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 Suomelainen, Hamelainen 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 mylu in Lithuanic. The name, then, that a Fin locality would take in the mouth of a Lithuanian would not be Finsk but Minsk, or Pinsk, 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 Karelians.
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.
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 Gothones, Guttones, Gythones &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, Gshnitz-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.
OBSERVATIONS LAID BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL SECTION, AT THE MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, HELD AT BIRMINGHAM 1849.
So far from the Gothi and Getæ being identical there is no reason to believe that any nation of Germany ever bore the former of these two names until it reached the country of the population designated by the latter. If so, the Goths were Gothic, just as certain Spaniards are Mexican and Peruvian; and just as certain Englishmen are Britons i.e. not at all.
The Goths of the Danube, etc. leave Germany as Grutungs and Thervings, become Marcomanni along the Bohemian and Moravian frontiers, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, on the Lower Danube (or the land of the Getæ), and Mœsogoths (from the locality in which they become Christian) in Mœsia.
What were the Goths of Scandinavia? It is not I who am the first by many scores of investigators to place all the numerous populations to which the possible modifications of the root G—t apply in the same category. I only deny that that category is German. Few separate the Jutes of Jutland, from the Goths of Gothland. Then there is the word Vitæ; which is to Gut-, as Will-iam is to Gul-ielmus, a form that was probably Lithuanic.
If J+t, as it occurs in the word Jute, be, really, the same as the G+t in Got or Goth, we have a reason in favour of one of the earlier Danish populations having been Lithuanic.
The four islands of Sealand, Laaland, Moen, and Falster formed the ancient Vithesleth. This division is of considerable import; since the true country of Dan, the eponymus of the Danes, was not Jutland, nor yet Skaane, nor yet Fyen. It was the Four Islands of the Vithesleth:—"Dan—rex primo super Sialandiam, Monam, Falstriam, et Lalandiam, cujus regnum dicebatur Vithesleth. Deinde super alias provincias et insulas et totum regnum."—Petri Olai Chron. Regum Daniæ. Also, "Vidit autem Dan regionem suam, super quam regnavit, Jutiam, Fioniam, Withesleth, Scaniam quod esset bona."—Annal. Esrom. p. 224.
That the Swedes and Norwegians are the newest Scandinavians and that certain Ugrians were the oldest, is undoubted. But it by no means follows that the succession was simple. Between the first and last there may have been any amount of intercalations. Was this the case? My own opinion is, that the first encroachments upon the originally Ugrian area of Scandinavia were not from the south-west, but from the south-east, not from Hanover but from Prussia and Courland, not German but Lithuanic, and (as a practical proof of the inconvenience of the present nomenclature) although not German, Gothic.
Whether these encroachments were wholly Lithuanic, rather than Slavonic as well, is doubtful. When the archæology of Scandinavia is read aright, i. e. without a German prepossession, the evidence of a second population will become clear. This however, is a detail.
The Gothic historian Jornandes, deduces the Goths of the Danube first from the southern coasts of the Baltic, and ultimately from Scandinavia. I think, however, that whoever reads his notices will be satisfied that he has fallen into the same confusion in respect to the Germans of the Lower Danube and the Getæ whose country they settled in, as an English writer would do who should adapt the legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth respecting the British kings to the genealogies of Ecbert and Alfred or to the origin of the warriors under Hengist. The legends of the soil and the legends of its invaders have been mixed together.
Nor is such confusion unnatural. The real facts before the historian were remarkable. There were Goths on the Lower Danube, Germanic in blood, and known by the same name as the older inhabitants of the country. There were Gothones, or Guttones, in the Baltic, the essential part of whose name was Goth-; the -n- being, probably, and almost certainly, an inflexion.
Thirdly, there were Goths in Scandinavia, and Goths in an intermediate island of the Baltic. With such a series of Goth-lands, the single error of mistaking the old Getic legends for those of the more recent Germans (now called Goths), would easily engender others; and the most distant of the three Gothic areas would naturally pass for being the oldest also. Hence, the deduction of the Goths of the Danube from the Scandinavian Gothland.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
JANUARY 15TH 1857.
