The Monosyllabic Area--the Tʻhay--the Môn and Khô--Tables--the Bʻhot--
the Chinese--Burmese--Persia--India--Tamulian family--the Brahúi--
the Dioscurians--the Georgians--Irôn--Mizjeji--Lesgians--Armenians--
Asia Minor--Lycians--Carians--Paropamisans--Conclusion.
Our plan is now to take up the different lines of migration at the
points where they were respectively broken off. This was at their
different points of contact with Asia. The first line was--
I. _The American._--In affiliating the American with the Asiatic, the
ethnologist is in the position of an irrigator, who supplies some wide
tract of thirsty land with water derived from a higher level, but kept
from the parts below by artificial embankments. These he removes;
his process being simple but effectual, and wholly independent of
the clever machinery of pumps, water-wheels, and similar branches of
hydraulics. The obstacle being taken away, gravitation does the rest.
The over-valuation of the Eskimo peculiarities is the great obstacle
in American ethnology. When these are cut down to their due level, the
connexion between America and Asia is neither more nor less than one
of the clearest we have. It is certainly clearer than the junction
of Africa and north-western Asia; not more obscure than that between
Oceanica and the Transgangetic Peninsula; and incalculably less
mysterious than that which joins Asia to Europe.
Indeed, there is no very great break, either philologically or
anatomically, until we reach the confines of China. Here, the physical
conformation keeps much the same: the language, however, becomes
_monosyllabic_.
Now many able writers lay so much stress upon this monosyllabic
character, as to believe that the separation between the tongues so
constituted and those wherein we have an increase of syllables with a
due amount of inflexion besides, is too broad to be got over. If speech
were a mineral, this might, perhaps, be true. But speech _grows_, and
if one philological fact be more capable of proof than another, it is
that of a monosyllabic and uninflected tongue being a polysyllabic
and inflected one in its first stage of development--or rather in its
_non_-development.
The Kamskadale, the Koriak, the Aino-Japanese, and the Korean are the
Asiatic languages most like those of America. Unhesitatingly as I
make this assertion--an assertion for which I have numerous tabulated
vocabularies as proof--I am by no means prepared to say that one-tenth
part of the necessary work has been done for the parts in question;
indeed, it is my impression that it is easier to connect America with
the Kurile Isles and Japan, &c., than it is to make Japan and the
Kurile Isles, &c., Asiatic. The group which they form belongs to an
area where the displacements have been very great. The Kamskadale
family is nearly extinct. The Koreans, who probably occupied a great
part of Mantshuria, have been encroached on by both the Chinese and the
Mantshús. The same has been the case with the Ainos of the lower Amúr.
Lastly, the whole of the northern half of China was originally in the
occupancy of tribes who were probably intermediate to their Chinese
conquerors, the Mantshús and the Koreans.
That the philological affinities necessary for making out the Asiatic
origin of the Americans lie anywhere but on the surface of the
language, I confess. Of the way whereby they should be looked for, the
following is an instance.
The _Yukahiri_ is an Asiatic language of the Kolyma and Indijirka.
Compare its numerals with those of the other tribes in the direction of
America. They differ. They are not Koriak, not Kamskadale, by no means
Eskimo; nor yet Kolúch. Before we find the name of a single Yukahiri
unit reappearing in other languages, we must go as far south along the
western coast of America as the parts about Vancouver’s Island. There
we find the Hailtsa tongue--where _malúk_ = _two_. Now the Yukahiri
term for _two_ is not _malúk_. It is a word which I do not remember.
Nevertheless, _malúk_ = _two_ does exist in the Yukahiri. The word for
_eight_ is _malúk_ × the term for four (2 × 4).
This phænomenon would be repeated in English if our numerals ran
thus:--1. _one_; 2. _pair_; 4. _four_; 8. _two-fours_; in which case
all arguments based upon the correspondence or non-correspondence
of the English numerals with those of Germany and Scandinavia would
be as valid as if the word _two_ were the actual name of the second
unit. Indeed, in one respect they would be more so. The peculiar way
in which the Hailtsa _malúk_ reappears in the Yukahiri is conclusive
against the name being _borrowed_. Whether it is _accidental_ is quite
another question. This depends upon the extent to which it is a single
coincidence, or one out of many. All that is attempted, at present, is
to illustrate the extent to which resemblances may be disguised, and
the consequent care requisite for detecting them[27].
II. _The connexion between Oceanica and South-eastern Asia._--The
physical conformation of the Malays is so truly that of the
Indo-Chinese, that no difficulties lie in this department. The
philological ones are a shade graver. They involve the doubt already
suggested in respect to the relations between a monosyllabic tongue
like the Siamese, and a tongue other than monosyllabic like the Malay.
This brings us to the great area of the monosyllabic tongues itself.
_Geographically_, it means China, Tibet, the Transgangetic Peninsula,
and the Sub-Himalayan parts of northern India, such as Nepal, Sikkim,
Assam, the Garo country, and other similar localities.
_Politically_, it means the Chinese, Nepalese, Burmese and Siamese
empires, along with several British-Indian and independent tribes.
The chief _religion_ is Buddhism; the physical conformation
unequivocally _Mongolian_.
The transition from _mono_-syllabic to _poly_-syllabic has never
created much difficulty with myself: nor do I think it will do so
with any writer who considers the greater difficulties involved in
the denial of it. What these are will become apparent when we look
at the map of Asia, and observe the tongues which come in contact
with those of the class in question. Then it will become clear
that _unless we allow it to form a connecting link, it not only
stands alone itself, but isolates other families_. Thus, it is only
through the Transgangetic Peninsula that the _Oceanic_ family can
be connected with the _Indian_; a connexion which rests on grounds
sufficiently good to have induced careful writers[28] to believe the
affiliation to be _direct_ and _immediate_. It is only through this
same Transgangetic Peninsula _plus_ Tibet and China that the great
Siberian families--Turanian and Japanese--can be similarly connected
with the Oceanic. Yet such a connexion really exists, though, from its
indirect character, it is but partially recognised. Nevertheless, it
_is_ recognised (often, perhaps, unconsciously) by every inquirer who
hesitates about separating the Malay from the Mongol.
A difficulty of far greater magnitude arises from the following
considerations:--There are two principles upon which languages may be
classified. According to the first, we take two or more languages as
we find them, ascertain certain of their characteristics, and then
inquire how far these characteristics coincide. Two or more languages,
thus taken, may agree in having a large per-centage of grammatical
inflexions, in which case they would agree in certain _positive_
characters. On the other hand, two or more languages may agree in
the _negative_ fact of having a small and scanty vocabulary, and an
inflexional system equally limited.
