnish name Rau or Rawa (Miillenhoff, ii. 75).
This name cannot, as far as I have been able to discover, be
explained from Mordwinic or Finnic * generally, though it does
correspond precisely, according to Finnic-Ugrian phonetic laws,
which only allow simple sounds at the beginning of a word,
to a primeval Indo-European '''sravd, "the stream," which is
pointed to by Sans, srava, giri-sravd, "mountain-stream," G. po-q
{*srovd), Lith. srioive, and belongs to the root srev, sru, "flow"
(whence also Strymon). Those Indo-European peoples fronL,
whom at a later time the Finns (Mordwins) might have borrowed
it, the Slavs and the Iranians, are just the peoples who have no
corresponding word for "river" (except O.S. ostrovu, "island").
The evolution before us then is as follows : the Indo-E\iropeans
termed the mightiest river in their home sravd, i.e., "stream."
This term continued to stick to the river even after their depai'ture,
because the Finns, who pi'obably advanced southwards along its
banks, took it over in a form conformable to the laws of their own
language, Rawa. From them the Greeks learnt it ('Pa = 'Pa - Fa).
The Turks also called it the " great river," for that is the meaning
of Adel, Idel, amongst them (Miillenhoff, ii. 75, note).
Thus, considerations of different kinds have led us to the convic-
tion that the central point of the original Indo-European home is
to be looked for on the banks of the Volga. As to its extent
nothing definite can, of course, be said. Yet it will be well to
imagine the geographical continuity of the Indo-Europeans before
their division into eastern and western Indo-Europeans, as coA^er-
ing a relatively wide area. A nomad population, as the Indo-
Europeans were in prehistoi'ic times, needs for its support a wide
stretch of country. According to A. Meitzen (Verh. des ztveiten
deutschen Geograjihentags zu Halle, p. 74, /. 1882), a nomad family in
Upper Asia needs for its support about 300 head of cattle, which
in UpJDer Asia, Turkestan, and the south of Siberia, require not
less than one-sixth of a geographical square mile of pasturage.
"A tribe of 10,000 persons would need 200 or 300 square miles."
On the fertile soil of the South European steppes these figures
would admit of reduction.
* In ]\Iordw. "river" is lei, in Moksa lei, ocu, miulerl:s, Cerem. aner [cf.
Klaprotli, Asia Poltjgl, Langiuigc-atlas, p. xiv).
THE SOUTH RUSSIAN STEPPE. 439
AVe may imagine that the expansion of the Indo-luiropcans in
the earliest times was directed to the south-west and the south-
east rather than to the soutli (along the Volga) for the simple reason
that the waste and sandy steppes of the Caspian would be avoided
as long as possible {cf. the map of the flora of Asia and Europe
in 0. Drude's Atlas der Fjianzenverbreitimg). Thus it came about
that the Indo-Europeans before the dispersion were unacquainted
with the sea.
It remains for us to give, as it were, the proof of the above calcu-
lation, and to consider briefly the question whether and how far
the physical geography of the South Russian steppes satisfies the
requirements of the stage of culture which the previous pages have
ascribed to the Indo-Europcans.*
After what has been said above (p. 116,/.) stress will be prin-
cipally laid on the positive agreements, though for the sake of
contrast the negative ones will not be omitted.
To begin with the climate of the South liussian steppe, it is
characterised by an extraordinary cold, snowy, and snow-stormy
wintei", the length of which is estimated by the natives at six
months, and by a (usually) intolerably hot summer. The transitions
from the one season to the other are so abrupt and rapid that "it
is scarcely possible to speak of spring and autumn" (TF"., 94; K. 3,
49, 50, 62). It is enough for our purpose to refer to p. 301 above
for the division of the Indo-Iuu-opean year into two parts, and for the
importance of the winter in the Indo-European computation of time.
Apart from the climate, the peculiar character of the steppe
appears in three marked features, which we may designate briefly
as absence of forests and trees, absence of mountains and valleys,
and abundance of rivers. The poverty of the Indo-Eui'opean
language in names for forest-trees is in harmony with this, and has
been ah-eady sufficiently insisted upon (above, pp. 271, 286).
The individual species of trees known to the Indo-Europeans we
shall retiu'n to subsequently.
As to contour, the steppe must not be imagined as a perfectly
level plain ; on the contrary, owing to the action of water, numerous
trenches and banks have been formed in the plateau of the steppe,
the heights. and depressions of which, however, are so inconsiderat)le
that to an eye looking over the country from a distance, there
seems nothing but a level surface extending beyond the range
of sight. It was quite impossible that a copious terminology for
the ideas raised by the contemplation of mountains should grow up.
Xor can any such terminology lie established by Indo-European
equations. Pictet's opinion to the contrary (Orif/incs, i. 122, /".)
is based on a number of perfectly untenable etymologies, of which
the above-mentioned Indo-Iranian one (which recurs in Lithu-
Slavonic), Sans, giri, Zend gaii'i, O.S. gora, Lith. gii-e, "forest,"
* Our statements as to the South Russian steppes are based mainly on the
admirable and standard work of J. G. Kohl (K.), Jleiscn in Siidntssland, Toil
1-3, Dresden and Leipzig, 1846-47 ; cf. also Jlusslancl, gcschildcrt von F.
Meyer wn JFaldcc/c (JF.), i., Leipzig, 1884.
440 PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
alone has any durability. From our point of view, the undulating
wooded hills of Central Russia, which rise to the north of the
original home, may have been meant.
In many parts of the steppe artificial hillocks, which are popu-
larly called "Turks' hills," break the uniformity of the landscape.
" They are heaps of earth, as a rule 7 or 8 metres high, situated
on the top of the highest eminences they are distributed in
such a way over the steppe that usually from the top of one of
these hillocks it is possible to see another from any one of the four
sides " ( IF., 92). It is, perhaps, not too bold to allow these to
remind one of the Indo-European TroXeis mentioned on pp. 140, 403
above. That the Indo-Europeans were well acquainted with water-
courses is shown by what has preceded (above, p. 438). Reference
might also be made to the equations O.H.G. ouioa^hat. aqua,
Sans, uddn, G. vSwp, O.S. voda, Goth, vato, and to the roots js^^'V,
phi, plud [Uiessen, fluss), and others.
Rich, however, as South Russia is in mighty rivers, they have
never constituted any serious obstacle to the onward march of
nations, and the reason may be that the greatest of these rivers,
even the Volga, is extremely rich in shallows, and varies in its
upper course from 12 to 2 feet in depth, and in its lower from 40
to 3 (Daniel, Handbtich der Geographic, ii. 890).
On Indo-European fords see above, p. 352.
The soil of the steppe generally is uncommonly rich in salt,
so that as linguistic evidence also points this way (p. 318), it
is pei'haps more probable that the failure of the Indo-Iranian
languages to participate in the joint European term for salt
is due to the former having lost the word at some later
period.
We now proceed to treat of the animal, vegetable, and human
life that developed on this soil.
Trees are only found in the steppe in isolated instances along
the sides of rivers. Amongst them Peschel {Europa, p. 131)
especially mentions the birch (cf. above, p. 271), which occurs,
under favourable conditions, even in the otherwise treeless steppe
country of Orenburg. Drude's map of the flora of Europe also
mentions the bettda alba, in the approaches to the steppe country.
Grisebach (i. 463) remarks that the underwood which lines the
banks of the rivers in the steppe consists mainly of willows (cf.
above, p. 271) and poplars.
Wild fruit-trees are said to be found far into the steppes, at any
rate on the west (A'., 3, 75). The place of forest is taken by thorn-
bushes, and above all by reeds,* which grow to a considerable
extent especially on the banks of the lai-ger rivers, attain a height
of from 3 to 4 metres, and harbour many land and water animals
of prey {W., 95; A"., 3, 77). Rushes in the steppe in many
respects supply the place of wood, which is scarce, as fuel, roofing,
wattle-work, &g.
Sans, nada, nndaka (?), Q. vddpai,, vdpdr]^, Lith. nendre; Lat. combrStum,
Lith. szvendrai ; Goth, rans, Lat. ruscus.
FAUXA AND FLORA OF THE STEPPE, 44!
In the animal kingdom the beast of prey, Kar e^oxr}v, is the wolf.
To show the importance of this beast in the original Indo-European
period (above, p. 247), it may be added that this is the only wild
animal whose name has a clear feminine form belonging to the
original language to pair with it (O.H.G. wulpa, M.H.G. wUlpe,
O.N. y/r/r = Sans. vrki). Again, the other quadrupeds which were
ascertained above to be Indo-European — the hare, the mouse, the
polecat and marten (K., 3, 116; W., 96), the wild-boar (now only
in the Caucasian steppe ; K., 3, 267, 276), the otter (Brehm,
Tierlehen, pop. ed., 1. 301) — are expressly mentioned as inhabitants
of the steppe, or as in the case of the beaver (Brehm, ih., i. 450),
may be assumed to be so.
The fox, common in the steppe, seems to be confined linguistic-
ally to Europe (above, p. 247). I find no Indo-European equivalent
for a quadruped very characteristic of the steppe, the marmot-like
creature called Susslik. A difficulty is caused by the presence in
the Indo-European fauna of the bear (above, p. 247), which is
obviously no real inhabitant of the steppe. We must, therefore,
shift the abodes of the Indo-Europeans sufficiently far north for
incursions of bears from Central Russia and the Ural into the
steppes to be conceivable. Amphibious creatures abound in the
steppe, particularly snakes {K., 3, 143), with which the colonists
had to wage regular war (cf. above, p. 258), tortoises,* and frogs, f
Amongst the insects the bee, frequent as it is in the Ukraine,
Little Russia, and Podolia, does not occur in the steppe itself {K.,
3, 171). One of the most terrible plagues to the inhabitants of
the steppe at the present day is the attack of swarms of grass-
hoppers ; it is, howevei', not improbable that these are relatively
late emigrants into South Russia {K., 3, 151,/.).
The bird-world of the steppe has experienced a variety of changes
and received many additional species since the introduction about
a hundred years ago of horticulture, farming, and afforesting
{K., 3, 137). Birds of prey are very common, such as the eagle,
falcon, hawk {cf. above, p. 252), which soar above the wide
expanses of rushes and reeds watching for their prey, wild ducks,
geese (above, p. 252), pelicans, and also herons and bustards ( W.,
96). Further, the dove (above, p. 253), the owl (above, p. 251),
the hen (above, p. 251), the crane (above, p. 251), and other kinds
of birds arc mentioned as inhabitants of the steppe.
In fish the South Russian streams, especially the mother Volga,
are uncommonly rich. The failure, therefore, of the Indo-
Europeans to observe them (above, p. 118) cannot be due to
anything in the nature of the locality, indeed thex'e is no
hypothetical original home for the Indo-Europeans in which it
conceivably could. It has its root rather in the general conditions
so characteristic of the nomad stage in the history of culture, to
which navigation and fishing are foreign (above, p. 353).
* G. x^^^^j X*^"'"''/) ^-S. ^c^y (Sans, har-mufal).
t For this animal the only equation known to mo is O.S. zaba, 0. P.
gabawo, O.D. quappa.
44- PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES.
Ill this locality a form of civilisation, but little affected by the
advance of modern Europe, has developed from ancient times —
a civilisation which reflects even at the present day many features
of the primeval Indo-European period with absolute fidelity. " It
is inconceivable," says Kohl (3, 53, 67), " wdien looking at the
steppe, how a man could hit upon the idea of settling down to farm
in the steppe, the whole nature of which ci'ies out against such a
perversion." Herds and hinds are the mark and seal of the steppe.
Here sheep, cattle, and the Tabuns, i.e., half-wild herds of horses,
still constitute the principal fortune of the ownei'. Goats also are
to be found amongst the flocks of sheep, and are used to lead them
(A''., 3, 228). Dogs, which easily run wild, are found distributed
in enormous quantities over the steppe. The herds follow the
clumsy cattle-drawn wagons of the hinds, for the ox is still the
principal, if not the only, beast of burden here {cf. above, p. 260).
A new phenomenon in certain portions, even of the European
steppe, is the camel imported by wandering Turko-Tataric herds-
men.
Here the native still clothes himself in the hide of his own
cattle. For at least six months of the year in the hard winter
sheep-skins are indispensable, and he frequently has them ready in
spring, and even in summer [K., 3, 46). In the way of arts, the
manufacture of felt is one of the main occupations of all steppe
peoples (A'., 3, 272, and above, p. 328).
Here the inhabitant of the steppe digs his dwelling (called " Sem-
lanken" ) to the present day in the earth as his best protection against
the terribly cold winter and the oppressive heat of summer, for the
ridge alone is visible covered with earth and turf. For the cattle,
too, special holes are dug (A'., 1, 260,/., and cf. above, p. 340,/.).
It would be easy to multiply the parallels here. drawn between the
condition of the most ancient Indo-Europeans and the conditions of
life on the steppe, which have always stamped their mark afresh
upon the hordes of men who have swept tumultuously across the
land. But we believe that what has been said is enough to show
that general considerations drawn fi'om the history of culture and
the arguments of linguistic palteontology thoroughly warrant the
assumption to which we were led above, viz., that it is in the steppe
of South Russia that the scene of the most ancient period of Indo-
European development, the original home of our race, is to be
looked for.
In the oldest times known to history, we find the northern shores
of the Pontus in the possession of the mj^sterious people of the
Oimmerii ; after that, the Scjths spread to the west of the Tanais,
the Sarmatae to the east. It can be no part of my purpose to
discuss the ethnological difticulties which these people present to
the investigator.* Only thus much I may point out, that it seems
to me impossible that these tribes, which sometimes betray Indo-
* In tliis connection "W. Tomaschek's " Kritik der altesten Nachricliten
neber den Sc3^thischen Xorden " (Sitzungsb. d. Kais. Ak. d. JV. in JFicn, cxvi.
cxvii.) is important.
CONCLUSION. 443
Kuropean features, sometimes altogetlier Asiatic and Mongolian,
(■an be regarded as forming an ethnological nnit. After the
departure of the Indo-European clans from the district in question,
I'^innish tribes from the north, Turkish from the east, may have
advanced towards southern Russia, possibly subjugating and
absorbing considerable remnants of the Indo-p]uropean peoples.
Then from the south-east there \mdoubtcdly Avas, as the Scythian
])roper names explained by Miillcnhoff show, a back-wash, and
considerable conquests wei'e made by the Iranians. But these are
all events which took place long after the epoch with which we are
engaged.
Our endeavour to determine the original abode of the Indo-
Europeans has been, in accordance with the chai'acter of the whole
'if this book, essentially based on the history of culture and on
language. It is in the present stage of research, the only way by
which it is possible to appi'oach the pi'oblem with some hope of
success.
How the proposed hypothesis as to the original liome of the
Indo-Europeans will be aifected by anthropology, when its results
liave been sifted as we may expect them to be (above, p. 113,/.),
how it will be affected by the discovery of prehistoric remains, when
the treasures concealed in the soil of South Russia have been fully
brought to light and thoroughly examined, remains to be seen.
INDEX OF AUTHORS QUOTED IN PART I.
Adelung, J. Chr., 1-4, 5, 7, 93.
Ahlqvist, A., 45, 46.
Allen, F., 29.
Anqiietil-DupeiTon, 5.
Arcelin, 95.
Arnold, 58, 59.
Ascoli, 57, 69, 96.
Bacmeister, A., 27, 61.
Beerman, E., 76.
Benfey, Th., 3, 4, 11, 23, 25, 29,
37-42, 74, 86, 87, 91, 98, 101.
Bemhoft, 15.
Bezzenberger, A., 103.
Bohtlingk, 0., 20, 41.
Bopp, F., 4, 14, 57.
Bradke, v. P., 63, 71.
Braune, W., 67.
Breal, 85.
Bruckner, A., 59, 79, 91.
Briigmann, K., 72.
Brunnhofer, H., 98.
Biicheler, F., 57.
Candolle, A. de, 21, 83.
Colebrooke, H. Th., 10.
Collitz, 57.
Corssen, 76.
Crawfurd, J., 9.
Cuno, J. G., 36, 89, 104.
Curtius, E., 56.,
Curtius, G. 35, 41, 69, 75.
Curzon, A., 6, 84.
Daniel, H. A., 8.
Darmesteter, J., 63.
Deecke, W,, 55.
Delbrvick, B., 24, 48, 57.
Delitzsch, J., 96.
Diefenbach, L., 75.
Dietrich, 44.
Diez, 79.
Donner, 104.
Duncker, M., 57.
Ebel, H., 54, 61, 65, 77, 79.
Ecker, A., 101.
Eichhoff, F. G., 10, 11.
Ermann, 78.
Ernesti, 74.
Fick, A., 23, 24, 29, 30, 37, 38,
41, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 63, 69,
88, 90.
Fischer, v., 100.
Forstermann, E., 26, 30, 58, 59,
77.
Franz, W., 77.
Geiger, L. 61, 86, 88, 98.
Geiger, W., 63.
Gerland, 36.
Gesenius, 74.
Gheyn, J. van den, 95, 99, 104,
105, 106.
Grassmann, H., 53.
Grimm, J., 9, 12, 13-15, 26, 44,
57, 58, 77, 88.
Giiterbock, 79.
Harlez, de, 95.
Hassencamp, E., 58.
Haug, M., 63, 85.
Havet, 96 (Germ. ed.).
446
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
Heeren, N., 5.
Helm, v., 31-35, 39, 42, 57, 76,
92.
Helbig, W., 38, 57.
Herder, 9 (Germ. ed.).
Heifer, A., 10, 90.
Hommel, R, 43, 74, 75, 97, 98,
103.
Hostman, Chr., 25.
Hiibschmann, H., 70, 73.
Jolly, J., 23, 48, 69, 87.
Jones, W., 4, 5.
Justi, F., 22, 23, 25, 30, 53, 63,
73, 83, 103.
Kaltsclimidt, 10.
Keller, 0., 61.
Kennedy, Vanns, 16.
Kiepert, H., 57, 81, 85, 93.
Kirchhoff, A., 103.
Klaproth, J. v., 4, 6, 7, 8, 9.'
Kluge, F., 59, 77, 79.
Kneisel, 56.
Kremer, A. v., 42, 43, 96.
Krek, 19, 60, 61, 78, 79.
Kuhn, A., 11, 12, 13,14, 16, 17,
29, 30, 33.
Lagarde, P. de, 73, 74.
Lassen, Chr., 7, 8, 9, 19, 20, 63,
84, 85.
Latham, R. G., 85, 86.
Leibnitz, 2, 3.
Leist, B. W., 57.
Lenormant, F., 21, 74, 99.
Leo, H., 15.
Leskien, A., 58, 63, 71.
Lhuyd, E., 61.
Lindenschmit, 101.
Link, H., 4, 10.
Loher, v., 105.
Lottner, E., 49, 52, 53, 55, 56,
77.
Mackel, E., 79,
Mainow, 100.
Matzenaner, A., 78.
Meyer, E., 98.
Meyer, G., 70, 76.
Meyer, L., 96 (Germ. ed.).
Miklosich, F., 61, 78.
Misteli, F., 27, 28.
Mommsen, Th., 16, 56, 57, 75.
Miillenhoff, K., 58.
Muller, A., 74.
Miiller, F., 57, 74, 98.
Muller, K. 0., 55.
Muller, Max, 8, 10, 23-26, 30,
42, 51, 52, 63, 66, 84, 85, 105.
Muir, J., 6, 62, 84, 85.
Niebuhr, B. G., 56.
Noreen, A., 59.
Parry, D., 61.
Paul, H., 72.
Pauli, F. C., 29, 53, 91.
Paulinus, Frater, a St. Barth., 3.
Penka, K., 102, 103.
Pfordten, H. v. d., 48.
Pictet, A., 18-21, 27, 30, 66,
80-83, 88, 94, 95.
Pifetrement, C. A., 94.
Posche, Th., 9, 100, 101, 102.
Pogatscher, A., 77.
Pott, F. A., 4, 7, 10, 11, 27, 41,
93.
Rask, R. K., 10, 11, 44.
Raumer, R. v., 77.
Rautenberg, E., 59.
Remusat, A., 8.
Renan, E., 74.
Rhode, J. G., 6-9, 85.
Ritter, K., 9.
Roth, 20, 63.
Rougemont, J. v., 21.
Rage, 76.
Saalfeld, A., 76.
Sayce, A. H., 103.
Schade, 78.
Scherer, W., 58.
Schiemann, Th., 60.
Schildberger, J., 2.
Schlegel, A. W. v., 6, 10.
Schlegel, F. v., 6.
Schleicher, A., 22, 28, 30, 33,
48, 49, 50, 53-58, 66, 83.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
447
Schmidt, J., 56, 58, 61, 63, 64,
65, 66, 69-72.
Schradcr, E., 96.
Schroder, 74.
Schuchardt, H., 67.
Seybold, 79.