Of the nations whose movements are connected with the decline and fall of the Roman empire, though several are more important than the Gepidæ, few are of a greater interest. This is because the question of their ethnological relations is more obscure than that of any other similar population of equal historical prominence. How far they were Goths rather than Vandals, or Vandals rather than Goths, how far they were neither one nor the other, has scarcely been investigated. Neither has their origin been determined. Nor have the details of their movements been ascertained. That the current account, as it stands in the pages of Jornandes Diaconus, is anything but unexceptionable, will be shown in the present paper. It is this account, however, which has been adopted by the majority of inquirers.
The results to which the present writer commits himself are widely different from those of his predecessors; he believes them, however, to be of the most ordinary and commonplace character. Why, then, have they not been attained long ago? Because certain statements, to a contrary effect, being taken up without a due amount of preliminary criticism, have directed the views of historians and ethnologists towards a wrong point.
These, however, for the present will be ignored, and nothing, in the first instance, will be attended to but the primary facts upon which the argument, in its simplest form, depends. These being adduced, the ordinary interpretation of them will be suggested; after which, the extent to which it is modified by the statements upon which the current doctrines are founded will be investigated.
If we turn to Strabo's account of the parts on the north-eastern side of the Adriatic, the occupancies of the numerous tribes of the Roman province of Illyricum, we shall find that no slight prominence is given to the population called Ἰάποδες. They join the Carni. The Culpa (Κολαπις) flows through their land. They stretch along the coast to the river Tedanius; Senia is their chief town. The Moentini, the Avendeatæ, the Auripini, are their chief tribes. Vendos (Avendo) is one of their occupancies. Such are the notices of Strabo, Ptolemy, Appian, and Pliny; Pliny's form of the word being Japydes.
The Iapodes, then, or Japydes, of the authors in question, are neither an obscure nor an inconsiderable nation. They extend along the sea-coast of the Adriatic. They occupy the valley of the Culpa. They are Illyrian, but conterminous with Pannonia.
As Pliny seems to have taken his name from Strabo, the authors just quoted may all be called Greek. With the latest of them we lose the forms Ἰάποδες or Japydes.
As the Roman empire declines and its writers become less and less classical, their geographical records become less systematic and more fragmentary; and it is not till we get to the times of Probus and Maximian that we find any name approaching Ἰάποδες. Probus, however, plants a colony of Gepidæ within the empire (Vopiscus, Vit. Pub. c. 18). The Tervings also fight against the Vandals and Gipedes (Mamertinus in Genethl. Max. c. 17). Sidonius makes the fierce Gepida (Gepida trux) a portion of the army of Attila. Finally, we have the Gepidæ, the Lombards, and the Avars, as the three most prominent populations of the sixth century.
The Gepid locality in the fifth century is the parts about Sirmium and Singidunum—Alt Schabacz and Belgrade—within the limits of Pannonia, and beyond those of Illyricum, i. e. a little to the north of the occupancy of the Iapodes and Japydes of Strabo and Pliny.
There is, then, a little difference in name between Japydes and Gepidæ, and a little difference in locality between the Gepids and Iapodes. I ask, however, whether this is sufficient to raise any doubt as to the identity of the two words? Whether the populations they denoted were the same is another matter. I only submit that, word for word, Japyd and Gepid are one. Yet they have never been considered so. On the contrary, the obscure history of the Japydes is generally made to end with Ptolemy; the more brilliant one of the Gepidæ to begin with Vopiscus. This may be seen in Gibbon, in Zeuss, or in any author whatever who notices either, or both, of the two populations.
There is a reason for this; it does not, however, lie in the difference of name. Wider ones than this are overlooked by even the most cautious of investigators. Indeed, the acknowledged and known varieties of the word Gepidæ itself, are far more divergent from each other than Gepidæ is from Japydes. Thus Gypides, Γήπαιδες, Γετίπαιδες, are all admitted varieties,—varieties that no one has objected to.
Nor yet does the reason for thus ignoring the connexion between Gepidæ and Japydes lie in the difference of their respective localities. For a period of conquests and invasions, the intrusion of a population from the north of Illyricum to the south of Pannonia is a mere trifle in the eye of the ordinary historian, who generally moves large nations from one extremity of Europe to another as freely as a chess-player moves a queen or castle on a chess-board. In fact, some change, both of name and place, is to be expected. The name that Strabo, for instance, would get through an Illyrian, Vopiscus or Sidonius would get through a Gothic, and Procopius through (probably) an Avar, authority—directly or indirectly.
