Now the language of the Brahúi belongs to the Tamulian family.The affinity by no means lies on the surface—nor is it likely that it should. The nearest unequivocally Tamulian dialect on the same side of India is as far south as Goa—such as exist further to the north being either central or eastern. Supposing, then, the original continuity, how great must have been thedisplacement; and if the displacement have been great, how easily may the transitional forms have disappeared, or, rather, how truly must they once have been met with!
However, the Brahúi affinities by no means lie on the surface. The language is known from one of the many valuable vocabularies of Leach. Upon this, no less a scholar than Lassen commented. Without fixing it, he remarked that the numerals were like those of Southern India. They are so, indeed; and so is a great deal more; indeed the collation of the whole of the Brahúi vocabularies with the Tamul and Khond tonguesen massemakes the Brahúi Tamulian.
Is it original or intrusive? All opinion—valeat quantum—goes against it being the former. The mountain-fastness in which it occurs goes the other way.
Our sequence is logical rather than geographical,i. e.it takes localities and languages in the order in which they are subservient to ethnological argument rather than according to their contiguity. This justifies us in making a bold stride, in passing over all Persia, and in taking next in order—Caucasus, with all its conventional reminiscences and suggestions.
The languages of Caucasus fall into a group,which, for reasons already given, would be inconveniently calledCaucasian, but which may conveniently be termedDioscurian[38]. This falls into the following five divisions:—1. The Georgians; 2. the Irôn; 3. the Mizjeji; 4. the Lesgians; and 5. the Circassians.
1.The Georgians.—It is the opinion of Rosen that the central province of Kartulinia, of which Tiflis is the capital, is the original seat of the Georgian family; the chief reasons lying in the fact of that part of the area being the most important. Thus, the language is calledKartulinian; whilst the provinces round about Kartulinia are considered as additions or accessions to the Georgian domain, rather than as integral and original portions of it—a fact which makes the province in question a sort ofnucleus. Lastly, the Persian and Russian names,Gurg-istanandGr-usia, by which the country is most widely known, point to the valley of the Kur.
To all this I demur. The utmost that is proved thereby is the greater political prominence of the occupants of the more favoured parts of the country; as the middle course of the Kur really is.
Of the two sides of the watershed that separates the rivers of the Black Sea[39]from those of the Caspian[40], it is thewesternwhich has the best claim to be considered the originalhabitatof the Georgians. Here it is that the country is most mountainous, and the mountains most abrupt. Hence it is, too, that a population would have both the wish and power to migrate towards the plains rather thanvice versâ.
More weighty still is the evidence derived from the dialects. The Kartulinian is spoken over more than half the whole of Georgia: whereas, for the partsnotKartulinian, we hear of the following dialects:—
I believe, then, that in Central Caucasus the Kartulinian Georgians have been intrusive; and this is rendered probable by the character of the populations to the north and east of them. Between Georgia and Daghestan we have, in the pre-eminently inaccessible parts of the eastern half of Caucasus[41], two fresh families, different from each other, different from the Lesgians, and different from the Circassians.
With such reasons for believing the original direction of the Georgian area to have been westernly, we may continue the investigation. That they were the occupants of a considerable portion of the eastern half of the ancient Pontus, is probable from the historical importance of the Lazi in the time of Justinian, when a Lazic war disturbed the degenerate Romans of Constantinople. It is safe to carry them as far west as Trebizond. It is safe, too, to carry them farther. One of the commonest of the Georgian terminations is the syllable-peor-bi, the sign of the plural number; a circumstance which gives the town ofSino-pea Georgian look—Sinopenear the promontory ofCalli-ppi.
2.The Irôn.—To the north-west of Tiflis we have the towns of Duchet and Gori, one on the Kur itself, and one on a left-hand feeder of it. The mountains above are in the occupation of theIrônorOsetes. In Russian Georgia they amount to about 28,000. The nameIrônis the one they give themselves;Osetiis what they are called by the Georgians. Their language contains so great a per-centage of Persian words orvice versâ, that it is safe to put them both in the same class. This has, accordingly, been done—and a great deal more which is neither safe nor sound has been done besides.