The complication here suggested lies in a fact of which a little
reflection will show the truth, viz. that _negative points of
similarity prove nothing in the way of ethnological connexion_; whence,
as far as the simplicity of their respective grammars is concerned, the
Siamese, Burmese, Chinese and Tibetan may be as little related to each
other, or to a common mother-tongue, as the most unlike languages of
the whole world of Speech.
Again--it by no means follows that because all the tongues of the
family in question are comparatively destitute of inflexion, they are
all in the same class. A characteristic of the kind may arise from
two reasons; _non_-development, or loss. There is a stage _anterior_
to the evolution of inflexions, when each word has but one form, and
when relation is expressed by mere juxtaposition, with or without the
superaddition of a change of accent. The tendencies of this stage are
to combine words in the way of composition, but not to go further.
Every word retains, throughout, its separate substantive character,
and has a meaning independent of its juxtaposition with the words with
which it combines.
But there is also a stage _subsequent_ to such an evolution, when
inflexions have become obliterated and when case-endings, like
the _i_ in _patr-i_, are replaced by prepositions (in some cases
by postpositions) like the _to_ in _to father_; and when personal
endings, like the _o_ in _voc-o_, are replaced by pronouns, like the
_I_ in _I call_. Of the _first_ of these stages, the Chinese is the
language which affords the most typical specimen that can be found in
the present _late_ date of languages--_late_, considering that we are
looking for a sample of its earliest forms. Of the _last_ of these
stages the English of the year 1851 affords the most typical specimen
that can be found in the present _early_ date of language--early,
considering that we are looking for a sample of its latest forms.
Hence--
_a._ How far the different monosyllabic tongues are _all_ in the same
stage--is one question.
_b._ Whether this stage be the _earlier_ or the _later_ one--is
another; and--
_c._ Whether they are connected by _relationship_ as well as in
_external form_--is a third.
In answer to this, it is safe to say (a.) that they are _all_
uninflected, because inflexions have yet to be evolved; not because
they have been evolved and lost--as is the case with the English, a
language which stands at one end of the scale, just as the Chinese does
at the other.
(b.) They are, also, all connected by a _bonâ fide_ ethnological
relationship; as can be shown by numerous tables; the Chinese and
Tibetans being, apparently, the two extremes, in the way of difference.
As for their geographical distribution, it is a blank-and-prize
lottery, with large and small areas in juxtaposition and contrast, just
as has been the case in America and in Africa; the Sub-Himalayan parts
of British India, Sikkim and Nepâl, and the Indo-Burmese frontier
(or the country about Assam and Munipúr) being the tracts where the
multiplicity of mutually unintelligible tongues within a limited
district is greatest.
Again--whenever the latter distribution occurs we have either a
mountain-fastness, political independence, or the primitive pagan
creed--generally all three.
The population speaking a monosyllabic language which is in the
most immediate contact with the continental tribes of the Oceanic
stock, is the Southern Siamese. This reaches as far as the northern
frontier of Kedah (Quedah), about 8° N. L. Everything north of this
is monosyllabic; with the exception of a Malay settlement (probably,
though not certainly, of recent origin) on the coast of Kambogia.
Now the great stock to which the Siamese belong is called Tʻhay. Its
direction is from north to south, coinciding with the course of the
great river Menam; beyond the head-waters of which the Tʻhay tribes
reach as far as Assam. Of these northern Tʻhay, the _Khamti_ are the
most numerous; and it is important to know that as many as 92 words
out of 100 are common to this dialect and to the classical Siamese of
Bankok.
Again, the intermediate tribes of the Upper and Middle Menam--the
Lau--speak a language as unequivocally Siamese as the Khamti. If so,
the Tʻhay tongue, widely extended as it is in the particular direction
from north to south, is a tongue falling into but few dialects; the
inference from which is, that it has spread within a comparatively
recent period. Consequently, it has encroached upon certain other
populations and effected certain displacements.
I think that even in the minuter details that now suggest themselves we
can see our way; so far, at least, as to determine in which direction
the movement took place--whether it were from north to south or from
south to north.
Few classes of tongues can be better studied for ethnological purposes
than the monosyllabic. A paper of Buchanan’s, and another of Leyden’s,
are amongst the most valuable articles of the Asiatic Researches. One
of Mr. Brown’s in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal gives us
numerous tabulated vocabularies for the Burmese, Assamese and Indian
frontiers. Mr. Hodgson and Dr. Robertson have done still more for the
same parts. Lastly, the chief southern dialects, which have been less
studied, are tabulated in the second volume of ‘Crawfurd’s Embassy to
Siam.’
Upon looking over these, we find specimens of the two tongues which
lie east and west of the southern Siamese; the first being the _Khô_
language of Kambogia, and the second the _Môn_ of Pegu. Each of these
is spoken over a small area; indeed the Môn, which is, at present,
nearly limited to the Delta of the Irawaddi, is fast giving way before
the encroaching dialects of the Burmese class, whilst the Khô of
Kambogia is similarly limited to the lower part of the Mekhong, and is
hemmed in by the Siamese, the Lau, and the Anamitic of Cochin China.
Now, separated as they are, the Môn and Khô are liker to each other
than either is to the interjacent Siamese; the inference from this
being that at one time they were connected by transitional and
intermediate dialects, aboriginal to the lower Menam, but now displaced
by the Siamese of Bankok introduced from the parts to the northwards.
If this be the case, the monosyllabic tongue most closely allied to
those of the Malayan Peninsula (which are _not_ monosyllabic) is
not the present Siamese, but the language which the present Siamese
displaced.
How far this view is confirmed by any special affinities between
the Malay dialects with the Môn and Khô is more than I can say. The
examination, however, should be made.
The _southern_ Tʻhay dialects are not only less like the Môn and Khô
than is expected from their locality, but the _northern_ ones are less
like those of the Indo-Burmese frontier and Assam than the geographical
contiguity prepares us to surmise; since the per-centage of words
common to the Khamti and the other dialects of Munipur and Assam is
only as follows[29].
Siamese. Khamti.
0 1 per cent. with the Aka.
0 1 „ „ Abor.
3 5 „ „ Mishimi.
6 8 „ „ Burmese.
