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The Delhi University PublicationsNO. 2.THEHOME OF THE ARYASWITH

Notes, references, appendix, etc.BY

Pandit. Laohhml Dhar Kalla M.A , M.O L , Shastrl.PANJAB UNIVERSITY GOLD MEDALLIST, LATEGOVERNMENT OF INDIA RESEARCH SCHOLAR IN

ARCHAEOLOGY, READER AND HEAD OF THEDEPARTMENT OF SANSKRIT AND HINDIDELHI UNIVERSITY ;

LECTURER, ST. STEPHEN'S COLLEGE, DELHI.

1930,


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ToTHE ARYAN FATHERSwho united the ancient world by the pricelessgift of their language and the mentality born ofthat language, and to whom the modern worldis indebted for its garment of thought in the formof Greek, Latin, German, French, English, Russian,Sanskritt Persian, Hindi, Urdu and many morelanguages of civilization of the ancient and themodern world.


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FOREWORD.This paper on the home of the Aryas embodies a short

summary of the subject that arose in discussion during thecourse oE a series oE lectures on comparative philology deliveredto the post-graduate student* oE the Delhi University from theyear 1927 to 1929. The subject oE the home oE the Aryas aswe all know is as Eascinating as it is difficult to deal with. Ithas occupied the best minds among Sanskrit scholars all overthe world. Enormous literature has already grown up roundthe subject and yet no final word has been said on it. Mystudies in comparative philology that had always attracted memost encouraged me to approach the subject from the philologi-cal point oE view, primarily. As I was brooding on theproblems oE accent in language, it almost suddenly flashedupon me that the unity of accent between the 'Indo-European'tongue and th.it oE the Vedic must be a sure indication o thehome oE the Arya*. Dr. Glassenapp oE the Berlin Universityhappened to be in Delhi, in those days. As I discussed thematter with him, he remarked that it was a new line oE attackon the subject altogether. I concentrated on the point andcollected material to re-inEorce my argument on the homeoE the Aryas in the Himalayas which conclusion I was Eorcedto arrive at on the basis oE the unity oE accent oE the Indo-Euro-penn mother-tongue with the Vedic. Thus I have made elevenchieE points that favour the home oE the Aryas in theHimalayas that are discussed in the body oE this paper and thatmay brieEly be noted as below :

J. The unity oE accent uE the hypothetical Indo-Europeanmother tongne with that oE the Vedic languagewhose first speakers seem to have lived round theHimulayns and their Eootlands.

2. The growth and development oE the Vedic literaturein India prior to the growth and development oEon Aryan literature in outerlands inhabited by theAryan-speaking nations.


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II

3. Exuberance of names and grammatical forms in theVedio language and literature as compared withthose of the different Aryan languages and literaturethat flourished outside India all over the world.

4. The archaic character of the Vedic language andliterature of the InJo- A ryas who never lived in'isolation amid strange people' in India. The confor-mity of the Vedic language with the standardIndo-European mother-fcongne to-gether with itscontinuous historical growth from its archaic forminto the modern languages in the same geographicalcontinuum, ns contrasted with the disruptive characterof the Aryan languages in different lands outsideIndia.

5. Lack of traces of any foreign journey behind theVedic language and literature.6. Common vocables in various languages of the

'Indo-European' mother-tongue, both in the east andthe West denote objects that fit in best with theconditions of life of the ancient Aryas and theirlanguage, in the Himalayas and their footlands.

7. Absence of any tradition or suggestion in the Vedawhich is supposed to be an immediate record of theadmission of the Aryas into India, regarding theirhome in outer-lands.

8. The home of the Aryas mint he sought for in theneighbourhood of Asiatic Turkistan the land ofbifurcation of the Aryan-mother tongue into theCentum and the Satem groups, and that may on thesupport of other important evidences be located roundthe Himalayas and not round the kble-laud of CentralAsia the Himalayas (however a distant neighbourof the Asiatic Turkistan ) being historically connectedwith it* [n other words, the Himalayas occupying

aprominent central place immediately looking over tha


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Ill

plains of the Satan-speaking Punjab, and those of theCentum-speaking Tnkharistan at some distance, may bethe home of the original speakers of the Aryan or"Indo-European" mother-tongue using that parentform of sound which on the one hand gave birth to theCentum and on the other-band to the Satem group oflanguages.

9. The archaeological evidence supplied by differentcountries points to the Vedic India MS the radiatingcentre of the languages of ancient Aryas, theirculture and civilisation into different lands.

10. The narrations of the deluge by the Semitic, theIranian, and the Indians can best be reconciledby referring to a historical deluge of the Kashmir-lake which may synchronise in date with thedispersion of the Aryas in distant lands, and pointto the home of the Aryus in the Himalayas.

11. The Indian tradition supports the theory of thehome of Aryas in the Himalayas and the migrationof the ancient Aryas to distant lands.

It may be noted that the nature of evidence I havesupplied above in defence of my theory is cumulative in essence.Now before I could make some of these points it took mesome time to clear the ground ; about half the size of thepaper is therefore devoted to the setting up of the problemof the home of the Aryas and an approach to the subject fromthe various points of view and a survey and refutation ofthe various theories in the field before final presentation ofmy own views on the subject. The reader will note as hegoes through this paper that I differ on many vital pointswith the new school of comparative philology-such as theorigin of 6 and 6 vowels, law of palatalization in Sanskrit,gutturaltzatiou and sibiiization of the hypothetical Indo-Europeanpalaial sound, substitution of a simple guttural in Sanskrit forthe supposed Indo-European labio-velar, origin of cerebralsin Sanskrit and rotization of the 1 -sound etc; and for that I


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request for bis patience with me, lor he will see i he consultsmy notes and references in this paper that I have my reasonsto support my views. The detailed examination of all theseinteresting problems of comparative philology does not forma part of this paper, I have therefore reserved it for another,and in this paper hinted only general principles-supported byexamples of course that were necessary to illustrate myargnment in this thesis-on the basis of which I beg to differfrom the modern

philologist however famous he may be-forthere is nothing sacred in naraes-in his conclusions on theseproblems.

Now the writer of this paper happens to be an Indianwho fixes the home of the Aryas in the Himalayas, that isin India, he may therefore in this case be supposed as it. is truein many other cases of Indian and European writers to bemoved by patriotic motives rather than by the spirit ofscholarship. He therefore wants to guard against any suchprejudices in the mind of the readers if it is necessary to do sowhen all his reasons are already set forth. The writer's senseof patriotism is not that of love of his country over and againstthe 1 rest of humanity but to him it stands for expansion of hispersonal and his family-life into a wider field of humanityfor greater opportunity of service. He believes in the dictumVamdhaiva kutumba&am. Also, I should like to guard myselfagainst any charge of partiality for the ancient Indo-Europeanor the Aryan people. I may be told that 'I have said many sweetwords in good praise of the noble Aryas and their works of civi-lisation in the world. I may point out that my words mayappear nweet but in my present st'ite of knowledge, I believe theyare nob nntru*. 1 leave it to others to find fault with the Indo-European people or the ancient Aryas. My readers mustnot confound the Aryas of this book with the Arya-Samajistsof toduy-I do not say anything about the latter. Again whenI speak of the works of civilisation of the ancient Aryasand the indebtedness of the modern world to them, I do notsuggest for a moment that I hold any low estimate of . the