Sievers, E., 45.
Sonne, W., 53, 66, 84.
Spiegel, F. v., 4, 6, 54, 62, 63,
67, 80, 85, 98, 99, 101.
Sprenger, 96.
Stokes, 79.
Taylor, I., 104, 105.
Thomsen, W., 44.
Thurneysen, R., 79.
Tomaschek, W., 36, 102, 104.
Tuchhtindler, 76.
Ujfalvy, Ch. de., 106.
Usener, 29.
Vambery, H., 46, 47, 78.
Vanicek, 76,
Vater, J.,'l.
Virchow, K, 102.
Wackemagel, W., 77.
Weber, A., 8, 12, 1.5, 20, 21.
Weigand, 77.
Weil, G., 42.
Weise, 0., 75.
AVestphal, R., 28.
Whitney, W. D., 23, 25, 26, 52,
69, 86, 91.
Wiedemann, A., 75.
Williams, M., 99.
Wilson, 21.
Windisch, K, 61, 63.
Winkler, H., 44.
Wocel, J. K, 60.
Wolzogen, H. v., 91.
Zeuss, K., 14, 54, 57.
Zimmer, H., 8, 58, 63, 84.
INDEX TO INDO-EUEOPEAN WORDS CITED
IN PARTS II.-V *
I. INDIAN.
{Sanskrit not distinguished.)
taktu, 312.
aksha, 134, 339.
agni, 414, 418.
aja, 134, 248, 260,
361.
ajina, 260.
ajra, 132, 283, 285.
anjana, 125, 319.
fat, atati, 353.
fatka, 330
athai-i, 226.
dtharvan, 416.
ad, 314.
adri, 223.
adhvan, 420.
adhvaryii, 420.
anadva'h, 260.
andhas, 130.
apaciti, 136.
apara-paksha, 307.
apa'd, 162.
apa'm napat, 412,
414.
apornuvdn, 407.
abhipitva, 313.
absin, Gypsy, 204.
fayava, 307.
ayas, 125, 132, 181,
187-192,195, 198,
209, 210.
ayalisthuna, 189.
ayddamshtra, 189.
ar, 125, 243.
ara, 239.
aritra, 339.
arczicz, Gypsy, 219.
arjuna, 182.
arna, arnava, 353.
arya, 404.
arvan, 263.
argas, 129.
avi, 248, 260, 332,
361.
a9an, 221, 223, 225
agirsha, 162.
a9man, 160, 190, 203,
234, 417.
a9va, 133, 248,-261,
361.
agvatara, 266, 361.
3,9™, 312.
ashtadhatii, 189.
as, asii, 407, 415.
asi, 221, 224, 228-
230, 239.
asura, 414.
asreman ,255.
ahan, ahar, ahana',
312, 407.
ahi, 117, 258.
ahdi'atra, aharni9a,
312.
a'gas, 130.
agrayana, 422.
ani, 339
a'ta, 342.
ati, 251, 269.
apri', 416.
ama, 315.
ayii, 130.
arya, aryaka, 404.
ashtri, 346.
as, 109.
a'sa, 346.
ishira, 420.
ishu, 221, 223, 225.
ishurdigdha, 223.
ukshan, 126,128, 260.
ukha, 160, 346.
udan, 440.
udara, 372.
i;dra, 247.
lima, 329.
furana, lira, 124, 327,
361.
urvara, 130, 283.
liluka, 137, 251.
usha's, 312, 414, 419.
lishtra, 248, 266, 361.
u'rna, 332.
urnavabhi, 330.
fksha, 247.
rta, 243-245.
rtii, 244, 304.
rtuvrtti, 304, 309.
rbhu' 163, 166.
* A + is prefixed to such words as the author believes he has brought into
fresh etymological connections.
INDEX OF INDIAN WORDS.
449
rshabha, 130, 260.
frshti, 221, 223, 228.
e'va, 244.
otu, 329.
fkaiisa, kansya, 216.
kata, 331.
kapi, 270.
tkapota, 251, 253.
kar, 158.
karanibha, 317.
karkata, 258.
kart, 331.
karsh, krsh, 132, 284,
293, 299.
karslnV 130, 283.
ka^ika, 247.
kastira, 216.
karmara, 158.
kala^-asa, 189.
kas, 421.
tkikidivi, 137, 251.
kukkuta, 137.
kunta,'228.
kumbha, 367.
krkavaku, 137, 251,
269, 361.
krti, 221, 224.
krshti, 299.
krshna, 119.
krshnapaksha, 307.
krshnayas, 189.
kelley, Hindust., 219.
kokila, 137, 251.
kravya, kravis, 315.
kravya'd, 316.
krina'mi, 132, 315,
349, 381.
kshan, 350.
kshap, kshapa, 312.
kshura, 12.3, 1.30,225.
Kshemaraja, 398.
kshdni', 387.
khara, 248, 266.
gavishti, 260.
gandha, 413.
gandharva, 130, 413.
gardabha, 266, 361.
ga, gtUha, 416.
giri, 435, 439.
tgrshti, 226.
gvha, 396.
g6', 248, 260, 288,
361.
godhu'ma, 284.
gola, 367.
gna, 386.
grama, 399, 400.
grii'vau, 125.
gnva, 337.
grishma, 304.
gharma, 304.
ghrta, 320.
ghora, 416.
cakra, 339.
catxishpad, 313.
candrabhuti, candra-
I6haka,candrahc'isa,
181.
caru, 128, 160, 223,
367.
carman, 226.
carma-mncl. 328.
crta'mi, 330.
ci,caye, 130, 136,402.
jatuka, 195.
jan, 376.
jana, 400, 403.
janman, 399.
jar, 125.
ja'matar, 375.
jami, 375.
jas, ja'spati, 386.
jfia, jfuitar, 136.
jya, 220, 225.
takman, 421.
taksh, 137, 330.
takshan, 130, 136,
421.
takshani, 222.
tanyatii, 415.
tamas, 313.
tarku, 126, 130, 225,
332.
tcirman, 129.
talatala, 424.
trita, 371.
tiltatulya, 373.
tamra, 193.
trimraka, tamraloham
189, 193.
triyii, 402.
tittiri, 251.
tuc, 375.
tul, tolayati, tubV,
135.
tarp, trp, Wpti, 135.
te'jas, 221.'
tota. Hind., 270.
trapu, 189, 195, 215.
trita, 130.
tvac, 225, 230.
daksliiiia, 249, 254,
255.
dadru, 421.
dadhi, 124, 319.
dama, 149, 341, 396.
darhpati, 130, 385,
396.
dar^, dar^ata, 180.
dasyu, 112.
da9amas3'a, 307.
dali, dahana, 312,
407.
datra, 284.
daru, 272, 278.
dfivane, 109.
dina, 312.
div, dive'-dive, dyavi-
djavi, 312, 408.
dih, 367.
dush, 213.
duhitar, 139, 372.
deva, 250, 415, 417,
419.
Deva-datta, 398.
devar, 377.
dehi', 344.
dytius (pita', janitfi,
asura), 142, 414,
415, 417, 419.
dvar, dvji'r, diir, 108,
342.
dvipa'd pac^u'nam,
314.
dosha 313.
drapi, 333.
drii, 138, 223, 273.
tdhanvan, 221, 222,
230.
dham, dhma,dhma't<i,
2f
450
INDEX OF INDIAN WORDS.
dhmiitiV, dhmatas
dftis, 159.
dhai-ma, 243-245.
dha, dhatri', 135.
dhaiicV, 140, 283.
dhaman, 142, 243,
396, 415.
dharaka, 226, 361.
dhenu, 124, 260.
naktamdinam, 311.
nakta, nakti, 135,
312, 415.
nagna, 327.
nadci, nadaka, 225,
441.
nana,', 371.
nanandar, 377.
nam, 415.
namas, 415, 416.
uapat, naptar, napti',
374.
nabhas, 414.
njVblii, 339.
namadheya, 142.
fnava, nava', naii,
278, 353.
ni9, 312.
fnivi, 331.
paktar, 136.
pac, 136, 141, 315.
pan, paiiate, 352.
pati, 140, 373, 386.
patni, 130, 141, 386.
pathikrt, 420.
pada, l41.
panthas, pa'thas, 353.
pay as, 124.
par, piparti, 352.
pai'agii, 224.
para-da, 349,
para'vij, 402.
parivatsara, 305.
pariit, 305.
Parjanya, 412, 414.
parvata, parvati', 435.
palava, 129.
pa9, pa9ayami, 260.
pagu, 260.
pa, 314.
pa, 373.
panigraliana, 384.
pjiman, 421.
piuda, 422.
I^iudapitryajna, 422.
pitar, 108, 163, 371,
422, 423.
pitii, 313.
pitrvya, 373.
pittala, 189.
pipilika, 173.
pi9, 159.
pish, 282, 284, 317.
pi'tadru, pita-daru,
pitu-daru, 274.
pitaloha, 189.
putra, 371.
pur, puri, pura, 130,
140, 403.
purushavcie, 270.
pu, 142,
tpii'rva, piirva-pak-
sha, 254, 307, 386.
prthivi' mata, 419.
pfshati, 260.
pautra, prapautra,
375.
prafic, 254.
prabhrti, 416.
pra vac, 416.
pragasti, 416.
pri, 384.
pragna, 329.
pha'la, 284.
bandh, 135.
bandhu, 130, 135,
377.
bambhara, 130.
barh, 420.
bahiidhmata, 190.
baiia, 223.
fbrahman, brahman,
416, 420, 421.
bhaga, 416.
bhafiga, 284, 299.
bhadra^,,207.
fbhartri'j 371,
bhishaj , bheshaj a,
421.
bhu'rja, 271.
bhrgu, 130.
bhrajj, 317.
bhraj, 271.
bhnVtar, 139, 372.
bhra'trvya, 374.
niajjan, 315.
mani, 337.
matsya, 118.
mad, mada, 321.
madhu, 321, 420.
mana, 175.
Manu, 412, 413,425.
mantra, 416.
mandura, mandira,
130, 347.
manya, 337.
mayu'ri, 270.
mar, 125, 283, 284.
mariit, 412.
mala, mahna, 119.
fmala, 333,
maharajata, 176.
ma, mi-me, 306, 349.
fmamsa, mas, 315.
matamaha, 375.
matar, 107, 139, 371.
matula, 373.
marjara, 268.
ma'sha, 284.
mas, 306, 414.
mitra, 414.
mih, 265.
mush, 248.
mrga, mrgaya', mfga-
yu, mrgayate, 250.
me, maye, mitsate,
348,
menaka, 435,
mesha, 124.
mulva, Hind.,molliwo,
Gyp., 219.
mla, 328, 333.
mlecchamukha, 193.
yaj, yajata, 130, 180,
415.
yama, 414,
tyava, 307,
yava, 282, 284, 299,
yavaneshta, 219,
yatar, 377.
I yatu, 414.
Mrv(Xl^(A
(a/vw
INDEX OF INDIAN WORDS.
451
yiitra, 303.
yuga, 339.
yiidh, 22.5.
yuvan, yaviyaiis, ya-
vishta, 130, 307.
yu.s, yu'sha, 315.
rariga, 219.
raj, rafij, 130.
rajata, 119, 12G, 180,
181, 183.
rajjn, 329.
ratha, 339.
raia, 311.
rasa, rasa, 172, 2G6,
436.
raj an, 403.
ra'tri, riltra, rjitrya-
han, 312.
ranga, Hind., 219.
ra'sabha, 266, 361.
rudhini, 119.
ru'pya, riipa, Hind.,
185.
rupp, rub, Gyp., 185.
lavi, lavaka, lavanaka,
283.
flaguda, 288.
lavana, 318.
flangala, 288.
lip, 320.
li, li-na-ti, 294.
loha, 189-191, 209,
212.
lohita, 189.
vaiiga, 219.
vajra, 221, 223.
vajriii, 223.
vajrabahu, vajra-
hasta, 223.
vatsara, 305.
vadhar, 221, 223.
vadhu', 383, 384.
vddhri, 130, 260.
vana, 435.
vap, 285.
vapra, 301.
vam, 421.
var, 121.
varaha, 248.
varuiia,130,412, 604.
varcas, 162.
vari.ia, 120.
vartaka, vartika, 130,
252.
vartaiia, vartula, 332.
fvarpas, 331.
varman, 222.
varsha, varshaiii,
304, 306.
vas, 333,
vas, 407.
vas, 312.
vasanta, 301, 302,
304.
vasu, 130.
vastra, 327.
vasna, vasnay, 348,
382.
vasnian, vasana, 327.
va9ii', 124, 260, 361.
vah, vahate, vahatu,
384.
va, vayati, 329, 332.
va'ta, 412, 415.
va'ma, 254.
va'ni bhar, 130.
vasana, 327.
vasara, 312.
va'stu, 130.
va'hana, 339.
vi, 123, 252.
vi, ve'ti, 250.
vidala, 268.
vidhava, 391.
vivas van t, 414.
vi9, 399, 403.
vi^-pati, 400.
fvisha, 226.
vrka, vrki', 110, 130,
■225,247,283,288,
637.
vrksha, 441.
vi-jana, 399.
vi-tra, 223.
vrtrahan, 412.
vf-sha, 260.
vena, 322.
ve^a, 140, 400.
vaira, vairadeya, vai-
rayatana, 402.
vyaghra, 250.
vrihi, 293.
t^ankii, 288.
9ankha, 190.
(^akuna, 190.
^ana, 256.
9ar, 303.
9arad, 303, 304, 306.
9aru, 128, 237.
9ardha, 260.
9arman, 233.
9arvara, 9abala, 412,
422, 425.
9arya, 223.
9alya, 225.
t9as, 9asa, 9asa, 288.
9astra, 204, 225.
9a9a, 248.
9a.kuna, 9akunika.
251, 256.
9akha, 288.
9ari, 223.
9a la, 341.
9ikhin, 270.
9ipra 221.
9iras, 9irastriina, 9ira-
stra, 221.
9i9ira, 304.
9irshan, 9iraska, 9ir-
shaka, 9irsharak-
sha, 221.
t9uka, 270.
9uklapaksha, 307.
9un, 9van, 9va', 134,
247, 264, 361,
519.
9u'ra, 130.
9u'la, 9ula, 221, 223,
236, 315.
96' va, 350.
9yrima, 189, 190,
611.
9yena, 130, 252.
9raddadhanii,
9raddluV, 142
9raddha, 423.
9va9ura, 376.
9va9riV, 376.
9va.tra, 415.
9vgta, 119, 292
415.
452
INDEX OF INDIAN WORDS.
sa, 372.
Satya-cravas, 398.
Sana, 305.
saniyas, 256.
sapatni, 141.
saparyenya, sapary,
130, 412, 597.
sapinda, 378, 422.
sabh'a', 344, 350,
400.
sabheyishta, 162.
sama, 301.
sama, 301, 304.
sam-gava, 313.
sam kar, 416.
tsam 9aiisati, 420.
samanodaka, 422.
saihvatsam, saziivat-
sara, 305.
saranyu', 130, 406,
412, 413.
sarama, 130, 406,
422.
sarayu, 436.
sarasvati, 436.
sarp^, 258.
sarpis, 319.
savya, 254.
saster, Gypsy, 204.
sasya, 284.
sahasra, 126, 130,
349.
sa, 313.
saya, 313.
sa'ra, 319.
sarameya, 130, 406,
409,412,422,424,
592.
siv, 141, 363.
simha, siiiihi', 249.
si'sa, 189, 215, 219.
siira, 326.
su, 372.
sukara, 248, 261.
sunu, 139, 371.
su'iya, svar, 414.
srgala, 248.
saindhavd, 316.
sodara, 372.
so'ma, 299, 326, 414.
sonii. Hind., 185.
sonegai, sonakai,
Gypsy, 185.
star, 414.
stari', 260.
stu, stuti, stotar,
stoma, 416.
stena, 402.
stri, 386.
sthavi, 129, 330, 478.
sna'van, 221.
snusha', 375.
spandaua, 288.
sphara, spharaka,
221.
syala, cyala, 377.
fsrava, srava, giri-
srava, 438.
svadhiti, 224.
svarna, 185.
svasar, 372.
sviditas, svedani, 206.
swinzi, Gipsy, 219.
sjscha, Gipsy, 146.
haiiisa, 134, 252,
269, 390.
hanu, 108.
haya, 248, 263.
liari, liarina, harit,
havita, 119, 304.
harmuta, (?) 441.
havana, 416.
ha, jaha'mi, 290.
hayana, 301.
hima, 301, 306.
hiranva, 119, 125,
171, 176, 180,
189.
hiranyayi, 172.
liiraiiyavartani, 172
hu, 'l31, 142, 415
416.
he'man, 134.
hemauta, 301, 302,
304, 440.
he'shas, 235.
hotar, 416.
hotra, 416.
hrad, 221.
hriku, hliku, 195.
hva, 416.
airya, 404.
aiwigama, 306.
aurvaiit, 263.
aothra, aothrava,
336.
aoni, 159.
aonya, 214.
anhu, 415.
«,rihya, 223.
azra, 285.
azhi (azi), 258.
II. IRANIAN.
{Zend not distinguished.)
fadhka, 330.
anairyao danhavo,
312.
andun, anddn, Osset.,
272.
ansiiwar, Osset., 372.
apanyaka, 0. Pers.,
375.
apara napat, 444.
afseinag, awseinag,
Osset., 203, 204.
ayanh, 125, 132, 155,
188, 189, 203, 212,
224, 237.
ay are, 312.
ayathrima, 240.
ayoaghra, 223.
ay6khaodha,222,226.
ayokhshusta, ayok-
shust, Mod. Pers.,
ayokhsasta, Parsee,
155.
INDEX OF IRANIAN WOKDy.
453
ayosaepa, 159.
arezashi, 223.
arkhoy, ax'khiiy,
Osset., 193, 204.
arziz, Mod. P., 219.
farshti, Zend and 0.
Pers.,221,223,228.
jivzist, avzeste, 181,
204.
asan, 181, 221, 223.
avsin, Kurd., 180, 181.
asti, 223.
aspa, 248, 261, 408.
asman, 130, 417.
ahi, ahifrashtad, 0.
p OOl 001
ah lira, 414.
atar, 346,
athai'van, 347.
afrivacanh, 416.
ayathra, 303.
Tirsis, Buchar., 219.
asin, Belooch., Pehl.,
hasin, Kurd., 203.
alien, ahaii, Mod.
P., 203.
ahangar, Mod. P.,
hasinger, Kurd.,
158.
iza, izaena, 260.
izdi, isdi, Osset., 203,
219, 295, 318.
isi, 301.
ishu, 221, 223.
ishtva, 345.
udra, 247.
upa-vadhayaeta, 383.
ubda, 330.
urvara, 283, 284.
urvaro-baesliaza, 420.
ushanli, 312, 414.
usiitra, 248, 361.
uslitur, Mod. P., iisli-
tur, Pamir D., 248.
erezata, 125, 181.
erezatosaepa, 159.
ospanah, ospinah,
Afgh., 203, 213.
aithya, 342.
kaeiia, 130, 133, 402.
kata, 340, 341.
kathwa, 266.
kad, kadah. Mod.
P., 340, 341.
kan, 340.
kareta, 210, 221,
224, 236.
kareto-baeshaza, 420.
karesh, 284, 299.
karsha, 130, 283,299.
karsho-ruza, 299.
kark, Mod. P., kcirk,
Pamir D., kurk,
Kurd., 251.
kahrkasa, kahrkatas,
251.
kartinah, Mod. P.,
331.
kala, Osset., kalay.
Mod. P., kalai,
Kurd., kalajin,
Parsee, 219.
kard, Mod. P., 210,
224.
kuiris, 221.
kurguschum, kour-
ghachem, Kurd.,
Afgh., 219.
ket, Pamir D., 340.
ker, Kurd., 210, 224.
kshathra vairya, 158,
198.
kujit, Pamir D., 266.
kibit, Pamir D., 251.
qaiihar, 372.
qasura, 376.
khaodha, 221.
khodh, Pehl., khode,
khoi, Osset., Mod.
P., 221.
kbar, kliur, Pamir D.,
266.
khara, 248, 266, 361.
kharkh, Osset., 251.
khard, Osset., 210,
224.
khiig, Osset., khiig,
Pamir D., 261.
khuk. Mod. P., 261.
khumbo, 159.
chiiru, chimih, chu-
riis, Mod. P., 269.
khshap, khshapara,
Zend, khshapava.
raucapitiva, 0. P.,
312.
gairi, 435, 439.
gadhavara, 224.
gandiim. Mud. P.,
284.
ga, gatha, 416.
gao, gao daenu, 248,
260, 361.
gard, Buchar., 210.
gurz. Mod. P., 224.
gul, Mod. P., 121.
ghidim. Mod. P., 284.
ghena, 386.
6aliik, Mod. P., 211.
ci, 130.
airk, Afghan., 251.
