(1)
The details of the Slavonic area to the south of Altmark are as follows.
_Brandenburg_, at the beginning of the historical period, was Slavonic,
and one portion of it, the Circle of Cotbus, is so at the present
moment. It is full of geographical names significant in the Slavonic
languages. Of Germans to the East of the Elbe there are no signs until
after the time of Charlemagne. But the Elbe is not even their eastern
boundary. The Saale is the river which divides the Slavonians from the
Thuringians--not only at the time when its drainage first comes to be
known, but long afterwards. More than this, there were, in the 11th and
12th centuries, Slavonians in Thuringia, Slavonians in Franconia--facts
which can be found in full in Zeuss _vv. Fränkische und Thüringische
Slawen_--(_Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme_).
_Saxony_ brings us down to the point with which the preceding paper
concluded viz: the frontier of Bohemia. This was in the same category
with Brandenburg. In Leipzig Slavonic was spoken A. D. 1327. In Lusatia
it is spoken at the present moment. When were the hypothetical Germans
of all these parts eliminated, or (if not eliminated) amalgamated with
a population of intruders who displaced their language, not on one spot
or on two, but every where?
If the Slavonians of the time of Charlemagne were indigenous to the
western portion of their area, they were, _a fortiori_, indigenous to
the eastern. At any rate, few who hold that the German populations of
Bohemia, Mecklenburg, Luneburg, Altmark, Brandenburg, Saxony, Silesia,
and Lusatia are recent, will doubt their being so in Pomerania.
In his Edition of the Germania of Tacitus the only Germans east of the
Elbe, Saale and the Fichtel Gebirge, recognised by the present writer
are certain intrusive Marcomanni; who (by hypothesis) derived from
Thuringia, reached the Danube by way of the valley of Naab, and pressed
eastward to some point unknown--but beyond the southern frontier of
Moravia. Here they skirted the Slavonic populations of the north, and
formed to their several areas the several Marches from which they took
their name.
As far as we have gone hitherto we have gone in the direction of the
doctrine that the Slavonians of Franconia, Thuringia, Saxony, Altmark,
Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Holstein, and Brandenburg &c. were all old
occupants of the districts in which they were found in the 8th, 9th,
10th, and 11th centuries; also that the present Czekhs of Bohemia and
Moravia, the present Serbs of Lusatia and Brandenburg, the present
Kassubs of Pomerania, and the present Slovaks of Hungary represent
aboriginal populations. We now ask how far this was the case with the
frontagers of North-eastern Italy, and the Slavonians of Carinthia and
Carniola. The conclusion to which we arrive in respect to these will
apply to those of Bosnia, Servia, and Dalmatia.
That the Carinthians and Carniolans were the descendants of the
Carni of the Alpes Carnicæ would never have been doubted but for the
following statements--"The Krobati who now occupy the parts in the
direction of Delmatia are derived from the Unbaptized Krobati, the
Krovati Aspri so-called; who dwelt on the otherside of Turkey, and near
France, conterminous with the Unbaptized Slaves--_i. e._ the Serbi. The
word Krobati is explained by the dialect of the Slaves. It means the
possessors of a large country"--_Constantinus Porphyrogeneta_--_De Adm.
Imp._ 31. _ed. Par._ _p._ 97.
Again--"But the Krobati dwelt then in the direction of Bagivareia"
(Bavaria) "where the Belokrobati are now. One tribe (γενεὰ) separated.
Five brothers led them. Clukas, and Lobelos, and Kosentes, and Muklô,
and Krobatos, and two sisters, Tuga and Buga. These with their people
came to Delmatia--The other Krobati stayed about France, and are called
Belokrobati, _i. e._ Aspri Krobati, having their own leader. They are
subject to Otho the great king of France and Saxony. They continue
Unbaptized, intermarrying" (συμπενθερίας καὶ ἀγάπας ἔχοντες) "with the
Turks"--_c._ 30. _p._ 95.--The statement that the Kroatians of Dalmatia
came from the Asprocroatians is repeated. The evidence, however,
lies in the preceding passages; upon which it is scarcely necessary
to remark that _bel_ = _white_ in Slavonic, and _aspro_ = _white_ in
Romaic.