The true reason for the agreement in question having been ignored, lies in the great change which had taken place in the political relations of the populations, not only of Illyricum and Pannonia, but of all parts of the Roman empire. The Japydes are merely details in the conquest of Illyricum and Dalmatia; the Gepid history, on the contrary, is connected with that of two populations eminently foreign and intrusive on the soil of Pannonia,—the Avars and the Lombards. How easy, then, to make the Gepidæ foreign and intrusive also. Rarely mentioned, except in connexion with the exotic Goth, the exotic Vandal, the exotic Avar, and the still more exotic Lombard, the Gepid becomes, in the eyes of the historian, exotic also.
This error is by no means modern. It dates from the reign of Justinian; and occurs in the writings of such seeming authorities as Procopius and Jornandes. With many scholars this may appear conclusive against our doctrine; since Procopius and Jornandes may reasonably be considered as competent and sufficient witnesses, not only of their foreign origin, but also of their Gothic affinities. Let us, however, examine their statements. Procopius writes, that "the Gothic nations are many, the greatest being the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaides. They were originally called the Sauromatæ and Melanchlæni. Some call them the Getic nations. They differ in name, but in nothing else. They are all whiteskinned and yellow-haired, tall and good-looking, of the same creed, for they are all Arians. Their language is one, called Gothic." This, though clear, is far from unexceptionable (B. Vand. i. 2). Their common language may have been no older than their common Arianism.
Again, the Sciri and Alani are especially stated to be Goths, which neither of them were,—the Alans, not even in the eyes of such claimants for Germany as Grimm and Zeuss.
Jornandes writes: "Quomodo vero Getæ Gepidæque sint parentes si quæris, paucis absolvam. Meminisse debes, me initio de Scanziæ insulæ gremio Gothos dixisse egressos cum Berich suo rege, tribus tantum navibus vectos ad citerioris Oceani ripam; quarum trium una navis, ut assolet, tardius vecta, nomen genti fertur dedisse; nam lingua eorum pigra Gepanta dicitur. Hinc factum est, ut paullatim et corrupte nomen eis ex convitio nasceretur. Gepidæ namque sine dubio ex Gothorum prosapia ducunt originem: sed quia, ut dixi, Gepanta pigrum aliquid tardumque signat, pro gratuito convitio Gepidarum nomen exortum est, quod nec ipsum, credo, falsissinum. Sunt enim tardioris ingenii, graviores corporum velocitate. Hi ergo Gepidæ tacti invidia, dudum spreta provincia, commanebant in insula Visclæ amnis vadis circumacta, quam pro patrio sermone dicebant Gepidojos. Nunc eam, ut fertur, insulam gens Vividaria incolit, ipsis ad meliores terras meantibus. Qui Vividarii ex diversis nationibus acsi in unum asylum collecti sunt, et gentem fecisse noscuntur."
I submit that this account is anything but historical. Be it so. It may, however, be the expression of a real Gothic affinity on the part of the Gepids, though wrong in its details. Even this is doubtful. That it may indicate a political alliance, that it may indicate a partial assumption of a Gothic nationality, I, by no means, deny. I only deny that it vitiates the doctrine that Japydes and Gepidæ are, according to the common-sense interpretation of them, the same word.
The present is no place for exhibiting in full the reasons for considering Jornandes to be a very worthless writer, a writer whose legends (if we may call them so) concerning the Goths, are only Gothic in the way that the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth are English, i. e. tales belonging to a country which the Goths took possession of, rather than tales concerning the invaders themselves.
It is suggested then, that the statements of Procopius and Jornandes being ignored, the common-sense interpretation of the geographical and etymological relations of the Iapodes and Gepidæ—word for word, and place for place—be allowed to take its course; the Gepidæ being looked upon as Illyrians, whatever may be the import of that word; occupants, at least, of the country of the Iapodes, and probably their descendants.
Thus far the criticism of the present paper goes towards separating the Gepidæ from the stock with which they are generally connected, viz. the German,—also from any emigrants from the parts north of the Danube, e. g. Poland, Prussia, Scandinavia, and the like. So far from doing anything of this kind, it makes them indigenous to the parts to the north-east of the head of the Adriatic. As such, what were they? Strabo makes them a mixed nation—Kelt and Illyrian.
What is Illyrian? Either Albanian or Slavonic; it being Illyria where the populations represented by the Dalmatians of Dalmatia come in contact with the populations represented by the Skipetar of Albania.