(5it, (Sed, (5id, Pamir
D., 224.
6ed, Pamir D., 340.
crt, Pamir D., 331.
jaiti, 404.
gaw. Mod. P., 282,
299.
jurdc'ik, jurtak, Pehl.,
123, 284.
jya, 221.
zairi, 190.
zairita, zairina, 119.
zaena, 224
zaothra, 416.
zaotar, 416.
zaiitu, 403.
zayana, 301.
zarr, ^Mod. P., zar,
Afgh., Bal., Parsee,
171, 172.
zaranya, 119, 125,
171, 176, 190.
zarai, zarai, Afgh.,
283.
zaremaya, 304.
zavana, 416.
zaghah, Afgh., 252.
zAmatar, 376.
zinia, 301, 302, 304.
454
INDEX OF IRANIAN WORDS.
ziri, Kurd., zirkh,
Kurd., zirah, Mod.
P. 221 224.
ziw, Kurd., isi, 182.
zizananti, 376.
zumag, Osset., 304.
zurthani, Bel., 123.
zer, zer, zir, Kurd.,
171.
Zerafschan, 172.
zyao, 301, 304.
zrad, 221.
zrMha, 221, 224.
zreh, Kurd., 221.
taegha, tey, Mod. P.,
224.
taezha, 221.
takhairya aonya, 193,
tanura, 159.
ftab, taftah, taftik,
tiftik,Mod. P., 330.
tabar, tabr, Mod. P.,
tipar, Pamir D.,
224.
tavi, 402.
towar, Bel., 224.
tasha, 221.
tashta, 367.
tighri, 223, 250.
tir,Mod.P., 223, 250.
tilah, tilah, tile, Mod.
P., 172.
tuirya, 373.
tuti, I^Iod. P., 270.
tedzrev. Mod. P., 251.
thanvare, 221.
daenu, 123, 260.
daoslia, 313.
danhu, 403.
dashiua, 186, 255.
dasna, Mod. P., 224.
dahyusli, 403.
dauru, 223, 225, 272.
dana, 283.
danah, Mod. P., 283.
daran. Mod. P., 224.
das. Mod. P., 284.
did, Mod. P., 379.
dughdhar, 379.
dvara, 108, 342.
nakhtiiru, 312.
naghan, Mingaui,
Bel., nan, Mod. P.,
317.
najDat, 374.
napti, 374.
navada, Mod. P., 374.
nairicinanlio, 402.
navayao apo, 353.
fuavi, 0. P., 353.
niya. Mod. P., 374.
neza. Mod. P., 224.
nughra, Bel., nuqrja,
naeqra. Mod. P.,
181.
nost'a, Osset., 375.
nemaiih, 415, 416.
nmcina, 396.
nyaka, O. P., 374.
paikan, Mod. P., 224.
paiti, 386.
paitisliahya, 31 1.
paurvata, 435.
pathan, 353.
padha, 141.
papara, Mod. P , 250.
payaiih, 123, 319.
payofshiita, 319.
par, 352.
paroberejya aonya,
194.
parodars, 361.
pard, parwuz, Pamir
D., par, Mod. P.,
305.
pasu, 260.
paman, 609.
pai, pai, poi, Pamir
D., 320.
pit, Pamir D., 274.
pitar, 371.
ping-dana, Pamir D.,
283.
1 ■ ok, Kurd., 193.
pisra, 159.
pishtra, 282.
pist, pist, post, Pamir
D., 282.
puthra, 371.
pulad, pola, pila,
Kurd., pulad, Mod.
P., polawat, Pelil.,
203.
peretu, 353.
pouru, paurva, 254.
farw, farwe, Osset.,
271.
fare, Osset., 305.
furz, brug, Pamir
D., 271.
fradakshana, 223.
frabereti, 416.
fravac, 416.
fravasbi, 423.
frasasti, 416.
baeshazya, Zend,
bizisk, Mod. P.,
421.
bagha, 415.
bagir, Afgh., 193.
babr. Mod. P., 249.
baiiha (bafigha), 284,
294, 299.
barata, 262.
barse, bars, Osset.,
271.
balan, Osset., 270.
bawri, 248.
bafam, Mod. P., 330.
birinj, Kurd., Mod.
P., 193.
bid. Mod. P., 271.
buza, 124, 248, 360.
berejya, 193.
beng, Mod. P., 299.
behar. Mod. P., 301.
bratar, 372.
bratuirya, 374.
maenakha, 435.
maeslia, 124, 360.
madhu, 321.
mazga, 316.
masya, 118, 353.
maidy ozaremya, 311.
maoiih, 306, 414.
matar, 371.
mas Mod. P., max,
Pamir D., 284.
maniya, 0. P., 396.
maha 0. P. 306.
INDEX OF IRANIAN WOltJ^S.
455
mitlira, 414.
minu, 337.
mis, Mod. P., IVIazcnd..
miss, Buchar, mys,
Mod. P., mers,
Mazend., 193.
miis, Mod. P., 248.
mathra, 416.
mrithr6-baeshaza,420.
yau, yew, Ossct.,
yumg, Pamir D.,
•282, 299.
yaz, 130, 415.
yatii, 414.
yare, 138, 301.
yasto, 336.
yima, 414.
yir, yoi', Pamir D.,
312.
yurs, Pamir D., 247.
yud, 225.
raocahina, 190.
raaca, 0. P., 312.
raoghna, 320.
raogau,Parsel,r6ghan,
Mod. P., iiighii,
roghiin, Pamir D.,
320.
ranha, 172, 436.
rauapana, 222.
rod, Pehl., Bel., roi.
Mod. P., 191.
roz, Mod. P., 312.
riisas, ersas, erssas,
Kurd., 219.
liileh. Mod. P., 330.
vairi, 222.
fvairya, 199.
vairyastara, 256.
vaeti, 272.
vaiili, vaiiliana, 327.
vanhi-i (vaghri), 301,
304.
wagak, Wakhi, 216.
vazra, 221, 223.
vadarc, 221, 223.
vana, 435.
vafra, 301.
waf, Pamir D., wafun,
Osset., 330.
varaza, 248.
varesha, 435.
vart', Ossct, 225.
varethman, 221.
vimadhauh, 420.
vivanhvafit, 414.
wid, Parsee, 271.
wisii, Avesii, wasu,
Pamir D., 223.
vishcithra, 421.
VIS, 400.
v'ith, 0. P., 399.
vispaiti, 400.
vehrka, 247.
Vehrkana, 247.
vercthra, 225.
verethraghna, 414.
wolch, Pamir D., 252.
saena, 130, 252.
saepa, 159.
saora, 236.
^avpo/xaTai, 236.
sag. Mod. P., Sagdid,
379.
sandal, Mod. P. 330.
saredha, 234, 304,
306.
siirda, Osset., 304.
sara, 221.
saravara, 221, 225.
siftan. Mod. P., 159.
sipar, 221, 225.
sipi, Kxird., sepid.
Mod. P., 184.
sipir, sifr, Kurd., 193.
Sim, Mod. P., 180.
siii, Pamir D., soi,
Afgh., 248.
sughzarine,suzgharin,
Osset., 171, 204.
sunilr, Mod. P., 375.
.supar, Mod. P., 284.
suwar, Osset., 372.
surub. Mod. P., surb,
Afgh., ssurbjBuch.,
219.
sura, 221, 223.
(Tvpa<;, 221, 225.
staora, 260.
stare, 415.
stu, stuiti, staotor,
staoma, 416.
snavare, 221.
snizh, 301.
spaeta, 119, 203.
spa, 247, 264, 361.
spjira, 221.
spiu, isn, Pamir D.,
203.
spin. Mod. P., 203.
spin zar, Afgh., 181.
spundr, Wakhi, 288.
spur, Sanglici, 284.
spenta, 415.
sru, 219.
ser, Buchar., 171.
starkh, Pamir D., 332.
stri, 386.
shaeto-cinanho, 402.
shagal, Mod. P., 248.
shtur, khtiir, Pamir
D., 248.
haoma, 299,321, 326,
414.
haosafna, 203.
hazaiira, 126, 130,
349.
hama, 301, 302, 304.
hafikar, 416.
harahvati, 436.
haroyu, 436.
hahya, 284.
hunu, 371.
hura, 321, 326.
hu, 248, 261.
456
INDEX OF AKMENIAN WORDS.
a\ (al), 318.
aleur (aliur), 292.
(aleln), '225.
am, 302.
amafn, 302, 303.
amis, 306.
anag, 219.
aic (ay9, ajts), 248,
260.
astX, 41 4.
(aspar), 224.
arcat' (arca^, art-
sath), 126, 181,
182, 203.
(ar6i6), 219.
arj, 247.
(aroyr, aroir), 191.
aror (aror), 283.
(bzisk)' 421.
bue6, 251.
buc, 249.
gail, 247.
garn, 260.
gari (gari), 123, 283.
garun, 302.
geX-mn, geu. 'ge A,-mau ,
221, 332.'
gin, gnem, 348.
gini, 318.
giser, 313.
daznak, 225.
dufn, dur'u, 108, 342.
dustr, 372.
eXbair, 372.
elu, 249.
3. ARMENIAN.*
(erka^, erkath), 203,
'210.
ep'em, 315.
zarik, 172.
zen, 224.
zrah, 224.
(^onir), 160.
inc, 249.
lusin, 306.
cnaut, tsuot, 108.
(kovr), 221.
kaAin(kalin),272,317.
kanaik', 386.
kov (kow), 248, 260.
kruuk (kroiinkn),
123, 252.
hair, 371.
haz, 284.
harsn, 384.
heru, 284.
herk, 289.
Inm, 353.
hur, 415.
ji, jioy, 248.
jiun, 301.
jmern, 301, 302.
juku, dzukn (zoiiku),
118.
jaiinem, 415.
malem, 283.
mail", 371.
mauru,
meXr (melr), 374.
metal, 157.
mis, 315.
mukn, 248.
nav, 354.
net, 224.
(nizak), 224.
(nkanak), 317.
nu, 375.
sun, 247.
ozni, 248.
oski, 172.
(patkandaran), 224.
(plinz, plindz), 193.
(polovat), 203.
(poruik), 146.
ustr, 372.
jer, 304.
sag, 252.
(salaiiart), 324.
siun, 344.
skesur, 376.
skesrair, 376.
(soiir), 224.
sterj, 260.
vagr, 250.
(wahan), 225.
yard (ward), 121.
taigr, 376.
(tapar), 224.
(teg), 224.
tiv, 315.
tun, 342.
9in, 252.
pi6i, 274.
k'oir, 372, 373.
k'eri, 373.
aur, 312.
* De. Lagarde's transcriptions are given in brackets ; the others 'are
H. Hiibschmann's.
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
457
4. GREEK.
{Aticient Greek not distiii'juished, dialects dist
uvjuhhed in brackets.)
i/Biv, 129, 274.
d/ctvd/cr;?, 203, 224,
dvi(TTLO<;, 398.
fdySpava?, 276.
229.
dv£i/'tos,272, 374, 402,
dyacTTopes, 372.
dKfjLm', 159, 160, 205,
540, 581.
dyycoves, 235.
234.
dv^os, 130.
dy/cc(TTpov, 119.
"AKfjLOJv, 130, 165.
fdvTt', Mod. G., 330.
dyicvXrj, dyKvXt^, 225.
^ AKixovlhrj'i (oupavos).
tdvTiW, 329, 330.
dyccrOai yuvatKa, 314.
417.
fdvTK^dpa (Syrac),
ay LOS, ayo?, 131, 416.
dKOl'TtOV ilTLKaVTOV,
370, 371.
dyo?, 130.
235.
dvvoi, 256.
dypa, 249.
fd/coo-TT;, 292.
d^evia, 351, 352.
dypeL'S, dypeuw, 249.
dxpOTToAt?, 140.
d^ivT/, 224, 228, 234.
dypo?, 131, 133, 283,
dKTl's, 312.
dfw, 134, 339.
285.
dKU)v, 222, 225.
dop, 224, 225, 228.
dy;(iorTets, 378.
dAct'ara, 292.
direipeaLa ISva, 381.
dSd/Atts, 206.
dXcKTiap, dXcKTpvwv,
.^Tre'AAcov, vlTretAwi',
d8dyu,ao-T09, 206.
252, 269.
MttoAAw;/, 130,407,
dScA^os, dSeX^T^, 372,
fdAetcroi/, 322.
412.
386.
dXevpov, 292.
dir£(j>6o<s ')(pvcr6s, 183,
dS€At</)77p (lac), 372.
dAeco, 283, 292, 293.
186.
a^VTOv, 278.
fdAt^aAo?, 274.
d7ri05, 276.
dc'Xiot, 377.
oAkuoji', 129.
d7roSt8oo-^at, 349.
alo/xat, 416.
dXoi(firj, 320.
dTTO/xucrcraj, 265.
d^/p, ttLlT^p, 413.
dAs (^eios dAs), 131,
dTTono-i?, 136.
drjTTjs, 414.
319, 353.
dpd, dpatos, 255.
d6dpr], 263.
dAcros, 277.
fdpaKOS, 295.
'^^7/m, '^1^77^7, 407.
'A\vl3r], 182, 184.
'.4pd^7/s, 172, 436.
d^r/p, 226.
dA<^i, uA</)tTov, 292.
dpaofxai, 255.
fatyave?;, 227, 272.
dA<^ecrty8ota, 381.
dpaplaKO), 255.
faiyctpos, 274.
dA</)d?, 119, 129.
dpd^vrj, 331.
fatytAo)./^, 272, 294.
dAwTT?;^, 247.
'.4pa;^wT0S, 436.
iliyVTTTtOS, 159.
d/Att^tt, 339.
dpyo9, 126, 182.
fatyXa?, 288.
d/Aa^o/3tot, 340.
dpyvpos, 126, 182.
taieA.oupo9, 248, 267,
d/j.d<j), 131, 283.
dpyvpiov, 182.
388.
d/i,€t/3ecr^at, 352.
".4peio?, 436.
aieros, 252.
d/xeAyo), 127, 319.
dpeiiMV, dpuY], 255.
at^co, 304, 307, 445.
dfj.r]T6?, 283.
dpicTKO), 255.
atAtot, 377.
td)u,vd)u,ou?, 386.
fdp?;!', dpi'os, dpv'ao"6.
fat/xt'Aios, 321.
d/itvo9, 260.
124, 260.
ar^^, 248, 261, 361.
d/JLcfiy Kyi's, 227.
tdpicrrcpo?, 255.
alx/x^, 227, 228, 330.
dfx^LyvrjUS, 161.
dpidTOS, 255.
ttKaCTTOS, 128.
dm^, 404.
tdpKav?;, 331.
fd/ceo/tat, aKecTTO?,
tdvSpo/tcos, 315.
dpKTOS, 436.
420.
dvcAeti', 279.
fdpKvs, 331.
458
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
d/Dj'aKtSc?, 327.
dpi/eids, 327.
aporpov, 283, 288.
dpovpa, 130, 283.
dpoio, 125, 127, 131,
132, 283.
dpirayrj'S Sid, 383.
dpTTT], 283, 312.
dpprjv, 130, 260.
A pT€fjiL<; KeSpedrLS,
277.
dp)(o}, 404.
dcrj3€a-T0<;, 344.
darjpLi, Mod. G., 181,
182.
darj/jios, 181.
"Acn/Sa, 'A mjSewv, 182.
facTK/aa, 226.
fdcr/xa, 330.
fdo-TTt'?, 225, 226, 230.
ao-7r/3os, Mod. G., 181.
jdo-n-po^, ao-TT/Dis, 226.
dcTTT/p, 414.
darv, 130.
farr;, 127.
UT/X05, 305.
drpa/cTOs, 126, 130,
225, 332.
'ArpeiSaL, 399.
drra, 371.
TOLTTO/Xai, 330.
aSAaf, 130, 289.
avXd^a, 289.
aVT/XT^V, 305.
avToyvov aporpov,
287.
avpiov, 312.
d(}>Lr]iJiL, d<jiewKa, 293.
dcf>pi]Twp, 350, 398.
^^ai/xej/t'Sat, 399.
'^X^A^f'^'?, 399.
a^v?;, 283.
tdxpcis, 227, 276.
jdwros, 330.
Bayato<; (Zevs), 416.
/3avd, 386.
/SdXai'09, 123, 135,
272, 317.
/3aXav7]cj}dyoi, 317.
/3atT7?, 328.
/3a(rtXci's, fSacTLXr],
^ao-iAtV, 404.
/Savvos, 159.
ySeXo?, 225.
^tos, 225, 226.
t^lTTttKO?, 270.
/3Xltt(d, 321.
/3oX^o'9, 295.
/SovXvTovSe, 313.
y8oS?, 225, 248, 260,
361.
fiovTvpov, j3ovTvpo<f>d-
yoi, 118, 319.
Bptye';, 430.
;8pt'^a, Thrac, 294.
£pLo-7]'i<;, 407.
/3/DoVo?, 294.
(3povT7J(nov, Mod. G.,
200.
/3pvTov, Thrac, 322.
;8m9, 251.
/3w, 225.
yatcros, 235.
ydXa, 124, 129.
yaXaKTOT/DO^ovvTe?,
319.
tyaXer;, yaX'^, 230,
248.
ydXXapo?, yeXapos,
Phiyg., 377.
ydXw?, yaXows, 377.
ya/x/^pos, 375.
ya/xeo), 376.
yav8o/A?^v, 284.
tyavos, Thrac, 324.
Jyacrryp, 387.
yauXos, 367.
yeXyis, 295.
FeXxai'os, 162.
yeVo?, 400, 403.
yews, 108.
yepavos, 123, 252.
yeptv^os, yeXivdo?, 294.
y>^ycv€ts, 426.
jyeppov, 226.
ytyvwcTKO), 136.
tytWos, 265.
yirea, 271.
yXoijpos, Phryg., 176.
yvwTos, 372, 400.
yvwcrTTjp, 136.
yo?7Te5, 165.
yoveis, 371.
yva, yvT^s, 288.
tyv'TTtt, yuTrai, yvirapia,
341.
yvpos, 288.
Tvc^Tos, Mod. G., 159.
8a?7p, 139, 377.
oatoaXos, 8at8dXXa),
161.
OaKTvXoL, 'JSttLOl oaK-
Ti)Xoi, 165, 166,205.
SdfjLvr]jXL, Sap-do), 206.
Aa/xvap,evevi;, 1 65, 1 66.
SdpvXXo?, Mac, 272.
8d(f)vr], 407.
fSetX?;, 313.
AeiTrarupos, Tymph.,
419.
8£>a), 327, 341.
SeVSpoj/, 272.
Sextos, 255.
S6o-7rtVas(Thess.), 140.
hiuTvoLva, 140, 387.
8e<T7roT7js, 130, 386,
396.
Sixi;€Lv, 129, 328.
S^/.tos, 130, 403.
fSta^o/Aat, Scaafxa,
330.
hfxiaKL, Mod. G., 210.
AivokX^s, 398.
AlVOKpciTT/S, 398.
AioSoTos, 398.
Aiovucros cvSevSpos,
278.
Aiwv77, 129.
SifjiOepa, 328.
SiwKco, 250.
So/'^cvat, Sowat, 109.
80//.09, SofxoL, 149, 198,
341, 344, 396.
So>, 223, 225, 227,
272.
Spvs, 138, 272.
8w, Dacian, 294.
caj/os, 216.
€ap, 301, 304.
eyytJT^cns, 384.
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
459
€y;(etptSiov, 224.
lyxeXvs, 118,. 258.
flyxos, eyx€i77, 225,
227, 228.
feyXOS, jxaKpov, 8oXt-
')(6<j)(iov, /u-eya, evSt-
KaTr7])(V, TTcXojptov,
227.
eyx^Tptcr/Aos, 390.
eSvov, eeSvov, 382, 389,
t^pts, 130, 260.
tcTSap, 317.
ct/xa, 327.
€lVaT€p€S, 377.
€/cvpo?, eKvpd, eKvprj,
376, 378.
cA.aiVeov poTraXoj/, 226.
iXaTTj, 236, 274.
eXacfio^, eAAo?, 134,
248.
EXivq SevSptTts, 278.
iXevdepo'i, 129.
eAec^a?, 266.
eXiK?; (Arcad.), 274.
cAko?, 129.
flAv/Aa, 288, 293.
tlAr/xo9, 293.
cAdw, 288.
lA^os, cAttos (Cyjir.),
319.
e/>i£co, 421.
i/XTToXdo), 348.
fci/tavros, 305.
€VV17, 331.
ewvfxi, 327.
evos, eVos, 305.
€op, copes, 372.
eTre(f>vov, 253.
tcTTt^Sa, 305.
Ittoi/^, 129, 251.
Up^lSivOo<;, 295.
ip€T>i<;, ip€T/ji6<;, 353.
ip€(f>M, 344.