So much for the Croatians. The evidence that the Servians were in the
same category, is also Constantine's.--"It must be understood that the
Servians are from the Unbaptized Servians, called also Aspri, beyond
Turkey, near a place called Boiki, near France--just like the Great
Crobatia, also Unbaptized and White. Thence, originally, came the
Servians"--_c._ 32. _p._ 99.
In the following passages the evidence improves--"The same Krobati came
as suppliants to the Emperor Heraclius, before the Servians did the
same, at the time of the inroads of the Avars--By his order these same
Krobati having conquered the Avars, expelled them, occupied the country
they occupied, and do so now"--_c._ 31. _p._ 97.
Their country extended from the River Zentina to the frontier of Istria
and, thence, to Tzentina and Chlebena in Servia. Their towns were
Nona, Belogradon, Belitzein, Scordona, Chlebena, Stolpon, Tenen, Kori,
Klaboca--(_c._ 31. _p._ 97. 98). Their country was divided into 11.
_Supan-rics_ (Ζουπανιας).
They extended themselves. From the Krobati "who came into Dalmatia a
portion detached themselves, and conquered the Illyrian country and
Pannonia" (_c._ 30 _p._ 95).
The further notices of the Servians are of the same kind. Two brothers
succeeded to the kingdom, of which one offered his men and services to
Heraclius, who placed them at first in the Theme Thessalonica, where
they grew homesick, crossed the Danube about Belgrade, repented, turned
back, were placed in Servia, in the parts occupied by the Avars, and,
finally, were baptized. (_c._ 32. _p._ 99.)
It is clear that all this applies to the Slavonians of Croatia, Bosnia,
Servia, and Slavonia--_i. e._ the triangle at the junction of the Save
and Danube. It has no application to Istria, Carniola, Carinthia, and
Styria. Have any writers so applied it? Some have, some have not. More
than this, many who have never applied it argue just as if they had.
Zeuss, especially stating that the Slavonic population of the parts in
question was earlier than that of Croatia, still, makes it recent. Why?
This will soon be seen. At present, it is enough to state that it is
not by the _direct_ application of the passage in Porphyrogeneta that
the antiquity of the Slavonic character of the Carinthians, Carniolans,
and Istrians is impugned.
The real reason lies in the fact of the two populations being alike in
other respects. What is this worth? Something--perhaps, much. Which
way, however, does it tell? That depends on circumstances. If the
Croatians be recent, the Carinthians should be so too. But what if the
evidence make the Carinthians old? Then, the recency of the Croatians
is impugned. Now Zeuss (_vv. Alpenslawen, Carantani, and Creinarii_)
distinctly shews that there were Slavonians in the present districts
before the time of Heraclius--not much before, but still before. Why
not much? "They came only a little before", inasmuch as Procopius
"gives us nothing but the old names Carni, and Norici". But what if
these were Slavonic?
The present meaning of the root _Carn-_ is _March_, just as it is in
U-_krain_. In a notice of the year A. D. 974 we find "quod _Carn_-iola
vocatur, et quod vulgo vocatur _Creina marcha_", the Slavonic word
being translated into German. Such a fact, under ordinary circumstances
would make the _Carn-_ in Alpes _Carn_-icæ, a Slavonic gloss; as it
almost certainly is. I do not, however, know the etymologist who has
claimed it. Zeuss does not--though it is from his pages that I get the
chief evidence of its being one.
Croatia, Bosnia, and Servia now come under the application of the
Constantine text.
Let it pass for historical; notwithstanding the length of time between
its author and the events which it records.
Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the high probability of
_Crobyzi_, a word used in Servia before the Christian æra, being the
same as _Krobati_.
Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the chances that it is only
an inference from the presence of an allied population on both sides of
Pannonia.
Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the leadership of the five
brothers (one the eponymus _Krobatos_) and the two sisters.
Let it do this, and then let us ask how it is to be interpreted.
Widely or strictly? We see what stands against it viz: the existing
conditions of three mountainous regions exhibiting the signs of being
the occupancies of an aboriginal population as much as any countries on
the face of the earth.