3.The Mizjeji.—Due east of the mountaineer Irôn come the equally mountaineer Mizjeji, a family numerically small, but falling into divisions and subdivisions. Hence, it has a pre-eminent claim to be considered aboriginal to the fastnesses in which it is found. The parts north of Telav, to the north-east of Tiflis, form the Mizjeji area. It is a small one—the Circassians bound it on the north, and on the east—
4.The Lesgiansof Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan, next to the Circassians the most independent family of Caucasus. None falls into more divisions and subdivisions:e.g.
The displacements of the Irôn and Mizjeji—and from the limited area of their occupancies, displacement is a legitimate inference—must have been chiefly effected by the Georgians alone; that of the Lesgians seems referable to a triple influence. That the Talish to the north of Ghilan are Lesgians who have changed their native tongue for the Persian, is a probable suggestion of Frazer’s. If correct, it makes the province of Shirvan a likely part of the original Lesgian area—encroachment having been effected by the Armenians, Persians, and Georgians.
5.The Circassiansoccupy the northern Caucasus from Daghestan to the Kuban; coming in contact with the Slavonians and Tartars, for the parts between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian. As both these are pre-eminent for encroachment, the earlier contact was, probably, that of the most northern members of the Circassian family, and the southern Ugrians. The divisions and subdivisions of the Circassian family are both numerous and strongly marked.
The Armenians.—Except amongst the mountaineerIrôn and Mizjeji, there are Armenians over the whole of Russian Caucasus—mixed, for the most part, with Georgians. They are sojourners rather than natives. In Shirvan, Karabagh, and Karadagh they are similarly mixed with Persians and Turks. In this case, however, the Armenian population is probably the older; so that we are approaching the original nucleus of the family. In Erivan there are more Armenians than aught else; and in Kars and Erzerúm they attain theirmaximum. In Diarbekr the frontier changes, and the tribes which now indent the Armenian area are the Semitic Arabs and Chaldani of Mesopotamia, and the Persian Kurds of Kurdistan.
A great deal has been said about the extent to which the Armenian language differs from the Georgian, considering the geographical contact between the two. True it is that the tongues are in contactnow, and so they probably were 2000 years ago. Yet it by no means follows that they were always so. The Georgian has encroached, the Irôn retreated; a fact which makes it likely that, at a time when there was no Georgian east of Imiritia, the Osetic of Tshildir and the Armenian of Kars met on the Upper Kur. The inference drawn from the relations between the Môn, Khô, and Tʻhay tongues is repeated here,inasmuch as the Irôn and Armenian are more alike than the Armenian and Georgian. As a rough measure of the likeness, I may state the existence of the belief that both are Indo-European.
Asia Minor.—From Armenia the transition is to Asia Minor. One of the circumstances which give a pre-eminent interest and importance to the ethnology of Asia Minor is the certainty of the original stock being, at the present moment, either wholly extinct, or so modified and changed as to have become aproblemrather than afact. There is neither doubt nor shadow of doubt as to this—since it is within the historical period that this transformation has taken place. It is within the historical period that the Osmanli Turks, spreading, more immediately from the present country of Turkestan, but remotely from the chain of the Altaic Mountains, founded the kingdom of Roum under the Seljukian kings, and as a preliminary to the invasion and partial occupation of Europe, made themselves masters of the whole country limited by Georgia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Syria on the east and south, and by the Euxine, the Bosporus, the Propontis, the Hellespont, and the Ægean Sea westwards. Since then, whatever may be theblood, the language has been Turk. This is, of course,primâ facieevidence of the stock being Turk also. Nor are there anyverycogent reasonson the other side. The physiognomy is generally described as Turk, and the habits and customs as well.
Such is what we get from the general traveller—and a more minute ethnology than this has not yet been applied. What will be the result, when a severer test is applied, is another question. It is most probable that points of physiognomy, fragmentary traditions and superstitions, old customs, and peculiar idiotisms in the way of dialect, will point to a remnant of the older stock immediately preceding it. In such a case, the ethnological question becomes complicated—since the present Turks will be then supposed to havemixedwith the older natives, rather than to have replaced themin toto: so that the phænomena will rather be those exhibited in England (where the proportion of theolderCeltic and thenewerAnglo-Saxon is an open question) than those of the United States of America, where the blood is purely European, and where the intermixture of the aboriginal Indian—if any—goes for nothing.