'^pivi's, 130, 406,
412, 413.
epti^uo), 413.
ipfxaiov, epfjirjvix";, 412.
'£pixr}?, '/Jpp.€t'as, 130,
406, 413, 424.
c>^pos,119,191,195.
epwStos, 129, 251.
icrdrj'i, 327.
kairepa, 313.
eaTia, 'Kcrria, 127,
129, 162, 347.
icTTlOTrdfJLMV, 394.
jiaxc'-pT], 135, 346.
erai, 402.
eVaipo?, 402.
cTcAt's, 118.
-E'tcokA^s, 398.
€Tos, 144, 305.
ci;Aa/ca(lac.),130,225,
289.
evXrjpa, 130.
cufevt'a, 351.
€v(j)Wfxo<;, 256.
cc^e'oTtos, 269.
i(f)V(f>TJ, 330.
j' E)(evr]o<;, 278.
extvos, 247.
£>?. 118. 258.
ei/^w, 315.
Cca, 282, 292.
^e'AKta, Phryg., 430.
Zei;?, Zav, 2^i/, 129,
142, 414, 417 (eV
SevSpos, 278, vc<^e-
Xrj-yepeTa, repTriKc-
pawo?, (TTepoTrrjye-
pera, KcAati'e^T^s,
epiySovTTO?, ipifSpep.-
errj^, dcrrepoTr/^TTj?,
dpyLKepavi/o<;, evpv-
07ra, [j.r]TLeTa, ^eVto?,
IK€T7^T10S, ipK€LOS,
opKLOs, dyopatos,
ySot'Aaios, TrAoucnos,
OVptOS, iTTOif/LOi, 417,
418, 7rar77p, 419.)
t^t'Aai, Thrac, 325,
430.
^vyov, 339.
^wynos /AcAas, 314.
336.
ti7yer(r^at, 384.
^e'Aios, 414.
^i^fos, 390.
i7tKavos, 2.51.
rjXaKdTT], 332.
TjXcKTpo'S 6, r/, rjXeKTpov,
186, 197.
rjXiKTWp, 186.
yjfxap, rj/xepa, .312, 313.
r/yittWo?, 264,265,361.
rjvto^O'S, 136.
^pa ^ep€^v, 1 30.
^pt, .312.
^s (Dor.), 109.
yjTpiov, 329.
r/i)9, 130.
" H<f>ai(TTO<;, 161, 413.
^ws, 312, 313, 414.
OdXafJLOs, 6aXd[ji.T], 341,
345.
t^oAAts, 160.
t^dTTTO), 341.
^etos, 373.
6eXy(i), ©eAyii/e?, 165.
t^€07rpo7ro9, 256.
^€09, 416.
^£>t9, 128, 142, 243,
351, 415.
^ep/xa (El), 243.
OepjxacTTpa, 159.
^cpt'Cctv, 303, 304.
^€po9, 304.
Oea-TTi^eiv, 279.
^7;p, ^r/pcuo), 128, 249.
6-^(Taa0aL, 135.
0rj(Tavp6s, 145.
t^oAo9, 345.
t0p»;i/c€?, 399.
$pwva$, 321.
Ovydrrjp, 372.
^i'o9, 144.
^rpa, 108, 226, 342,
344, 497.
^rp€(^9, 226,230,231.
^wpT/f, 225, 226.
ftdo/Aat, 421.
icpeia, 316.
lepetov, 278.
i£po9, i£pci»9, 420.
LV, 285, 291.
tt77r»;p, 421.
i^apo9, 308.
iVtivos, 130, 252.
t/ia Atd, t/xoAis, 1 3 0, 2 9 2.
46o
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
ttvvos, 265.
tfds, 130.
tov, 120, 129.
I6s, 223, 225, 226.
los, 226, 421.
Ittvos, 160, 346.
r-TTTTos, 248, 261, 361.
ITTTrei'?, ITTTrfVCO, 262.
icrari?, 120.
IcTTirj, 130.
ICTTOS, 330.
h^a, 226, 231, 271.
Trus, 130, 339.
IxOvocfidyoi, 118.
iX^rs, 353.
fKctyKavos, 288.
Ka8/x€ta, KaSfjLLa, 220.
KatrpeaL, 230.
KaAai, Mod. G., 219.
KaAetv, 307.
KaXid, 341, 343.
fKaAt^os, Maced., 325.
KaXTTts, KaX—rj, 367.
KaXv/377, 342, 344.
KaArTTTW, 344.
KdX)(r], 196.
Kafiapo?, 258.
Kafx-qXos, 265.
KdfXLVO'i, 159, 160.
KdvOiov, 266.
KdwafBi'i, 294.
KctTTta (Arcad.), 295.
kSttos, 291.
KUTrpos, 124,128, 293.
Ka'pa, 226.
Kapdfxa, 339.
Kapapves, 339.
tKapSta, 134.
KdpKLVOL, 159.
KapKLVO^, 258.
KapOLVOV, 326.
KapTTOS, 304
KapraXos, 331.
jKacrts, KaaiyvrjTO<i,
KacTLyvijTr], 372.
tKacro-tVepo?, 197, 215,
216.
KacroTo), Kd(rcrvixa, kut-
TVjxa, 331, 363.
KardyeLOL oiKtat, 340.
KaTT7;9,KaTra, !Mod. G.,
268.
KarwvaKr], 328.
t/ca;^pvs, 293.
tKey;>^po9, 293.
Kevravpoi, 130, 412,
413.
K€VTOa), 413.
A'eA/i.is, 165.
Kepa?, 146.
Kep/Sepo^, 412, 425.
JKcpSo?, KepSatVw,
134.
KepKt?, 330.
KepKOs, KepKa^, Kep^a?,
KcpKi^aXt's, KepKvos,
137, 251.
K€(TTpOS, 225.
KCL'^W, 343.
Krj8eix6v€<;, Kr]S(vp.a,
377.
/ojXoi', 225.
K^TTos, 129, 291, 396.
K^TTOS, 270.
K-r]p6s, 321.
/<:^T05, 118, 129.
K-qc^-qv, 321.
Kl/SSt], KLf3S(t)V, 159.
TKtAXovpos, 252.
KLvvajidpL, 220.
KipKT], 330.
KLcro-a, 137, 252.
Ktwy, 344.
IkAciSos, 279.
KAeTTTO), 402.
jKX-qOpi], 271.
kAtjis, 129, 346.
K\yjpa, 279.
KXrjpo/xavTLa, 279.
kA^Pos, 279, 394.
kAivw, 342.
jKXtair], kXlctloV) kXlct-
la?, 342.
kAitu?, 255.
f/cAoj^co, 331.
kAwv, 279.
KV-qp-T), 339.
Kv-qpTiScs, 225, 230.
KoapvTa,Maced. Rom.,
224.
Koy)(rj, 130.
f/cotpavos, 396.
KOKKV^, 137, 251.
KOVTOS, 228.
KOTTTO), 236.
Kopa^, 252.
tKOpcVI'Vpt, 293.
Kopiv6io<i ^(aXKo^, 195.
KdpvOos, 165.
Kopvur], KopvvrjTr]<;, 226.
Kopu9, 225, 226.
Kopdivrj, 252.
KOuAeos, 260.
Kovpcrovp.L, Mod. G.,
219.
Kpdvua, 221 .
Kpdvo?, Kpdvov, 129,
227, 275.
Kpavos, 225, 226.
KpaTTjp, 183,
Kp eas, 315.
KpCKCO, 330.
Kpe'f, 251.
Kpr]Tn<;, 336.
Kpt, 292.
jKpLl3avo<s, 292.
Kpt^^, 292, 322.
jKpip.VOV, 292.
f/cpios, 295.
KpOKT], 330.
kp6ko<;, 121.
Kp6p.vov, 284.
Kvap.0%, 295.
klWo9, 121, 206.
Kve'w, 295.
/a'/<Aos, 339.
KiWos, 130, 251.
KuAAoTToStW, 161.
Kvp.jBo<s, 367.
KlJ/XtVOV, 297.
Kvver] (aly^ir], ktiSit;,
Tray^aAKOs, ravpeLT],
XaXK-qpris), 206,
225, 226, 230.
Kwr]yiTrj<;, 250.
KVTrdpLcrcro'?, 199.
Kvirq, 144.
KVTrpco^ T^aA/cos, 199.
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
461
KvpLO<;, 376,
KvpO'i, 130.
Kvpros, 331.
kCtos, 230.
Kvoyv, 134, 247, 264,
361.
K^fjiT}, 399, 400.
fXayapos, 255.
Xaiov, 283.
Aato?, 255.
\atcn]Lov, 225,
Xa/xupo9, 126.
X.avo<;, 332.
Xapos, 252.
Xe'aiva, 249.
Xet/Jctv, 129.
Aet/3^i'os, 129.
Xcipiov, Xetptoets, 120,
330.
XeiW, XeW, 249, 250.
XeTreii/, 329.
tX€o-x77, 160, 344.
X£;)(0?, 344.
XevKos, 119.
XeuKo? XP^'''^^} 186.
Xrjyu), 255.
fXiapds, 255.
Xt^os, 227,
XtVov, 294, 333.
XtTt, XiTtt, 294,
Xr?, 248,
tXdyxi?, 227.
Xvyi, 248.
XvKa/Jas, 309.
XvVos, 110, 118, 247.
AvKOs, Ai'/cas, 165.
XvTO'i, 330.
tXwTT?;, 333.
tftayeus, fxifiayixivrj,
320,
IJiOL^a, 317.
fjLala, 371.
/ixaXax'?, 120.
t/i,aXXds, 333.
fxafjiftrj, 371.
fxdvSpa, 130, 347.
fi.dvTL<;, 256, 421.
/iavvos, 337.
IxcyaXop^rjTrjp, 375.
fiiyapov, 344.
fi€^ifxvo<;, 349.
/xe^u, /xc^t;, 321.
p.iXa6pov, 346.
yaeXas, 119, 346.
/xeXSw, 128.
yae'Xt, 321.
/x€Xt77, 225, 227, 235,
274.
t/x-eXiVr;, 284, 293.
fxeraXXov, \-)0.
IXTJKWV, 284.
ya^Xov, 129, 144,
275.
)U,7;v (/XT^vos lora/AeVov,
<ji6LvovTO<;), firjvT],
307, 414.
UT^TTJp, 371.
fjLfjTpoTrarwp, 375.
fXTjTpvia, 371, 375.
fjLrjTpM<;, 373.
fuXo?, 198.
ilitWs, 406, 412, 413,
424.
/i.v5, 145, 175.
fjivdofJiaL, 386.
ju.otxds, 265.
/AoXt/So?, fx6Xv(3o<;, /xdX-
vySSos, fxaXv/SSaivrj,
/jLoXv/Bi, Mod. G.,
215,216,217,219,
fxopoi', jxwpov, 144.
jXTvaKapi, Mod. G.
193.
p.Trpovu^o'i, Mod. G.,
200.
/Jiva^, 118.
/tti'^a, 265.
/AU^OS, 118,
ilfu'Xas, 165.
fjivXrj, fxvXXw, 1 25, 1 26,
127, 131, 283.
fJiVpLOl, 12.5.
t/AV/30v, cr/xvpov, 320.
/«.{)s, 248.
t/AUrTO?, 265.
t^v^Xos, 265.
vato), 277
vdOpa^, vap6r]$,
440.
vttKos, 328,
vavi^a, veVva, 371,
fvad?, vr;ds, Hom.,
veoj?, Att., vaCos,
Acol., 277, 278.
fvavs, 278, 353.
V€/X09, 415.
VeKpOTTO/XTTOS, 423.
fj'eoTrrpat, 374.
vcVoSes, 374.
vepTepo<;, 128, 254.
V€<^OS, 415.
veupov, 221,
ve'co, 129, 3.30, 331.
vr]0(ii, vrjOi?, 330.
vrj/xa, vrjaLS, vrJTpOT,
329, 330.
v^o-o-a, 252, 269.
NiojSr], 413.
vi<Taro[xai, 216,
VLcfta, vt(/)et, 301,
vo/Mi^o/jLeua ra, 424.
I'dros, I'drtos, vorepds,
254,
vvfXffir], 384,
vv^, 134, 312, 414,
vijo?, 375,
vv^drjixepov, 312.
^eVi/o?, ^eivos, ^iv-Fo<;,
350.
^£0), 227.
^i<^at, 227.
^t</>os, 224, 225, 227,
228 229.
^vpoV, 'l30, 225.
fucrrdv, 225, 226.
6/3pv^ov {)(pvcriov), 200.
6ya(TTU)p, 372.
toyX''^' 226, 276,
oyfcos, 235,
o>^, 227,
d^di'ai, 336,
oiKcreta, 396,
oT/cos, 140, 396, 400.
oTi/os, 323, 324,
OLvrj, 324,
019,248,260,332,361,
tdio-To'?, 225, 226,
otWo's, 123, 252, 256,
5Xvpa, 282, 292.
o/xoyda-Ttap, 372, ,
OfJ-OKaTTOL, 396.
462
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
OfJiOCTLTTVOl, 396.
OflL^^eW, 265.
twos, 144, 264, 265,
361.
o^ivrj, 283.
o^vTj, 274.
OTrarpos, 226.
ottXi], 231.
OTTwpa, oTTwprj, 1 38,
302, 304.
operj^aAKOs, 196, 1 9 < .
fopet'S, 264.
"Opepo?, 412.
opvLs, 138, 252.
6pw/xi, 244.
fopo^o?, 294, 295.
opo?, 319.
opo9, 197, 265.
Topoc^os, 6po(f)rj, 344.
opru^, 130, 252, 366.
6p(jiav6s, 125, 290.
6(TTeov, 223.
ocrrpeov, 258.
Ovpav6<;, ovpavb<;, 130,
412, 417.
foupew, 265.
for'pet's, 264, 265.
ocfiVL^, 288.
OT^os, o)(rj/xa, 339.
TTraiTraAT^, TracnrdXr],
129, 293.
Tral?, 105, 373.
TraXat, 170.
fTraAyiii^, 226.
TraAXaKts, 146.
fTTaos, TTT^os, Trawrai,
400.
■TraTTTTOS, 375.
fTrapa/Sir], Thrac,
321.
irapfxr], 230.
TrareofxaL, 317.
ira-nqp, 143, 163, 353,
371, 396.
Trarpa, 396, 398.
TrarpaJot ^£0t', 424.
Trarpws, 373.
IlacrapyaSat, 399.
7rao-;!^w, 344.
IIcipT^vT;, 195,
7ret(r/Jia, 135.
Tre'Aeta, 253.
TreAcKus, 225, 228.
JTreAAa, 260.
t7reAp,a, 226.
TreAos, 253.
jTreXTT], 226.
TreAo), 349.
7r€IJi<f>pT]8u)V, 130.
TTCv^epo?, 130, 135,
377, 378.
TreTrAo?, 328,335, 336.
Trepaw, 352.
7rept/3oAi/3wcrat
(Rhod.), 217.
7repv77p.t, 352.
Hepcreffiaa-ara, 253.
Trepvat, 305.
TreWw, 141, 315.
TrevKY], 274.
TrrjX-rj^, 225.
fTTjyviW, 331.
TrlOrjKOS, 270.
TTt'^os, 367.
TTtAos, 328.
TTtTrpaCTKW, 352.
TTtcros, 7r6o-crov', 295.
Tri(T(ra, 274.
jTTLTVpa, 317.
TTITUS, 274.
TrAa^avov, 317.
TrAeKeiv, 329, 335.
TrAew, eTrXevcra, 428.
fTrAtj/^o?, 217, 343.
TTotvT?, 130, 133, 402.
TTOL/Jirjv, 137.
TToAis, 130, 140, 400,
403, 440.
TToAro?, 129, 293, 317.
TToXvpprjv, 327.
7rop/co9, 261.
TTOpvr], TTOpVlKOS, 146.
TTopOS, 353.
TTopri?, 260.
7ro(rts, 373, 386.
TTOTi/ta, 129, 140, 386.
TToOs, 134, 141, 374.
TrpaTTtSes, 134.
TTpaair], 283.
Trpdcrov, 296.
TTp-^aarw, 352.
7rpiafj.ai, 132, 348.
fTrptvo?, 272.
Trpoya/JLLa, TrporeAcia
385.
TrpoSofJLO?, 344.
7rp66vpaL, 344.
TTpoLKLov, Mod. G., 382.
TrpocreXyjvoi, 426.
TTpOOT^KOVreS, 380.
Trpov/j.vo';, 276.
Trpofjipacrcra, 253.
TrreAer/, 227.
TTTtWo,, 282, 295,317.
7R;ai/os, 295.
TTvpaypy], 159.
TTVpVOV, 292.
TTupo?, 284, 291.
TTwAew, TTwXeofxai, 349.
TTwAos, 263.
t'P5, 438.
tpaySSos, pafiSofiavTia,
279.
patcTTrjp, 159.
pal, 129.
paTTt?, 226.
tpaTTTO), 130, 331.
pOLTTV;, 296.
pa<^avts, 296.
pe^o), 130.
piyos, 129.
pivos, 225.
pi's, pivOKepws, 146.
poSoj/, po8^, poSoets,
po8oSaK7T;Ao?, 120,
144, 330.
poT^, 438.
poTvaXov, 226.
pCjTres, 226.
o-ayapts, Scyth., 224.
(TttKKeW, 170.
aa/cos, 225, 226, 230.
cravSaAoj/, 330.
creAas, aeXrjvr],
arjKo?, 306.
crtST/peos, 194,
a-iSrjpevs, 158, 205.
o-tSr/pos, at8apo<;, 158,
190,194, 195,205-
208, 212, 237.
INDEX OF GEEEK WOKDS.
463
^iBrjpov';, StSapoi's, 2t-
8a/3ios, StSapiVrtos,
206.
fo-icrus, (XLcrvpa, 328.
0"tTTaKOS, 270.
o-Katos, 129,255,256.
(TKU/WO), 34:3.
a-KaXfxy], Thrac, 237.
cTKOLjiKii, Thrac, 184.
toTKeAAo), 3-43.
o-Kev7/, 328.
CTKOpoBoV, 296.
CTKt'TO?, 328.
(TfLtXr], (TfXlXo^, 198.
(r/JuXa^, 274.
troA.os (aDTOT^owvos),
205.
OTraU;, 229, 331.
CTTreVSco, 129.
aiTLvSrjpa, 288.
CTTTT^Aata, 341.
o-Tia'po? (Syrac), 291.
Ja'Ta<f>vXrj, 217.
oreyos, 342.
a-reppos, 260.
a-TTQfioiv, 129, 330.
^Tpv/XWV, 438.
(TTW/X.vXoS, 126.
OT-VOlKtCr/AOS, 403.
avfJifSoXov, 351.
(Tvpfxa, Mod. G., 183.
(TTs, 328, 361.
fcru^etos, 347.
cr(fidTTw, cr^a^oj, 330.
cr({i€vB6vr], 229.
a<f>vpa, 159, 205.
tTatmpoi', 160, 205.
TaAavTOi', 135, 183.
traTTT;?, 330.
Tdprapo?, 424.
fra^os, Ttt<^pos, 341.
Tavpos, 260, 413.
raws, 270.
Tc'yos, 342.
TerT^os,Tor;^os,342,344.
Tc/crwv, 130, 136, 415.
TcAo-ov, 130, 293.
2W)(lv€'i, 165.
T€yU,€VOS, TC/AVO), 130,
277.
TevSpT^vT/, Tev8p7;8ojv,
321.
repefjivov, 343.
Tepfiwv, 130.
T€p(//tS, TepTTOjXaL, 136.
Tc'rpaf , TCTpt^, Terpawi',
251.
reTTa, 37 I.
T^^r,, 374.
TTJKeSwV, 421.
TTjKlO, 217.
TrjTOiU), 402.
Tt^r?/t(, 128, 142.
Tt^TyvT;, 135, 328.
TLViDjTLVOfiaL, 130, 341,
402.
Tl</>77, 291.
T A^ Va I, T At/T 09, 135,
332.
1 TO/o}cS, 371.
I To^ov, 222, 225, 226,
229, 233.
xpaTre^a, 400.
TpeVw, 332.
TpL-^pr]^, 353.
TpLTdiV, T'piroyivua,
130.
Tpl^^atKCS, 400.
rpvywv, 253.
TpvcfidXeLa, 224.
TpwyAat, 342.
t TVpaVTOS, 404.
frupos, 319.
^ TVppL<i, 145.
vdtva, 146.
va.KLvOo'S, 121.
fuypos, 254.
iiSpapyvpos, 220.
vSpos, 247.
vScop, 440.
rio9, rt?;, 324.
viwvo?, 375.
i'At;, 129.
WIS, vio'ts, wn^, 288.
VTTCpCOOV, 344.
{;?, 146, 248, 261.
vcrixivr], 225.
vo-cros, 229.
vv?, 372.