8 8 „ „ Karien.
3 3 „ „ Singpho.
10 10 „ „ Jili.
1 3 „ „ Garo.
3 3 „ „ Munipúri.
1 1 „ „ Songphu.
0 0 „ „ Kapwi.
1 1 „ „ Koreng.
0 0 „ „ Maram.
0 0 „ „ Kamphung.
0 0 „ „ Luhuppa.
0 0 „ „ North Tankhul.
0 0 „ „ Central Tankhul.
0 0 „ „ South Tankhul.
0 0 „ „ Khoibu.
0 0 „ „ Maring.
This shows that their original locality is to be sought in an _eastern_
as well as in a _northern_ direction.
If the Tʻhay dialects are less like the Burmese than most other members
of their class, they are more like the Bʻhot of Tibet.
_English_ boat.
Ahom _ru._
Khamti _hu._
Lau _heic._
Siamese _reng._
W. Tibetan[30] _gru._
S. Tibetan[30] _kua._
_English_ bone.
Khamti _nuk._
Lau _duk._
Siamese _ka-duk._
S. Tibetan _ruko._
_English_ crow.
Ahom _ka._
Khamti _ka._
Lau _ka._
Siamese _ka._
W. Tibetan _kha-ta._
_English_ ear.
Khamti (3) _hú._
W. Tibetan _sá._
S. Tibetan _amcho._
_English_ egg.
Ahom _khrai._
Khamti _khai._
Lau _khai._
Siamese _khai._
_English_ father.
Ahom (3) _po._
W. Tibetan _phá._
S. Tibetan _pálá._
_English_ fire.
Ahom (3) _fai._
W. Tibetan _má._
S. Tibetan _mé._
_English_ flower.
Ahom _blok._
Khamti _mok._
Lau _dok._
Siamese _dokmai._
W. Tibetan _me-tog._
S. Tibetan _men-tok._
_English_ foot.
Ahom _tin._
W. Tibetan _{r}kang-pa._
S. Tibetan _kango._
_English_ hair.
Ahom _phrum._
Khamti _phom._
Lau _phom._
Siamese _phom._
W. Tibetan _skra._
---- _spu._
S. Tibetan _ta._
---- _kra._
_English_ head.
Ahom _ru._
Khamti _ho._
Lau _ho._
Siamese _hoa._
W. Tibetan _mgo._
S. Tibetan _go._
_English_ moon.
Siamese _tawan._
W. Tibetan _{z}lava._
S. Tibetan _dawa._
_English_ mother.
Ahom (4) _me._
Tibetan _ama._
_English_ night.
Khamti (3) _khün._
W. Tibetan _m tshan-mo._
S. Tibetan _chen-mo._
_English_ oil.
Ahom _man grá._
Khamti _nam._
---- _man._
Lau (2) _nam._
---- _man._
S. Tibetan _num._
_English_ road.
Ahom (2) _táng._
Siamese _tháng._
W. Tibetan _lami._
S. Tibetan _lani._
_English_ salt.
Ahom _klu._
Khamti _ku._
Lau _keu._
---- _keou._
Siamese _kleua._
_English_ skin.
Ahom _plek._
W. Tibetan _pag-spa._
S. Tibetan _pag-pa._
_English_ tooth.
Ahom _khiu._
Khamti _khiu._
Lau _khiau._
Siamese _khiau._
Tibetan _só._
_English_ tree.
Ahom _tun._
Khamti _tun._
Lau _tón._
Siamese _tón._
W. Tibetan _l. jon-shing._
S. Tibetan _shin dong._
_English_ three.
Ahom (3) _sam._
W. Tibetan _q-sum._
S. Tibetan _sum._
_English_ four.
Ahom (3) _si._
W. Tibetan _bzhi._
S. Tibetan _zhyi._
_English_ five.
Ahom (3) _ha._
W. Tibetan _hna._
S. Tibetan _gna._
_English_ six.
Ahom _ruk._
Siamese (3) _hok._
W. Tibetan _druk._
S. Tibetan _thú._
_English_ nine.
Ahom (3) _kau._
W. Tibetan _d-gu._
S. Tibetan _guh._
_English_ in, on.
Ahom _nu._
Khamti _nau._
Lau _neu._
Tibetan _la, na._
_English_ now.
Ahom _tinai._
Khamti _tsang._
Lau _leng._
W. Tibetan _deng-tse._
S. Tibetan _thanda._
_English_ to-morrow.
Ahom _sang-manai._
Tibetan _sang._
_English_ drink.
Siamese _deum._
W. Tibetan _{p}thung._
S. Tibetan _thung._
_English_ sleep.
Ahom (2) _non._
W. Tibetan _nyan._
S. Tibetan _nyé._
_English_ laugh.
Ahom _khru._
Khamti _khó._
Lau _khóa._
Siamese _hoaro._
W. Tibetan _{b}gad._
S. Tibetan _{f}gá._
[30] S. means the _spoken_, W. the _written_ Tibetan. The collation has
been made from a table of Mr. Hodgson’s in the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal. The Ahom is a Tʻhay dialect.
The Bʻhot itself is spoken over a large area with but little
variation. We anticipate the inference. It is an intrusive tongue,
of comparatively recent diffusion. What has been its direction? From
east to west rather than from west to east; at least such is the
deduction from its similarity to the Tʻhay, and from the multiplicity
of dialects--representatives of a receding population--in the Himalayas
of Nepâl and Sikkim. This, however, is a point on which I speak with
hesitation.
Dialects of the Bʻhot class are spoken as far westward as the parts
about Cashmír and the watershed of the Indus and Oxus. This gives us
the greatest extent eastwards of any unequivocally monosyllabic tongue.
The Chinese seem to have effected displacements as remarkable for
both breadth and length as the Tʻhay were for length. We get at their
original locality by the exhaustive process. On the northern and
western frontier they keep encroaching at the present moment--at the
expense of the Mantshús and Mongolians. For the provinces of Chansi,
Pe-tche-li, Chantung, Honan, &c., indeed, for four-fifths of the whole
empire, the uniformity of speech indicates a recent diffusion. In
Setshuen and Yunnan the type changes probably from that of the true
Chinese to the Tibetan, Tʻhay and Burmese. In Tonkin and Cochin the
language is like but different--like enough to be the only monosyllabic
language which is placed by any one in the same section with the
Chinese, but different enough to make this position of it a matter of
doubt with many. Putting all this together, the south and south-eastern
provinces of China appear to be the oldest portions of the present area.