The remaining object of the present paper is to raise two fresh questions:—
1. The first connects itself with the early history of Italy, and asks how far migrations from the eastern side of the Adriatic may have modified the original population of Italy. Something—perhaps much—in this way is suggested by Niebuhr; suggested, if not absolutely stated. The Chaonian name, as well as other geographical and ethnological relations, is shown to be common to both sides of the Gulf. Can the class of facts indicated hereby be enlarged? The name, which is, perhaps, the most important, is that of the Galabri. These are, writes Strabo, a "people of the Dardaniatæ, in whose land is an ancient city" (p. 316). Word for word this is Calabri—whatever the geographical and ethnological relations may be. Without being exactly Iapodes, these Calabri are in the Iapod neighbourhood.
Without being identical, the name of the Italian Iapyges (which was to all intents and purposes another name for Calabri) is closely akin to Iapodes; so that, in Italy, we have Calabri called also Iapyges, and, in Illyria, Iapodes near a population called Galabri.
More than this, Niebuhr (see Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography, v. Japygia) suggests that Apulia may be Iapygia, word for word. The writer of the article just quoted demurs to his. At the same time the change from l to d is, at the present moment, a South Italian characteristic. The Sicilian for bello was beddo. On the other hand, this is a change in the wrong direction; still it is a change of the kind required.
The evidence that there was a foreign population in Calabria is satisfactory—the most definite fact being the statement that the Sallentines were partly Cretans, associated with Locrians and Illyrians. (See Calabria.)
Again, this district, wherein the legends concerning Diomed prevailed, was also the district of the Daunii, whom Festus (v. Daunia) connects with Illyria.
I suggest that, if the Calabri were Galabri, the Iapyges were Iapodes. Without enlarging upon the views that the definite recognition of Illyrian elements in Southern Italy suggests, we proceed to the next division of our subject.
2. Is there any connexion between the names Iapod-es and Iapet-us? The answer to this is to be found in the exposition of the criticism requisite for such problems. Special evidence there is none.
The first doctrine that presents itself to either the ethnologist or the historian of fiction, in connexion with the name Iapetus, is that it is the name of some eponymus—a name like Hellen, or Æolus, Ion, or Dorus. But this is opposed by the fact that no nation of any great historical prominence bears such a designation. Doubtless, if the Thracians, the Indians, the Ægyptians, &c. had been named Iapeti, the doctrine in question would have taken firm root, and that at once. But such is not the case.
May it not, however, have been borne by an obscure population? The name Greek was so born. So, at first, was the name Hellen. So, probably, the names to which we owe the wide and comprehensive terms Europe, Asia, Africa, and others. Admit then that it may have belonged to an obscure population;—next, admitting this, what name so like as that of the Iapodes? Of all known names (unless an exception be made in favour of the -gypt in Æ-gypt) it must be this or none. No other has any resemblance at all.
Who were on the confines of the non-Hellenic area? Iapyges on the west; Iapodes on the north-west. The suggested area was not beyond the limits of the Greek mythos. It was the area of the tales about Diomed. It was the area of the tales about Antenor. It was but a little to the north of the land of the Lapithæ, whose name, in its latter two-thirds, is I-apod. It ran in the direction of Orphic and Bacchic Thrace to the north. It ran in the direction of Cyclopæan and Lestrygonian Sicily to the west. It was on the borders of that terra incognita which so often supplies eponymi to unknown and mysterious generations.
Say that this suggestion prove true, and we have the first of the term Iapodes in Homer and Hesiod, the last in the German genealogies of the geography of Jornandes and in the Traveller's Song—unless, indeed, the modern name Schabacz be word for word, Gepid. In the Traveller's Song we get the word in a German form, Gifþe or Gifþas. The Gifþas are mentioned in conjunction with the Wends.
In Jornandes we get Gapt as the head of the Gothic genealogies:—Horum ergo (ut ipsi suis fabulis ferunt) primus fuit Gapt, qui genuit Halmal; Halmal vero genuit Augis, &c. Now Gapt here may stand for the eponymus of the Gepidæ, or it may stand for Japhet, the son of Noah. More than one of the old German pedigrees begins with what is called a Gothic legend, and ends with the book of Genesis.
To conclude: the bearing of the criticism upon the ethnology of the populations which took part in the destruction of the Roman empire, is suggestive. There are several of them in the same category with the Gepidæ.