TLKi], vcf^acria, vcfirj,
141, 330, 335.
$ato-Tos, 162.
<^aKos, 295.
(fidXapa, 183.
<^avos, 119.
J(f>dpat, 336.
<jiapo<;, 336.
<f>apfj.aK€LS, 165.
tjidpfxaKOv, 421.
<fidayavov, 225, 227.
ft^acrcra, (f>dTTa, 254.
^eAAd?, 274.
<f)ep€LV, (f)€p€a6aL, 110,
139,262.
^€p(Ti(f>6vr], 145.
^vyyos, (fir]yovaio<;
(Zeus), 272, 279.
<^rAaf, 274.
^t'Aos, 350.
€f>LXvpa, 273.
^Aeyi'fS, 130.
j <^Awpi, <^XovpL, Mod.
I G., 177.
(fiovos, 253.
t^ova, 248.
</>peV£9, 134.
cjtprjrrjp, 139, 372,
397, 398.
t})prJTp7], (fiparpia, 397—
399.
<f>p'vy(x), 317.
<f>vXov,<l)vXr], 398, 403.
<^e-o-a, 159, 205.
«^vw, 407.
(^vyw, 124, 128, 317.
t^wAeoi, 341.
«^tip, 129.
txaAis, 325.
^aAKEO?, T^ttAK£l09, X*^^"
K7^tos,xaAK7;p7;s, 194.
XoAkcvs, 194, 205.
XaAKCun), 194.
XoAKewv, 194.
XoAKT/tOS So/XOS, X*^'
K7;i,ov, 160, 205.
XaAKos, 130, 155,|158,
164, 194-198,205,
210, 212.
464
INDEX OF G EEEK WORDS.
^aXKoXt/3aj'OS, 198.
^aAKO)//,a, Mod. G.,
196, 199.
^ciAri/', ^aXt'jSSiKos,
206.
-XaXv^e?, ^dXvfSoL (cri-
Sy]pOT€KTOV€^), 206.
XaAx^?, 196.
Xa'rkoman (Cypr.),
196.
■)(€€aOaL Koi ivayt^fw,
424.
^€LfJ.(i)V, 301.
X^Lp, 290. I
XeAus, x^XitiVT], 441. i
X'^Pt^o.^i-ov, 226.
^cpv^Tt?, 331.
X£w, 130, 142, 159,
415.
Xw, 134, 220, 252,
361.
XVP, 128.
X^pos, XVP^^'^^^"-
(Cret.), 290.
XtAtot, 130, 349.
Xt/>iapos, X'/^«'P«) 301.
XtTwv, 335.
Xtwv, 134, 301.
xAau'tt, 335, 336.
xAa/xvs, 335.
XXor/, 120.
xXowos, 176.
xA-copos, 119, 176,
Xoavoi, 159.
XoXos, 134.
x6pTo<s, 291.
xpvcro^, 174, 183.
Xpw9, xP<^At«> 120.
XX^To's apyvpoq, 220.
i/.c£p, 129, 252.
ii{/LTTaKO<;, 270.
(fj/Ao^oiVos, 236.
u)fx6^, 316.
wvos, oive'ojLtat, 348.
wov, 123.
(Spa, 138, 302.
INDEX.
465
(oAWv-t), 158.
ar, U4, 177, 183.
ari, 247.
asper (acnrpe-a), 181.
at, 371.
ah, 273.
vene, vere, 324.
viet, 305.°
vicher, viehcfe, 376.
vise, 400.
baku'r, bakur, 193,
198.
bar, 284.
hnOe, 284, 296.
bir, bil'e, 372.
bruuze,'200.
(je^jtr-O, 159.
dimcn, 301
dru, 272.
Sender, 376.
5. ALBANIAN.*
8l, 248, 260.
el'-p-bi, 292.
ergjuut, argjant, arg-
jan, crg^cnt {ipy-
je'vT-i), 183.
erne, cmc, 371.
gjalp, 319.
( ^tXe, ^tAj €- j a), zil'e, 198
ind, end, 330.
kalaj, 218.
kanep, Geg., kerjj,
Ttisc, 293.
(KO^aTcr-i), 158.
kordii (/copSe-a), 224.
korsum, 219.
(KJtVpi-a), 198, 199.
mcrae, 371.
miel," 283.
mis, 31.5.
moi, 306.
mot, 305.
motr^-, 371.
mur (fjiovp-), 145.
nate, 311.
lime, 371.
nuse, 375, 376.
sermaje (crep/xc-a, crfp-
/i,a-ja), 183.
siviet, 305.
tat6, 371.
tier, 332.
tuts, tuns (tovv(t-i),
198.
tselik, 211.
ul'k, 248.
(<^Aj opi-ov, Tusc. , (f>Xj o-
pLv-vi, Geg.), 177.
fhekur, ekur (\€Kovp-
i) 211.
hudere, 296.
fAbella, 276.
abellana, 276.
abies, 129, 274.
accipiter, 257.
acer, 128, 274.
acies, 211.
aclys, 225.
acus, 118.
acus, 283.
adgnati, 398.
ador, 128, 293.
aeneus, aenus,
199, 200.
6. ITALIAN.
[Latin not distinguished.)
aes, 132, 153, 188, alcedo, 129.
^^^^91, 196, 199, 212. alces, 248.
188,
„ Bruudisium, 200.
„ Cjprium, 199.
„ rude, 153.
„ signatum, 153.
faesculus, 272.
aestas, 304.
affinis, 381, 400.
agar, 283.
agmen, 415.
agna, 283.
agnus, 260.
alnus, 275.
aluta, 328.
amita, 371, 374.
amitini, amitinae,
372.
anas, 252.
ancilia, 230.
anguilla, 118, 258.
anguis, 118, 258.
annus, 128, 303, 311.
ann6na, 303. 311.
aeramen, aeramen- ahenus, aheneus, ah- anser, 134, 252.
turn, 200.
aerai'ius, 158.
aereus, 199, 200.
esnes, Umbr., 188,
200.
albus, 120, 129.
antae, 342.
anus, 374.
aper, 248.
* Transliteration according to G. Meyer ; G. v. Yl2L)xxiSi{Alha}icsischeSttiditn)
iu brackets.
2g
466
INDEX.
apis, 321.
Aprilis, 310.
aqua, 128, 440.
ara, 347.
arare, 125, 283.
aratrum, 283.
arbor, 272.
tarcus, 126,128, 225,
229, 233.
ardea, 129.
arduus, 183.
argentum, aragetud,
Osc.,125, 145, 181,
183.
„ vivum, 220.
argutus, 182.
arma, 231.
asa, Umhr., 347.
ascia, 234.
asinus, 144, 265.
ater, 346.
atrium, 346.
atta, 371.
attilus, 118.
aurichalcum, orichal-
cum, 197.
axxris, 178.
aurdra, 177, 309, 414.
aurugo, 176.
auinim, ausum, Sah.,
176,177,178,183,
197.
fantumnus, 304.
avtna, 293.
avis, 123.
avunculus, 373, 374,
379, 395.
axis, 134, 339.
barba, 123.
berva, Umhr., 228.
betula, 271.
bibo, 314.
bimus, 301.
bos, 248, 260, 288.
bubo, 251.
bulbus, Bulbus, bul-
bosus, bulbaceus,
295.
bura, 288, 296.
cadmea, cadmia, 220.
caecus, 128.
caepe, Caepiouum
gens, 295.
calare, 308.
calcatura, 323.
calendae, 308.
calix, 323.
calpar, 367.
calx, 343.
camelus, 265.
caminus, 160.
campestre, 336.
cancer, 258.
canis, 135, 247, 264.
cannabis, 294.
cauo, 252.
caper, 124, 128, 248.
capio, 252.
carbasus, 143.
caro, 316.
carpere, 304.
carpisculum, 337.
carrus, carrago, 263,
339.
caseus, 125, 319.
cassis, 225, 230.
fcateja, 234, 235.
cattus, catta, 267.
catulus, 267.
caudex, 278.
fcaupo, 144, 349.
caupulus, 278.
Caurus, 353.
celare, 342, 344.
cella, 342, 344.
cellere, 158.
cepa, caepe, 296.
cephus, 270.
cera, 321.
cerasus, 276.
cerdo, 158, 159.
Ceres, 293.
jcerea, cervesia, cer-
visia, Hisx>., 322.
cervus, 248.
cetra, 230.
tcicer, 295.
Cicero, 295.
ciconia, 251.
cinctus, 336.
cinnabari, 218.
cirrus, 293.
civis, 128, 350, 396.
civitas, 396.
clavis, 129, 346.
clavus, 346.
clepere, 402.
clupeus, clipeus, 225,
230.
coctile, 315, 343.
coctor, 136.
coemptio, 381.
cohors, 291.
color, 120.
columba, 269.
fcolus, 332.
combretum, 441.
confarreatio, 381,
384.
consobrini, 372.
contus, 228.
coquo, 128, 136, 141,
315, 343.
cor, 134.
corium, 232.
cornix, 252.
comus, 129, 275.
cornu, 128.
corulus, corylus, 128,
274.
corvus, 252.
cratera, 183.
crates, 331, 342, 346.
credo, 142, 415.
cribrum, 128.
crueutus, 183.
cruor, 315.
cuculus, 137, 251.
cudere, 158, 159.
culeus, 260.
culmen, 344.
culmus, 344.
cumin um, 298.
cuniculus, 268.
cunnus, 303.
cupa, 144.
cuprum, cupreum, cy-
prinum, 199.
fcuria, 396.
curis, 229.
INDEX.
467
cumaco, Umhr., 252.
currus, 339.
cuspis, 211.
Danuvius, 429.
deduc.tio domum,
385.
delibutus, 129.
depsere, 129,1328, -402.
derbiosus, 421.
deus, 250, 415, 419.
dei pareutum, 424.
dcxtrarum coiiiuiic-
tio, 384.
dexter, 255, 256.
Diana, 129.
dies, 312.
domiis, 149, 341,396.
dos, 382, 383.
ducere uxorem, 383.
dupursus, Umhr.,^\L
ebur, 208.
electrum, 185.
elephantus, 266.
emo, 349.
ensis, 228, 229, 239.
enubere, 392.
equus, 133, 248, 262.
eques, eqiiitare, equo
vehi, 262.
erro, 128.
tervum, 295.
essedarii, 262.
exuo, 336.
fiuimat, Osc, 396.
faba, 427, 284, 295.
Fabiorum gens, 295.
faber, forte faber,
Pic, 158.
Fabricius, 158,
faeles, 268.
fagus, 138, 272.
tfala, 325, 345.
fFalisci, Falerii, Fa-
lenius agar, 325.
tfallo, 341.
famelia, famedia,
Umhr., famelo,
Osc, 395.
famul, fauiel, Osc,
395.
far, Umhr., Osc, far-
er, farsio, fasio,
Umhr., 127, 284,
291, 292, 322.
fai'reuspanis,384,385.
fas, 142, 351.
fastigium, 228.
Februarius, 310.
fenestra, 346.
fero, 110, 139.
ferrarius faber, 207.
ferrum, 128, 207.
ferus, 128, 250.
fiber, 248.
ficus, 276.
fidelia, 367.
figulus, 344, 367.
filius, filia, 372.
fingere, 344, 367.
fimus, 341.
flagrare, 416.
fflamen, 416, 420.
flavus, 119.
Floralis, 310.
flos, 128.
fluentiim, 183.
flumen, 416.
focus, 317.
ffollis, 159.
forceps, 159.
fores, 108, 342.
fornius, 304.
fornus, 159.
fornax, 159.
forum, 342.
fostis, 350.
fragum, 129.
framea, 235.
frater, 139, 372, 373.
fraxinus, 271.
frigo, 206, 317.
frigus, 129.
fulvus, 119.
funda, 142, 229.
fuudere, 159, 415.
fur, 129.
furvus, 119.
t galea, galear, gale-
num, galenus, 225,
230.
gelu, 128.
gena, lOS.
gener, 376.
gens, 393, 397, 398,
401.
gentilis, 398, 400.
genu, 1U8.
genus, 376, 400.
gesum, gaesum, 235.
gigno, 376.
gladius, 22.5, 229.
glans, 123, 135, 272,
317.
glos, 377.
granum, 284.
grex, 263.
grus, 123, 252.
habeo, 128.
haedus, 128, 288.
fhasta, hastatus, ho-
statu, hostatir,
Umhr., 128, 225,
228.
helvus, 119,128,176.
heres, heredium, bir,
290.
herinaceus, 129.
hiems, 134, 301.
hinnus, 265.
hordeum, 123, 128,
284, 292.
hortus Lat., hiirtum,
Osc, 291.
hospes, 350.
hostis, 142, 350.
hydrargjrus, 220.
ianitrices, 377.
Januarius, 310.
Janus, 129.
idus, 308.
ignis, 414.
incus, 159.
induo, 231, 336.
intercalarius, 310.
iugum, 339.
Junius, 310.
Jupiter, Juppiter,
Jovis, 142, 414,
418, 419.
ius, 351.
468
INDEX.
ius, 315, 319.
kataphractes, 231.
lac, 124, 129.
lacus, 128, 353.
lacrima, 272.
laeua, 335.
laevus, 255, 256.
lana, 332.
lancea, 226, 235.
flangueo, 255.
lares, 424.
larix, 272.
legei-e, 279.
lenis, 255.
lens, lentis, Lentulus,
295.
leo, 249, 250.
levir, 375, 379, 388.
lex, 128.
libare, 129.
liber, 129.
Liber, 129.
libum, 317.
licium, 329.
lilium, 120. '
lignum, 278.
linter, 235, 274,
278.
linteum, 294.
linum, 294.
lira, 283.
loebertas, 129.
flongus, 227.
lora, lora, 323.
lorica, 225, 230, 231.
lorum, 129, 230.
lucere, 306, 312.
lucius, 118.
lumen, 416.
liina, 366.
lupus, 110, 247.
lupus, 118.
Maesius, 310.
Mains, 310.
malleus, 159.
melius, 128, 353.
malum, 129, 144,
275.
malva, 120.
mamma, 371.
mancipium, manu ca-
pere, 291, 384.
jmango, 349.
manes, 423, 424.
manus, in manum ve-
nire, 128, 393.
mare, 353.
Mars, Mamers, Mciv-
ors, 412.
Mars Thingsus, 418.
martulus, 234.
massa, 200.
mataris, 235.
mater, 108, 371.
matertera, 371, 374.
medeor, medicus, 420.
mcl, 321.
membnmi, 315.
Mene, Meua, 306,
415.
mensis, 306.
meretrix, 146.
fmerula, 128, 252.
metior, 349.
metallum, 155, 156.
migrare, 352.
fmilium, 284, 291,
293.
mille, 349.
mina, 175.
mingere, 265.
modius, 349.
mola, 126.
mola salsa, 318.
molere, 125, 283,
293.
monile, 337.
mortarium, 343.
morum, mdrus, 144,
276.
mugil, 118.
mulgeo, 319.
mulus, 265.
munus, 348.
murus, 145, 343.
mus, 248.
musa, 14^3
fmustela, 268, 402.
mustum, 323.
mutare, 348.
nassa, 354.
fnavis, 278, 353.
nebula, 414.
neo, neraen, netus,
129, 331.
nemus, 414.
nepos, 374, 375.
Neptunus, 412.
Nei-thus terra mater,
419.
nertro, nertru, ner-
truku, Umbr., 128,
254, 255.
ninguere, 301.
nix, 301.
nosco, notor, 136.
nox, 134, 311, 414.
nubo, nupta, 384.
nudus, 327.
nurus, 375.
obrussa, 200.
occa, occare, 283.
ocreae, 225, 231.
occulere, 120.
oleum, 322.
olla, 260. ,
orbus, 125, 290.
orior, 243.
OS, 223.
ose, Umbr., 309.
ostrea, 258.
ovis, 248, 260, 293,
332.
ovum, 123.
tpabulum, 317.
pale a, 293.
tpallium, 328.
palma, 208.
panicum, 293.
panis, 293.
fpannus, 331, 332.
pantex, 232.
parentes, 371.
fparicida, parricida,
400, 401.
parma, 230.
parra parfa, Umbr.,
252.
parus, 129, 252.
pasci, 293.
INDEX.
469
pater, 108, 371.
pater fixmilias, 396.
patricii, 398.
patrueles fratres, so-
rores, 372.
patruus, 373, 395.
pjivo, 270.
pccus, 153, 26G.
pecunia, peculium,
153.
pelex, pellex, 146,
208.
pellis, 226, 260, 328.
perperam, 401.
Persepouas, Pelig.,
14.5.
persicum malum,
276.
peturpursus, Umhr.,
314.
pes, 134.
phalerae, 183.
phaselus, 144.
picus, 128, 252.
pilarius, 343.
pilleus, 328.
pihim, 143, 22.5, 228,
233.
pinso, pistor, 228,
282, 295, 317.
pir, Umhr., 414.
pirus, 276.
piscis, 117, 128, 354.
pisum, Piso, 295,
pix, 274.
plaustriim, 339.
plecto, 329.
tplumbum, 215, 217,
218.
plumbum, album, ni-
grum, 215.
poculum, 322.
tpollen, polenta, 293.
pondus, 143.
jjons, ponttrani, Osc,
353.
pontifex, 421.
pdpulus, 274.
tporca, 128, 283,
289.
porcus, porka, Umhr.,
261, 289.
porrum, 296.
portus, 353.
porticus, 353.
possessio, 290.
postis, 343.
potestas, 386, 393.
Praenestinae sortes,
279.
pressa, 323.
procus, 384.
Prosepnais, 145.
primus, 276.
psittacus, 270.
puklo, Osc, 372.
puis, 129, 293, 317.
purus, 142.
tquercus, quernus,
272.
quinque, 110.
tquiris, 396.
radius, 407.
raja, 118.
rapa, 296.
ratio, ratus, ratum,
243, 244, 245.
ratis, 353.
I'audus, rudus, 189,
190, 191, 200, 209,
212.
ravus, 119.
reda, 263.
remus, 353.
frenones, 243, 327.
reor, 243.
re.x, 403.
rigor, 129.
ritus, 243.
robur, 272.
rorarii, 229.
rosa, 120, 144.
rota, 339.
ruber, 119.
ruscus, 441.
sabaja, lUyr., 321.
sacer, sancio, sacerdos,
420.
tsagire, 384.
sagitta, 225,229,233.
tsagum, 334, 335,
336.
sal, sallere, 293, 318,
328.
salix, 128, 274.
salum, 353.
sapo, 320.
sarpere, 283.
saxum, 237.
scaevus, 129, 255,
256.
scandula, 343.
scortum, 146.
scutum, 225, 229,
230, 231, 328.
sebum, 320.
secale, 293.
secare, 224, 288.
securis, 224.
seges, 291.
senex, 256.
sepelio, 412.
sero, semen, sator,
283, 291, 386.
serere, 279.
serpens, 258.
fserracum, 263.
serum, 319.
Sethlans, Etrusc,
162.
sidus, 206.
sileo, silentus, 128,
183
silva, 129.
sim, sif, Umhr., 261.
simila, similago, 129,
292.
sinister, 255, 256.
socer, 376.
socrus, 376.
s6l, 414.
fsons, 128.
sordes, 119.
soror, 177, 209, 372,
373.
sortes, 279.
t spar us, 235
spatha, 229.
spondeo, 1 29.
spousio, 384.
4/0
INDEX.
squatus, 118, 128.
fstagnum, stannum,
stagneus, stagna-
tus, 215, 217.
stamen, 129, 331.
Stella, 414.
sterilis, 260.
sturans,l 27,252, 262.
subligaculum, 336.
subtemen, 330.
sui, 398.
sulcus, 127, 289.
suo, 141, 331, 363.
sus, 248, 261.
suscipere, 390.
taceo, 132.
talentum, 183.
tata, 371.
taurus, Tavpofx, Osc,
toru, turuf, Umhr.,
260.
taxus, 222, 226, 274.
tectum, 342.
tego, 336, 342.
tegula, 343.
telum, 231.
,, praeustum,
235.
tela, 330.
temo, 339.
templum, 128.
tero, 292.
termo, 128.
tessera hospitalis,
351.
testa, 367.
tetrao, 251.
texo, textor, textura,
textriiia, textri-
num, 330, 341,
342.
thesaurus, thesavj-om,
thesavrei, Osc, 145.
thorax, 231.
tiurri, Osc, 145.
toga, 336.
toUo, tuli, 135, 390.
tollere surcvilos, 279.
touare, 414.
tongere, 128.
torculum, 323.
torqueo, 332.
touta, tutu, Umhr.,
tovto, Osc, 127,
140, 403.
tribus, trifu, Umhr.,
127, 140, 400.
trimus, 301.
triremis, 353.
triticum, 292.
tunica, 208.
turdela, 252.
turris, 145, 343.
tus, 144.
tympanum, 339.
ulcus, 129.
ulmus, 127, 274.
ulucus(alucus ?), 137.
ulula, 251.
unguentum, 125, 183,
319.
upupa, 129, 251.
uro, 176.
ursus, 247.