In fixing upon these as the parent provinces, the evidence of ethnology
on the one side, and that of the mass of tradition and inference which
passes under the honourable title of Chinese history on the other,
disagree. This latter is as follows:--
At some period anterior to 550 =B.C.=, the first monarch with whom
the improvement of China began, and whose name was Yao, ruled over a
small portion of the present empire, viz. its _north-west_ district;
and the first nations that he fought against were the Yen and Tsi, in
Pe-tche-li and Shantong respectively.
Later still, Honan was conquered.
=B.C.= 550. All to the south of the Ta-keang was barbarous; and the
title of King of Chinese was only _Vang_ or _prince_, not _Hoang-te_ or
_Emperor_.
At this time Confucius lived. Amongst other things he wrote the
_Tschan-tsen_, or Annals of his own time.
=B.C.= 213. Shi-hoang-ti, the first Emperor of all China, built the
great wall, colonized Japan, conquered the parts about Nankin, and
_purposely destroyed all the previously existing documents upon which
he could lay hand_.
=B.C.= 94. Sse-mats-sian lived. What Shi-hoang-ti missed in the way
of records, Sse-mats-sian preserved, and, as such, passes for the
Herodotus China.
A destruction of the earlier records, with a subsequent reconstruction
of the history which they are supposed to have embodied, is always
suspicious; and when once the principle of reconstruction is admitted,
no value can be attached to the intrinsic probability of a narration.
It may be probable. It may be true. It cannot, however, be historical
unless supported by historical testimony; since, if true, it is a
guess; and if probable, a specimen of the tact of the inventor. At
best, it can but be a _tradition_ or an _inference_, the basis of which
may be a certain amount of fact--little or great according to the
temperament of the investigator.
Now, in the previous notice of the history of Chinese civilization, we
have placed its claims to a high antiquity under as favourable a point
of view as is allowable. They bear the appearance of truth--so much so,
that if we had reason to believe that there were any means of recording
them at so early an epoch as 600 years =B.C.=, and of preserving them
to so late a one as the year ’51, scepticism would be impertinent. But
this is not the case. An historical fact must be taken upon evidence,
not upon probabilities; and to argue the antiquity of a civilization
like the Chinese from the antiquity of its history, and afterwards to
claim an historical value for remote traditions on the strength of an
early civilization, is to argue in a circle.
Without saying that _all_ argument upon the antiquity of the Chinese
Empire is of this sort, it may fairly be said that _much_ of it has
been so--so much as to make Confucius as mythological a character
as Minos, and to bring the earliest reasonable records to an epoch
subsequent to the introduction of Buddhism from India. Even this
antiquity is only probable.
A square block of land between the Ganges and Upper Irawaddi is
occupied by one dominant, and upwards of thirty subordinate sections
of one and the same population--the _Burmese_. Some of these are
mountaineers, and have retreated before the Indians from the south
and west--encroachers upon the originally Burmese countries of Assam,
Chittagong and Sylhet. Others are themselves intruders, or (what is
much the same) consolidators of conquered countries. Such are the Avans
of the Burmese Empire, properly so called, who seem to have followed
the course of the Irawaddi, displacing not only small tribes akin to
themselves, but the Môn of Pegu, as well. Lastly, the Kariens emulate
the Tʻhay in the length of their area and in its north-and-south
direction, being found in the southern part of the Tenasserim Provinces
(in 11° N. L.) and on the very borders of China (in 23° N. L.).
No great family has its distribution so closely coincident with a
water-system as the one in question. The plateau of Mongolia and the
Himalayas are its boundaries. It occupies the whole[31] of all the
rivers which rise within these limits, and fall into either the Bay of
Bengal or the Chinese Sea; whereas (with the exception of the Himalayan
portions of the Indus and the Ganges) it occupies none of the others.
The lines of migration with the Indo-Chinese populations have generally
followed the water-courses of the Indo-Chinese rivers; and civilization
has chiefly flourished along their valleys. Yet, as these lead to an
ocean interrupted by no fresh continent, the effect of their direction
has been to isolate the nations who possess them. I imagine that this
has much more to do with peculiarities of the Chinese civilization than
aught else. Had the Hoang-ho fallen into a sea like the Mediterranean,
the Celestial Empire would, probably, have given and taken in the way
of social and political influence, have acted on the manners of the
world at large, and have itself been reacted on. Differences should
only be attributed to so indefinite and so impalpable a force as _race_
when all other things are equal.
Upon the principle of taking the questions in the order of complexity,
so as to dispose of the simplest first, I pass over, for the present,
the connexion between Africa and South-Western Asia, and take the
easier of the two European ones.
_The Turanians._--The line which, beginning at Lapland, and, after
exhibiting the great Turanian affiliations, ends at the wall of China,
comprising the Ugrians, Samoeids[32], Yeniseians[32], Yukahiri[32],
Turks, Mongols, and Tungusians[33], is connected with the area of the
monosyllabic languages in different degrees of clearness according to
the criterion employed. The physical conformation is nearly identical.
The languages differ--the Turanian, like the Oceanic and the American,
being inflected and polysyllabic[34]. With this difference, the
complexities of the affiliation begin and end. Their amount has been
already suggested.
A great part of Northern Europe, Independent Tartary, Siberia,
Mongolia, Tibet, China, and the Transgangetic Peninsula, has now been
disposed of. Nevertheless, India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Caucasus
remain; in size inconsiderable, in difficulty great--greatly difficult
because the points of contact between Europe and Asia, and Africa
and Asia, fall within this area; greatly difficult because the
displacements have been enormous; greatly difficult because, besides
displacement, there has been intermixture as well. Lest any one
undervalue the displacement, let him look at Asia Minor, which is now
Turk, which has been Roman, Persian and Greek, and which has no single
unequivocal remnant of its original population throughout its whole
length and breadth. Yet, great as this is, it is no more than what we
expect _à priori_. What families are and have been more encroaching
than the populations hereabouts--Turks from the north, Arabs from the
south, and Persians from the east? The oldest empires of the world lie
here--and old empires imply early consolidation; early consolidation,
premature displacement. Then come the phænomena of intermixture. In
India there is a literary language of considerable age, and full of
inflexions. Of these inflexions not one in ten can be traced in any
modern tongue throughout the whole of Asia. Yet they are rife and
common in many European ones. Again, the _words_ of this same language,
_minus_ its inflexions, are rife and common in the very tongues where
the inflexions are wanting; in some cases amounting to nine-tenths of
the language. What is the inference from this? Not a very clear one at
any rate.