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ancient Semitic people, their culture and civilisation.Unfortunately the writers in the West have ranged themselvesagainst each other on this unnecessary issue. I can speakfor myself that I cannot look without the greatest admirationfor the ancient Egyptian and the Babylonian civilisations andtheir great contributions to the progress of humanity. I onlysubmit that where-ever the Aryas had gone, they took holdof the strings of the pre-existing civilisations of the land, addedto them their own, to form a new pattern that was distinctlyan improvement on the older one. Thus the Aryas had theirown place in history and I believe it would not be a heresyto say if it may be said of the Aryas that they came tofulfil! and not to destroy. The monogamous Arya, who knewthe use of the third metal probably the iron, who had a quickhorse at his service which carried him from country to country,who worshipped the bright forces of nature as God's powersand hated black intigic, was certainly, as compared with thenon-Aryan races, far ahead of his times, in point of culture andcivilisation. The Aryas or their linguistic descendants havebeen doing the advanced thinking for the world for manycenturies. We cannot wipe out the facts in history whichtell us that the Aryan languages both eastern and western-Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, German, French, Englishetc. and the mentality born of these languages tlieir cultureand civilisation, are a distinct advance on the ancient Semitictowards the higher progress of humanity. The Aryan languagebrought the east and the west together and served as abond of unity between the two. But all this does not speaklow of the achievements of other ancient or modern civilisa-tions. From all this I should not be understood to say eitherthat the Aryas had no defect of their own-T hold no brieffor the Aryas ; but the study of the character of theAryas does not form a part of this paper. We are concernedat preHent with the original home of the Aryas. Now Ihave for the first time worked out a theory of the home of ihoAryns in the north-westen Himalayas and their footlnnds inIndia on the basis of material that is at present supplied to


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VIIdo the notes and references at least, fairly accurately, whichthey assured me to do. Bat I regret to find that the press haveintroduced the printer's devil even in places corrected by Mr,Capron. I am sorry that the equations undgr noie 4 have notcome out quite accurately. I would beg the scholars to correctthese misprints which are obvious and are not of a disputablecharacter. 1 subjoin an errata towards the end indicating someerrors that have been brought to my notice by my own pupilMr. Ram Singh M. "A., of St. Stephen's College, Delhi., towhom I offer my sincere thanks.

LAOHHMI DHAR,July 1st, 1930. ST. STEPHEN'S COLLKGE, DELHI


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THE HOME OF THE ARTAS.The 'Discovery' of Sanskrit by the West, also, on

the basis of Sanskrit, the foundation of the science ofcomparative philology which was described by Hegel asthe discovery of a new world, are of no less importanceindeed, in the history and civilization of mankind thanthe geographical discovery of America by the West at anearlier date. If the discovery of America has led to thematerial growth and expansion of the nations of Europein the West, the 'discovery' of Sanskrit is leading in nosmall degree to the gradual widening of the intellectual andreligious outlook and horizon of the educated people inthe West, and is in its own way, responsible for the newand promising birth of a feeling of kinship on the part ofthe West with the ancient Aryas of India and throughthem with the people of India to-day.

Thus our interest in the ancient Aryas, who, as wehave come to know, have played such an important andleading part in the history of human culture and civiliza-tion through distant ages, is deepening day by day, Wein the East or in the West who speak their language turnto them quite naturally, with a fetling which is due toour forefathers who first taught us our language. Theancient Aryas may or may not be the ethnic forefathersof the Aryan-speaking nations of to-day both easternand western for it is well pointed out by anthropologiststhat identity of speech does not imply identity of raceany more than diversity of speech implies diversity ofrace; but that they are their linguistic forefathers, no onecan deny 1 . In our opinion, the ancientAryas must originallybelong to a definite type of race, for we fail to understandhow otherwise the ancient Aryan language in its firstfonnulative stage could acquire a homogeneous characterwith regard to its aooent, phonetics, and grammatical


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structure in. a set of heterogeneous people with alienspeech habits of accent and pronunciation etc. We alsobelieve that the growth of numerous Aryan languagesfrom the parent Aryan language could not be made pos-sible without some degree of intermixture of the Aryanfclood with the non-Aryan. We who speak the Aryanlanguage may therefore have a strain of Aryan blood inour veins and may therefore claim to be not only thelinguistic descendants but also the lineal descendants ofthe ancient Aryas. However, from the point of view ofthe language that the ancient Aryas have framed for usa language that has stood triumphant in its march indifferent countries for thousands of years in the historyof the world as the chief language of culture and civiliza-tion of a large section of humanity; these ancient Aryasdeserve our great admiration and excite our stillgreater curiosity. Vasistha and Zarathustra, Homerand Hesiod, Virgil and Dante, Milton and Shakespeare,Goethe and Moliere, Firdausi and Hafiz, Kalidasa andTulsidasa, Zauq and Ghalib all speak the language ofthe ancient Aryas and sing their choicest songs in it. Allthe important languages of Europe such as Greek, Latin,Celtic, Teutonic and Slavonic; all the Sanskritic languagesof India containing more than a dozen important vernacu-lars of to-day and their numerous dialects, all the langua-ges of Persia with their many dialects such as the Kurdish,the Pushtu, the Baluchi and others and many moredialects of the ancient East, the Armenian, the Albanianand the Tokharian are now definitely known as belongingto the great linguistic family of the Aryan they are allrecognized as members of the Aryan brotherhood.

Now, aid we inherit the language of the ancientAtyas, it is but natural that we also inherit sortie essen-tHI features of their culture. For example, the BritishParliament, a gigantic tree which is said to have its foots


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3in the primitive teutonic institutions such as the "Witen-agemots* or meetings of the Wise, may in the remotestpast be discovered as sprouting forth out of the seedof the Ganas or Janas of the anoient Aryas fromwhich seed also grew the civic polity of the Greek GanaSjthe Latin Gens and the Indian rule by Ganas. The'King' etymologically and historically the father of theState is the Janaka or the father-king of the ancientAryas. Thus the Indians and the British may be saidto inherit originally the same traditions of politicalconstitution in their language and history. Again, theAryan creed of the family-hearth and of the common posses-sion of the cattle-herd and land for agriculture, has led tothe organization of the family and social life known inIndia as the Gotra, also the Greek Phratria, (Latin Prater^Sanskrit Bhratarah, modern Hindi Biradari, and LatinPatria, Sanskrit Pitaras; their cult of the dead developinginto Shraddha in India has furnished a basis for the law ofproperty such as that of primogeniture in ancient Indiaand abroad. Their love for the order of things in natureSanskrit Rta, buds forth in the Roman law and theancient laws of Manu, their sense of beauty

1*and graceadded to the perfection of the late Grecian art , and gave

us our anoient art and music in India. Their religiousintuition, Latin Credo or Sanskrit. Shraddfiah&a blossomedforth into our Bhakti cult, the mysticism of the Sufis,the exalted morality of Buddhism and the most preciousand delicate flower of Christianity that has come out onthe branch of Buddhism transplanted on the soil ofJudaea already marked with the Aryan religion of Zara*thustra8 . .Their keen faculty of perceiving things aftthey are Sanskrit Jnana, Latin Gnosis*, their intenselonging to see the Divine Light behind the Sun Sans-krit Deva, Gr. Dios, Latin Ztaa, English Teu* ; theirincessent thirst and hunger of the soul and their endlesstoil and pursuit to see God, the Ultimate Reality behind


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other numerous roots and words as can not be explainedas loan-words or mere accidental resemblances in thevarious languages but can only be understood as belong-ing to a common stock from which the diverse languageshave drawn and thus point to the origin of those cognatelanguages as derived from a common mother-tongue. 4Now it is not possible to explain the primitive andfundamental unity of the mother-tongue which gave birthto so many languages in Europe and Asia without presup-posing as its necessary condition the primitive unity ofland which the Aryas must have occupied before theyseparated in distant lands ; for the mother-tongue whichis traceable as a common factor in the various Indo-Euro-pean languages of the Aryan family must essentially behomogeneous in character, and it could not maintain itshomogeneous character and retain its intelligibility to allits speakers unless it was cultivated amon'g people whoformed some sort of unity among themselves, who werenot geographically removed far from each other, who werenot cut asunder by insurmountable barriers of land andsea and such other factors as break the primitive unityof a language, who did not live in wholly scattered landsbut lived in a more or less circumscribed area, possessedcommon fields to raise their crops and pasture-lands to feedtheir cattle, and who found shelter for themselves under acommon roof after a full day's work. The fact that theAryan languages are found to-day scattered in distantlands can only be explained by the later dispersal of themain Aryan stock from its common beehive. The ques-tion therefore is: Under what sky did the Aryan fathers ofour Aryan languages first flourish, what part of landserved as their cradle and rocked that primitive racethat gave promise of such a bright career in this worldand had such a mighty future before it? In short, thequestion is: What is the home of the Aryas before theirmigration to distant lands 5?