Usil, Etrur., 309.
uus, Pelig., 309.
fuxor, 377.
vacca, 124, 260.
Valentianus I., 164.
vas, 367.
vates, 127.
Velchanu, Etr., 162.
vellus, 333.
fvelum, 330.
fvenari, 249.
venerari, 263.
venire, venumdare,
348.
tventer, 386.
ventus, 412, 415.
ver, 301, 304.
verbena, 279.
vereri, 256.
vei'res, 260.
verticillus, 332.
verto, 304.
Vertumnus, 304.
veru, vericulum, 225,
228.
verus, 127.
vesper, 313.
Vesta, 127,129,162,
347.
vestio, vestis, 327.
vetus, 144, 305.
vicus, 128, 140,
400.
vidua, 391.
vimen, 324.
vinco, 129.
vindemiare, 323.
Vinicius, Yiinikiis,
Osc, 324.
vinum, vinu, Volsc ,
Umhr., 466-469,
323-325.
viola, 120, 129.
vir, 376.
virus, 226.
viscum, 129.
Vistula, 429.
vitex, 272, 324.
vitis, 324.
Vitus, 129, 339.
vitrum, 120.
Volcae, 257, 429.
Volcanus, Vulcanus,
162.
v6mer, vomis, 288.
vomo, 421.
vulpes, 247.
INDEX.
4/1
7. LOW LATIN AND THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES.
{Low Latin not distinguished.)
acciajo, It., 211.
acciale, It., 211.
acero, Span., 211.
aceiro, 0. Port., 211.
aciare, aciariimi, 211.
acier, F., 211.
airaiii, F., 199.
alame, ]VaL, 199.
alambre, Sjmn., 199.
ania, Sjxm., Port.,
371.
aram, Pr., 199.
arame, Wal., 199.
arambre, Span., 199.
arnes, arnese, Sjxin.,
It., 232.
ascus, 278.
azzale, Ven., 211,
bibere, 322.
bicarium, 323.
bronce, Span., 199.
bronze, F., It., 199.
bvonzium, broiizina,
brouzinum vas,
199.
bruno, brunitius, bru-
niccie, briinizzo,
199.
broigne, bi'unie, 232.
bronha, Pi:, 232.
brugna, 232.
bxilga, 260.
calamina, Sjxin.,
Port., 220.
calamine, F., 220.
canape, It., 294.
caunella, 217.
capus, 251.
cattus, catta, 267,
268.
charrue, F., 289.
chat, F., 268.
cheque, F., 279.
cocha, 279.
coirassa, Pr., 232.
coq, F., 269.
coraza,*S)>a?i., corazza.
It, 232.
cuirasse, F., 232.
cuivre, F., 199.
diable boiteux, 16-5.
dota, It, 383.
drap, F., 333.
epee, F., 229.
epervier, F., 257.
espada, Sx>an,, 229.
espeautre, 0. F., 218.
estafio, Span., 217.
etam, i^., 217.
falco, falcone. It.,
faucon, i^., 257.
fleche, F, 233.
florinus, fiorinus,
177.
francisca, 234.
freccia, It., 233.
frecha, flecha, Sp.,
233.
fusta. It., 278.
fustis, 278.
Galand, F, 163.
gatto, /^., 268.
gerifalte, Sp., ger-
falco, /«., girfalc,
Pr., gerfaut, F..
257.
Gitanos, Sp., 159.
grana, 217.
laupia, 342.
legno. It., 279.
loggia. It, lobia,
Xo?/i6., 342.
logoro. It, leurre,
F., 257.
maitresse, F., 146.
martes, 268.
metal, F„ 155.
mina, /<., mine, 7^.,
208.
mundium, 127, 362,
393.
obryzum, 200.
ottone, It., 200.
otzyl, Wal, 211.
pancia, /^., panza, Sp.,
232.
panciera. It, pancera,
S])., panchire, 0.
Fr., 232.
paraveredus, 143.
peautre, 0. F., 218.
peltre, S])., Port, pel-
tro. It, 218.
plata, Sp., 200.
pialla, It., 234.
plovum, plomn, 289.
plug, Wal., pio,
Lomh., plof, TiV.
289.
rame, /«., 200.
say a, Pr., saja, /^,
saie, F., 334.
harnas, 0. F., bar- scrama, scramasaxiis,
nois, F., 232.
haubert, /:, 232.
if, F, 274.
ivus, 274.
kositoriu, Wal., 216.
lagellum, 336.
laiton, F., 289.
laton, aS^x, 289.
latta. It, 206.
237.
see, 288.
sparaviere, If., 257.
stagno, It., 217.
stufa, 7^., 346.
teni, 279,
targa. It., tixi-ge, F.,
231.
tarja, <S/>., Port., 231.
472
INDEX.
faball, viball, ubull,
276.
ag allaid, 248.
aidche, oidche, 312.
aire, airech, 404.
airim, 125, 283.
ambactus, 0. Celt.,
404.
lander, 377.
-apa, Celt, 128.
arathar, 283.
ar, 250.
ard, 183.
Argento-, Argentoma-
giis, Argentoratum,
Argentovaria, 183.
argat, arget, Ir.,
ariant, Cymr.,
arhanz, Corn.,
archant,57W., 182.
Ariovistvis, 0. Celt,
404.
art, 248.
asbiur, 110.
assan, 265.
atcluic, 233.
fath, 353.
athir, 371.
Attrebates, 0. Celt.,
400.
aue, 373.
aurdam, 342.
awr, Cymr., 177.
bairgen, 293.
ban, 119.
bech, 293.
befer, Corn., 247.
beithe, Ir., bedwe,
Welsh, 271.
fbele, Cymr., 248.
ben, 385.
tbi, 274.
biail, 234.
bir, aaa. 'i-i %
8. CELTIC.
{Irish not distinguished.)
blath, 128.
bligim, 319.
bocc, 124, 248.
b6, 248, 260.
bole, 260.
fbrace, O.C, 322.
braccae, O.C, 322.
brathir, 372.
br6, 124.
bruinne, 232.
bruinni, 186.
caech, 128.
caise, 319.
carr, 144, 263, 339.
cat, 268.
fcath, 235.
cathbarr, 233.
Cathoiarn, 194.
tceachta, M.I., 288.
ceinach, Cymr., 248.
celicnon, O.C, 343.
cere, cercdae, 137,
257.
cerd, 158, 159.
eertle, 331.
fcetne, 372.
cilornn, 367.
claideb,claidbene, 229,
236.
tclethe, 342.
cliath, 342.
clo, 346.
e6i, 137, 251.
coibnes, 350.
coic, 109.
coll, 128, 274.
colom, 269.
congan, eongna, con-
ganchness, 231.
copar, Jr., cober,
Corn., 200.
core, coire, 128, 160,
367.
JKoV/xa, O.C, 322.
fcrandgiiis, 274.
creccaim, 348.
cred, 199.
credumae, 186.
crem, 284, 295.
crenim, 132, 348.
cretim, 415.
criathar, 128.
crocan, 260.
crocenn, croccenn,
260.
crii, 315.
cii, 247, 264.
cnirm, 321.
dair, daur, 138, 272.
dam, 130, 403.
derg, dergor, 186.
deriad, 263.
dess, 254, 255.
dia, 312.
dia, 415, 419.
dinu, 260.
fdiubarcu, 233.
dorus, 108, 342.
dub, 253.
-dunum, O.C, 140,
144.
eeh, 248, 261.
elain, Cymr., 248.
-em, 349.
emed, 0. Cymr.,
efydd, il/od Cymr.,
199.
e6, 274.
eorna, 282.
er, Corn., 252.
Eriu, ;Erenn, 404.
esea, 306.
escung, 118, 258.
etaim, 353.
ewithr. Mod. Cymr.,
eui-ter, 0. Corn.,
373, 379.
faith, 128.
INDEX.
473
fedb, 229, 390.
fedaim, fedan, 384.
fen, 339.
fer, 110.
fern, fernog, 231.
fertas, 332.
fescor, 313.
ffiad, fiadach, 251.
fich, 400.
fichim, 128.
figim, 330.
fin, 323.
find, finn, 18G, 231,
304.
ffindcn, 231.
ffindruine, findbru-
ithne, findbruiuni,
186.
fine, 350.
fill, 130.
fir, 128.
flaith, 404.
gabul, gablach, gab-
alca, 236.
gai, ga, 235.
gam, 301, 302.
garan, Cymr., 252.
gels, 252.
gen, 108.
giall, 209.
goba, /., gof, Bret.,
Com., Cymr.,
158.
Gobanus, /., Goban-
nitio, O.C, Gouan-
nQn, Cymr., 158.
gort, 291.
graig, 263.
griiiin. Gen., 123.
gnlan, Cymr., 336.
gwic. Corn., 400.
gwenn, Bret., 292.
gwiniz, Bret., 292.
hoiarn, haeai'n, Cymr.,
hoern, hern, horn.
Corn., haiarn,
hoiarn, Arem., 1 94,
209, 232.
Haiarn, Hoiarn, Hoi-
arnscoet, Hael-
hoiarn, Cymr.,
Arem., 194.
hebauc, Cymr., 257.
heu, Cymr., 283.
heul, Cymr., Corn,
414.
liiuin, Com., 274,
hoch. Corn., hwch,
Cymr. , houch,hoch,
Bret, 289.
hveger, Corn., 376.
hvigeren. Corn., 376.
iarunn, iarn, 209,
232.
iasc, 117, 128, 353.
ibar, 275.
imb, 125, 319.
innocht, 311.
ion, Cymr., 339.
Isarnodori, O.C'., 209.
ith, 317.
ithim, 317.
Kapvov ' Tr]v cra\7nyya,
128.
leine, 294.
lem, 128.
Icthar, 328.
liaig, 421.
lin, 293.
flitb, 305.
loch, 128, 353.
hiaide, 218.
hiach, 119.
lubgort, 291.
luirech, /., lluryg,
Cmyr., 231.
hige, 376.
hiss, 296.
maite, matan, 128.
fiavLdKr)<i, O.C., 337.
marc, 263.
mathir, 371.
fmein, niianach, 208.
melg, 124.
melin], 125, 283.
mertrech, 146.
mi, 306.
mid, 321.
mil, 321.
mile, 349.
mitall, 155.
modryb, Cymr., 374.
more, O.C., 353
muin, muince, 337.
mnir, 353.
miir, 145.
fnau, n6i, 353.
nel, 415.
nem, nemed, 415.
nia, 374.
nocht, 327.
ocet, 0. Com., 283.
foegi, 350.
eg, 123.
ohan. Corn., 260.
oi, 248, 260.
6m, 316.
or, /.,'oui-, eur, Cymr.,
177.
orbe, 125, 290.
ore, 261, 289.
peatar, 218.
peber. Corn., 315.
niith, rath, 183.
ram, 353.
rath, roth, 339.
trech,7.,rec, 0. Bret.,
128, 283, 289.
reccim, 352.
renim, 352.
ri, 144, 404.
-ritum, O.C, 353.
riiad, 119.
triiaim, 274.
riin, 280.
sai, 334.
saiget,saiged,/.,saeth,
Cymr., 233.
sail, saileach, 274.
sal, 353.
salann, 318.
sam, samrad, 301,
302.
tsciath, 231.
sebocc, 257.
seib, 295.
senmathir, 374.
fsesrech, sesrach,263.
ail, 283.
siur, 177, 209, 372.
474
INDEX.
fsmir, 320.
snathe, 331.
snechta, 301.
suim, snimaire, 129,
331.
socc, /., swell, Cymr.,
soch. Corn., souch,
soch, Bret., 288.
stall, stain, sdan, /.,
stean, Corn., stean,
sten, stin, Arem.,
217.
sterenn, Bret., 414.
taid, 402.
tarb, 260.
target, /., taryan,
Cymr., 231,
tarvos, O.C., 260.
teg, 342.
tindscra, 383.
treb, I., tref, Cymr.,
128, 140, 400.
tuirend, 292.
tuag, 333.
tuatli, 128, 140, 254,
403.
ftunna, tonn, tond,
/., tomien, Bret.,
260.
lian, 260.
umae, uim, 199, 213.
umaide, umhaidhe,
umamail, 199.
yell, Cymr., 260.
ystaeii, Cymr., 218.
yw, Cymr., 206.
aband, O.H.G., ap-
tami, O.N., fet'en,
A.S., 313.
adum, A.S., 376
ae, O.N., 373.
fafFo, O.H.G., 276.
ag, O.H.G., 118.
ahorii, O.H.G., 128,
206.
alls, ahaiia, 283.
ahsa, O.H.G., 339.
ahva, 128. ^
airzjan, 128.
aiz, 125, 132, 188,
199, 200.
akrs, 283.
albiz, O.H.G., 129.
ale, Engl, 322.
alhs, 277.
ahiir, almr, O.N., 128,
222, 229, 274.
alp, O.H.G., alf, A.S.,
alfr, alfa liodi, visi
alfa, 163.
ama, O.H.G., 371.
ambosz, M.H.G., ana-
poz, O.H.G., 159.
amsala, O.H.G., 128.
ana, O.H.G., 374.
anco, aiicho, anclie,
O.H.G., anke,
Alem., 125, 319. •
9. TEUTONIC.
(Gothic not distinguished.)
andbahts, 404.
ango, angul, O.H.G.,
235.
ano,O.H.G., 374,375.
anses Goth., oss,
O.N., 416.
aiiut, O.H.G.. 252.
fapi, O.N., 276.
fapple, Eng., 275.
apsa, O.H.G., 274.
aqizi, 234.
ar, A.S., 188, 190.
ara,Gotb. ,aro, 0. H. G. ,
138, 252.
arbi-numja, 125, 290.
arbjo, 386.
ardr, O.N., 283.
farfe, arbe, M.H.G.,
229.
farhvazna, 229, 233.
arjan, 125.
arl, O.N., 283.
arii6n, O.H.G., 303.
aruz, Aruzapah, Ariz-
perc, Arizgrefti,
Arizgruoba,O.H.G.,
188, 200, 213.
tarwiz, O.H.G., 295.
asans, 128, 303, 304,
311.
asilus, Goth., assa,
A.S., 265.
askr, O.N., 226, 235,
274, 278, 427.
asp das, M.H.G. dial.,
277.
asten, M.H.G., 304.
a)?, A.S., 376.
ajm, 128, 304.
atisk, 128, 293.
atta, 371.
faudr, O.N., 304.
auga-daiiro, 346.
aiihiis, 346.
auhsa, 126, 128, 260.
auso, 178.
auwi, 248, 260.
avi-, 332.
avo, 373.
azger, O.H.G., atgar,
A.S., atgeir, O.N.,
235.
fazgo, 135, 346.
baean, A.S., bahhap,
O.H.G., 126, 128,
317.
bait, bitum, 109.
balgs, 260.
fbansts, 347.
bard, bardisan,
M.H.G., 238.
bariz-, Goth., barr,
O.N., 128, 284,
293.
INDEX.
475
bart, M.H.G., 123.
barta, O.H.G., 234.
fbas, O.N., 347.
basa, O.H.G., 354.
baso, A.S., 119.
baugr,O.N.,l78, 348.
baiirgsvaddjus, 342.
baun, O.N., bean,
A.S., 295.
fbearu, A.S., borv,
barr, O.N., 277.
behhari, O.H.G., 323.
beo, beor, A.S., 322.
berusjos, 372.
besitz, M.H.G., 290.
bezzer hant diu, Med.
H.G., 255.
bibar, O.H.G., 248.
bida, O.X., 367.
bier, INI.H.G., bior,
O.H.G., bjoiT,
O.X, 322.
bihal, O.H.G., 234,
237.
bill, A.S., bil, O.S.,
237.
binden, M.H.G., 135.
bini, O.H.G., 321.
birch, Engl., birke,
M.H.G., 271.
biugan (bang), 349.
briii\van,O.H.G.,322.
blao, O.H.G., blau,
N.H.G., 119, 218.
bliu, O.H.G., blv',
O.N., 218.
blotan, 416.
bluoma, O.H.G., 128.
boc, O.H.G., 248.
boce, A.S., 272.
bolvasmidr, O.N.,
158.
bona, O.H.G., bohne,
N.H.G., 295.
bord, A.S., 231.
tborto, O.H.G., 335.
tbos, A.S., 347.
braes, A. S., brass, Eng.,
128, 189, 207,212.
breovan, A.S., 322.
bret, M.H.G., 231.
broj'ar, Gotli., bruder,
M.H.G., 139, 372.
brugga, O.N., 322.
briinjo, Goth.,brunja,
O.H.G..byrne,A.S.,
brynja, O.N., 225.
bruoli, U.H.G., br6kr,
O.N., 336.
briit, O.H.G., 384.
brii))-fa])s, 385.
brynglofar, brynstu-
kur, O.N., 232.
biicca, A.S., 124.
bugjan (baulita),
Goth.,bycgan,A.S.,
buggean, O.S.,
349, 382.
buech das, M.H.G.
dial., 277.
bulga, U.H.G., 260.
buohha, O.H.G.,
buche, M.H.G.,
139,272.
butera, O.H.G., 320.
bygg, O.N., 321.
dags, 312.
danimerung, M.H.G.,
313.
dauhtar, 372,
daiir, 108, 342.
dehsala, O.H.G., 234.
deigan, Goth., deig,
O.N., 344, 367.
fden, D., 222.
diehter, O.H.G., 375.
dihsala, O.H.G., 339.
diot, O.H.G., 333.
donar, O.H.G., 414.
dorf,O.H.G., 128,400.
dregg, O.N., 322.
drostel, Med. H.G.
253.
diibo, 253.
tdung, O.H.G., 341.
dveorg, A.S., dvergr,
O.N., 163.
ealu, A.S., 322.
earn, A.S., 373.
fearfe, A.S., 295.
fearh, A.S.,126, 128,
233.
earn, A.S., 139.
febresche, eibrisch,
eibisch, M.H.G.,
275.
ebur, O.H.G., 248.
egjan, O.H.G., 283.
ehu, A.S., 248, 262.
ei, O.H.G., 123.
eid, O.H.G., 376.
eidum, O.H.G., 376.
eikja, O.N., 278.
feili, O.H.G., 227,
272.
eir, O.N., 188, 200.
eisarn, 209, 212.
ecchil,ecchel, O.H.G.,
211.
elaho, O.H.G., 248.
elilento, O.H.G., 350.
elira, O.H.G., 274.
elmboum, O.H.G. ,
elm, A.S., 274.
eltiron, O.H.G., 372.
em, O. Frank, 373.
eninchil, eninchili,
O.H.G., 375.
en-gimus,lexSal., 301.
eoh, A.S., 274.
eosol, A.S., 265.
Eostra, A.S., 414.
er, er, eer, O.H.G.,
188, 194.
terbse, M.H.G., 295.
erin, erin, Med. H.G.,
188, 200.
erezi, O.H.G., erz,
M.H.G., 155, 188,
200.
erzin, erzen, O.H.G.,
200.
ersmid, O.H.G., 15S.
eschdas, M.H.G. dial.,
277.
essa, O.H.G., 346.
ewa, O.H.G. 244.
eyra, eyru, eyrna,
O.N., 278.
eyrir, O.N., 278.
4/6
INDEX.
fadar, Goth., fater,
H.G., 108, 143,
371.
fadrein, 371.
foedera, A.S., 373.
faihn, Goth., fihu,
O.H.G., vieh,
M.H.G., 153, 260.
falcho, O.H.G., falke,
O.N., 257.
fakir, O.N., 333.
fallen, M.H.G., 257.
falo, O.H.G., 119.
fana, 331.
ffara, faraman i, fara-
kisez, O.H.G., 399,
400.
farah, O.H.G., 260,
289.
faran, farjan, 352.
faro, O.H.G., 119.
farro, O.H.G., 260.
vart, O.H.G., 353.
fatureo, O.H.G., 373.
fajm, A.S., 374.
tfauho, 248.
ffeigi, O.H.G., feigi-,
O.N., 351.
fel, O.H.G., 328.
felawa, O.H.G., 272,
339.
felga, O.H.G., 339.
fendo, O.H.G., 353.
feoh, A.S., 153.
fercha, vereh-eih,
ferha, O.H.G., 128,
272.
fernevo, O.H.G., 375.
fethe, O.F., 374.
fe]7oen, A.S., 372.
-fill, 226, 260.
filz, O.H.G., 328.