Mutatis mutandis: every point in the previous criticism, which applies to the Gepidæ and Iapydes, applies to the Rugi and Rhæti. Up to a certain period we have, in writers more or less classical, notices of a country called Rhætia, and a population called Rhæti. For a shorter period subsequent to this, we hear nothing, or next to nothing, of any one.
Thirdly, in the writers of the 5th and 6th centuries, when the creed begins to be Christian and the authorities German, we find the Rugi of a Rugi-land,—Rugi-land, or the land of the Rugi, being neither more nor less than the ancient province of Rhætia.
Name, then, for name, and place for place, the agreement is sufficiently close to engender the expectation that the Rhæti will be treated as the Rugi, under a classical, the Rugi as the Rhæti, under a German, designation. Yet this is not the case. And why? Because when the Rugi become prominent in history, it is the recent, foreign, and intrusive Goths and Huns with whom they are chiefly associated. Add to this, that there existed in Northern Germany a population actually called Rugii.
For all this, however, Rugiland is Rhætia, and Rhætia is Rugiland,—name for name and place for place. So, probably, is the modern Slavonic term Raczy.
FROM
THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE FOR MAY 1853.
To the investigator who believes in the unity of the human species, whether he be a proper ethnologist, or a zoologist in the more current signification of the term, the phænomena exhibited by the numerous families of mankind supply ninetenths of the data for that part of natural history which deals with varieties as subordinate to, and as different from, species. The history of domestic animals in comprehensiveness and complexity yields to the history of the domesticator. Compare upon this point such a work as G. Cuvier's on the Races of Dogs, with Dr. Prichard's Natural History of Man. The mere difference in bulk of volume is a rough measure of the difference in the magnitude of the subjects. Even if the dog were as ubiquitous as man, and consequently as much exposed to the influence of latitude, and altitude, there would still be wanting to the evolution of canine varieties the manifold and multiform influences of civilization. The name of these is legion; whilst the extent to which they rival the more material agencies of climate and nutrition is getting, day by day, more generally admitted by the best and most competent inquirers. Forms as extreme as any that can be found within the pale of the same species are to be found within that of the species Homo. Transitions as gradual as those between any varieties elsewhere are also to be found. In summing up the value of the data supplied by man towards the natural history of varieties, it may be said that they are those of a species which has its geographical distribution everywhere and a moral as well as a physical series of characteristics. Surely, if the question under notice be a question that must be studied inductively, Man gives us the field for our induction.
Before I come to the special point of the present notice and to the explanation of its somewhat enigmatical heading, I must further define the sort of doctrine embodied in what I have called the belief of the unity of our species. I do not call the upholder of the developmental doctrine a believer of this kind. His views—whether right or wrong—are at variance with the current ideas attached to the word species. Neither do I identify with the recognition of single species the hypothesis of a multiplicity of protoplasts, so long as they are distributed over several geographical centres. The essential element to the idea of a single species is a single geographical centre. For this, the simplest form of the protoplast community is a single pair.
All this is mere definition and illustration. The doctrine itself may be either right or wrong. I pass no opinion upon it. I assume it for the present; since I wish to criticize certain terms and doctrines which have grown up under the belief in it, and to show, that, from one point of view, they are faulty, from another, legitimate.
It will simplify the question if we lay out of our account altogether the islands of the earth's surface, limiting ourselves to the populations of the continent. Here the area is continuous, and we cannot but suppose the stream of population by which its several portions were occupied to have been continuous also. In this case a population spreads from a centre like circles on a still piece of water. Now, if so, all changes must have been gradual, and all extreme forms must have passed into each other by means of a series of transitional ones.
It is clear that such forms, when submitted to arrangement and classification, will not come out in any definite and wellmarked groups, like the groups that constitute what is currently called species. On the contrary, they will run into each other, with equivocal points of contact, and indistinct lines of demarcation; so that discrimination will be difficult, if not impracticable. If practicable, however, it will be effected by having recourse to certain typical forms, around which such as approximate most closely can most accurately and conveniently be grouped. When this is done, the more distant outliers will be distributed over the debateable ground of an equivocal frontier. To recapitulate: varieties as opposed to species imply transitional forms, whilst transitional forms preclude definite lines of demarcation.