Of the occupants of Asia Minor previous to the Osmanli Turks we can ascertain the elements, but not the proportions which they bore to each other.
All this suggests numerous questions—but they are questions of minute rather than general ethnology.The latter takes us to the consideration of the populations of the frontier. Here we find—
Of these, the last are recent intruders; so that the real ethnology to be considered is that ofancientThrace. Unfortunately this is as obscure as that of Asia Minor itself.
The Greeks of the Ægean areprobablyintrusive; the other three are ancient occupants of their present areas.
Now, in arguing upon the conditions afforded by this frontier, it is legitimate to suppose that each of the populations belonging to it had some extension beyond their present limits, in which case theà-prioriprobabilities would be that—
Now, the population of Asia Minormayhave been a mere extension of the populations of the frontiers—one or all.
But it also may have been separate and distinct from any of them.
In this case, we are again supplied with an alternative.
Dealing with these questions, we first ask what are the reasons for supposing the population—whether single or subdivided—of Asia to have beenpeculiar,i.e.different from that of the frontier areas—Georgia, Thrace, Armenia, Mesopotamia and Syria?
This is answered at once by the evidence of the Lycian Inscriptions, which prove theLycian, at least, to have been distinct from all or any of the tongues enumerated.
The following extracts, however, from Herodotus carry us farther:—
“The Lycians were originally out of Crete; since, in the old times, it was the Barbarians who held the whole of Crete. When, however, there was a difference in Crete, in respect to the kingdom, between the sons of Europa, Minos and Sarpedon, and when Minos got the best in thedisturbance, he (Minos) expelled both Sarpedon himself and his faction; and these, on their expulsion, went to that part of Asia which is theMilyadicland. For that country which the Lycians now inhabit was in the old timesMilyas; and theMilyæwere then calledSolymi. For a time Sarpedon ruled over them. They called themselves by the name which they brought with them; and even now, the Lycians are called by the nations that dwell around them,Termilæ. But when Lycus, the son of Pandion, driven away from Athens, and like Sarpedon, by his brother (Ægeus), came to the Termilæ under Sarpedon, they, thence, in the course of time, were called, after the name of Lycus, Lycians. The usages are partly Cretan, partly Carian. One point, however, they have peculiar to themselves, and one in which they agree with no other men. They name themselves after their mothers, and not from their fathers: so that if any one be asked by anotherwho he is, he will designate himself as the son of his mother, and number uphis mother’smothers. Again, if a free woman marry a slave, the children are deemed free; whereas, if a man be even in the first rank of citizens, and take either a strange wife or a concubine, the children are dishonoured.”
Whilst Asia Minor was being conquered forPersia, under the reign of Cyrus, by Harpagus, theCariansmade no great display of valour; with the exception of the citizens of Pedasus. These gave Harpagus considerable trouble; but, in time, were vanquished. Not so the Lycians.—“The Lycians, as Harpagus marched his army towards the Xanthian plain, retreated before him by degrees, and fighting few against many, showed noble deeds: but being worsted and driven back upon the town, they collected within the citadel their wives, and children, and goods, and servants. They then set light to the citadel to burn it down. This being done, they took a solemn oath, and making a sally died to a man, sword in hand. But of those Lycians who now called themselves Xanthians, the majority are, except eighty hearths, strangers (ἐπήλυδες). These eighty hearths (families) were then away from the country. And so they escaped. Thus it was that Harpagus took Xanthus. In like manner he took Caunus.For the Caunians resemble the Lycians in most things.”
And now we have asecondfact, the following, viz.—that what the Lycians were the Caunians were also.
1.The Caunians.—According to the special evidence of Herodotus, the Caunians had two peculiar customs—one, to make no distinction between age and sex at feasts, but to drink and junket promiscuously—the other, to show their contempt of all strange foreign gods by marching in armour to the Calyndian mountains, and beating the air with spears, in order to expel them from the boundaries of the Caunian land. Still theCaunians were Lycian.
