The Hypothesis Concerning The European Origin Of The Aryans

: INTRODUCTION.
: Teutonic Mythology

In the year 1854 was heard for the first time a voice of doubt. The

sceptic was an English ethnologist, by name Latham, who had spent many

years in Russia studying the natives of that country. Latham was

unwilling to admit that a single one of the many reasons given for the

Asiatic origin of our family of languages was conclusive, or that the

accumulative weight of all the reasons given amounted to real evidence.

He ur ed that they who at the outset had treated this question had lost

sight of the rules of logic, and that in explaining a fact it is a

mistake to assume too many premises. The great fact which presents

itself and which is to be explained is this: There are Aryans in Europe

and there are Aryans in Asia. The major part of Aryans are in Europe,

and here the original language has split itself into the greatest number

of idioms. From the main Aryan trunk in Europe only two branches extend

into Asia. The northern branch is a new creation, consisting of Russian

colonisation from Europe; the southern branch, that is, the

Iranian-Hindooic, is, on the other hand, prehistoric, but was still

growing in the dawn of history, and the branch was then growing from

West to East, from Indus toward Ganges. When historical facts to the

contrary are wanting, then the root of a great family of languages

should naturally be looked for in the ground which supports the trunk

and is shaded by the crown, and not underneath the ends of the

farthest-reaching branches. The mass of Mongolians dwell in Eastern

Asia, and for this very reason Asia is accepted as the original home of

the Mongolian race. The great mass of Aryans live in Europe, and have

lived there as far back as history sheds a ray of light. Why, then, not

apply to the Aryans and to Europe the same conclusions as hold good in

the case of the Mongolians and Asia? And why not apply to ethnology the

same principles as are admitted unchallenged in regard to the geography

of plants and animals? Do we not in botany and zoology seek the original

home and centre of a species where it shows the greatest vitality, the

greatest power of multiplying and producing varieties? These questions,

asked by Latham, remained for some time unanswered, but finally they led

to a more careful examination of the soundness of the reasons given for

the Asiatic hypothesis.



The gist of Latham's protest is, that the question was decided in favour

of Asia without an examination of the other possibility, and that in

such an examination, if it were undertaken, it would appear at the very

outset that the other possibility, that is, the European origin of the

Aryans--is more plausible, at least from the standpoint of methodology.



This objection on the part of an English scholar did not even produce an

echo for many years, and it seemed to be looked upon simply as a

manifestation of that fondness for eccentricity which we are wont to

ascribe to his nationality. He repeated his protest in 1862, but it

still took five years before it appeared to have made any impression. In

1867, the celebrated linguist Whitney came out, not to defend Latham's

theory that Europe is the cradle of the Aryan race, but simply to clear

away the widely spread error that the science of languages had

demonstrated the Asiatic origin of the Aryans. As already indicated, it

was especially Adolphe Pictet who had given the first impetus to this

illusion in his great work Origines indo-europeennes. Already, before

Whitney, the Germans Weber and Kuhn had, without attacking the Asiatic

hypothesis, shown that the most of Pictet's arguments failed to prove

that for which they were intended. Whitney now came and refuted them all

without exception, and at the same time he attacked the assumption made

by Rhode, and until that time universally accepted, that a record of an

Aryan emigration from the highlands of Central Asia was to be found in

that chapter of Avesta which speaks of the sixteen lands created by

Ormuzd for the good of man, but which Ahriman destroyed by sixteen

different plagues. Avesta does not with a single word indicate that the

first of these lands which Ahriman destroyed with snow and frost is to

be regarded as the original home of the Iranians, or that they ever in

the past emigrated from any of them. The assumption that a migration

record of historical value conceals itself within this geographical

mythological sketch is a mere conjecture, and yet it was made the very

basis of the hypothesis so confidently built upon for years about

Central Asia as the starting-point of the Aryans.



The following year, 1868, a prominent German linguist--Mr. Benfey--came

forward and definitely took Latham's side. He remarked at the outset

that hitherto geological investigations had found the oldest traces of

human existence in the soil of Europe, and that, so long as this is the

case, there is no scientific fact which can admit the assumption that

the present European stock has immigrated from Asia after the quaternary

period. The mother-tongues of many of the dialects which from time

immemorial have been spoken in Europe may just as well have originated

on this continent as the mother-tongues of the Mongolian dialects now

spoken in Eastern Asia have originated where the descendants now dwell.

That the Aryan mother-tongue originated in Europe, not in Asia, Benfey

found probably on the following grounds: In Asia, lions are found even

at the present time as far to the north as ancient Assyria, and the

tigers make depredations over the highlands of Western Iran, even to the

coasts of the Caspian Sea. These great beasts of prey are known and

named even among Asiatic people who dwell north of their habitats. If,

therefore, the ancient Aryans had lived in a country visited by these

animals, or if they had been their neighbours, they certainly would have

had names for them; but we find that the Aryan Hindoos call the lion by

a word not formed from an Aryan root, and that the Aryan Greeks borrowed

the word lion (lis, leon) from a Semitic language. (There is,

however, division of opinion on this point.) Moreover, the Aryan

languages have borrowed the word camel, by which the chief beast of

burden in Asia is called. The home of this animal is Baktria, or

precisely that part of Central Asia in the vicinity of which an effort

has been made to locate the cradle of the Aryan tongue. Benfey thinks

the ancient Aryan country has been situated in Europe, north of the

Black Sea, between the mouth of the Danube and the Caspian Sea.



Since the presentation of this argument, several defenders of the

European hypothesis have come forward, among them Geiger, Cuno, Friedr.

Mueller, Spiegel, Poesche, and more recently Schrader and Penka.

Schrader's work, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, contains an

excellent general review of the history of the question, original

contributions to its solution, and a critical but cautious opinion in

regard to its present position. In France, too, the European hypothesis

has found many adherents. Geiger found, indeed, that the cradle of the

Aryan race was to be looked for much farther to the west than Benfey and

others had supposed. His hypothesis, based on the evidence furnished by

the geography of plants, places the ancient Aryan land in Germany. The

cautious Schrader, who dislikes to deal with conjectures, regards the

question as undecided, but he weighs the arguments presented by the

various sides, and reaches the conclusion that those in favour of the

European origin of the Aryans are the stronger, but that they are not

conclusive. Schrader himself, through his linguistic and historical

investigations, has been led to believe that the Aryans, while they

still were one people, belonged to the stone age, and had not yet become

acquainted with the use of metals.