Fioroyn, O.N., 412.
fjorJ^O-N., 305.
fiiij'an, 353.
fiuhta, O.H.G., 274.
fis, O.N., 282.
fisks, 117, 128, 354.
fiur, O.H.G., 414.
flahs, O.H.G., 294.
flado, O.H.G., 317. '
flan,A.S.,flemn,O.X.,
211.
fliessen, fiuss, M.H.G.,
440.
flihtu, O.H.G., 329.
vliz, flitsch, M.H.G.,
flits, D., 234.
folc, O.H.G., 403.
folo, O.H.G., 263.
forha, O.H.G., 272.
fortnight, ]
fotns, 134.
fraihnan, 256.
tfrauja,Goth., frouwa,
O.H.G., 386.
freien, ]\LH.G., 384.
vriuntschaft, IMed.
H.G., freundschaft,
N.H.G., 377.
fula, 263.
ffuotar, O.H.G., 317.
ffurh, furuh, O.H.G.,
128, 283, 289.
fyrs, A.S., 293.
gabel, M.H.G., 236.
gaits, 128.
galie, Med.H.G.,230.
gans, M.H.G., 252.
gapaidon, 328.
gards, Goth., garten,
M.H.G., 291.
gasts, 350.
tgaswio,O.H.G., 379.
gavasjan, 327.
gavi, Goth., gouwi,
O.H.G., 403.
gazds, 128, 229.
gebaren,M.H.G., 139.
geiza, O.H.G., 289.
geirfalki, O.N., 257.
gelo, 119, 128.
ger, ker, O.H.G.,gar,
A.S., geir, O.N.,
Gertrut, Gerhart,
235, 238.
gerben, M. G., 328.
gersta, O.H.G., 123,
128, 284, 292.
gesmide,O.H.G., 198.
gisal, O.H.G., 209.
gisarawi, O.H.G., 231.
gisustruon, O.D.,372.
giswistar,O.H.G.,372.
giutan, 142, 415.
glaf, Swed., 238.
grao, O.H.G., 119.
gTundu-vaddjus, 342.
gruobe, Med. H.G.,
341.
gul]), Goth.,gull,O.K,
gold, M.H.G., 119,
125,134,176, 178,
194.
gnp, Goth., sod, O.N.,
got, O.RG., 416.
Gypsies, Engl., 159.
haban, 128.
habaro, O.H.G., 293.
thabiih, O.H.G., 251,
257.
hsett, A.S., 230.
hafr, O.N., 124, 128,
248, 293.
hagre, Swed., 293.
haihs, 128.
haims, 400.
hairda, 260.
fhairto, 134.
hairus, Goth., heru,
0. Sax., heor, A.S.,
hjorr, O.N., 128,
237.
halla, O.H.G., 341,
346.
halsbiorg, O.N., heals-
beorg, A.S., hals-
perga,O.H.G.,232.
hamarr, O.N., hamur,
0. Sax. , hamor, A. S. ,
hamar,O.H.G.,160,
234.
hampr, 0.1^., 294.
hana, 251.
hanaf, O.H.G., hoe-
nep, A.S., 294.
hardneskja,O.N., 232.
harnasch, Med. H.G.,
232.
haruc, O.H.G., 277.
INDEX.
477
harugari, O.H.G.,
277.
hasala, hasel, O.H.G.,
128, 274.
haso, 248.
haukv, O.N., 257.
haiirds, 331, 34G.
haurn, 128.
haust, O.X., 304.
heliara, 137, 251.
Heimrich, O.H.G.,
398.
helau, O.H.G., 341.
hellebard, M.H.G..
238.
helza, O.H.G., belt,
A.S., 229.
fher, herero, O.H.G.,
396.
herbest, O.H.G., bter-
fest, A.S., 304.
hilms, Gotb., belm,
O.H.G., A.S., 0.
Sax., bjalmr, O.N.,
233.
binkeb'jin, M.H.G.,
165.
bired, A.S., hirat,
O.H.G., 396.
fbirsi, birso, O.H.G.,
293.
bb-uz, O.H.G., 248.
bjii, bjun, U.N., biun,
O.H.G., 396.
beiva-frauja, 350,
396.
bivan, A.S., 396.
hiwiski, O.H.G., 396.
bivnfeden, A.S., 396.
blaifs, 143, 317.
fbUxuts, Goth., hluz,
O.H.G., blutr,
O.N., 279.
bleidaina, 255.
fbleipra, Gotb., bbf,
O.N., 342.
fblidau, 0. Sax.,
342.
blif, O.N., 238.
libfau, 402.
bbja, Gotb.,ble,O.N.,
bleo, 0. Sax., 342,
343.
blyur, O.N., 275.
boba, 288, 289.
bouwan, H.G., 158.
borr (bor), O.N.,
294.
braivadubo, 253.
breiiiu, O.X., 327.
breo, O.H.G., 315.
brifcUng, A.S., 337.
brot, 346.
bruk, 137.
bulja, bulla, O.H.G.,
230.
liumaiT, O.N., 258.
bunds, Gotb., bund,
M.H.G., 134, 247,
264.
buusl, Gotb., busel,
A.S., biisl, O.N.,
415.
buoba, O.H.G., bufe,
M.H.G., 128, 291.
huobib, O.H.G., 289.
buon, O.H.G., 251.
buora, O.H.G., bure,
M.H.G., bora,
Swed., 146.
buosto, O.H.G., 421.
buot, O.H.G., 230.
burd, O.N., 346.
bus, O.H.G., 343.
biitte (butta),
O.H.G., 343.
bvaiteis, 292.
bveits, 292.
bvitte scilti, O.H.G.,
231.
hvel, O.N., bveol,
A.S., 339.
bverr, O.N., 128,
160, 367.
hyse, A.S., 372.
byske, AS., 396.
jagon, O.H.G., 250.
jarn, O.K., 163, 209.
J'arnglumra, Jaru-
saxa, O.X., 163.
jer, 138, 301.
igil, O.H.G., 247.
iha, O.H.G., 274.
imbi, O.H.G., 321.
ireii, A.S., iron, Engl.,
209, 237.
is, O.H.G., 301.
isarn, O.H.G., A.S.,
O.N., isen, O.H.G.,
209.
Isanbus, Isanpacli,
Isarubo, O.H.G.,
210.
iuk, 339.
iwa, O.H.G., 274.
cbalcb, O.H.G., 343.
calcatura, O.H.G.,
323.
kalds, 128.
cbaltsmid, O.H.G.,
158, 159.
kamin, M.H.G., 159.
cbarro, O.H.G., 144,
339.
kas, kasja, 367.
cbasi, O.H.G., Sax.,
cyse, A.S., cbeese,
Eng., 126, 319.
kaupon, Gotb.,kaupa,
O.N.,ceapian, A.S.,
144, 348.
kaiirn, 284.
cbazza, cbataro,
O.H.G., 268.
chelib, O.H.G., 323.
kelikn, 343.
kernen, M.H.G.,
kirna, O.N., Cyrnau,
AS., churn, Engl.,
320.
kesja, O.N., 238.
fkien, O.H.G., cen,
A.S., kiefer,
M.H.G., 274.
kinnus, 108.
kitze, M.H.G., 268.
kn6|'s, Gotb., chnuot,
clniuusli, O.H.G.,
400.
fcofa, A.S., koH,
478
INDEX,
O.N., kobe, Med.
H.G., 341.
kokkr, O.N., 5y2en,
A.S., 269.
kona mundi keyj^t,
O.N., 382.
konungr, O.N., 404.
fchoufan, O.H.G.,
349.
cran, A.S., 123, 252.
kriikka, O.N., crocca,
A.S., 260.
fchubisi, O.H.G.,
341.
culufre, A.S., 269.
chumin, O.H.G., 298.
chunni, O.H.G., 399,
400.
chvming, O.H.G.,
404.
chiio, O.H.G., 248,
260.
cliuphar, O.H.G.,
koparr, O.N., kob-
ber, Dan., koppar,
Swed., copper,
Engl., kupfer,
kopfer, Med. H.G.,
200.
kiipferin, Med. H.G.,
188.
tchursina, O.H.G.,
kiirschner, O.H.G.,
226. •
kiirass, M.H.G., 232.
lagella, O.H.G., 323.
lagu, 0. Sax., lago,
A.S., 128, 353.
lacheneere, lachenen,
Med. H.G., 421.
lachs, O.H.G., 118.
langiz, O.H.G.,
lencten, A.S., 304.
laufs, 342.
le, O.N., 283.
lead, A.S., 218.
ledar, O.H.G., 328.
ligan, Goth., legen,
M.H.G., 128, 344.
lehne, lenne, lohne,
M.H.G. dial.,
274.
lein, 293.
leis, Med. H.G., 283.
fleijni, Goth., lid.,
A.S., lid, O.H.G.,
322.
lekeis, 421.
tlencha, O.H.G., 255.
lenzo, O.H.G., 304.
leodslaho, O.H.G.,
166.
lesan, O.H.G., 279.
lewo, louwo, O.H.G.,
249.
flink, M.H.G., 255.
linnr, O.N., 294.
flinta, O.H.G., lind.,
A.S., 231, 236,
274, 294.
liusi, O.H.G., 295.
Ij6dasmidr, O.N.,
158, 166.
liri, O.N., 252.
liugan, 376.
log, O.N., 128.
lood, D., lot, Med.
H.G., 218.
L6})urr, O.N., 412.
louba, O.H.G., 342.
louft, O.H.G., 329.
louh, O.H.G., 296.
lubjaleisei, Goth., lyf,
O.N., 421.
luhs, O.H.G., 248.
lun, O.H.G., lunisa,
0. Sax., lynes,
A.S., 339.
lunze, Med. H.G.,
250.
luoder, Med. H.G.,
257.
liirwein, O.H.G., 323.
mad, O.H.G., 283.
mag, O.H.G., mseg,
msegd, A.S., megs
Goth., magT., O.N.,
400, 401.
niago, O.H.G., 284.
majan, O.H.G., 283.
malan, 125, 283.
malz, O.H.G., malt,
O.N., mealt, A.S.,
322.
mana, O.H.G., 337.
Mannus, 412.
fmanga, mangari,
O.N., mangere,
A.S., mangari,
O.H.G., 349.
mama, M.H.G., 139.
marei, 353.
marg, O.H.G., 315.
mast, O.H.G., mastr,
O.N., 128, 353.
maurgins, 313.
meard, A.S., 268.
fmeisa, O.H.G., 128,
252.
meki. Goth., maekir,
O.N., mece, A.S.,
237, 238.
meljan, 280.
mena, 306, 414.
menni, O.H.G., 337.
men6j)S, 306.
meriha, O.H.G., 263.
messe, M.H.G.,
mosch, Swiss, mes-
sing, M.H.G., O.N.,
masthng, A.S., 201.
meta, Longob., 382.
metu, O.H.G., 321. ^
milchu, O.H.G., 319.
milif, 321.
miltestre, 0. Engl.,
146.
miluks, 124.
fmimz, 315.
mitan, 349.
missere, A.S., misseri,
O.N., 305.
m6drie,A.S., modder,
D., 374.
moeme, D., m6na,
O.N., 371.
mortere, O.H.G.,
343.
most, O.H.G., 323.
mundr, O.N., 382.
INDEX.
479
niunt, muntboi'o,
O.H.G., 128, 393.
miioma, muoia,
O.H.G., 303, 372,
374.
maotar, O.H.G., 108,
372.
mura, mnri, O.H.G.,
145, 343.
miis, O.H.G., 248.
naan, 0. H.G., 331.
laaba, O.H.G., nafu,
A.S., 339.
nahts, 311.
naqa])S, 327.
nass, M.H.G., 254.
nati, 353.
fnaue, 'Med. H.G.,
naust, O.N., 353.
nebil, O.H.G., nifl-
heim, O.N., 414.
nefo, O.H.G., neve,
Med. H.G., iiefa,
A.S., nefe, O.N.,
374.
ne])la, 331.
nima, 349,
nipt, O.N., nift,
O.H.G.,niftel,Med.
H.G., 374.
nijjjis, m])]6, Goth.,
nidr.O.N., 374,386.
nord, O.H.G., 128,
254.
foat, Engl., 317.
ofan, ovan, O.H.G.,
160, 346.
oheim, O.H.G., 373.
ol, O.N., 322.
olbenta, O.H.G., ol-
fend, A.S., 266.
or, orvar, O.N., 233.
ore, Engl., 188, 190.
6rchalc, O.H.G., 198.
ostara, dstarun,
O.H.G., 303.
ostr, O.N., 319.
ostre, A.S., 258.
ottir, O.H.G., 247.
ouwi, O.H.G., 332.
ouwa, O.H.G., 440.
paida, Goth., pheit,
O.H.G., peda, 0.
Sax., 328.
panzier, Med. H.G.,
panzer, M.H.G.,
232.
papa,"M.H.G., 139.
paravvari, O.H.G.,
277.
peanter, D., pewter
Engl., 218.
phawo, O.H.G., 270.
pferd, M.H.G., 143.
philari, O.H.G., 343.
phluog, O.H.G.,
pl6gT, O.N., 289.
pfirsich,M.H.G., 276.
pforzih, O.H.G., 343.
pfost, O.H.G., 343.
pfunt, O.H.G., 143.
pigsnose, Engl., 289.
piia, O.N., phil,
O.H.G., pfeil,
M.H.G., 233.
portkona, O.N., 146.
pott, potte, D., 160.
pozan, O.H.G., 159.
presson, O.H.G., 323.
-qairnus, 125.
quappa, O.D., 441.
qino, 385.
rad, O.H.G., 317.
frafo, ravo, O.H.G.,
rafr, raf, O.N., 344.
raginon, 404.
rams, M.H.G. dial.,
284, 295.
raudi, O.X., 191,
209, 210, 212.
rauds, 119.
raus, 441.
read, Enirl., rajdan,
A.S., 279.
rcchts, M.H.G., 255.
rihhi, O.H.G., 265.
reiks, 144, 404.
reecho, O.H.G.,
rekkr, O.N., 403.
rcpa, O.H.G., 229.
rlda, O.N., ridan,
A.S., riden, Med.
H.G., reiten,
M.H.G., 262.
rita, O.X., rizan,
O.H.G., 140.
ritara, O.H.G., 128.
ro, O.H.G., 315.
rocka, Swed., 118.
froccho, rocch,
O.H.G., rokkr,
O.N., 331.
row, A.S., rnowa,
O.H.G., 311.
riigr, O.N., ryge,
A.S., rocko,
O.H.G., 293.
runa, O.H.G., riin,
O.N., A.S., 280.
ruoba, O.H.G., 296.
ruodar, O.H.G., 353.
ruoz, O.H.G., 346.
truster, M.H.G., 274.
sage, ]\r.H.G., 288.
sagqs, 313.
sahs, O.H.G., O.S.,
seax, A.S., sax,
O.N., 237.
saian, saiso, 283, 291,
293.
salaha, O.H.G., 128,
274.
salo, O.H.G., 119.
salt, 318.
samo, O.H.G., 283.
sape, A.S., 320.
sarva, Goth., searo,
A.S., 232.
sealf, A.S., 319.
fsegl, O.K, segal,
O.H.G.,segel,A.S.,
334.
seh, O.H.G., 288.
sei, Med. H.G., 334.
seifa, O.H.G., 320.
fseim, O.H.G., 321.
sibja, Goth., Sjf,
O.N., 350, 399,
400.
sichel, M.H.G., 288.
48o
INDEX.
silan, 128.
Slid, O.N., 118.
silubr, 144, 183.
sitich, O.H.G., 270.
siuja, 141, 363.
scaba, O.H.G., skafa,
O.N., 227.
skafinn, O.N., 235.
fskalja, 343.
skalm, O.K, 237.
scaro, O.H.G., 288.
skauda-raip, 329.
sceran, O.H.G., 288.
skildus, Goth., scilt,
O.H.G., 231.
skilja, 237.
fscit, O.H.G., scid,
O.K, 231.
scintala, O.H.G.,343.
schramme, M.H.G.,
237.
scriban, O.H.G., 280.
sch\varz,N.H.G., 119.
schwimmen, M.H.G.,
254.
sennight, Engl., 311.
slach, O.H.G., slakr,
O.K, 255.
slahta, O.H.G., 399.
sleha, O.H.G., 276.
fsleo, O.H.G., sleu,
0. Sax., 255.
fslinc. Lower Rhen.,
255.
smiilta, Swed., 209.
fsmairj^r, Goth.,
smero, O.H.G.,
smjor, 320.
smelzan,O.H.G.,128.
smida, O.H.G., 156,
158,178, 198,209.
smidar, O.H.G., 158.
Smidr, O.N., 158.
-smi}>a, Goth., smidr,
O.N., smip, smid,
A.S., smid, O.H.G.,
158.
smittemeister, Med.
H.G., 166.
snaivs, 301.
snorjo, Goth., snuor,
O.H.G., 331.
snura, O.H.G., 375.
fsokjan, 383.
s61, CK, 414.
sparo, O.H.G., 252.
spar\vari,O.H.G., 257.
spato, O.H.G., spaten,
M.H.G., 229.
spatjahr, M.H.G.,
304.
specht, O.H.G., 128,
252.
speihha, O.H.G., 339.
fspelt, D., spelz,
M.H.G., 291, 293.
spelter^Engl. ,spialter,
D., spiauter, H.G.,
218.
fsper, O.H.G., spjor,
O.K, 235.
fsperbaum, Med.
H.G., 235.
fspinnan, 331.
fspriu, O.H.G., spreu,
M.H.G., 293.
stahal, O.H.G., stahel,
stachel, stal, Med.
H.G., stal, O.N.,
steel, Engl., 156,
210.
stachulla, stachila,
O.H.G., 210.
staimbort, O.H.G.,
234.
stamm, 0. Sax., 278.
stara, O.H.G., 128,
252.
Starke, M.H.G., 266.
stero, O.H.G., 266.
sterro, O.H.G., 414.
stiur, 260.
stuba, O.H.G., 346.
stuot, O.H.G., 263.
strila, O.H.G., 234.
su, O.H.G., 248, 261.
sulh, A.S., 128, 289.
sumar, O.H.G., 301,
302.
fsnnd, O.N., A.S.,
254.
fsnndan, O.H.G.,
sunnan, O.N.,
Sudan, A.S., 254.
fsunta, O.H.G., 128.
sunus, 371.
svaihra, svaihro, 376,
386.
sweizjan, O.H.G.,
206.
svidre, suithora, A.S.,
0. Sax, 255.
svilar, O.N., 377.
svistar, 372.
tagr, 312.
taihsvo, 255.
tains, Goth., tan,
A.S., 218, 279.
tacor, A.S., 377.
tackjern, Swed., 209.
ttanna, O.H.G., 222,
274.
taim der, M.H.G.,
277
targa, torguskjoldr,
O.N., targe, A.S.,
231.
teinn, O.N., 218, 279.
fah, O.N., 342.
jjahan, 128.
jjagkjan, 128.
fj5rr, O.N., 260.
fisl, O.N., ])ixl, AS.,
339.
fiuda, 128, 140, 403.
faiirp, Goth., forp,
AS., thorp, O.S.,
140, 400.
fusundi, 125, 177,
349.
tjara, tyrr, O.N., teer,
D., 272.
timrjan, 272, 342.
tin, O.N., A.S., 218.
tirnpaum, O.H.G.,
276.
tivar, O.N., 415, 419.
torcul, O.H.G., 323.
toto, O.H.G., 371.
INDEX.
^8[
town, Enfjl., 140.
treno, O.H.G., 321.
triu, 138, 272.
trog, O.H.G., 272.
tun, O.N., A.a, 140,
144.
ttunc, O.H.C., 340.
tunga, O.H.G., 340.
ftunnca, O.H.G., 2G0.
Tuonouwa, 429.
turri, O.H.G., 343.
twerc, O.H.G., 163.
tuhtv6, 312.
ulbandus, 265.
ulfr, O.N., 110.
unc, O.H.G., 258.
unsibjis, 350, 398.
urtailsmit, O.H.G.,
158.
ussiggvan, 279.
uster, M.H.G., 258.
uwila, O.H.G., 251.
fvad, O.N., wat,
O.H.G., 329.
vaddjus, 279.
wagan, O.H.G., 339.
waginso, O.H.G.,
wagense, Med.
H.G., 288.
wahs, O.H.G., 321.
waid, M.H.G., 120.
Waland, O.H.G., 163,
164.
Waldram, Waldbert,
O.H.G., 399.
Walh, O.H.G., Vealh,
A.S., Valir, O.N.,
429.
Walo, O.H.G., 164.
valda, 404.
var, O.N., 301.
war, O.H.G., 128.
vat6, 440.
uuandolunga, wanta-
l6n, \vantal6d,
O.H.G., 352.
vandus, 342.
want, O.H.G., 342.
weban, O.H.G., vefan,
A.S., vefa, O.N.,
141, 330, 333.
A'eftr, veptr, O.N.,
veft, A.S., wift,
Med. H.G., vefl,
A.S.,wefel,O.H.G.,
329, 477.
vefstadr, O.N., 330.
veggr, O.N., 342.
vel, O.N., 164.