Were any other nations thus Lycian? Caunian? Lyco-Caunian? or Cauno-Lycian? since the particular designation is unimportant.
The Carians.—The language of the Carians and the Caunians was the same; since Herodotus writes—The Caunian nation has either adapted itself to the Carian tongue, or the Carian to Caunian.
2. On the other hand, the worship of the national Eponymus was different.The Lydians and Mysians share in the worship of the Carian Jove. These do so. As many, however, of different nations (ἔθνος) as have become identical in language with the Carians do not do so.
And here comes a difficulty—one part of the facts connects, the other disconnects the Carians from the Lycians. The language goes one way, the customs another.
But this is not the only complication introduced by theCarianfamily. The whole question of their origin is difficult, and that of their affinities is equally so. It was from the islands tothe continent, rather than from the continent to the islands, that the Carians spread themselves; and they did this as subjects of Minos, and under the name of Leleges. As long as the system of Minos lasted, these Carian Leleges paid no tribute; but furnished, when occasion required, ships and sailors instead. And this they did effectually, inasmuch as the Carian was one of the most powerful nations of its day, and, besides that, ingenious in warlike contrivances. Of such contrivances three were adopted by the Greeks, and recognised as the original invention of the Carians. The first of these was the crest for the helmet; the second, thedevicefor the shield; the third, thehandlefor the shield. Before the Carians introduced this last improvement, the fighting-man hung his buckler by a leathern thong, either on his neck or his left shoulder. Such was the first stage in the history of Carian Leleges, who were insular rather than continental, and Lelegian rather than Carian. It lasted for many years after the death of Minos; but ended in their being wholly ejected from the islands, and exclusively limited to the continent, by the Dorians and Ionians of Greece.
This would connect the—
The native tradition.—The Carian race is not insular, but aboriginal to the continent; bearing from the earliest times the name it bears at the present time. As a proof of this, the worship of the Carian Jupiter is common to two other, unequivocally continental nations—theLydiansand theMysians. All three have a share in a temple at Mylasa, and each of the three is descended from one of three brothers—Car, Lydus, orMysus—the respective eponymi of Caria, Lydia, and Mysia.
All this is not written for the sake of any inference; but to illustrate the difficulties of the subject. A new series of facts must now be added—or rather two new ones.
The reader is in possession of a fair amount of complications. They can easily be increased.
Instead of enlarging on them, I suggest the following doctrine:—
Of these, the former was, perhaps, Sarmatian, whilst the latter may have borne the same relation to the Carian as the Malay of Sumatra does to that of the Orang Binúa of the Malayan Peninsula.
It may be added, that the similarity of the nameThekhes, themountainfrom which the 10,000 Greeks saw the sea, to the TurkTagh,suggests the likelihood of Turk encroachments having existed as early as the time of Artaxerxes.
Lastly—Thetermination-der, inScaman-der(a bilingual appellation) andMæan-der, indicates Persian intrusion of an equally early date.
Of the glosses collected by Jablonsky, none are illustrated by any modern language, except the following:—
There is no denying that these affinities are Indo-European rather than aught else, and that they are Armenian as well—an objection to several of the views laid down in the preceding pages which I have no wish to conceal. However, all questions of this kind are a balance of conflicting difficulties. As a set-off to this, take the following table, where the Armenian affinities are Turk, Dioscurian, and Siberian also.
The watershed of the Oxus and Indus.—We are in the north-eastern corner of Persia. The Púshta-Khur mountain, like many other hills of less magnitude, contains the sources of two rivers, different in their directions—of the Oxus that falls into the Sea of Aral; and of the right branch of the Kúner, a feeder of the Cabúl river—itself a member of the great water-system of the Indus. Its south-western prolongation gives us the corresponding watershed. This is a convenient point for the study of a difficult but interesting class of mountaineers, who may conveniently be calledParopamisansfrom the ancient name of the Hindu-kúsh. Their northern limits are the heights in question. Southwards they reach the Afghan frontier in the Kohistan of Cabúl. Eastward they come in contact with India. There is no better way of taking them in detail than that of following the water-courses, and remembering the watersheds of the rivers.