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6We call these people Arya and their language as Aryan,

for the term Arya has not only the advantage of both beingshort and compact but because it is the right term to use,for the term Arya generally speaking, is found to exist wher-ever the Aryan language has penetrated both in the Eastand in the West, as a part of the designation of persons or ofthe countries which these people had occupied. The termMndo-German' favoured by Germany on patriotic groundsand the term 'Indo-European* as designations of these peopleand their language have not only the disadvantage of beingmodern geographical names for the ancient people andtheir language, but both are clumsy and inaccurate:-theterm 'Judo-German' excludes important languages outsidethe Germanic and the Indie group such as Greek, Latinetc., and the term Indo-European excludes the importantlanguages of the Iranian group and such other languagesas the Armenian and the Tokhariau etc., and certainlyneither of the terms can with any cogency of reason applyto the original people who took ihier language from onecountry to another. The term 'Viros' suggested by Prof.Giles as the name of these people, is not so happy as theterm Arya. It is not accurate either, for in the Aryanmother-tongue, the terra 'Viras' only signified 4a man* or'a hero9 , and was never used as a designation of the peopleas a whole, as perhaps the term Arya was 6 .Now the question of the home of the Aryas bristleswith enormous difficulties and still awaits a right solution.The fact is that the ancient Aryas as* they went round theworld have left some traces of migration, chiefly theirlanguage and other marks of culture, behind them both iuthe East and in the West, and we have to trace their ori-ginal home on the basis afstheir language and marks ofcivilization iu different countries, which is by no meansan easy task. The migration of the Aryas ia differentcountries is like a railway-trfuti running on the rail-roadfrom one end of the world to the other. The railroad


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may still be there but the railway train has already runand it is now left to the ingeneous surveyors of the an-cient history of the world to trace which way the trainhas run, from the east to the west or from the west to theeast. The bond of ancient Aryan-language and its culturebetween the east arid the west is now discoverved but thespeakers of the ancient Aryan language have alreadyfinished the course of their journey, ages ago, and are nowsettled in their homes both in the east and in the westwith whatever relics of the ancient Aryan heritage oflanguage and culture they may happen to possess at thisdate; and we are curious to learn which way theyoriginally started! Thus the deception in locating thehome of the Aryas arises from the fact that each of theAryan-speaking countries possesses its own heirloom ofthe ancient heritage of the Aryan language and culture,and from this it is not easy to discover which of thesecountries has the honour of being the original home ofthe joint-family of the Aryan ancestors before theyseparated themselves in distant parts of the world. Werethe ancient Aryas originally Europeans and the "firstEuropean invaders of India" as some of the notableEnglish writers would state with a sense of pride andself-glorification? Or, if they were Europeans were theyoriginally Germans, as the patriotic German scholarswould like us to believe, or non-Germans as someFrench writers out of their dislike for Germans wouldattempt to prove? Or again were .the ancient Aryas peopleof the East, originally belonging to Babylonia, as thebelievers in the Hebrew tradition of the migration of thefamily of Japhet from the plains of Shinar wouldassume, or did they belong to Persia or to Central Asiaas some a priori arguments based on imagination wouldlead some writers to believe, or even to India as theBrafcmanical tradition in the Manu-Samhita dictates to us?


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8iMiese are some of the leading questions and most fascinat-ing aspects of this important problem in the ancients his-tory of the world. Unfortunately, the element of nationalpride in owning the great Aryas as our kith and kinand expropriating them from adversary or the people whomwe happen to govern, has obscured our right vision pfthe truth. It may be that the ancient Aryas may belongto the writer's own country, but he in order to prove it,must not be actuated by any patriotic or political motivesas has been the case even with eminent writers in Indiaand abroad that only adds to our difficulty in arriving atthe right solution of the problem. Our real difficulty how-ever is that for the present, the evidence at our disposal isso scanty and uncertain" that we find that even the bestscholars are hopelessly divided on the subject and thehome of theAryas has been shifted by them according to theirown whims and caprices, from time to time, from one endof the world to the other and fixed in different countries,now in Asia, now in Europe and now in the Arctic regionsfar away to the North at the top of the world*

In this conflict of opinion regarding the home ofthe Aryas the right course for us would be not to hazardany a priori conclusion based on imagination as has beenthe case with some writers. For example, it is held, thatthe path of the Aryan migration must be the path of theSun from the east to the west, EX ORIENTE LUX.; oragain, that the energetic ancient Aryan race could be noother than the energetic European race whioh, as in thepresent so in the past, had conquered the lethargic East,with this difference, we would . suggest, that the presentEuropean conquers the East for purposes of exploitationfor the West and finally returns to Europe while the ancientEuropean Arya left his home in Europe for good, conquer-ed the East, settled down in Persia and India and madethese 'countries his own home.


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9"We on oar part have no wish to indulge in senti-ment and we wish to confine ourselves to facts only. In

'our enquiry therefore we shall start from the known tothe unknown and shall make an attempt to trace back theAryas, from the separated Aryan-speaking people as knownto us in different countries, to the undivided Aryan stock,that will lead us to think of the world as far back as 3000B.C. at least; for tentative dates have been suggested forthe various Aryan-speaking nations as they may havefirst occupied the different countries which they nowinhabit. For example, tne Vedio Aryas, if they invadedIndia at all are supposed to have invaded it at about 1500B.C. (?) The Kassite Aryas in Babylonia are found in1760 B. 0., the Bogus Keui and the Tel-el-amarna Aryasin Mesopotamia in 1400 B.O., the Aryan people calledthe Mandas are said to have been in possession of westernPersia in 2,500 B.C., the Zoroastrian Aryas may be noted inIran about 1200 B.C. according to one calculation and 600B.C. according to another, the Hellenic Aryas in Greece in1100 B.C. or still earlier, and the Latin Aryas inRome in 900B. C. Now, giving an allowance of another 500 yearsfrom the date of the first Aryan occupation of Persia in2,500 B. C. to the days of their earliest march from theirundivided Home, we may arrive at a date, say about 3000B. C. as the lowest limit, when the Aryas were still unitedgeographically and linguistically and were not yet dividedas Indians, Greeks, Romans, Persians etc. At somesuch hypothetical date as this, the condition of theworld was that there was no Sanskrit -or Zend or Greekor Latin but there was the one homogeneous Aryanlanguage limited to a definitely circumscribed area, withits minor dialectical variations, which as lime went onand as foreign elements came in composition with it grewinto different languages in different countries.

Thus the chief evidence that gives us an importantclue to the home of the Aryas at such an early date as


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10aay 3000 B* 0., is furnished by the comparative study ofthe Aryan languages which we happen to possess suchas the Vedic, Zend, Greek or Latin etc., leading up tothe reconstruction of the hypothetical Aryan mother-tonguethat the undivided Aryas must have spoken. Unfortu-nately, the methods of reconstruction of the Aryanmother-tongue as employed by modern philologists arefaulty7 and this has in our opinion made further complica-tions in the solution of the problem of the home of theAryas. However, the evidence of the comparative studyof the Aryan languages is our main support and with allits defect* is of considerable help to us in the solution ofour problem. The evidence supplied by the comparativestudy of the history of the Aryan languages -their accent;phonetics, syntax and semantics, supported by the studyof the comparative mythology, religion and literature ofthe Aryan-speaking nations, receives further aid indetermining the home of the Aryas from several othersources as well, such as, prehistoric archaeology, anthro-pology, oraniology, botany and geology.