Africa has but one point of contact with Asia, _i.e._ Arabia. It
is safe to say this, because, whether we carry the migration over
the Isthmus of Suez or the Straits of Babel-Mandeb, the results are
similar. The Asiatic stock, in either case, is the same--Semitic. But
Europe, in addition to its other mysteries, has two; perhaps three. One
of these is simple enough--that of the Lap line and the Turanian stock.
But the others are not so. It is easy to make the Ugrians Asiatic; but
by no means easy to connect the other Europeans with the Ugrians. The
Sarmatians, nearest in geography, have never been very successfully
affiliated with them. Indeed, so unwilling have writers been to admit
this relationship, that the Finnic hypothesis, with all its boldness,
has appeared the better alternative. Yet the Finnic hypothesis is but a
guess. Even if it be not so, it only embraces the Basks and Albanians;
so that the so-called Indo-Europeans still stand over.
For reasons like these, the parts forthcoming will be treated with far
greater detail than those which have preceded; with nothing like the
detail of _minute_ ethnology, but still slowly and carefully.
All that thus stands over for investigation is separated from the area
already disposed of by that line of mountains which is traced from the
Garo Hills in the north-east of Bengal to the mouth of the Kuban in the
Black Sea. First come the Eastern Himalayas, which, roughly speaking,
may be said to divide the Indian kingdoms and dependencies from the
Chinese Empire. They do not do so exactly, but they do so closely
enough for the present purpose.
They may also be said, in the same way, to divide the nations of the
Hindu from those of more typically Mongolian conformation.
They may also be said, in the same way, to divide the Indian tongues
from the monosyllabic.
On the _north_ side of this range, languages undoubtedly, monosyllabic
are spoken as far westwards as Little Tibet. On the _south_ there are
Hindu characteristics both numerous and undoubted as far in the same
direction as _Cashmír_.
Then comes a change. To the north and west of Cashmír is a _Kohistan_,
or _mountain-country_, which will soon require being described in
detail. The line, however, which we are at present engaged upon is
that of the northern boundary of the Valley of the Kabúl River, the
mountains between Cabul and Herat, and the continuation of the same
ridge from Herat to the south-eastern corner of the Caspian. _North_ of
this we have--roughly speaking--the Uzbek and Turcoman Turks; south of
it, the Afghans and Persians Proper. Bokhara, however, is Persian, and
the _Kohistan_ in question is _not_ Turk--whatever else it may be.
To proceed--this line runs nearly parallel to the southern shore
of the Caspian. Of the provinces to the north of it, Asterabad is
partly Turk and partly Persian; Mazenderan and Ghilan, Persian. From
Ghilan northwards and westwards, the valleys of the Cyrus and Araxes
form the chief exception--but, saving these, all is mountain and
mountaineership. Indeed, it is Ararat and Armenia which lie on our
left, and the vast and vague Caucasus which rears itself in front.
The simplest ethnology of the parts between this range, the Semitic
area, and the sea, is that of the Persian province of Khorasan. With
Persia we are so much in the habit of connecting ideas of Eastern pomp
and luxury, that we are scarcely able to give it its true geographical
conditions of general sterility. Yet it is really a desert with
oases--a desert with oases for the far greater part of its area. And
of all its provinces few are more truly so than Khorasan. Here we
have a great elevated central table-land; pre-eminently destitute of
rivers; and with but few towns. Of these Yezd is the chief in interest:
the head-quarters of remains of the old fire-worship: Yezd the city
of the Parsees, more numerous there than in all the others in Persia
besides. Perhaps, too, it is the ethnological centre of the Persian
stock; since in a westerly direction they extend to Kurdistan, and in a
north-eastern one as far as Badukshan and Durwaz on the source of the
Oxus.
The northern frontier is Turcoman, where the pastoral robbers of the
parts between Bokhara and the Caspian encroach, and have encroached.
As far south as Shurukhs they are to be found; and east of Shurukhs
they are succeeded by the Hazarehs--probably _wholly_, certainly
_partially_, of Mongolian blood.
Abbasabad on the north-west is a Georgian colony. On the line between
Meshed and Herat are several Kurd colonies. In Seistan we have
Persians; but further south there are Biluch and Brahúi. Due east the
Afghans come in.
Kerman is also Persian; and that to a greater degree than Khorasan.
Fars is the same; yet west of Fars the population changes, and Arabian
elements occur. They increase in Khuzistan; and in Irak Arabi we,
at one and the same time, reach the rich alluvia of the Tigris and
Euphrates and a doubtful frontier. Whether this was originally Arab or
Persian is a matter of doubt.
From Irak we must subtract Laristan, and the Baktyari Mountains, as
well as the whole north-western half. Hamadan is the ancient Ecbatana;
the ancient Ecbatana was Median--but that the Medes and Persians were
as closely allied in blood as we suppose them to have been in their
unalterable laws, is by no means a safe assumption. The existence
of a _third_ language in the arrow-headed inscriptions yet awaits a
satisfactory explanation.
On the other hand, Mazenderan is wholly Persian; and so is Ghilan
Proper. The Talish, however, to the north of that province, are,
possibly, of another stock. Asterabad, as stated above, is a frontier
province.
I think that there is good reason for believing Ajerbijan to have been,
originally, other than Persian.
In Balkh and Bokhara, the older--but not necessarily the
oldest--population appears to be Persian under recently immigrant Uzbek
masters. Beyond these countries, the Persians reappear as the chief
population, _i.e._ in Badukshan and Durwaz.
Here the proper Persian population ends--but not either wholly or
abruptly.
Three modifications of it occur--
1. In Biluchistan to the south-east.
2. In Kurdistan to the west.
3. In Afghanistan to the east.
Besides which, there are Persians encroaching upon the Armenian and
Caucasian area in Shirvan, Erivan, and Karabagh--in all of which
countries, as well as in Ajerbijan, I believe it to have been intrusive.
_The Biluch._--East and south-east of the proper Persians of Kerman
come the Biluch, of Biluchistan. There is certainly a change of type
here. Physically, the country is much like the table-land of Kerman.
India, however, is approached; so that the Biluch are frontier tribes.