Yet what is the actual classification of the varieties of mankind, and what is the current nomenclature? To say the least, it is very like that of the species of a genus. Blumenbach's Mongolians, Blumenbach's Caucasians, Blumenbach's Æthiopians,—where do we find the patent evidence that these are the names of varieties rather than species? Nowhere. The practical proof of a clear consciousness on the part of a writer that he is classifying varieties rather than species, is the care he takes to guard his reader against mistaking the one for the other, and the attention he bestows on the transition from one type to another. Who has ever spent much ethnology on this? So far from learned men having done so, they have introduced a new and lax term—race. This means something which is neither a variety nor yet a species—a tertium quid. In what way it differs from the other denomination has yet to be shown.
Now if it be believed (and this belief is assumed) that the varieties of mankind are varieties of a species only, and if it cannot be denied that the nomenclature and classification of ethnologists is the nomenclature and classification of men investigating the species of a genus, what is to be done? Are species to be admitted, or is the nomenclature to be abandoned? The present remarks are made with the view of showing that the adoption of either alternative would be inconsiderate, and that the existing nomenclature, even when founded upon the assumption of broad and trenchant lines of demarcation between varieties which (ex vi termini) ought to graduate into each other, is far from being indefensible.
Man conquers man, and occupant displaces occupant on the earth's surface. By this means forms and varieties which once existed become extinct. The more this extinction takes place, the greater is the obliteration of those transitional and intermediate forms which connect extreme types; and the greater this obliteration, the stronger the lines of demarcation between geographically contiguous families. Hence a variational modification of a group of individuals simulates a difference of species; forms which were once wide apart being brought into juxtaposition by means of the annihilation of the intervening transitions. Hence what we of the nineteenth century,—ethnologists, politicians, naturalists, and the like—behold in the way of groups, classes, tribes, families, or what not, is beholden to a great extent under the guise of species; although it may not be so in reality, and although it might not have been so had we been witnesses to that earlier condition of things when one variety graduated into another and the integrity of the chain of likeness was intact. This explains the term subjectivity. A group is sharply defined simply because we know it in its state of definitude; a state of definitude which has been brought about by the displacement and obliteration of transitional forms.
The geographical distribution of the different ethnological divisions supplies a full and sufficient confirmation of this view. I say "full and sufficient," because it cannot be said that all our groups are subjective, all brought about by displacement and obliteration. Some are due to simple isolation; and this is the reason why the question was simplified by the omission of all the insular populations. As a general rule, however, the more definite the class, the greater the displacement; displacement which we sometimes know to have taken place on historical evidence, and displacement which we sometimes have to infer. In thus inferring it, the language is the chief test. The greater the area over which it is spoken with but little or no variation of dialect, the more recent the extension of the population that speaks it. Such, at least, is the primâ facie view.
A brief sketch of the chief details that thus verify the position of the text is all that can now be given.
1. The populations of South-eastern Asia, Mongol in physiognomy and monosyllabic in speech, have always been considered to form a large and natural, though not always a primary, group. Two-thirds of its area, and the whole of its frontier north of the Himalayas, is formed by the Chinese and Tibetans alone. These differ considerably from each other, but more from the Turks, Mongols, and Tongusians around. In the mountainous parts of the Assam frontier and the Burmese empire, each valley has its separate dialect. Yet these graduate into each other.
2. Central Asia and Siberia are occupied by four great groups, the populations allied to the Turk, the populations allied to the Mongol, the populations allied to the Mantshu, and the populations allied to the Finns. These are pretty definitely distinguished from each other, as well as from the Chinese and Tibetans. They cover a vast area, an area, which, either from history or inference, we are certain is far wider at present than it was originally. They have encroached on each and all of the populations around, till they meet with families equally encroaching in the direction of China and Tibet. This it is that makes the families which are called Turanian and Monosyllabic natural groups. They are cut off, more or less, from each other and from other populations by the displacement of groups originally more or less transitional. The typical populations of the centre spread themselves at the expense of the sub-typicals of the periphery until the extremes meet.
3. The circumpolar populations supply similar illustrations. Beginning with Scandinavia, the Lap stands in remarkable contrast with the Norwegian of Norway, and the Swede of Sweden. Why is this? Because the Northman represents a population originally German,—a population which, however much it may have graduated into the type of the most southern congeners of the Lap, is now brought into contact with a very different member of that stock.
4. This phænomenon repeats itself in the arctic portions of America, where the Algonkin and Loucheux Indians (Indians of the true American type) come in geographical contact, and in physiological contrast, with the Eskimo. Consequently along the Loucheux and Algonkin frontiers the line of demarcation between the Eskimo and the Red Indian (currently so-called) is abrupt and trenchant. Elsewhere, as along the coast of the Pacific, the two classes of population graduate into each other.