The geological evidence is useful as it tells us of theclimatic conditions of the world and points out to us thetransfiguration of land and sea during the course of somany milleniums on the earth; it helps us in determiningthe right course of the migration of the Aryas from onecountry to another, and in settling their original home insuch favourable topographical and climatic conditions of theworld as are revealed to us in their language and litera-ture several thousand years ago. But in this connectioq.we would like to point out that the problem of the home ofthe Aryas is not the problem of geology or as a matter offact, of botany or craniology or anthropology theyare mere aids to it, the problem of the primitive home ofthe Aryas, is

in ouropinion

the problem of the primitiveAryan language in relation to race, country and historical


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11traditions traced back to prehistoric times in an unbrokencontinuity. It is the problem of the language that wasspoken by a distinct set of people living under distinctgeographical conditions, a language which on the onehand, could account for the evolution of different Aryanlanguages in different countries, and on the other hand,could be shown as placidly flowing in a continuous streamfrom prehistoric times to the present day, thus pointingto the geographical continuum as the ancient home of theAryas and their land of diffusion to different countries.

Thus we can not like Dr. Das ofthe Calcutta Uni-versity, and Mr. Pavgee of Mahara^tra who press geologyto the services of the Veda in defence of their theory ofthe indie origin of the Aryas, make too much of geologyof this essentially linguistic problem; nor can we agree withTilak and De Morgan who place the Aryas on the NorthPole and Siberia on grounds of geology or the geologicalinterpretation of the Veda. We know, that the conclu-sions of Geology regarding the early stratification of landand the eras and the epochs in which the formation of Earthis divided and their dates not yet firmly established-whichare so often quoted by some of the writers on the home ofthe Aryas do not concern us at all. Indeed, for purposesof our present enquiry we can not take the Aryas back,as some writers do, to such an ancient geological past asten or twenty or thirty thousand years B. 0., for all thefacts that are able to explain the growth of various Aryanlanguages in different countries from the original stock,can well be supposed to have taken place at a compara-tively far later date: they can not certainly be linkedtogether with such an ancient geological past as notedabove.

Now, the botanical and the zoological conditionsof the various parts of the world are worth studying asthey can be compared with the flora and fauna known


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12to the Aryas, as reflected in their language. But theargument on the home of the Aryas based on the flora andfauna of a country has serious limitations. We knowthat like human beings, trees and animals have also theirmigratory character, and the names of the trees andthe animals found at the original home may be transferredby the migrating Aryas to the new types of trees and ani-mals 8 , on some basis of similarity, in their new homes; andit is quite probable that the migrating Aryas may evenforget altogether, the old names for trees and animalswhich are no longer found in their new place of residence.Again, the absence of common names for common objects,in the various Aryan languages does not prove that theobject was unknown to the undivided Aryas*, for theobject in the Aryan mother-tongue may be known bynames more than one; each name being separately retain-ed by the separated sections of the migrating Aryas.

Thus in view of the above limitations in the argu-ment in hand, Benfey's argument adopted by Q-eiger andfollowed by other writers that Asia can not be the origi-nal home of the Aryas for the Aryan languages have nocommon names for such Asiatic animals as the elephant,camel, lion and tiger loses much of its force; and the oldargument repeated by Giles in the latest edition of theCambridge History of India that since the Indo-Euro-pean languages do not possess vocables representing theIndian flora and fauna, India therefore can not be theoriginal home of the Aryas; and the negative portion ofJarl Carpenter's argument for the home of the Ayras inCentral Asia on the basis of absence of common namesin the different Aryan languages for fruit-treee andvegetables and salt can not seriously be maintained, norcan the beech-argument so cleverly suggested by Sohra-


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13confined 'to the beech-zone of Europe, meet ouracceptance. Not the possession of isolated names ofthings, by the different Aryan-speaking nations, nor theabsence of such isolated names in the different Aryanlanguages can furnish us with a clue to the home of theAryas, but a whole collection of the names of trees andanimals and other objects, commonly stored by manyAryan-speaking nations in their memories, with the supportof other important evidence in the same direction can spotout for us the original home of the Aryas with a tolerablecertainty. We shall therefore, as we deal with otherevidences, turn only to the positive cumulative evidenceof the names of the flora and fauna known tD the Aryasin their original home.

Let us now weigh the evidence supplied by anthro-pology. Anthropology takes up the study of the historyof man and his culture from his first appearance on earthand divides the human population of the earth into varioustypes of races such as the Aryan, the Semitic, the Mongo-lian, or the Nordics, the Alpines, the Mediterraneans etcand divides various stages of culture of man on earthinto the palaeolothic, neolothic, pastoral, nomadic andagricultural stages and the others that follow. No doubt,anthropology is of use to us in the study of our problemof the ancient home and culture of the Aryas as with theaid of anthropology we are able to deduce certain import-ant conclusions regarding the ancient language, but wehave to point out again that in no case is the problemof the home of the Aryas the problem of anthropology orethno-metrics as some writers seem to have argued, forrace and language as they migrate do nob always go to-*gether. Ultimately, no doubt, when we study the origins,we hold, we must assume a particular type of race asso-ciated with a particular type of language, but since noancient type of race owing to intermixture of blood,


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a*m**d to this day in allsince difibreot people ia differentphysical conditions similar to each of thereprewmt a similarity of racial typa iaare left with no sore test that oould indicate the ]Atyan type connected with the primitive Afjft* Ittgftftge,Oraniology, a branch of Anthropology* which m*lr


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immemorialtheir colonies

xn dis^iliias^Let us finally estimate tb* value of the evidence

supplied by prehistoric archaeology in settling the homeof the Aryas* Archaeology no doubt is a sure help andguide to philology. Ancient objects of use such as potterytools andweapons and other important historical documentslying briried in the" ground on layers of different depth,as they are got out of the bowels of the earth andbrought to light, reveal to the trained eye of the archaeo*logist different strata of civilization which the world hasundergone during the course of many miHeniums. Suchancient finds as an eastern object on the western soil anda western object lying buried in the East may supply uswith a clue to the ancient history of migration of peoplefrom one part of the world to another. Indeed the his-tory of the ancient world has to be re-written in the lightof the numerous archaeological finds recently discoveredin Mesopotamia, Turkistan and at Mohenjo Daro or otherplaces in India. Our problem may wait for a final wordto be said on it on grounds of Archaeology; till Archaeo-logical excavations in the Near East and India, which arein their initial stages, are made complete and the evidencethus collected is carefully studied.

In the meantime, let it suffice to say that our mainsupport in our enquiry into the home of the Aryas, islanguage and incidents relating to language only. Whenall other evidences fail, the evidence of language standsby us. In the absence and decay of all the physicalmonuments that eould relate to us the history of theancient Aryas to-day we have the living monument oftheir language that lives with us as we live and thatchanges in itsu form antf meaning as we change in our


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16

changes retains its constancy of character, its genius whichnever dies, which serves as a continued thread that leadsus out of the labyrinth of ages of change to the primitiveunity of language which, as we know, the undivided Aryasmust have possessed in their common land. We shallsoon find that the primitive language gives us a clue tothe primitive home of the Aryas .

But before we proceed with our line of argumentwe would like to give a brief historical sketch of thetheories of the home of the Aryas that have been advancedfrom time to time, and some of which are still in the ,field, and try to refute them all, if we can.

Previous to the evidence supplied by the comparativestudy of the 'Indo-European 7 languages, the popular beliefin Europe was that Hebrew was the primitive languageof all mankind and that the diversity of human speechdated from the confusion of tongues at Babel. 19 * But withthe discovery of the Sanskrit language by the West whichled to the discovery of the original unity of most of theIndo-European languages, that belief in the Hebreworigin of languages had to be abandoned: thus the Aryanlanguage that had made its conquests both in the East andthe West came to be recognized as the mother-tongue ofthe various Indo-European languages, and the originalspeakers of the Aryan language namely the Aryas wereheld to have been people of the East who had migrated toEurope, till Latham in 1851, for the first time, disputed theAsiatic origin of the Aryas and struck out the theory oftheir European home.