Veland, Wielant,164.
tweida, O.H.G.,
veidr, O.N., vad,
A.S., 251.
veiha, 128.
veihs, 140, 400.
vein, 323.
vere, were, weragelt,
A.S., O.H.G., 402.
wida, O.H.G., 272.
widamo, widumo,
O.H.G., wittimo.
Burg., witma.
Fries., veotuma,
A.S., 382, 383.
viduvd, 391.
vigsmi(t, A.S., 158.
wih, O.H.G., 277.
wihsila, O.H.G., 276.
wint, O.H.G., 412,
414.
vind-auga, O.N., 346.
windemdn, O.H.G.,
323.
wini, O.H.G., 350.
winistar,O.H.G.,256.
vintrus, Goth., win-
tar, O.H.G., 302,
303, 306.
wirtil,Med.H.G.,332.
fwisil, wisul, O.H.G.,
248.
Vixl, Weichse],
M.H.G., 429.
v6tr, A.S., 128.
Volundr, O.N., 163,
164.
voma, O.N., 421.
vrecca, A.S., wrekkio,
O.H.G., 350, 402.
Wretch, Engl., 350.
vritan, A.S., write,
Engl., 140, 280.
vulfs, 110, 248.
Wiilfinge, Med.H.G.,
Vyltingas, A.S.,
Ylfingar, O.N.,
399.
wulpa, O.H.G.,wiilpe,
Med.H.G., ylgr,
O.N., 441.
vulla, 332.
vimdersmid,A.S.,158.
y'r, O.N., 202, 229,
233, 274.
zarga, O.H.G., 231.
zeihhur, O.H.G., 377.
zein, O.H.G., 218,
279.
ziegal, O.H.G., 34.3.
fziel, zeit, zeile,-
M.H.G., 313.
zimbar, O.H.G., 272.
zin, O.H.G., 218.
zink, M.H.G., 220.
zinco, O.H.G., 220.
Zio, Tiu.O.H.G., Ty'r,
O.N., 142, 144,
417, 418.
fzirbe, zirbel, zirme,
zirn, Med.H.G.,
M.H.G., 272.
zitaroh, O.H.G. , 421.
2 II
482
INDEX.
X. BALTIC.
{Lithuanian not distinguished.)
abse, Pruss., 274.
ake'ti, ake'cz'ios, 283.
alus, Litli., alu, Pr.
322.
alwas, Lith., alwis,
Pr., 215, 218.
angis, 1 1 8, 258.
anksti, 312.
anukas, 375.
apusze (apuszis), 274.
drklas, 283.
arti, 125, 283.
asilas, 265.
assanis, Pr. 303.
aszis, 339.
aszwk, 248, 261.
audimas, 330.
aukle, 231, 337.
auksas, Lith., ausis,
Pr., 177, 178.
austi, 330.
autas, 336.
auti, 231.
auszra, 178, 312,
414.
autre, Pr., 157.
awis, 248, 260, 293,
332.
awiz'os, 293.
avvy'nas, Lith., awis,
Pr., 373, 379.
aysmis, Pr., 227,
baba, Pr., 295.
balafldis, 269.
barzd^, 123.
bebrus, 248.
berz'as, 271.
bitis, 321.
brotere'l s, 372.
buras, burvas, Lett.,
336.
dadan, Pr., 124, 319.
dagas, 277.
dederwine', 421.
dedis, dedz'ius, dede,
374.
deilkti, 341.
fderwa, 272.
deszin^, 255.
dew ens, 377.
diena, 3 1 2.
di6vvas, 415, 419.
dragios, Pr., 322.
drapana, 333.
dukte', 372.
duna, 126, 283.
durys, 342.
dzelse, Lett., 210.
6gle, eglius, 274.
etksnis, 274.
elnis, 248.
erelis (erelis), eris,
139, 252.
ez'ys (ez'y's), 248.
gabawo, Pr., 441.
gelezis, Lith., gelso,
Pr., 130, 164, 195,
210, 212.
gettas, 119.
genno, Pr., 386.
gerwe (gerve), gersze,
123, 252.
gile, 135.
gimdy'tojei, 372.
gimtis, 404.
gire, 435, 439.
girnos, 125.
imu, 349.
inte, 377.
invis, Pr., 274.
irti, irklas, 363.
tjaunas me'nu, 307.
jawai, 282.
jentere, Lett., 377.
jeszmas, 227.
jiingas, 339.
ju'sta, 339.
jiisze, 315.
kalwis, Lith., kalleys,
Lett, 158.
kalti, 158, 159.
kardas, 210, 224.
kate', Icatinas (kati,
katinas), 268.
keksze, 146.
kepii, 315.
kermuszis, kermusze,
284, 296.
fkiele, 252.
kiemas, Lith., caymis,
Pr., 400.
kirsna, Pr. 119.
kifwis, 238.
klepas, 317.
k6ris, 321.
korto, Pr. 331.
k6siu, 421.
kratai, 331.
kreeiis, kreena
nauda, 349, 381.
kiigis, 234.
kukii'ti, 137, 251.
kurpe, 337.
kurwa, 146.
kwiecz'iei, 292.
laigonas, 378.
lankas, liiikis,
233.
lape, 248.
lasziszk, 118.
lauks, 119.
l^nkti, 332.
lenktuwe, 332.
lepa, 329.
flemu, 288.
lefisze, 295.
lent^, 274.
linas, 294.
linta, 294.
ly'se, 283.
lytus, 304, 306.
liutas, 249, 250.
INDEX.
483
flopas, 333.
liikai, 296.
liiszis, 248.
malu6s, 284, 293.
malu, malti, 125,
283, 293.
mares, 353.
marti, 375, 384.
mediis, midus, 321.
melua, Lett, 119.
fmensa, Pr., mies^,
Lith., 315.
menu, me'nesis, 306,
414.
metas, 305.
miez'iei, 293.
mieri, 349.
fmilas, 333.
minti, Lett., 328.
misingi, 198.
m oasis, Pr., 293.
moazo, Pr., m6sza,
Lit, 377.
momk, 371.
mote', m6tyna, 371.
muras, 145.
nabis, Pr., 339.
nagis, Pr. 237.
naktis, 311.
nendre' (nendre), 441.
nu'gas, 327.
6balas, 276.
o2ys, 134, 248, 260.
pauii - stacliin, Pr.,
210.
pardu'ti, 349.
parszas, 261, 289.
p^ts, pati. 140, 386.
peku, Pr , 266.
Perkunas, Litli., Per-
cunis, I'r., 279, 412.
piemti, 137.
pi^tus, 313.
tpinti, pinu, 331.
pii'kti, 352.
pirszly's, 384.
plaskanei (1 pleiz-
gane), 294.
pUukas, 294.
plduti, 428.
plenas, Lith., playnis,
Pr., 211.
pliiigas, 289.
powasaris, 301.
prakurejis, 375.
prest, Lett, 331.
priekalas, Lith., prei-
j calis, Pr., 159,
j pil'das, 160.
pup4, 296.
purai, 291, 305.
I puszis, 274.
ratas, 339.
raudil'uas, rudas,
119, 303.
rezgu, 329.
ruda, 156, 209.
rudininkas, 158.
rudu, 303.
rugys (rugys), 293.
sasiiis, Pr., 248.
saule, 414.
saiisis, 421.
seiuu, se'ti, semen,
Pr., 283, 292, 293.
sesu, 372.
sidabras, Lith., sira-
blan, Pr., 183.
sitke, 118.
siuwu, 363.
skaistwaris, 198.
skroblus. 273.
skydas, 226, 231.
slywa, 276.
tsora, soros, 293.
sni6gas, 301.
sprandas, 331.
; fsrove (sriowe), 438.
stakle, stakles, 129,
I 330.
I stay tan, Pr., 231.
I stodas, 263.
st6gas, 342.
strazdas, 252.
strujus, 374.
j stuba, 346.
I sunus, 372.
I siiris, 319.
swaine, swainius, 379.
' sweczias, 402.
swidus, 206.
swins, Lett, 218.
szalmas, 233.
szaka, 288.
szarwa, 232.
szeszkas, 248.
szeszuras, 376.
sziaurys, 353.
fszirdi, 134.
szu, 247, 264.
szweiidrai, 441.
szwefitas, 416.
szwieczias, 292.
szwinas, Lith., swins,
Lett, 218.
szwitwaris, 198.
Taut^, 128, 403.
t empty w a, 233.
terauds, Lett., 211.
teszlyczia, 234.
tetis, 371.
te'was, 371.
tistics, Pr., 379.
titnagas, 237.
tukstantis, Lith.,
tusimtons, Pr.,
125, 177, 349.
udra, 247.
ngnis, 414.
ungurys, 1J8, 258.
ii'sis, 274.
tu'szwis, 376.
wakaras, 313.
fwarias, Lith., war-
gian, Pr., 198, 199.
fwarpste, 331.
waszkas, 321.
wasiira, 301.
wedega, Lith., wedga,
Lett., wedigo, Pr.,
234.
wedu, 383.
wemti, 421.
fwerpu, 130, 331.
wertii, wercziu's, 349.
wefszis, 260.
wetuszas, 305.
wezimas, 339.
wieszpats, 400.
witkas. 248.
484
INDEX.
wilna, 332.
woasis, Pr., 274.
tw6ras, 329.
wutris, Pr., 1-58.
zardis, 291.
i^sis, 252.
ielti, 119.
zentas, 376.
iiem^, 301.
iuwis, Lith., zukans,
Pruss., 117, 353.
zelts, Lett., 178.
cinas, 218.
II. SLAVONIC.
{Old Slavonic = Old Bulgarian not distinguished.)
aspi'a, Serv., Bulg.,
18L
baba, 374.
bakar, Serv., bakur,
Bulg., 194.
bajati, baj%, balija,
balistvo, O.8., baja
Bulg., bachari,
Buss., 420.
fberdo. Less. Buss-,
brdo, M.S., brudo,
Bulg., 335.
bobu, 284, 295.
bogu, 415.
borii, 277.
braga, Russ., 322.
braki, Buss., 336.
brada, 123.
brady, 234.
bratrii, 372.
bratstvo, bratst-
venici, S.S., 397,
398.
brozenu, 199.
bronza, Serv., Buss.,
brunc, M.S., 199.
brunja, O.S., bronja,
Buss., 232.
buky, 272.
butatu. Buss., Less.
Buss., 203, 210.
buru, 284, 293.
vedcj;, 383.
velib^dii, 266.
vepri, 248.
vesna, 301.
vetuchu, 305
ve5eru, 313.
vino, 323.
Visla, 429.
visnja, Buss., 276.
vlad^, 404.
vlasii, 293.
vlaka, 248.
vliina, 332.
voda, 440.
vozii, 339.
vojevoda, 403.
vosku, 321.
vra6i, 420.
fvruba, 279.
vreteno, 332.
vunuku, 375.
vurri, 158.
vj'dra, 247.
vidova, 390.
visi, 140, 400.
veuo, veniti, 349.
galija, 230.
gvozdije, 194.
gov§do, 248, 260.
tgody, Pol., god,
Serv., godina,
Bulg., hod, Cech.,
305.
goljibi, 269.
gora, 435, 439.
gospodi, 385.
gosti, 350.
grachii, O.S., grab,
M.S., 295.
griva, grivina, 336.
g^sl, 252.
dvoi'u, dviri, 342.
demiskinja, Serv., de-
meszek, Pol, 211.
derenii, Buss., 276.
desinu, 255.
doniu, 149, 342.
doma6in, domacica,
S S., 394, 395.
drozdijg, 322.
driivo, drevo, 272.
Dunavu, 429.
dini, 312.
diisti, 371.
dedu, 374.
dfveri, deverii, 377.
diibu, 272.
2aba, 441.
2el?zo, 130, 164, 195,
210.
2el{|di, 123, 272,317.
2ely, 441.
2ena, 386.
2eravi, 123, 252.
2ito, ziti, 317.
Iliigi, 120.
2runy, 125.
zupiste, 342.
2upa, 403.
zadruga, S.S., 394.
zeleaii, 125, 176,
304.
zima, 134, 301, 302.
zlaku, 431.
zlato, 125, 134, 176,
178, 194.
zliiva, 377.
zmrok, L.R., 313.
zriino, 284.
zgti, 376.
iva, 274.
igo, 339.
izvisti, 344.
ima, 349.
istuba, 346.
INDEX.
48;
kalay, B., 219.
kamina, 160.
kamy, kameni, 1 60,
234.
kaslll, 421.
t*ken, 6hv<x, &c.,
372.
klaku, 343.
klenu, 274.
tkletl, 342.
kjuminu, O.R., 298.
kovati, 15S, 159.
kovafii, 158.
kokotu, 1 37.
kolo, 339.
konoplja, 294.
kopije, 236.
kopor, O.Serv., kupor,
M.Serv., 199.
korada, U.S., korda,
Serv., R, Croat.,
M.S., kord. P.,
kortiku. P., 210,
224, 238.
kotii, 268.
kositeru, O.S., kosi-
ter, MS, kositar,
Croat, 156, 216.
kropiva, 293, 315.
krosno, 330.
kruvl, 315.
kukavica, 137, 251.
kuznl, kuznici, 158.
kurii, kura, 269.
kuruva, O.S., kurva,
W.K., 146.
kurgum, Bulg., 219.
kujji, 158.
kiingjzu, kungzi, 404.
kvj, 234.
fL-ista, 340.
lebedl, 129.
leme.si, 289.
flipa, 274, 329.
loniiti, 289.
lososi, Russ., 118,
losi, 247.
Inku, Euss., 296.
flutie, R., tut, L.R.,
tut, W.R., 236.
livu, Ivica, 249, 250.
liiui, 294.
leku, 421.
\i'vn, 255.
lecha, 283.
fleto, 302, 304, 305,
306.
Iciku, 233.
tl^gta, 236.
Igsta, 295.
lyko, Russ., Pol., 329.
fmazi, mazati, 319.
maku, 284.
mati, 371.
fniaslo, 319.
medii, 321.
meljq,, 125. 283.
mesnik, M. Serv., mo-
siadz, Pol., mosaz,
O.^ Serv., 200.
mir, M.S., mur, L.R.,
P., 145.
mlatu, 234.
mlato, 322.
mluzq,, 319.
mozgii, 315.
nionisto, 336.
morje, 353.
mrukn%ti, 313.
fmizgu, miskii, mistg.
265.
mi^i, 236.
medi, O.S., raied^, P.,
mjedz, 0. Serv.,
156, 157, 158, 178,
193, 198, 209.
medari, 158.
fmezga, 265.
mena, 349.
m^ra, 349.
mesgcT, 306.
mgso, 315.
mysl, 248.
navoj, 330.
ludiovalo, 159.
nagu, 327.
nebo, 414.
nevfsta, 384.
netiji, 374.
nestera, 374.
tniti, nista, 331.
no2i, 227, 237.
noStI, 312.
nurija, 427.
nizj|,, nisti, 227.
ovisu, 293.
ovica, 248, 260, 293,
332.
ognl, 414.
ognistije, S.S., 394.
okno, 346.
olovo, 215, 218.
olu, 322.
opona, 331.
oralo, 283.
orati, 125, 283.
orilu, 13S, 252.
oseni, R., 303.
osika Cech., 274.
osi, 339.
osilu. 265.
ostrovu, 438.
otici, 371.
oceli, ocel, S.O.W.S.,
156, 211.
pek%, 141, 315.
penika, R., pienka,
P., 294.
Perunu, 279, 412.
pitati, O.S., 317.
plavu, 119.
platmo, 333.
pleta, 329.
plinuta, 344.
ptoskoii, P., 294.
plugu, R., plug. P.,
pluh, L.R., 289.
pluti, plovfi, 428.
plilku, 403.
plusti, 328.
pk'mg (pleme), 397,
398, 403.
pojasii, 336.
poluschka, R., 178.
poskoni, 294.
prazu, 296.
prasg, 261, 289.
prikija, 382.
prik'pu, 320.
prijatell, O.S., prija-
486
INDEX.
teljstina, S.S., 377,
397.
prodati, 349.
proso, 293.
prosci, S.S., 384.
prgsti, prgdeno, pi"g-
slica, 331.
piklu, 274.
piseno, 282,
p%tl, 353.
pyro, 284, 291.
ruda, 155, 156, 191,
209.
rudnik, P., 155.
riidru, 119.
ru2i, 293.
repa, 295.
fsagati, 384.
svekru, svekry, O.S.,
svekrbiiia, S.S.,
376, 377.
svgtu, 415.
svila, 330.
svinecii, R, svinec,
M.S., 219.
svinija, 219,248,261.
svoiti, svatu, 378.
selidi, R, 118.
sestra, 372.
siiuma, 0. Serv.,
si-ma, M. Serv.,
183.
sliva, 276.
sniicha, 375.
snegu, 301.
solC 318.
tsocha, 288.
sogivo, 295.
sriipu, 283, 317,
stado, 263.
stall, R, 210.
strela, 233,
stryj, strina, stryjci,
373, 374.
su, sun^ti, 236.
sulica, O.S., sudlice,
Cech, 236.
siivito, 330,
sirebro, 144,183,194.
severu, 354.
sekyra, sekyra, 224.
sejcj,, semg, 283.
sq;ku, 288.
syiiu, 371.
syru, 319.
tazbina, S.S., 377.
tati, 402.
ftvarogu, 319.
tesla, 234.
teta, tetka, 374.
tetrevu, 251.
tisti, 274.
toporu, 224, 238.
tremii, 343.
turn, 260,
tu6u, B., tu2, Serv.,
198.
tukati, tukalij, 330.
tuknq,ti, 330.
tisti, 378.
tgtiva, 233,
tys^sta, 125, 349.
uj, ujka, 373.
charalugu (haralugu)
R, 210.
chlebii, 143, 317.
chlevii, chlevina
(hlevii), 343.
chyzii (hyzii), 343.
cigeli, 343.
cyna, R, 218.
5apu, 321.
delik, Serv., 211.
drinu, 119.
sijii, 141, 363.
slemii, O.S,, Setom,
R., 233.
fstitii, 2 "11,
*sturu, 375,
tjugii, O.S., jih,
Cech., 254.
jucha, 315.
tjabluko, 276.
jagng, 260,
jazino, 260,
jarii, O.S., jaro. Bo-
hem., 138, 301.
jasen, jesen, M.S.,
274.
jaspra, Serv., 181.
jaje, 123.
jezi, 248.
jeklo, M.S., 211.
jela, 274.
jeleni, 134, 248.
jelicha, 274.
jeseiii, 303, 311.
jetry, O.S., jetrva,
Serv. and Croat.,
jetorva, Bulg.,
jetrve, 377.
jgSimy, 292.
%o-oristi, 117, 258.
%tuku, 329, 330.
ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA.
NOTE.
The Indo-European guttural-series is represented (in accordance
with K. Brugmann's Grundriss) by In, g, gh (palatals), and g,
g, gh (velar) ; the syllabic nasals and liquids by n, m, I, r.
PART I.
P. 80, Note. — " L'Origine europeenne des Aryas. Memoire
presente au Congr^s scientifique international des
Catholiques tenu k Paris en 1888," par Van den Gheyn,
Paris, 1889, is instructive on the history of the home
question.
P. 103. — Sayce inclines of late, apparently, more and more to
Penka's hypothesis. Cf. V. d. Gheyn, loc. cit., p. 10.
P. 105. — Amongst the champions of the kinship of the Finns
and the Indo-Europeans we should have mentioned
Nicolai Anderson, " Studien zur Vergleichung der indo-
germanischen und finnisch-ugrischen Sprachen," in the
Ve7-k. d. Gel. estn. Ges. zu Dor-pat, Bd. ix. (Dorpat,
1879) and Fr. Th. Koppen, Beitrcige zur Frage ueber
die Urheimat und Urverivandtschaft der Indoeurojmer
und Finnen, St Petersburg, 1886 (in Russian).
PART II.
P. 216. — Delbriick calls my attention to the form /3dAt/Aos {Samml,
d. griech. Dial. Inschriften von Collitz, iii. 3, p. 149).
PART IV.
P. 274.— A. Fick {B. B., xvi. p. 171) compares Lith. usis "ash "
with Lat. ornus {*osimis), which is very likely.
P. 370. — The full title of Delbrlick's work is Die indogermanischen
Verwandtschaftsnamen, tin Beitrag zur vergleichenden
Altertumskunde (Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1889). On Del-
briick's agreement with me, see p. 28 (406) and p. 212
(590) of this work.
P. 436. — H. Brunnhofer, in his book Iran und Imuran (Leipzig,
1889), which is designed to explain a very considerable
number of geographical names in the Rigvcda by
reference to Iranian localities, goes very nuich further.
Owing to the difficulties of the subject, and the distance between
author and printer, it is possible that some few misprints may
have escaped detection in the case of the Indo-European and other
words cited. The reader is requested to consult the Index in case
of doubt.
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