I.The Oxus.—At the very head-waters of the Oxus, and in contact with the Kirghiz Turks of Pamer, comes the small population of Wokhan, speaking a language neither Turk nor Persian—at least not exactly Persian; and, next to Wokhan, Shughnan, where the dialect (possibly the language) seems to change. Roshan, next (along the Oxus) to Shughnan, seems to be in the same category. Durwaz, however, is simply Tajik. All are independent, and all Mahometan.
II.The Indus.—1.The Indus.—The Gilghit[42]river feeds the Indus—two other feeders that join it from the east being called the Hunz and the Burshala, Nil, or Nagar. The population of each of these rivers is agricultural, and is, accordingly, calledDunghar, a Hindu, but no native term. Their Rajah is independent; their religion a very indifferent Mahometanism. On the Gilghit and the parts below its junction with the Hunz and Nagar rivers, the dialect (perhaps the language) seems to change, and the people are known asDardoh(or Dards) andChilass Dardoh—the Daradæ of the Greek and the Daradas of the Sanskrit writers. These, too, are imperfect Mahometans. The Dards and Dunghers carry us as far as Little Tibet (Bultistan) and the Cashmírian frontiers.
2.The Jhelum.—This is the river of the famous valley of Cashmír—the population whereof (with some hesitation) I consider Paropamisan.
3.The Cabul River.—1.The Kúner.—The eastern watershed of the Upper Kúner is common to the Gilghit river. The population is closely akin to the Dardoh and Dungher; its area being Upper and Lower Chitral, its language the Chitrali, its religion Shia Mahometanism.
South of the Chitral, on themiddleKúner, the creed changes, and we have the best known of the Paropamisans, theKaffresof Kafferistan, reaching as far westwards and northwards as Kunduz and Badukshan—the Kaffres, or Infidels, so called by their Mahometan neighbours, because they still retain their primitive paganism.
Now when we approach the Cabúl river itself, the direction of which, from west to east, is nearly at right angles with the Kúner, the characteristics of the Dardoh, Chitrali, and Kaffre populations decrease—in other words, the area is irregular, and the populations themselves either partially isolated or intermixed. Thus, along the foot of the mountains north of the Cabúl river and west of the Kúner comes the Lughmani country; the language being by no means identical with the Kafir, and the Kafir paganism being reduced to an imperfect Mahometan—némchú Mussulman, orhalf Mussulman, being the term applied to the speakers of the Lughmani tongue of the valley of the Nijrow and the parts about it.
The Der, Tirhye, and Pashai vocabularies of Leach all represent Paropamisan forms of speech spoken by small and, more or less, fragmentary populations.
The valley of the Lundye has, almost certainly, been within a recent period, Paropamisan. Thus is it that Elphinstone writes of its chief occupants:—“The Swatís, who are also called Deggauns, appear to be of Indian origin. They formerly possessed a kingdom extending from the western branch of the Hydaspes to near Jellabahad. They were gradually confined to narrower limits by the Afghan tribes; and Swaut and Búnér, their last seats, were reduced by the Eusofzyis in the end of the fifteenth century. They are still very numerous in those countries.” ByIndianI believe a population akin to that of Cashmeer isdenoted—I do not sayintended. Another extract carries us further still:—“The Shulmauni formerly inhabited Shulmaun, on the banks of the Korrum. They afterwards moved to Tíra, and in the end of the fifteenth century they were in Hustnugger, from which they were expelled by the Eusofzyes. The old Afghan writers reckon them Deggauns, but they appear to have used this word loosely. There are still a few Shulmauni in the Eusofzye country who have some remains of a peculiar language.”
Hence, the Paropamisans may safely be considered as a population of a receding frontier, the encroachment upon their area having been Afghan. With these the Asiatic populations end.
If we now look back upon the ground that has been gone over, we shall find that the evidence of the human family having originated in one particular spot, and having diffused itself from thence to the very extremities of the earth, is by no means absolute and conclusive. Still less is it certain that that particular spot has been ascertained. The present writerbelievesthat it was somewhere in intratropical Asia, and that it wasthe single locality of a single pair—without, however, professing to have proved it. Even this centre is onlyhypothetical—near, indeed, to the point which he looks upon as the starting-place of the human migration, but by no means identical with it. The Basks and Albanians he does not pretend to have affiliated; but he does not, for this reason, absolutely isolate them. They have too manymiscellaneousaffinities to allow them to stand wholly alone.