It was first believed that the Aryas had originallycome from the banks of tjie Saraswati but that belief wasgiven up in favour of the Iranian legend dealing with thehome of the Aryas in the first Chapter of the Vendidad,which in the opinion of some writers, pointed to Bactriaor the . valley between the Oxus and the Jaxartes as thetrue cradle of the Indo-European or Aryan race; .Rhode,


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17Pott and Lassen were the chief adherents of this theory.Piotet too argued in favour of the original home of theAryas in Central Asia as a central plaoe from which theAryas could be supposed to have migrated to all countries;it being pointed out that since Zend and Sanskrit weremore archaic in character as compared with the Europeanlanguages such as Greek and Latin, that since the Asiaticlanguages deviated less from the Aryan mother-tonguethan the sister-European languages and conformed morewith the original standard, the speakers of the Asiaticlanguages must be regarded as situated round the regionswhere the original standard language or the Aryan mothertongue was spoken, for the greater was the distance, it wasargued, the greater was the change in language; and there-fore the speakers of the Aryan mother-tongue, namely,the Aryas, must have originally come from Central Asia.Mommsen however, placed the home of the Aryas in thevalley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and some writerswent so far as to trace relationship between the Aryanand the Semitic speech. Monier Williams placed theAryas on the table-land of Pamir, the roof of the world.MaxMuller, who had lived long to see the theory of theEuropean home of the Aryas flourish, never gave hissupport to it and to the last days of his life, he stuck fastto the belief that the original home of the Aryas must befound "somewhere in Asia".

But the theory of the European home of the Aryashad gradually been gaining in strength during the latterhalf of the last century, and it had made many notableconverts to it such as Sayoe and others. Soon afterLatham had advanced his "European theory", Benfeysupported it by pointing out that common designationsin the Aryan languages in Europe for European trees andanimals such as birch and beech and bear and wolf, andabsence of common names in the Asiatic group of Aryan


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18languages for Asiatic animals-such as lion and tiger andcamel, go to prove the European home of the Aryas. Heput the home of the Aryas in the region north of the BlackSea. Geiger followed Benfey's line of argument and pointedout that since the undivided Aryas had common namesfor wood and snow, they had originally come from northEurope, somewhere in Germany. Posohe appealed toanthropology and suggested that since the tall, blue-eyed,fair-skinned Germans with dolicho-cephalio skulls werethe only genuine Aryas by blood, the Aryas hadoriginated in the great Rokitno Swamp in Germany.Penka on the other hand, argued that the Scandinavianswere the only ethnic representatives of the ancient Aryaswho should therefore be located round the forest-valleysof Sweden and Norway.

In defence of the European home of the Aryas itwas pointed out that ethnically-speaking, there was notrace of an invasion of foreign Aryan blood in Europe,for a modern European ethnic type could be traced backto its ancestral type in the neolithic age in Europe andthat man was found to exist in Europe from the earliestpost-glacial period. Thus it was argued that theancient Aryas were autochtonous people in Europe.Attempts were made to spot the geographical area inEurope which could best correspond with the conditionsof life in the undivided home of the ancient Aryas. ThusSchrader was more inclined .to put the Aryas on thesteppes in South Russia, in Europe, and Grierson followedSchrader. Now, Giles locates the ancient Aryas roundthe tract which we now call Hungary, Austria and Bohe-mia and Bender confines them in the plains of Cent-ral and South-Eastern Europe the present Poland,Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia, south and west of theVolga, the ancient habitat of the Lithuanian stock ofpeople whom Bender regards as the lineal descedante ofthe ancient Aryas. De Morgan on geological grounds


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19locates the Aryas in Siberia and Tilak, too, leads them to theNorth Pole. Ohilde on grounds of archaeology is unableto choose between South-Russia and Scandinavia; Keithlike old Whitney appears to waver and seems to cast alonging glance on Central Asia. Jarl Carpenter of Up-eala has taken a definite turn against the current viewsand has fixed his' eyes again on Central Asia. Meyer onarchaeological grounds would place the original home ofthe Aryas somewhere between Syria and India, probablythe plateau of Iraq. Such is the present situationregarding our problem the home of the Aryas is beingoscillated between the two poles on the globe of this earth.Indeed the problem still presents itself as a stumblingblock that has baffled the atttmpts of many a scholar atits right solution. Our task therefore is by no means aneasy one. Before we set ourselves to cut this tangle inour humble way, we ought to prove that most of thearguments in defence of the 'Asiatic' or the 'European'home of the Aryas, that we have heard so far, are indeedshadowy and far from being convincing.l.a. We must at the outset dispose of Tilak's argumentof the arctic home of the Aryas. Tilak has pressed hismeaning in certain passages of the Veda and the laterSanskrit literature, relating to the pairs of Dawn, longnights and the solar solstices, which in his opinion, indi-cated the Aurora Borealis and other allied phenomena ofthe arctic regions to prove the arctic home of theAryas. Now in the first place, mere knowledge of thearctic phenomena on the part of the Vedic people, whichcould be gathered from a variety of sources could notprove their original home to have been in the arctic regions,secondly, the Vedio passages do not seem to indicate such ameaning as Tilak would suggest, for the natural meaning ofthe passages is so clear and distinct that we need not haverecourse to a forced interpretation of our meaning in them.This theory therefore need not detain us longer.


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1 .b.De Morgan's hypothesis of Siberia as the original homeof the Aryas too, lacks support of proper evidence. Geo-logical reasons advanced in support of the theory maywith equal force apply to any other ancient cold regionsin the world such as the Himalayas. De Morgan's theoryis therefore untenable.

2. Monier William's theory of the Pamir as the cradle ofthe Aryan race can not meet with the approval of scho-lars since the Pamir does not suit the conditions of life ofthe ancient Aryas and it is highly improbable that abarren and inhospitable region like the Pamir could bethe original home of the prolific Aryan race.

3. From the archaic character of the Avestan language ofIran it can not be argued that the highlands of centralAsia were the true cradle of the primitive Aryas, whichserved as a central place for the Aryas to enter Europe onthe one hand and India on the other: For in the first placethe Avestan language of Iran does not really representthe most archaic type of the Aryan mother-tongue,the Vedic language being on the whole more archaic incharacter than the Avestan14; and, secondly, the migration ofa people need not begin at a central place, it might, geog-raphical conditions permitting, like several other migra-tions in history, begin at any part of the world. Wetherefore, do not see any cogency in the remarks of SirRichard Temple who while reviewing Carpenter's lecturesseeks for a central place as the original home of the Indo-Europeans. Thus he observes16:-"I have always felt thatthe only safe assumption for the Aryan migration intoIndia and Europe was that thoy must have started fromCentral Asia, east of the Caspian. With that assumptionas a base, the argument is straight-forward and compara-tively easy. With the assumption that the originalmoving Iribes came from somewhere in Europe everfrom South Russia the argument is obscure and difficult1


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w* shall see, though on different grounds, that theargument is still easier if we posit the Aryas in theHimalayas.