To a certain extent they are encroachers. We find them in Sind, in
Múltan, and in the parts between the Indus and the Sulimani Mountains,
and in the middle part of the Sulimani Mountains themselves. They
style themselves _Usul_ or _The Pure_, a term which implies either
displacement or intermixture in the parts around. Their language is
a modified (many call it a _bad_) Persian. Philologically, however,
it may be the older and more instructive dialect--though I have no
particular reasons for thinking it so. Hindu features of physiognomy
now appear. So do Semitic elements of polity and social constitution.
We have tribes, clans, and families; with divisions and sub-divisions.
We have a criminal law which puts us in mind of the Levites. We have
classes which scorn to intermarry; and this suggests the idea of
_caste_. Then we have pastoral habits as in Mongolia. The religion,
however, is Mahometan, so that if any remains of the primitive
Paganism, available for the purposes of ethnological classification,
still exist, they lie too far below the surface to have been observed.
Captain Postans distinguishes the Biluch from the Mekrani of Mekran;
but of this latter people I know no good description. They are,
probably, Kerman Persians. The hill-range between Jhalawan and Sind is
occupied by a family which has commanded but little notice; yet is it
one of the most important in the world, the Brahúi.
_The Kurds._--A line drawn obliquely across Persia from Biluchistan
towards the north-west brings us to another frontier population; a
population conterminous with the Semitic Arabs of Mesopotamia, and the
unplaced Armenians. These are mountaineers--the Kurds of Kurdistan.
Name for name, they are the _Carduchi_ of the Anabasis. Name for
name, they are the _Gordyæi_. Name for name, they are, probably,
the _Chaldæi_ and _Khasd-im_--a fact which engenders a difficult
complication, since the Chaldæi in the eyes of nine writers out of
ten--though not in those of so good an authority as Gesenius--are
Semitic. The Kurd area is pre-eminently irregular in outline. It is
equally remarkable for its physical conditions. It is a range of
mountains--just the place wherein we expect to find old and aboriginal
populations rather than new and intrusive ones. On the other hand,
however, the Kurd form of the Persian tongue is not remarkable for the
multiplicity and difference of its dialects--a fact which suggests the
opposite inference. Kurds extend as far south as the northern frontier
of Fars, as far north as Armenia, and as far west as the head-waters
of the Halys. Have they encroached? This is a difficult question. The
Armenians are a people who have generally given way before intruders;
but the Arabs are rather intruders than the contrary. The Kurd
direction is vertical, _i.e._ narrow rather than broad, and from north
to south (or _vice versâ_) rather than from east to west (or _vice
versâ_), a direction common enough where it coincides with the valley
of a river, but rare along a mountain-chain. Nevertheless it reappears
in South America, where the Peruvian area coincides with that of the
Andes.
_The Afghans._--The Afghan area is very nearly the water-system of the
river Helmund. The direction in which it has become extended is east
and north-east; in the former it has encroached upon Hindostan, in
the latter upon the southern members of a class that may conveniently
be called the Paropamisan. In this way (I think) the Valley of the
Cabul River has become Afghan. Its relations to the Hazareh country
are undetermined. Most of the Hazarehs are Mongolian in physiognomy.
Some of them are Mongolian in both physiognomy and language. This
indicates intrusion and intermixture--intrusion and intermixture which
history tells us are subsequent to the time of Tamerlane. Phænomena
suggestive of intrusion and intermixture are rife and common throughout
Afghanistan. In some cases--as in that of Hazarehs--it is recent, or
subsequent to the Afghan occupation; in others, it is ancient and prior
to it.
_Bokhara._--I have not placed the division containing the Tajiks of
Balkh, Kúnduz, Durwaz, Badukshan, and Bokhara, on a level with that
containing the Afghans, Kurds and Biluch, because I am not sure of
its value. Probably, however, it is in reality as much a separate
substantive class as any of the preceding. Here the intrusion has
been so great, the political relations have been so separate, and the
intermixed population is so heterogeneous as for it to have been, for a
long time, doubtful whether the people of Bokhara were Persian or Turk.
Klaproth, however, has shown that they belong to the former division,
though subject to the Uzbek Turks. If so, the present Tajiks represent
the ancient Bactrians and Sogdians--the Persians of the valley and
water system of the Oxus. But what if these were intruders? I have
little doubt about the word _Oxus_ (_Ok-sus_) representing the same
root as the _Yak_ in _Yaxsartes_ (_Yak-sartes_), and the _Yaik_, the
name of the river flowing into the northern part of the Caspian. Now
this is the _Turanian_ name for _river_, a name found equally in the
Turk, Uguari, and Hyperborean languages. At any rate, Bokhara is on an
ethnological frontier.
But Bactria and Sogdiana were Persian at the time of Alexander’s
successors; they were Persian at the very beginning of the historical
period. Be it so. The historical period is but a short one, and there
is no reason why a population should not encroach at one time and be
itself encroached upon at another.
All the parts enumerated, and all the divisions, are so undoubtedly
Persian, that few competent authorities deny the fact. The most that
has ever been done is to separate the Afghans. Sir W. Jones did this.
He laid great stress upon certain Jewish characteristics, had his
head full of the Ten Tribes, and was deceived in a vocabulary of
their languages. Mr. Norris also is inclined to separate them, but on
different grounds. He can neither consider the Afghan language to be
Indo-European, nor the Persian to be otherwise. His inference is true,
if his facts are. But what if the Persian be other than Indo-European?
In that case they are both free to fall into the same category.
But the complexities of the Persian population are not complete.
There is the division between the _Tajiks_ and the _Iliyats_; the
former being the settled occupants of towns and villages speaking
Persian, the others pastoral or wandering tribes speaking the Arab,
Kurd, and Turk languages. That _Tajik_ is the same word as the root
_Taoc_, in _Taoc-ene_, a part of the ancient country of Persis (now
_Fars_), and, consequently, in a pre-eminent Persian locality, is a
safe conjecture. The inference, however, that such was the original
locality of the Persian family is traversed by numerous--but by no
means insuperable--difficulties. In respect to their chronological
relations, the general statement may be made, that wherever we have
Tajiks and Iliyats together, the former are the older, the latter the
newer population. Hence it is not in any Iliyat tribe that we are to
look for any nearer approach to the aborigines than what we find in the
normal population. They are the analogues of the Jews and gipsies of
Great Britain rather than of the Welsh--recent grafts rather than parts
of the old stock. In Afghanistan this was not so clearly the case.
Indeed, the inference was the other way.