What then is the strict interpretation? Even this--that Heraclius
introduced certain Croatians from the north into the occupancies of the
dispossessed Avars apparently as military colonies. Does this mean that
they were the first of their lineage? By no means. The late emperor of
Russian planted Slavonic colonies of Servians in Slavonic Russia. Metal
upon metal is false heraldry; but it does not follow that Slave upon
Slave is bad ethnology.
With such a full realization of the insufficiency of the evidence
which makes Bohemia, Carinthia, Servia &c. other than Slavonic _ab
initio_, we may proceed to the ethnology of the parts to the west,
and southwest--the Tyrol, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Bavaria, and
Wurtemberg. In respect to these, we may either distribute them among
the populations of the frontier, or imagine for them some fresh
division of the population of Europe, once existent, but now extinct.
We shall not, however, choose this latter alternative unless we forget
the wholesome rule which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily.
Let us say, then, that the southern frontier of the division
represented by the Slavonians of Carniola was originally prolonged
until it touched that of the northernmost Italians. In like manner,
let the Styrian and Bohemian Slaves extend till they meet the Kelts
of Gaul. With this general expression I take leave of this part of
the subject--a subject worked out in detail elsewhere (_Edition of
Prichard's Eastern origin of the Celtic Nation, and The Germania of
Tacitus with Ethnological Notes_,--_Native Races of the Russian Empire_
&c.).
The _northern_ and _eastern_ frontiers of the Slavonians involve those
of (1) Ugrians, (2) the Lithuanians.
In respect to the former, I think a case can be made out for continuing
the _earliest_ occupancy of the populations represented by the Liefs
of Courland, and the Rahwas of Estonia to the Oder at least; perhaps
further. This means along the coast. Their extent inland is a more
complex question. The so called Fin hypothesis in its full form is
regarded, by the present writer, as untenable. But between this and
a vast extension of the Fin area beyond its present bounds there is
a great difference. It is one thing to connect the Basks of Spain
with the Khonds of India; another to bring the Estonians as far west
as the Oder, or even as the Elbe. It is one thing to make an allied
population occupant of Sweden, Spain, and Ireland; another to refer
the oldest population of western Russia to the stock to which the
eastern undeniably belongs. This latter is a mere question of more
or less. The other is a difference, not of kind, but of degree. With
this distinction we may start from the most southern portion of the
present Ugrian area; which is that of the Morduins in the Government
of Penza. Or we may start from the most western which is that of the
Liefs of Courland. What are the traces of Fin occupancy between these
and the Vistula and Danube--the Vistula westward, the Danube on the
South. How distinct are they? And of what kind? We cannot expect them
to be either obvious or numerous. Say that they are the vestiges of
a state of things that has passed away a thousand years, and we only
come to the time of Nestor. Say that they are doubly so old, and we
have only reached the days of Herodotus; in whose time there had been a
sufficient amount of encroachment and displacement to fill the southern
Governments of Russia with Scythians of Asiatic origin. The Britons
were the occupants of Kent at the beginning of our æra. How faint are
the traces of them. We must regulate, then, our expectations according
to the conditions of the question. We must expect to find things just a
little more Ugrian than aught else.
From that part of Russia which could, even a thousand years ago,
exhibit an indigenous population we must subtract all those districts
which were occupied by the Scythians. We do not know how much
comes under this category. We only know that the Agathyrsi were in
Hungary, and that they were, probably, intruders. We must substract
the Governments of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Taurida at the very
least--much of each if not all. That this is not too much is evident
from the expressed opinions of competent investigators. Francis
Newman carries the Scythia of Herodotus as far as Volhynia, and, in
Volhynia, there were Cumanian Turks as late as the 11th century. Say,
however that the aborigines were not Fins. At any rate they were not
the ancestors of the present Russians--and it is the original area of
these that we are now considering. In the North there were Fins when
Novorogod, and in the East Fins when Moscow, was founded. In Koursk,
writes Haxthausen, there is a notable difference in the physiognomy of
the inhabitants; the features being Fin rather than Slavonic.