4. Again, the Baotrian home of the Aryas oan not bemaintained, since allusion to it if any, in the Vendi-dad of the Parsees might indicate a secondary home andnot the original and primitive home of the Aryas. Like-wise Tokharistan in Asiatic Turkistan, which possesses theTokharian language of the Centum group can not be theoriginal home of the Aryas as is suggested by Keith.18 ForTokharistan might furnish a base for differentiation of theCentum and the Satem group of languages, but from thisit does not follow that it was also the primary home ofthe Aryas. Professor Carpenter makes a comparative stu-dy

17 of the common vocables in the Aryan languages andarrives at a conclusion that the fathers of the Indo-Euro-peans who were nomads were the near neighbours of theMongolians, ETuns eto.-tribes who led the same nomadic modeof life as the Aryas; and that no part of Asia could satisfy theconditions of their home 'except the regions to the east ofthe Caspian sea which are generally called central Asia,with the neighbouring plains of Turkistan where formerlyconditions of living were far easier than nowadays'.Professor Carpenter argues that the fathers of the Indo-Europeans lived in a mountainous country with a tempe-rate climate but they did not know the use of shell-fish.They used the horse for riding nd knew of the bird^,willow, and fir among trees, but had no knowledge of fruit^trees and vegetables. They could crush eorn and had noacquaintance with salt. This was because they probablyJived chiefly on meat and milk and thus led a nomadic}ife, being no agriculturists. They seem to have dressedin skin* mid woollen stuffs only and those they got fromtOifeata9 . On the basis of facts such as these, Prof. Carpen-ter conclude* that tbe original home of the Aiyas was in


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22Cfcatral Asia. Bat the conditions of life noted above canvery well fit in with the conditions of life in the Himalayasand there is no sp3oial reason why Central Asia shouldbe chosen as the cradle-land of the Aryas18 . Besides, theAryan cradle-land must contain lakes and fishes {mira? and'jhasha'~as the common vocables in various Indo-Europeanlanguages go to prove, both of which Professor Carpenterfinds missing in Central Asia Certainly, the Aryas couldnot be supposed to be the ancient neighbours of the Asia-tic hordes of people such as the Mongols or the Hunsfor the Aryan language totally differs from the languageof these people and betrays no indication of its being aneighbour to them, and further it is wrong to suppose.that the undivided Aryas were nomads themselves19 .Prof. Carpenter tells us that the Aryas could crush corn,but where did they get the corn to crush, if they werenot agriculturists and were nomads only. Mr. Carpen-ter's argument that the Aryas left their common countryin Central Asia, under the pressure of the Mongols, mayapply to the secondary dispersion of the Aryas who mayhave their original home in the Himalayas the primaryseat of their dispersion round the world. Thus on theabove grounds no tract of country in Central Asia can besupposed to be the original home of the Aryas. CentralAsia may be a halting-place of the Aryas on theirmarch to distant countries but not their primary home*

4a Meyer's argument that 'as Indian civilization mustdate at least from 1500 B.C. and as at about that time,the Indo-Europeans are depicted in the Egyptionsculptures in Syria, the original home of the Indo-Europeans might have been somewhere between Syriaand India, probably in the plateau of Iraq,'19* is based


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Sindh valley civilization which is dated approximately8000 B.C. 1Q; spreading itself on 'to Iraq and Syria andfurther west.4b. The argument for the Babylonian home of the Aryas on

the basis of identity of certain Semitic and Aryan wordscan not stand. For the few Semitic words in the Aryanlanguages may be purely accidental resemblances, or loan-words due to trade-connections from ancient times, orwords as were picked up by the Aryas during the periodof their sojourn in later times in the land of Babylon. Afew resemblances of words and roots do not prove any closeand permanent contiguity of the Aryas in the land ofSemites* For the grammatical structures of the Aryan andthe Semitic languages fundamentally differ from eachother. The mingling of the Aryan decimal system andthe Babylonian duo-decimal system of numerals may bethe result of trade connections between the two nations*a close communication between the two people may alsobe inferred from their mutual borrowings of religiousnames and ideas, as Tilak has shewn80. The commonpossession of the legend of the Deluge by the Aryan andthe Semitic people does not prove the home of the Aryasin the Semitic land, for the legend may be a borrowingon the part of the Semitics -like several other religiousnames and ideas20, from the Aryas who are known tohistory as having reached the Semitic country during thecourse of their expansion round the world81 . Thus it isfutile to argue that the legend of the Deluge that is com-mon among the Indo-Aryas, the [ranians and the Semiticpeople in of a Semitic origin and that the Aryas whopossessed the Semitic legend must have come from theland of Semites. It is difficult to understand why thelegend of the deluge should be traced to Semitic origin only-was the ancient world outside the range of the Semiticpeople free from such oaatclyms? But it will be pointed


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24


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authority of the Mahabharata as a more ancient andsettled people of the East than the late migration fromEurope would make them to be wb Nor can the originalhome of the Centum-speaking people round Tokharistanbe considered as the original home of the indo-Europeansas is held by Feist and Meyer and supported by Keith,who on the basis of the treatment of gutturals and the'retention' of the vowels e and o besides a, in the Tokharianlanguage considers it reasonable to suppose that the'Indo-European home lay in the plateau of Central Asia,the source of the later Mongolian invaders of the West';for the simple reason, that the characteristics of theCentum-speech might be of a later growth only as aresult of the influence of the foreign Aryan languageupon the non-Aryan substratum in Central Asia and notat all belong to the early 'Indo-European' mother-tongue23which might have its home else-where in the neighbour-hood of Tokharistan (say, at some distance in the Hima-layas) which in Indian literature and history is known tous as connected with India from ancient times.

The 'Proto-Iranian' and the Iranian marks of languageswhich Grierson has traced on the Indian Dardiolanguages and the Ghalchah languages of the Pamirs donot necessarily point to the first Aryan invasion inIndia from outside, as Grieraon has wrongly emphasised,but they may be explained as the result of later closercommunications23* between the Northern-Himalaya peopleand the Iranians or the 'Proto-Iranians', as Grierson callsthem. Grierson's point that the Mandas in Media werelater Aryan immigrants to India has nothing to supportit and the argument may well be reversed as we shall seelater on. Again Grierson'a argument that the archaiccharacter of the Vedio as compared with the Iranianlanguage is the result of the isolation of Aryas

in Indiaa strange population the rate of development in


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26India being slower than in Persia, is faulty, since it isbased on comparison of the two non-contemporaneouslanguages, and does not take into account the influencesof alien speech-habits on the Aryan tongue. The Isolation ofthe Vedic Aryas in India amid strange people is again asupposition of scholars meant to square with the supposedfact of an Aryan home outside India. We shall fully criti-cize the argument elsewhere in the sequel of this paper.Thus Central Asia might be the secondary home of theAryas the birth place of the characterisation of the Centumlanguages which were carried to Europe; but their primaryhome may be situated outside Central Asia, in the Hima-layas. Hence wo find nothing left to support the Asiaticorigin of the Aryas, outside India.

6. We now refute the argument, that since man is knownto have inhabited Europe from the earliest times, the Aryaswhose language is spoken in Europe did not come fromoutside Europe, but had their origin in Europe; for, wohold, that man may have been an inhabitant of Europe fromthe earliest times yet there is no proof that the first man inEurope was the Arya who spoke the Aryan language.Thus the ethnic continuity of race in Europe from ancienttimes is no proof that the first man in Europe was an Arya.Indeed the question is, What is an Arya? The racial type ofthe primitive Arya is never known to us; the primitive Aryantype may have resembled any of the European types of raceand yet may have flourished outside Europe under physicalconditions similar to those of Europe say in the snowyHimalayas in India which have also their tall and fair people24as Europe has. Again, the racial type of the Aryaswhich invaded Europe in comparatively small numbersmight have absorbed itself into the numerically dominat-ing type of the European races. The gypsies who wanderedall their way from India to Europe are a notable exampleof the depigmentation of colour and other ethnic


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87characteristics in Asia and Europe. The racial affinitybetween the northern Indians, the Persians and the Euro-peans and their gradual shading in colour and other typicalcharacteristics due to change in climate and occupation,may equally well be explained by starting the Aryas fromIndia to Europe instead of starting them from Europe toIndia; the ethnic continuity of the Aryan race in northernIndia being traceable to the earliest times known to us2*1 .

7. The argument of the European home of the Aryasbased on similarity between the Aryan and the Finniclanguages can not be held, since the borrowing of wordson the part of the Finnic languages may belong to alater date when the Aryas had migrated into the land ofthe Finns, and need not point to the original home of theAryas in Finland, the morphological similarity between thetwo languages being of no consequence since it may occurin cases of distant languages as a result of man's psychicunity 24b .