In the way of physical conformation, the Hottentot presents themaximumof peculiarities. The speech, however, of the latter is simply African; whilst, in form and colour, the Basks and Albaniansare European. A fly is a fly even when we wonder how it came into the amber; and men belong to humanity even when their origin is a mystery. This gives us a composition of difficulties, and it is by taking this and similar phænomena into account, that the higher problems in ethnology must be worked. Nothing short of a clear and comprehensive view of the extent to which points of difference in one department are compensated by points of likeness in another, will give us even a philosophical hypothesis; allpartialargument from partial points of disagreement being as unscientific as a similar overvaluation of resemblances.
As for the detail of the chief difficulties, the writer believes that he, unwillingly and with great deference, differs from the best authorities, in making so little of the transition from America to Asia, and so much of that between Europe and Asia. The conviction that the Semitic tongues are simply African, and that all the theories suggested by the termIndo-Europeanmust be either abandoned or modified, is the chief element of his reasoning upon this point—reasoning far too elaborate for a small work like the present. He also believes that the languages of Kafferistan, the Dardoh country, and north-eastern Afghanistan, are transitional to the monosyllabic tonguesand those of Persia—in other words, that the modern Persian is much more monosyllabic than is generally supposed. Yet even this leaves a break. How far the mostwesterntongue of this class can be connected with those of Europe, and how far the mostsouth-western one has Semitic affinities are questions yet to examine—questions beset with difficulties. However, as the skeleton of system he believes the present work to be true as far as it goes, and at the same time convenient for the investigator. That there is much in all existing classifications which requires to be unlearnt is certain. Lest any one think this a presumptuous saying, let him consider the new and unsettled state of the science, and the small number of the labourers as compared with the extent of the field.
THE END.
[27]Since this chapter was written, the news of the premature death of the most influential supporter of the double doctrine of (a.)the unity of the American families amongst each other, and (b.)the difference of the American race from all others—Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia,—has reached me. It is unnecessary to say, that the second of these positions is, in the mind of the present writer, as exceptionable as the first is correct. Nor is it likely to be otherwise as long as theeasternside of the Rocky Mountains is so exclusively studied as it is by both the American and the English school. I have little fear of the Russians falling into this error. With this remark the objections against the very valuable labours of Dr. Morton begin and end. HisCrania Americanais by far the most valuable book of its kind. HisCrania Ægyptiacaand other minor works, especially his researches onHybridism, are all definite additions to ethnological science. The impulse which he, personally, gave to the very active study of the Human Species, which so honourably characterises his countrymen, is more than an Englishman can exactly value. Perhaps, it is second only to that given by Gallatin: perhaps, it is scarcely second.
[28]Mr. Norris, for instance, of the Asiatic Society, has given reasons for connecting the Australian tongues with those of the Dekhan.
[29]Taken, with much besides, from Mr. Brown’s Tables, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
[31]Considering the Burampúter and Ganges as separate rivers.
[32]Conveniently thrown into a single class, and calledHyperboreans.
[33]The great family of which theMantshúsare the best-known members.
[34]Not necessarily withmanysyllables, but withmore than one—hyper-mono-syllabic.
[35]Observe—notof the island of Ceylon.
[36]Of Orissa.
[37]The Cashmírian of Cashmír is in this predicament. It is not safe to say that it is Hindu rather than Persian, or Paropamisan—a term which will soon find its explanation.
[38]From the town ofDioscurias, in which Pliny says business was carried on through 130 interpreters—so numerous were the languages and dialects.
[39]The Phasis, Tshorok, &c.
[40]The Kur and Aras.
[41]TheIrônandMizjeji.
[42]From Moorcroft’s Travels in the Himalayan Provinces, and Vigne’s Cashmír.
PRINTED BY RICHARD TAYLOR,RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.
London, January 1863.