The Aryan Family Of Languages

: INTRODUCTION.
: Teutonic Mythology

It is universally known that the Teutonic dialects are related to the

Latin, the Greek, the Slavic, and Celtic languages, and that the kinship

extends even beyond Europe to the tongues of Armenia, Irania, and India.

The holy books ascribed to Zoroaster, which to the priests of Cyrus and

Darius were what the Bible is to us; Rigveda's hymns, which to the

people dwelling on the banks of the Ganges are God's revealed word, are
/> written in a language which points to a common origin with our own.

However unlike all these kindred tongues may have grown with the lapse

of thousands of years, still they remain as a sharply-defined group of

older and younger sisters as compared with all other language groups of

the world. Even the Semitic languages are separated therefrom by a chasm

so broad and deep that it is hardly possible to bridge it.



This language-group of ours has been named in various ways. It has been

called the Indo-Germanic, the Indo-European, and the Aryan family of

tongues. I have adopted the last designation. The Armenians, Iranians,

and Hindoos I call the Asiatic Aryans; all the rest I call the European

Aryans.



Certain it is that these sister-languages have had a common mother, the

ancient Aryan speech, and that this has had a geographical centre from

which it has radiated. (By such an ancient Aryan language cannot, of

course, be meant a tongue stereotyped in all its inflections, like the

literary languages of later times, but simply the unity of those

dialects which were spoken by the clans dwelling around this centre of

radiation.) By comparing the grammatical structure of all the daughters

of this ancient mother, and by the aid of the laws hitherto discovered

in regard to the transition of sounds from one language to another,

attempts have been made to restore this original tongue which many

thousand years ago ceased to vibrate. These attempts cannot, of course,

in any sense claim to reproduce an image corresponding to the lost

original as regards syntax and inflections. Such a task would be as

impossible as to reconstruct, on the basis of all the now spoken

languages derived from the Latin, the dialect used in Latium. The

purpose is simply to present as faithful an idea of the ancient tongue

as the existing means permit.



In the most ancient historical times Aryan-speaking people were found

only in Asia and Europe. In seeking for the centre and the earliest

conquests of the ancient Aryan language, the scholar may therefore keep

within the limits of these two continents, and in Asia he may leave all

the eastern and the most of the southern portion out of consideration,

since these extensive regions have from prehistoric times been inhabited

by Mongolian and allied tribes, and may for the present be regarded as

the cradle of these races. It may not be necessary to remind the reader

that the question of the original home of the ancient Aryan tongue is

not the same as the question in regard to the cradle of the Caucasian

race. The white race may have existed, and may have been spread over a

considerable portion of the old world, before a language possessing the

peculiarities belonging to the Aryan had appeared; and it is a known

fact that southern portions of Europe, such as the Greek and Italian

peninsulas, were inhabited by white people before they were conquered by

Aryans.





3.

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