8. The claims of Lithuania as the cradle of the Aryanrace on the basis of the archaic character of Slavonicmay easily be set aside for Slavonic25 is even less archaicin character than the Avestan which, in its turn, is lessarchaic than the Vedio language which'conforms most withthe Aryan mother-tongue. Thus the archaic characterof the Slavonic and the Avestan may follow from a stillmore archaic character of the Vedic language that wasin close touch with and proximity to the original home ofthe Aryas, as a result of free communication betweenRussia and the North of India on the one hand, andPersia and the North-west of India on the other.

9. Now the strongest argument that is brought forwardin favour of the European origin of the Aryas, whichmust now be discredited, is that of common voca-bles in the " Indo-European " languages for trees andanimals and other objects found in Europe. But theArgument is based on false premises for the birch, the


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28bear, the wolf the names of which occur in 'Indo-European1languages, are found not only in Europe but in India too,as in the Himalayas. Indeed we do not know of a singleobject tree or animal that is entirely European inits origin having a common name in the Aryan languagesof the East and the West. Of late, the beech-argumentis much advertised by the promoters of the Europeantheory of the home of the Aryas. But the term for'beech' might have been coined by the Aryan settlers inEurope only where the tree grew. Or the Europeanname beech may be derived from the Indo-Aryan term'Bak'. If we compare the variants for the term 'beech*in various European languages such as Phegos in Greek,Fagus in Latin, Buohha in Teutonic (OHQ-.) and Buck asin Back-mast, in English, and also compare Buk inPersian, we might arrivo at 'Bak' as a common radicalsound for all these words. Only in conformity withGrimm's law 'Bak ? must transform itself into Bhak beforeit can pass into Phagus in Greek and Fagus in Latin,like the term Dvftra which must" assume the form Dhvfcrabefore it can give birth to Latin fores. But it is amistake to suppose that the aspirated form must be theoriginal Aryan word, for aspiration in such cases as thismay be the result of alien speech-habits on non-aspiratesounds in their transmission from India to foreign lands ***.Thus the radical Bak like Dvara, in our opinion, may bethe original sound which in Sanskrit may be detected inthe term Bakula the name of a famous Indian tree (anda drug), which is reported to grow also on the north-western Himalayas26. It is quite possible that the term'Bak' as it travelled from India abroad was employed fordifferent purposes as a general name for wood in Persiaand a particular name for oak in Greek and beech in Latinlike the Indian radical 'Dru', a general name for woodor tree, in Sanskrit Deva Daru or Drama, which in itsmigratory course was restricted in its meaning to fir in


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29Lithuanian and oak in Greek and Celtic. Generalizationaad specialization of meanings of words may indeed takeplace independent of any migration of people, and theuniformity in the form of a word among many peopledoes not indicate the uniformity of the meaning as well. 17Again the uniformity of the meaning of a word amongsome groups of people, can not lead us to conclude thatthe meaning of the word was also known to anothergroup of people who preserved the uniformity of the formonly, for the word might originally be a generic termhaving for its meaning many varieties of the same class,for each or any variety of which the term might bespecialized in different countries in different times*Thus the term 'beech' which signifies 'beech' in Latinand several teutonic languages and signifies not beechbut oak in Greek and elm or alder in East-Europeanlanguages, can not prove that the ancient Aryas hadcome . from the beech-regions of Europe. We havealready traced the stem 'beech* to its archetype 'bhak* orgeneric 'bak', which in Sanskrit, gave us bakula ! It isremarkable that the Indian bakula (Hindi Maulsiri) bearsedible nuts as is the case with the European beech, oak andthe sweet chestnut trees denoted by the relative stem inthe various Germanic languages, and in Latin and Greek.The Lithuanian stem is said to mean both beech bearingan edible nut and 'alder' (Persia Buk). The bakula in Indiadenoted a tree with edible nuts, so does the stem beechin its later migrations to Europe. May not the stembak which gave us our bakula have migrated fromIndia abroad ! The beech-argument therefore on whichso much stress is laid by the advocates of the Europeanhome of the Aryas has little to attract us.

Again the absence of common names in the Indo-European languages for such Asiatic animals

as the lionthe tiger and the camel, can not prove the European


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80origin of the Aryas, for the names of such animals asare peculiar to the East might easily be forgotten bythe people in the "West where those animals were notfound or it is very probable, that there may be severalsynonyms*8 for the same object in the Aryan mother-tongue the one tribe of the Aryas in Asia or Indiahaving taken fancy for one name while the other foranother. We have already pointed out, that from theabsence of a common name for fire in the Indo-Europeanlanguages such as Greek in Europe and Sanskrit in India,none can argue that fire was unknown to the undividedAryas, or just because Greek skips over the Aryan namefor sister, no one is going to conclude that sisters were notrecognized in the ancient family of the Aryas, or fromthe absence of a common Aryan name for milk, none caninf3r that milk was unknown to the primitive Aryas.Thus the fcrgumept that the flora and fauna of theprimitive home of the Aryas must be represented in thevarious branches of the Aryan languages that sprangup later at different times and in different countries isfutile and we can not base our conclusions on suchweak premises as these. It is surprising to note Pro-fessor Giles arguing in the Cambridge History of Indiathat the Aryas could not be the natives of India, forthe Aryan languages do not record names for flora andfauna that are peculiar to India. Professor Giles is anadvocate of the European home of the Aryas. He oughtto have seen that his argument cuts both ways, for thenames of European flora and fauna do not exist inthe Asiatic Aryan languages either. Really it shouldnot be difficult to understand that the names for treesand animals disappear as the trees and the animalsthemselves disappear. Thus no argument can be drawnfrom the absence of names of objects in case of theabsence of the objects themselves.


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31Arguments based on identity of a few isolated words

in different Aryan languages do not conclusively provethe home of the Aryas, for the objects denoted by thewords may singly be found scattered in different parts ofthe world. Thus Geiger's point which is given muchprominence by later writers, that the common term forsnow exists in the Indo-European languages, and on thisbasis, his conclusion, that the undivided Aryas mustoriginally belong to the cold regions of North Europe, isa weak point and a hasty conclusion indeed. For 'snow'taken singly can not decide the home of the Aryas, asit is not found in one part of the world .only the coldregions of North-Europe are not the only cold regionsin this world, Besides the snow and the winter andthe wolf and the bear and the birch and the trees, withwhich the ancient Aryas are so closely associated exactlyfit in with the Himalayas -the abode of 'Hima' thecommon Indo-European word. Not every land of snowand winter can be the home of the Aryas. Snow coupledwith other objects known to the undivided Aryas-the wholecollection of which can be found only in one compactpart of the world, can spot out for us, the original andprimitive home of the Aryas provided the evidence isfurther supported by important linguistic and historicalproofs. Now if we posit the Aryas in the North-WesternHimalayas, we need not have common I. E. words forcamel and tiger which are not the denizens of the North-Western Himalyas. As for the lion for which there isno common Indo-European word, it may be pointed out,that it may originally be known to the Aryan tribes byvarious names, lion according to some writers itself beingtraceable to 'Ravant', the roaring one !