5. The African family is eminently isolated. It is, however, just along the point of contact between Africa and Asia that the displacements have been at a maximum. The three vast families of the Berbers, the Arabs and the Persians, cannot but have obliterated something (perhaps much) in the way of transition.
6. The Bushmen and Hottentots are other instances of extreme contrast, i. e. when compared with the Amakosah Caffres. Yet the contrast is only at its height in those parts where the proof of Caffre encroachment is clearest. In the parts east of Wallfisch Bay—traversed by Mr. Galton—the lines of difference are much less striking.
Such are some of the instances that illustrate what may be called the "subjectivity of ethnological groups,"—a term which greatly helps to reconcile two apparently conflicting habits, viz. that of thinking with the advocates of the unity of the human species, and employing the nomenclature of their opponents.
WITH
PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE LANGUAGES OF
THE INDO-EUROPEAN CLASS.
READ BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
28TH FEBRUARY 1849.
In respect to the languages of the Indo-European class, it is considered that the most important questions connected with their systematic arrangement, and viewed with reference to the extent to which they engage the attention of the present writers of philology, are the three following:—
1. The question of the Fundamental Elements of certain Languages.—The particular example of an investigation of this kind is to be found in the discussion concerning the extent to which it is a language akin to the Sanskrit, or a language akin to the Tamul, which forms the basis of certain dialects of middle and even northern India. In this is involved the question as to the relative value of grammatical and glossarial coincidences.
2. The question of the Independent or Subordinate Character of certain Groups.—Under this head comes the investigation, as to whether the Slavonic and Lithuanic tongues form separate groups, in the way that the Slavonic and Gothic tongues form separate groups, or whether they are each members of some higher group. The same inquiry applies to the languages (real or supposed) derived from the Zend, and the languages (real or supposed) derived from the Sanskrit.
3. The question of Extension and Addition.—It is to this that the forthcoming observations are limited.
Taking as the centre of a group, those forms of speech which have been recognised as Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic), from the first recognition of the group itself, we find the languages derived from the ancient Sanskrit, the languages derived from the ancient Persian, the languages of Greece and Rome, the Slavonic and Lithuanic languages, and the languages of the Gothic stock; Scandinavian, as well as Germanic. The affinity between any two of these groups has currently been considered to represent the affinity between them all at large.
The way in which the class under which these divisions were contained, as subordinate groups, has received either addition or extension, is a point of philological history, which can only be briefly noticed; previous to which a difference of meaning between the words addition and extension should be explained.
To draw an illustration from the common ties of relationship, as between man and man, it is clear that a family may be enlarged in two ways.
a. A brother, or a cousin, may be discovered, of which the existence was previously unknown. Herein the family is enlarged, or increased, by the real addition of a new member, in a recognised degree of relationship.
b. A degree of relationship previously unrecognised may be recognised, i. e., a family wherein it was previously considered that a second-cousinship was as much as could be admitted within its pale, may incorporate third, fourth, or fifth cousins. Here the family is enlarged, or increased, by a verbal extension of the term.
Now it is believed that the distinction between increase by the way of real addition, and increase by the way of verbal extension, has not been sufficiently attended to. Yet, that it should be more closely attended to, is evident; since, in mistaking a verbal increase for a real one, the whole end and aim of classification is overlooked.
I. The Celtic.—The publication of Dr. Prichard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, in 1831, supplied philologists with the most definite addition that has, perhaps, yet been made to ethnographical philology.
Ever since then, the Celtic has been considered to be Indo-European. Indeed its position in the same group with the Iranian, Classical, Slavono-Lithuanic, and Gothic tongues, supplied the reason for substituting the term Indo-European for the previous one Indo-Germanic.
2. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the Armenian is Indo-European. Perhaps the wellknown affinity between the Armenian and Phrygian languages directed philologists to a comparison between the Armenian and Greek. Müller, in his Dorians, points out the inflexion of the Armenian verb-substantive.
3. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the old Etruscan is Indo-European.
4. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the Albanian is Indo-European.
5. Since the fixation of the Celtic, Indo-European elements have been indicated in the Malay.
6. Since the fixation of the Celtic, Indo-European elements have been indicated in the Laplandic.
7. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the Ossetic is Indo-European.
8. Since the consideration of the Ossetic as Indo-European, the Georgian has been considered as Indo-European likewise.