I now notice the name of Roxolani. Prichard and, doubtless, others
besides see in this a Fin gloss, the termination _-lani_ being the
termination _-lainen_ in Suome_lainen_, Hame_lainen_ and several other
Fin words, _i. e._ a gentile termination. It does not follow from this
that the people themselves were Fins. It only follows that they were in
a Fin neigbourhood. Some one who spoke a language in which the form in
_-lain-_ was used to denote the name of a people was on their frontier,
and this frontier must have been South of that of the Roxolani
themselves--else how did it come to the ears of the Greeks and Romans?
If this were not the case, then was the name native, and the Roxolani
were Ugrian. In either case we have a Fin gloss, and a Fin locality
suggested by it. Now the country of the Roxolani either reached, or
approached, the Danube.
In the account of Herodotus a population named _Neuri_ occupied a
marshy district at the back of the Scythian area; probably the marshes
of Pinsk. This is, perhaps, a Fin gloss. The town of _Narym_ in the
Ostiak country takes its name from the marshes round it.
The Lithuanian language avoids the letter _f._--using _p._ instead;
sometimes _m._ The Greek φιλεω is _m_ylu in Lithuanic. The name, then,
that a Fin locality would take in the mouth of a Lithuanian would not
be _F_insk but _M_insk, or _P_insk, and these are the names we find on
what I think was, at one time, the Finno-Lithuanic frontier.
I should add that the _Kour-_ in _Kour_-sk seems to be the _Kour-_ in
_Kour_-land, the _Kor-_ in _Kor_-alli (a Fin population of the Middle
Ages), and the _Car-_ in the eminently, and almost typically, Fin
_Kar_elians.
This is not much in the way of evidence. Much or little, however, it
is more than can be got for any other population. Much or little it
is got at by a very cursory investigation. No special research has
been instituted. No tumulus has been appealed to. No local dialect
has been analysed. No ordnance map has been pored over. All this
will, doubtless, be done in time, and if, when it has been done, no
confirmation of the present doctrine be found, the propounder will
reconsider it. If the evidence point elsewhere he will abandon it. At
present he brings the early Fin frontier to Minsk and Pinsk:
There it touched that of the Lithuanians. To make these the most
eastern members of the Sarmatian stock is, at the first view, to fly
in the face of the testimony of their present position. They are, in
one sense, the most western. The Germans of Prussia touch them on the
side of Europe. Between them and the Fins of Asia, the vast Russian
area of the Governments of Smolensko, Novogorod &c. intervene. Speaking
laxly, one may say that all Russia lies beyond them. Nevertheless,
it is with the Fins of Estonia that they are also in contact; whilst
the explanation of the German and Russian contact is transparently
clear. The Germans (as a matter of history) cut their way through
whole masses of Slavonians in Pomerania, before they reached them; so
displacing the Slavonians to the west of them. The Russians (again a
matter of history) pressed up to them by a circuit from the south and
west. The Lithuanians have kept their position--but one population has
stretched beyond, and another has pressed up to them. Their language
is eminently akin to the Sanskrit. Their physiognomy is the most Fin of
any thoroughly European population.
There were no Slavonians, _in situ_, to the East of the Lithuanic area;
none originally. By encroachment and change of place there are, in
later times, many. There are, as aforesaid, all the Russians of the
present moment. The question, however, before us is the original area,
the primordial _situs_.
The westward extension of the Lithuanians is a matter upon which I do
not press the details. I think that the Vistula may have been to them
and the Slavonians what the Rhine was to the Gauls and Germans. The
main question is how far can we bring them south? What justifies us in
making them reach the Carpathians? At present we find them in Livonia,
Courland, East Prussia, Vilna, and Grodno; but further south than
Grodno nowhere; nowhere, at least, with the definite characteristics of
name and language. Every inch that is given them south of Grodno must
have its proper evidence to support it.
The Gothini of Tacitus are the first population that we may make
Lithuanic. What says Tacitus? They were not Germans; their language
proved this. They were not Sarmatians. The Sarmatians imposed a tribute
upon, as on men of another stock--_tributa ut alienigenis imponunt_.
The Quadi did the same. If neither Germans nor Sarmatians what were
they? Members of a stock now extinct? The rule against the unnecessary
multiplication of causes forbids us to resort to this supposition.