The antiquities and history of Persia are too well-known to need
more than a passing allusion. The creed was that of Zoroaster;
still existent, in a modified (perhaps a corrupted, perhaps an
improved) form, in the religion of the modern Parsis. The language
of the Zoroastrian Scriptures was called Zend. Now the Zend is
Indo-European--Indo-European and highly inflected. The _inflexions_,
however, in the modern Persian are next to none; and of those few it
is by no means certain that they are Zend in origin. Nevertheless, the
great majority of modern Persian words _are_ Zend. What does this mean?
It means that the philologist is in a difficulty; that the grammatical
structure points one way and the vocabulary another. This difficulty
will meet us again.
_India._--In the time of Herodotus, and even earlier, India was part of
the Persian empire. Yet India was not Persia. It was no more Persia in
the days of Darius than it is English now. The original Indian stock
was and is peculiar--peculiar in its essential fundamentals, but not
pure and unmodified. The vast extent to which this modification implies
encroachment and intermixture is the great key to nine-tenths of the
complexities of the difficult ethnology of Hindostan. Whether we look
to the juxtaposition of the different forms of Indian speech, the
multiform degrees of fusion between them, the sections and sub-sections
of their creeds--legion by name,--the fragments of ancient paganism,
the differences of skin and feature, or the institution of caste,
intrusion followed by intermixture, and intermixture in every degree
and under every mode of manifestation, is the suggestion.
And now we have our duality--viz. the primitive element and the foreign
one--the stock and the graft. Nothing is more certain than that the
graft came from the north-west. Does this necessarily mean from Persia?
Such is the current opinion; or, if not from Persia, from some of
those portions of India itself nearest the Persian frontier. There are
reasons, however, for refining on this view. Certain influences foreign
to India may have come _through_ Persia, without being Persian. The
proof that a particular characteristic was introduced into India _viâ_
Persia is one thing: the proof that it originated in Persia is another.
They have often, however, been confounded.
In the south of India the foreign element is manifested less than in
the north; so that it is the south of India which exhibits the original
stock in its fullest form. Its chief characteristics are referable
to three heads, physical form, creed, and language. In respect to
the first, the southern Indian is darker than the northern--_cæteris
paribus_, _i. e._ under similar external conditions; but not to the
extent that a mountaineer of the Dekhan is blacker than a Bengali from
the delta of the Ganges. Descent, too, or caste influences colour, and
the purer the blood the lighter the skin. Then the lips are thicker,
the nose less frequently aquiline, the cheek-bones more prominent,
and the eyebrows less regular in the southrons. The most perfect form
of the Indian face gives us regular and delicate features, arched
eyebrows, an aquiline nose, an oval contour, and a clear brunette
complexion. All this is Persian.
Depart from it and comparisons suggest themselves. If the lips thicken
and the skin blackens, we think of the Negro; if the cheek-bones stand
out and if the eye--as it sometimes does--become oblique, the Mongol
comes into our thoughts.
The original Indian creeds are best characterized by negatives. They
are neither Brahminic nor Buddhist.
The language, for the present, is best brought under the same
description. No man living considers it to be _Indo-European_.
In proportion as any particular Indian population is characterized by
these three marks, its origin, purity, and indigenous nature become
clearer--and _vice versâ_. Hence, they may be taken in the order of
their outward and visible signs of aboriginality.
First come--as already stated--the Southrons of the Continent[35]; and
first amongst these the mountaineers. In the Eastern Ghauts we have
the Chenchwars, between the Kistna and the Pennar; in the Western the
Cohatars, Tudas, Curumbars, Erulars, and numerous other hill-tribes;
all agreeing in being either imperfect Brahminists or Pagans, and in
speaking and languages akin to the Tamul of the coast of Coromandel;
a language which gives its name to the class, and introduces the
important philological term _Tamulian_. The physical appearance of
these is by no means so characteristic as their speech and creed. The
mountain _habitats_ favour a lightness of complexion. On the other, it
favours the Mongol prominence of the cheek-bones. Many, however, of the
Tudas have all the regularity of the Persian countenance--yet they are
the pure amongst the pure of the native Tamulian Indians.
In the _plains_ the language is Tamulian, but the creed Brahminic;
a state of evidence which reaches as far north as the parts about
Chicacole east, and Goa west.
In the _South_, then, are the chief samples of the true Tamulian
aborigines of Indian; the characteristics of whom have been preserved
by the simple effect of distance from the point of disturbance.
Distance, however, alone has been but a weak preservative. The
combination of a mountain-stronghold has added to its efficiency.
In _Central_ India one of these safeguards is impaired. We are nearer
to Persia; and it is only in the mountains that the foreign elements
are sufficiently inconsiderable to make the Tamulian character of the
population undoubted and undeniable. In the Mahratta country and in
Gondwana, the Ghonds, in Orissa the Kols, Khonds, and Súrs, and in
Bengal the Rajmahali mountaineers are Tamulian in tongue and Pagan in
creed--or, if not Pagan, but imperfectly Brahminic. But, then, they are
all mountaineers. In the more level country around them the language is
Mahratta, Udiya, or Bengali.
Now the Mahratta, Udiya[36] and Bengali are _not_ unequivocally and
undeniably Tamulian. They are so far from it, that they explain what
was meant by the negative statement as to the Tamulian tongues not
being considered _Indo-European_. This is just what the tongues in
question _have_ been considered. Whether rightly or wrongly is not very
important at present. If rightly, we have a difference of language as
_primâ facie_--but not as _conclusive_--evidence of a difference of
stock. If wrongly, we have, in the very existence of an opinion which
common courtesy should induce us to consider reasonable, a practical
exponent of some considerable difference of some sort or other--of a
change from the proper Tamulian characteristics to something else so
great in its _degree_ as to look like a difference in _kind_. With the
Bengali--and to a certain extent with the other two populations--the
foreign element approaches its _maximum_, or (changing the expression)
the evidence of Tamulianism is at its _minimum_. Yet it is not
annihilated. The physical appearance of the Mahratta, at least, is
that of the true South Indian. Even if the language be other than
Tamulian, the Hindús of northern India may still be of the same stock
with those of Mysore and Malabar, in the same way that a Cornishman is
a Welshman--_i. e._ a Briton who has changed his mother-tongue for the
English.
Intermediate to the Khonds and the Bengali, in respect to the evidence
of their Tamulian affinities, are the mountaineers of north-western
India. Here, the preservative effects of distance are next to nothing.
