LINGUISTICS
LINGUISTICS as a department of Anthropology may be regarded from many
points of view. To the evolutionist language forms one of the tests
dividing the Hominidæ from the other anthropoids; the somatologist is
interested in correlating the phonetic system with the structure of the
organs connected with the mechanism of speech; and the ethnologist
studies language for the evidence it affords of ethnic affinity or
social contact, or as a means of determining the grade of culture to
which a particular people has attained, or, again, as a reflection of
their character or psychology. The linguistic classifications of
Gallatin, Humboldt, and Müller are referred to later.
[Sidenote: =The Aryan Controversy.=]
The connection between linguistics and anthropology assumed its greatest
importance in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the discoveries
and theories of philologists were adopted wholesale to explain the
problems of European ethnology, and the Aryan controversy became the
_locus_ of disturbance throughout the Continent. “No other scientific
question, with the exception, perhaps, of the doctrine of evolution, was
ever so bitterly discussed or so infernally confounded at the hands of
Chauvinistic or otherwise biassed writers.”[121]
Footnote 121:
Ripley, 1899, p. 453.
In 1786 Sir William Jones had pointed out the relationship between
Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and Celtic, and suggested a common
parentage, which was confirmed by Bopp in 1835. Unfortunately, a
primitive unity of speech was held to imply a primitive unity of race.
Among the ethnological papers read at the meeting of the British
Association in 1847 was one “On the Results of the recent Egyptian
Researches in reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology, and the
Classification of Languages,” in which Baron Bunsen sought to show that
the whole of mankind could be classified according to language. In fact,
it was taken for granted in 1847 that the study of comparative philology
would be in future the only safe foundation for the study of
anthropology.[122] The spread of this fallacy is usually attributed to
Max Müller, whose charm of style and high reputation as a Sanskrit
scholar did much to popularise the new science of philology. He invented
the term “Aryan,” which in itself contains two erroneous assumptions—one
linguistic, that the Indo-Iranian group of languages is older than its
relatives; and the other geographical, that its “cradle” was in ancient
Ariana, in Central Asia. Moreover, in his lectures he not only spoke of
an Aryan language, but of an “Aryan race.” He is credited with having
made “heroic reparation” for these errors when he wrote later: “To me an
ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and
hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic
dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar. It is worse than a Babylonian
confusion of tongues—it is downright theft.” But, as he pointed
out,[123] he himself never shared the misconception that he was accused
of launching on the world. He admits that he was not entirely without
blame, as he allowed himself occasionally the freedom to speak of the
Aryan or the Semitic race, meaning the people who spoke Aryan or Semitic
languages; but as early as 1853 he had protested against the intrusion
of linguistics into ethnology, and
called, if not for a complete divorce, at least for a judicial
separation between the study of Philology and the study of
Ethnology.... The phonologist should collect his evidence,
arrange his classes, divide and combine as if no Blumenbach had
ever looked at skulls, as if no Camper had ever measured facial
angles, as if no Owen had ever examined the base of a cranium.
His evidence is the evidence of language, and nothing else; this
he must follow, even though in the teeth of history, physical or
political.... There ought to be no compromise between
ethnological and phonological science. It is only by stating the
glaring contradictions between the two that truth can be
elicited.[124]
Footnote 122:
_Rep. Brit. Assoc._ (Cardiff), 1891, p. 787.
Footnote 123:
_Rep. Brit. Assoc._ (Cardiff), 1891, p. 787.
Footnote 124:
_Rep. Brit. Assoc._ (Cardiff), 1891, p. 787.
The protest was in vain. The belief in an “Aryan race” became an
accepted fact both in linguistics and in ethnology, and its influence
vitiates the work of many anthropologists even at the present day.
Naturally the question of the identity of the Aryan race was soon a
subject of keen debate. The French and German schools at once assumed
opposite sides, the Germans claiming that the Aryans were tall, fair,
and long-headed, the ancestors of the modern Teutons; and the French,
mainly on cultural evidence, claiming that the language, together with
civilisation, came into Europe with the Alpine race, which forms such a
large element in the modern French population.
There are two ways in which linguistics may be studied as an aid to
Anthropology—first, with regard to structural analysis, by which
linguistic affinities may be proved; secondly, by what has been called
“linguistic palæontology,” or the study of root words, by means of which
the original culture of a people may be ascertained. Philology pushed
both these methods too far. It claimed the right, by proof of structural
analysis, to link up the racial relationships of the European and
Asiatic peoples, and, by linguistic palæontology, to determine the
culture of the original “Aryans,” and to identify their original home.
It was over the question of the “Aryan cradle” that they were forced to
relinquish their too ambitious claims.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was generally believed
that our first ancestors were created in 4004 B.C. and spoke Hebrew, and
that the origin of the European languages dated from the migration of
Japhet from the plains of Shinar, _cir._ 2247. The Asiatic origin of
race and language was for long unchallenged. But in 1839 Omalius
d’Halloy, followed by Latham in 1851, began to cast doubts on the
Asiatic “cradle,” noting that the Asiatic languages had no real claim to
be considered older than those of Europe, and that in many ways the
Lithuanian and Armenian were the most archaic in the family. More
important still was the work of Benfey,[125] who may be regarded as the
originator of linguistic palæontology, and who used its evidence to
shift the original dispersal from Asia to Europe. Various philologists
followed, employing different methods to prove different theories; and
the Aryan cradle was located in many parts of Europe and Asia, ranging
from the Pamir plateau to the Baltic plains. Max Müller confessed in
1888 that “the evidence is so pliant that it is possible to make out a
more or less plausible case” for almost any part of the world.
Footnote 125:
T. Benfey, in preface to Fick’s _Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der
Indogermanischen Sprachen_, 1868.
[Sidenote: =Language and Race.=]
From claiming too much the swing of the pendulum brought linguistics
into disrepute with ethnologists, and for a time the evidence of
language was looked upon with suspicion. Even philologists were accused
of going too far in this direction.
Professor Sayce[126] says: “Identity or relationship of language can
prove nothing more than social contact.... Language is an aid to the
historian, not to the ethnologist.” But, as Professor Keane points out,
there are many cases in which language infallibly proves the existence
of ethnic elements which would otherwise have been unsuspected—as, for
example, in the case of the Basques of Europe. “Language used with
judgment is thus seen to be a great aid to the ethnologist in
determining racial affinities, and in solving many anthropological
difficulties” (1896, p. 205).
Although Max Müller wrote nearly twenty years ago, “I believe the time
will come when no anthropologist will venture to write on anything
concerning the inner life of man without having himself acquired a
knowledge of the language in which that inner life finds its truest
expression,” we are obliged still to echo his lament: “How few of the
books in which we trust with regard to the characteristics or
peculiarities of savage races have been written by men ... who have
learnt their languages until they could speak them as well as the
natives themselves!”[127]
Footnote 126:
_Science of Language_, ii., p. 317.
Footnote 127:
_Rep. Brit. Assoc._ (Cardiff), 1891, p. 792.
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