Do so once and we may always be doing it. Were they Fins? Say that
they were, and what do we gain by it? We may as well prolong the
Lithuania area from Grodno as the Fin from Pinsk. Nay, better. That
Grodno is Lithuanian we _know_. That Pinsk was Fin we _infer_. Were
they Scythians? We know of no Scythians beyond the Maros; so that the
reasoning which told against the Fin hypothesis tells equally against
the Turk. Beyond the Germans, the Slavonians, the Fins, the [6]Turks,
and the Lithuanians we have nothing to choose from; and I submit that
the _minimum_ amount of assumption lies with the population last named.
[Footnote 6: The term _Turk_ is used in its wide Ethnological sense,
and includes the _Scythæ_.]
Now comes the name of their Language. The Language of the Gothini was
_Gallica_--Osos Pannonica, Gothinos _Gallica_ arguit non esse Romanos.
I have given reasons elsewhere (Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological
notes) for translating Gallica Gallician,--not Gallic. Say, however,
that the latter is the better translation; Gothini would still be the
name of the people.
There is a country, then, of the Gothini sufficiently far south to be
in contact with the Quadi and Sarmatæ--the Quadi in Moravia and Upper
Hungary, the Sarmatæ in the parts between the Theiss and the Danube.
Gallicia meets these conditions. It was a mining country. Gallicia
is this. It was on the Upper Vistula--probably at its head-waters.
At the _mouth_ of the same river the name re-appears, in that of the
_Goth_ones, _Gutt_ones, _Gyth_ones &c. of the Amber country. These were
either the nearest neighbours of the Aestyii, or the Aestyii themselves
under a name other than German--for Aestyii is an undoubted German
gloss, just like _Est-_ in _Est-_ onia.
Are we justified in identifying these two populations on the strength
of the name? No. What we _are_ justified in doing, however, is this. We
are justified in placing on the frontier of both a language in which
the root _Goth-_ was part of a national name.
At the beginning of the historical period these Gothones were the
Lithaunians of East Prussia, and their neighbours called them _Guddon_.
They were the congeners of those Lithuanians whose area, even now,
extents as far south as Grodno.
It is easy to connect the Gothones with Grodno; but what connects
Grodno with Gothinian Gallicia? What _can_ connect it now? All is
Polish or Russian. What are the proofs that it was not so from the
beginning? The following--the populations between Grodno and the
frontier of Gallicia, appear, for the first time in history in
the 13th century; but not as Poles, nor yet as Russians, but as
Lithuanians--"cum _Pruthenica_ et _Lithuanica_ lingua habens magna ex
parte similitudinem et intelligentiam"--"lingua, ritu, religione, et
moribus magnam habebat cum _Lithuanis_, _Pruthenis_ et _Samogitis_"
(the present Lithuanians of East Prussia) "conformitatem".
We cannot bring these quite down to Gallicia; and this is not to be
wondered at. The first notice we have of them is very nearly the last
as well. The narrative which gives us the preceding texts is the
narrative of their subjugation and extinction.
What was the name of this people? I premise that we get it through a
double medium, the Latin, and the Slavonic--the latter language always
being greatly disguised in its adaptation to the former. The commonest
form is Jaczwingi (Lat.) Jatwyazi (Slavonic); then (in documents)
_Getuin_-zitæ, a word giving the root _Gothon-_. Finally, we have
"Pollexiani _Getharum_ seu Prussorum gens".
Such are the reasons for connecting the Gothini of the Marcomannic
frontier with the Gothini of the Baltic, and also for making both
(along with the connecting Jaczwingi) Lithuanians. This latter
point, however, is unessential to the present investigation; which
simply considers the area of the Slavonians. For the parts north of
the Carpathians, it was limited by a continuous line of _Gothini_,
_Getuinzitæ_, and _Gothones_. Whatever those were they were not
Slavonic.
Such is the sketch of the chief reasons for believing that originally
the Vistula (there or thereabouts) was the boundary of the Slavonians
on the North East; a belief confirmed by the phenomena of the
languages spoken, at the present moment, beyond that river. They
fall into few dialects; a fact which is _prima facie_ evidence of
recent introduction. The Polish branch shews itself in varieties and
subvarieties on its western frontier; the Russian on its southern and
south-eastern. The further they are found East and North, the newer
they are.