Those, however, of the mountain-fastnesses supply the following
populations--Berdars, Ramusi, Wurali, Paurias, Kulis, Bhils, Mewars,
Moghis, Minas, &c. &c., speaking languages of the same class with the
Mahratta, Udiya, and Bengali, but all imperfectly Brahminic in creed.
The other important languages of India in the same class with those
last-mentioned, are the Guzerathi of Guzerat, the Hindú of Oude, the
Punjabi of the Punjab, and several others not enumerated--partly
because it is not quite certain how we are to place them[37], partly
because they may be sub-dialects rather than separate substantive
forms of speech. They take us up to the Afghan, Biluch, and Tibetan
frontier.
These have been dealt with. But there is one population, belonging to
these selfsame areas, with which we have further dealings, Bilúchistan
has been described; but not in detail. The Bilúch that give their name
to the country have been noticed as Persian. But the Bilúch are as
little the only and exclusive inhabitants of it, as the English are of
Great Britain. We have our Welsh, and the Bilúch have their Brahúi.
Again--the range of mountains that forms the western watershed of the
Indus is not wholly Afghan. It is Bilúch as well. But it is not wholly
Bilúch. The Bilúch reach to only a certain point southwards. The range
between the promontory of Cape Montze and the upper boundary of Kutch
Gundava is _Brahúi_. There is no such word as _Brahúistan_; but it
would be well if there were.
_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 the displacement; 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 tongues
_en masse_ makes 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 called _Caucasian_, but which
may conveniently be termed _Dioscurian_[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
called _Kartulinian_; 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 of _nucleus_. Lastly, the Persian and
Russian names, _Gurg-istan_ and _Gr-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 the _western_ which
has the best claim to be considered the original _habitat_ of 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 than _vice
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 parts _not_ Kartulinian, we hear of the following
dialects:--
1. The _Suanic_, on the head-waters of the small rivers between
Mingrelia, and the southern parts of the Circassian area--the Ingur,
the Okoumiskqual, &c. This is the most northern section of the Georgian
family.
2, 3. The _Mingrelian_ and the _Imiritian_.
4, 5. The _Guriel_ and _Akalzike_ in Turkish Georgia.
6. The _Lazic_.--This is the tongue of the most western dialects. The
hills which form the northern boundary of the valley of the Tsorokh are
the Lazic locality; and here the diversity has attained its _maximum_.
Small as is the Lazic population, every valley has its separate
variety of speech.
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 _-pe_ or _-bi_,
the sign of the plural number; a circumstance which gives the town of
_Sino-pe_ a Georgian look--_Sinope_ near the promontory of _Calli-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 the _Irôn_ or _Osetes_. In
Russian Georgia they amount to about 28,000. The name _Irôn_ is the one
they give themselves; _Oseti_ is what they are called by the Georgians.
Their language contains so great a per-centage of Persian words or
_vice 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 Lesgians_ of Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan, next to the
Circassians the most independent family of Caucasus. None falls into
more divisions and subdivisions: _e.g._
_a._ The _Marulan_ or _Mountaineers_ (from _Marul_ = _mountain_)
speak a language called the Avar, of which the Anzukh, Tshari, Andi,
Kabutsh, Dido and Unsoh are dialects.
_b._ _The Kasi-kumuk._
_c._ _The Akush._
_d._ _The Kura of South Daghestan._
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 Circassians_ occupy 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 mountaineer Irôn 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 their _maximum_. 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 contact
_now_, 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 a _problem_ rather than a _fact_. 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 the _blood_,
the language has been Turk. This is, of course, _primâ facie_ evidence
of the stock being Turk also. Nor are there any _very_ cogent reasons
on 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 have
_mixed_ with the older natives, rather than to have replaced them _in
toto_: so that the phænomena will rather be those exhibited in England
(where the proportion of the _older_ Celtic and the _newer_ Anglo-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.
1. There was an element supplied by the Byzantine Greek
population--itself pre-eminently mixed and heterogeneous.
2. There was an element supplied by the purer Greek population of
Greece Proper and the Islands.
3. There were, perhaps, traces of the old Greek populations of Æolia,
Doris, and Ionia.
4. There was an extension of the Armenian population from the east.
5. Of the Georgian from the north-east.
6. Of the Semitic from the south-east.
7. There was also Arab and Syriac intermixture consequent on the
propagation of Mahometanism.
8. There were also remnants of a Proper Roman population introduced
during the time of the Republic and Western Empire, _e.g._ of the sort
that the Consulate of Cicero would introduce into Cilicia.
9. There were also remnants of the _Persian_ supremacy, _e.g._ of a
sort which would be introduced when it was a Satrapy of Tissaphernes or
Pharnabazus.
10. Lastly, there would be traces of the _Macedonian_ Greeks; whose
impress would be stamped upon it during the period which elapsed
between the fall of Darius and that of Antiochus.
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--
1. Georgians.
2. Armenians.
3. Semites of Mesopotamia and Syria.
4. Greeks of the Ægean Islands.
5. Bulgarians, and Turks of Thrace.
Of these, the last are recent intruders; so that the real ethnology to
be considered is that of _ancient_ Thrace. Unfortunately this is as
obscure as that of Asia Minor itself.
The Greeks of the Ægean are _probably_ intrusive; 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 the
_à-priori_ probabilities would be that--
1. On the north-west there was an extension of the Thracian population.
2. On the north-east, of the Georgian.
3. On the east, of the Armenian.
4. On the south, of the Syrian and Mesopotamian.
Now, the population of Asia Minor _may_ have 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.
1. The population may have been _one_--just as that of Germany is _one_.
2. The population may have fallen in several--nay, numerous
divisions--so that the so-called races may have been _one_, _two_,
_three_, _four_, or even more.
Dealing with these questions, we first ask what are the reasons for
supposing the population--whether single or subdivided--of Asia to
have been _peculiar_, _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 the _Lycian_, 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 the
disturbance, he (Minos) expelled both Sarpedon himself and his faction;
and these, on their expulsion, went to that part of Asia which is the
_Milyadic_ land. For that country which the Lycians now inhabit was in
the old times _Milyas_; and the _Milyæ_ were then called _Solymi_. 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 another _who he is_, he will designate
himself as the son of his mother, and number up his mother’s mothers.
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 for Persia, under the reign of
Cyrus, by Harpagus, the _Carians_ made 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 a _second_ fact, 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
the _Caunians 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._