I may add that I find no facts in the special ethnology of the early
Poles, that complicate this view. On the contrary, the special
facts, such as they are, are confirmatory rather than aught else of
the western _origin_ and the eastern _direction_, of a Polish line
of encroachment, migration, occupancy, displacement, invasion, or
conquest. Under the early kings of the blood of Piast (an individual
wholly unhistoric), the locality for their exploits and occupancies
is no part of the country about the present capital, Warsaw; but the
district round Posen and Gnesen; this being the area to which the
earliest legends attach themselves.
Where this is not the case, where the Duchy of Posen or Prussian Poland
does not give us the earliest signs of Polish occupancy, the parts
about Cracow do. At any rate, the legends lie in the west and south
rather than in the east; on the Saxon or the Bohemian frontier rather
than the Lithuanic.
The Slavonic area south of the Carpathians gives us a much more complex
question--one, indeed, too complex to investigate it in all its
bearings.
That there were both Slavonians and Lithuanians in Dacia, Lower
Mœsia, Thrace, and, even, Macedon is nearly certain--and that early.
Say that they were this at the beginning of the historical period. It
will, by no means, make them aboriginal.
Such being the case I limit myself to the statement that, at the
beginning of the historical period, the evidence and reasoning that
connects the Thracians with the Getæ, the Getæ with the Daci, and the
Daci with the Sarmatian stock in general is sufficient. Whether it
makes them indigenous to their several areas is another question. It
is also another question whether the relationship between them was so
close as the current statements make it. These identify the Getæ and
Daci. I imagine that they were (there or thereabouts) as different
as the Bohemians and the Lithuanians--the Getic Lithuanians, and the
Dacian (Daci = Τζαχοι) Czekhs; both, however being Sarmatian.
I also abstain from the details of a question of still greater
importance and interest viz: the extent to which a _third_ language
of the class which contains the Slavonian and Lithuanic may or may
not have been spoken in the parts under notice. There was room for it
in the parts to the South of the Fin, and the east of the Lithuanic,
areas. There was room for it in the present Governments of Podolia,
and Volhynia, to say nothing of large portions of the drainage of the
Lower Danube. The language of such an area, if its structure coincided
with its geographical position would be liker the Lithuanic and the
most eastern branch of the Slavonic than any other Languages of the
so-called Indo-European Stock. It would also be more Sarmatian than
either German or Classical. Yet it would be both Classical and German
also, on the strength of the term Indo-European. It would be the most
Asiatic of the tongues so denominated; with some Ugrian affinities,
and others with the languages in the direction of Armenia, and Persia.
It would be a language, however, which would soon be obliterated; in
as much as the parts upon which we place it were, at an early date,
overrun by Scythians from the East, and Slavonians from the West. When
we know Volhynia, it is Turk, and Polish,--anything but aboriginal.
Such a language, however, might, in case the populations who spoke it
had made early conquests elsewhere, be, still, preserved to our own
times. Or it might have been, at a similarly early period, committed
to writings; the works in which it was embodied having come down to
us. If so, its relations to its congeners would be remarkable. _They_
would only be known in a modern, _it_ only in an ancient, form. Such
being the case the original affinity might be disguised; especially if
the transfer of the earlier language had been to some very distant and
unlikely point.
I will now apply this hypothetical series of arguments. It has long
been known that the ancient, sacred, and literary language of Northern
India has its closest grammatical affinities in Europe. With none of
the tongues of the neighbouring countries, with no form of the Tibetan
of the Himalayas or the Burmese dialects of the north-east, with no
Tamul dialect of the southern part of the Peninsula itself has it half
such close resemblances as it has with the distant and disconnected
Lithuanian.
As to the Lithuanian, it has, of course, its closest affinities with
the Slavonic tongues of Russia, Bohemia, Poland, and Servia, as
aforesaid. And when we go beyond the Sarmatian stock, and bring into
the field of comparison the other tongues of Europe, the Latin, the
Greek, the German, and the Keltic, we find that the Lithuanic is more
or less connected with them.
Now, the botanist who, found in Asia, extended over a comparatively
small area, a single species, belonging to a genus which covered
two-thirds of Europe (except so far as he might urge that everything
came from the east, and so convert the specific question into an
hypothesis as to the origin of vegetation in general) would pronounce
the _genus_ to be European. The zoologist, in a case of zoology, would
do the same.
_Mutatis mutandis_, the logic of the philologue should be that of the
naturalist. Yet it is not.
1. The area of Asiatic languages in Asia allied to the ancient Language
of India, is smaller than the area of European languages allied to the
Lithuanic; and--
2. The class or genus to which the two tongues equally belong, is
represented in Asia by the Indian division only; whereas in Europe it
falls into three divisions, each of, at least, equal value with the
single Asiatic one.
Nevertheless, the so-called Indo-European languages are deduced from
Asia.
I do not ask whether, as a matter of fact, this deduction is right or
wrong. I only state, as a matter of philological history, that it is
made, adding that the hypothesis which makes it is illegitimate. It
rests on the assumption that it is easier to bring a population from
India to Russia than to take one from Russia to India. In the case of
the more extreme language of which it takes cognisance this postulate
becomes still more inadmissible. It assumes, in the matter of the
Keltic (for instance), that it is easier to bring the people of Galway
from the Punjab, than the tribes of the Punjab from Eastern Europe. In
short, it seems to be a generally received rule amongst investigators,
that so long as we bring our migration from east to west we may let a
very little evidence go a very long way; whereas, so soon as we reverse
the process, and suppose a line from west to east, the converse becomes
requisite, and a great deal of evidence is to go but a little way. The
effect of this has been to create innumerable Asiatic hypotheses and
few or no European ones. Russia may have been peopled from Persia,
or Lithuania from Hindostan, or Greece from Asia, or any place west
of a given meridian from any place east of it--but the converse,
never. No one asks for proofs in the former case; or if he do, he is
satisfied with a very scanty modicum: whereas, in the latter, the
best authenticated statements undergo stringent scrutiny. Inferences
fare worse. They are hardly allowed at all. It is all "theory and
hypothesis" if we resort to them in cases from west to east; but it
is no "theory" and no "hypothesis" when we follow the sun and move
westwards.
Let the two lines be put on a level, and let ethnographical philology
cease to be so one-sided as it is. Let the possibility of a Western
origin of the Sanskrit language take its natural place as the member of
an alternative hitherto ignored. I do not say what will follow in the
way of historical detail. I only say (in the present paper at least)
that the logic of an important class of philological questions will be
improved. As it stands at present, it is little more than a remarkable
phenomenon in the pathology of the philological mind, a symptom of the
morbid condition of the scientific imagination of learned men.
Turning westwards we now take up the Slovenians of Carinthia and Styria
on their western frontier, not forgetting the southermost of the Czekhs
of Bohemia. How far did the Slavonic area extend in the direction of
Switzerland, Gaul, and Italy?
In the Tyrol we have such geographical names as Scharn-_itz_,
Gsh_nitz_-thal, and _Vintsh_-gau; in the Vorarlberg, Ked-_nitz_ and
Windisch-_matrei_. Even where the names are less definitely Slavonic,
the compound sibilant _tsh_, so predominant in Slavonic, so exceptional
in German, is of frequent occurrence. This, perhaps, is little, yet is
more than can be found in any country _known_ to have been other than
Slavonic.
Again--a Slavonic population in the Vorarlberg and Southern Bavaria
best accounts for the name _Vind_-elicia.
If the Slavonians are aboriginal, and if the Czekhs are the same, the
decisive evidence that, within the historical period, they have both
receded is in favor of their respective areas having originally been
greater than they are at present. Such being the case, we may bring
them both further south and further west. How far? This is a question
of minute detail, not to be answered off-hand. The rule of parsimony,
however, by which we are forbidden to multiply stocks unnecessarily,
carries them to the frontier of the Gauls in one direction, and the
Italians on the other.
If so, there may have been Slavonians on the frontier of Liguria. More
than this the Rhæti may have been Slavonic also. But many make the
Etruscans Rhætian. Is it possible however, that even the Etruscans were
Slavonic?
I know of numerous _opinions_ against their being so. I know of no
_facts_.