The distinction of the Aryan mother-tongue into theCentum and the Satem groups of languages led somescholars to believe that the original home of the Aryas


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33be found in a central place which could account

for the growth and spread of the two phonetic types oflanguages in distant parts of the world. Thus Schraderthought that South-Russia would eminently suit thepurpose. Grierson echoed Schrader. The philologist inorder to explain the origin of the two groups of languagesposited an original palatal sound in the Aryan mother-tongue which in his opinion gave birth to sibilization inthe Satem group and the gutturalization in the Centumgroup. The promoters 'of the European theory tooktheir lead from the philologist, who argued that thedistinction was of a later date and might have grownafter the Aryas had left Europe and branched off intwo divisions the Centum group remaining in Europeand the Satem group carrying itself on to Asia. But thediscovery of the Tokharian language in the AsiaticTurkistan, with its Centum form of pronunciation turnsthe tables against the European hypothesis of the Aryanhome and creates a presumption in favour of the originalhome of the Aryas in the east. But that does not makeTokharistan the original home of the Aryas either.Tokharistan may be a seat of differentiation of the twophonetic sounds, but as we have already pointed out, thisdoes not prove that it wan also the original home of theAryas. We on our part do not believe in the theory thatthe sibilization is a corruption of the original patalal sound.281On the contrary, we find it simpler to believe that theoriginal Indian sibilant or some sound akin to it wasunder the influence of alien speaoh-habits of the Tokha-rians corrupted into a guttural form of pronunciationthat was carried on by one set of people to Europewhile the other set of people in Asia retained the originallike sibilant. This is the simplest explanation that one canofier to the existence of the Centum form of pronunciationin Tokharistan and the explanation becomes all the more


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88'clear to us if we posit the home of the Aryas with theiroriginal sibilant sound in the Himalayas in India with whichTokharistan was historically connected in ancient times.Even if the original sound that gave birth to the Centumform of pronunciation were not a sibilant but an "unknown"parent-form that gave birth to the Satem and the Centumboth, the Himalayas midway between the Satem land ofthe Veda and the Centum land of Tokharistan would suitbest as the home of the speakers of the Aryan mother-tongue. This exhausts all the important arguments infavour of the European or the Asiatic home of theAryas.

Thus we have seen that the chapter of the homeof the Aryas in outer-Asia or in Europe is the chapter ofa great scientific delusion in the ancient history of man-kind. There is not an- iota of proof that the Aryas hadtheir original home in Europe or in Asia outside India.We shall now proceed to examine the case of Indiaas the primitive home of the Aryas who in course of agessent their colonies round the whole world. Of late, severalattempts have been made to fix the primitive home of theAryas in India. Reference has already been made tothe geological arguments of Mr. Pavgee of Maharastraand of Dr. A. C- Dass of Calcutta and their free plttjr ofimagination in setting the home of the Aryas in Iftdia.Mr. Pargiter who settles the primitive Aryas in Indiafrom the most ancient times unnecessarily dabblten inphilology and not only brings to discredit the philologicalevidence in the eyes of the world but also ruins the causefor which he invokes the aid of philology. Thus Mr.Pargiter who identifies the ancient "Aila" dynasty ofthe Puranas with the primitive 'Aryas' on grounds ofetymology excites the laughter of the philologist andcreates a bias against the origin of the Aryas in Indiawhich he so ably pleads on grounds of Indian tradition.


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85Now before we discuss our own theory regarding

the home of the anoient Aryas in India, some preliminaryand important objections against a theory such as this,may first be set aside.

1. The objection that the Aryan languages outsideIndia do not represent names of flora and fauna character-istic of India and therefore India can not be the home ofthe Aryas has already been set aside on the ground, thatthe disappearance of the Indian flora and fauna in foreignlands led to the disappearance of their names in theAryan languages outside India. But we shall presentlysee that the objection is invalid, for reminiscences ofIndian life are found scattered in the Aryan nations,as they may be culled from the various Aryan languagesoutside India. The objection that there is no common namefor the Indian 'lion* among the eastern and the westernbranches of the Aryan language proves nothing, for aswe have already pointed out, there is no common nameamong the eastern and the western branches of the rootlanguage of the ancient Aryas who were fire-worshippersand cattle-breeders, for fire and milk even ; and 'the kingof the forest' may have been known to the ancientIndo-Aryas who lived in tribes in the secluded valleys ofthe Himalyan regions, by different names.

2. The argument that since the Avesta and theVedio Sanskrit so closely resemble each other, both ofwhich conform with the primitive standard of the Aryanmother-tongue we must seek for a central-placeoutside India, whence the Aryas could migrate to India,is based on imagination. For we can very wellaccount for the close relationship of the Avestan and theVedio Sanskrit and their conformity with the primitivestandard of the Aryan mother-tongue by locating theAryas first in India and then giving them a start intoforeign lands by later migration or expansion into Iran


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Hot flourish sicta by aide in the same geographical areafrom the most ancient times : since it is held, that theDravidians who are now found in the south of Indiaappear to be earlier immigrants from west or north-westinto northern India, who drove away the Austrics or theMundas the still earlier immigrants from the north-east toIndia, and who themselves in their turn were drivensouthwards fry the later Aryan immigrants to north-India;We suggest the argument is futile, for the Auatrics whoentered India from the north-east and the Dravidianafrom the west or the north-west, may have formed a beltround the Aryas in North India who may still beautochtonous to that part of the country and may havecome into collision with each other in later times whenthe Aryan expansion began in or outside India. The terri-tory which the Aryas occupied in India may not at all beco-extensive with the territory which the Dravidians or theKolerians ever possessed. There is nothing to prove thatthe Dravidians or the Kolerians ever formed an earliersubstratum of population in northern India than the Aryas,But it is pointed out that Dravidian and Kolerianinfluences on the Sanskrit language are now traceable31 andthey may be due to the early contact of the Aryas with theDravidians and the Kolerians. But we suggest that theearly contact may only begin with the later expansion ofthe Aryas from their primitive home in the Himalayas inNorth India and the Afyas may even in their home havebeen attacked by these people. Thus the Dravidian orthe Kolerian influences on Sanskrit do not preclude thepossibility of the Aryan home in India. Again it ispointed out that there is the evidence of the 'Brahui'language in Baluchistan which is Dravidian in characterand which shows the existence of the Dravidian peoplein ancient times in Baluchistan. It is suggested

that theDravidians in Baluchistan might have arrived from


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Babylon whose earliest civilization, namely theSumerian, iheld by some to be essentially Dravidian in character.

It isfurther suggested that the recent "archaeological finds andscript discovered round Mohenjo Daru in the LarkanaDistrict in Sindh and at Harappa round Montgomeryresemble the Sumerian finds and script discovered inBabylon, and since it is held that the Sumerian cultureis Dravidian in character, these Sumero-Dravidians musthave started from Babylon and entered Siudh viaBaluchistan where 'Brahui' the relic of the ancient Dra-vidian language is still spoken. Now in our opinion allthese facts can best be reconciled if we posit theDravidians in South India where they are known tohave lived from the most ancient times, and give thema start from the south to reach Baluchistan across theSindh on their way to Babylon. Whatever way theDravidians had started, Babylonia could be connectedwith South-India across the Sindh through Biluchistanor the Persian gulf the passage to the North Punjab beingshut either way on account of Us Aryan obstruction.Thus for the purposes of the 'Brahni' language in thewest in Baluchistan and the ancient Dravidian culture onthe lower waters of the Sindh and even up to Harappa81in the Panjab, the Dravidians need not be supposedthe ancient inhabitants of the north of India or still moredefinitely the north-west Himalayas and its footlands whichthe Aryas might have occupied as their original homefrom the most ancient times. Now, if there are anyethnic traces of the Dravidian population in the Panjabthey like the foreign linguistic traces on Sanskrit, if any,might be accounted for as the result of intermixture ofblood belonging to a much later date when the Aryas hadcome in contract with the Dravidians, during the courseof their expansion from their originalh ome in NorthIndia. Or the Dravidians might even have made inroads


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89from the South Panjab right up to the northern home ofthe Aryas the Aryas, who as we know from the Veda arenot always the aggressive party-a position which could leadus to suppose that they were the conquerors of the land,for the non-Aryas frequently played the aggressivepart in the Veda whilst the Aryas were the aggressed.88The Aryas fought among the Aryas themselves but theydo not appear on that account, as is wrongly suggestedby some writers, as the earlier or the later occupants ofIndia. Thus we have no grounds to suppose that theDravidians ever formed a population of northern India.The suggestion that the invading Aryas made a cleansweep of the Dravidians in the Punjab against whomthey fought their women and children alike -reads more

' like a piece of fiction than history. The foes of the Aryasround the Panjab were by no means an easy prey to theAryas against whom they fought, for they often resistedthe encroachment of the Aryas with equal success as welearn from the Veda itself nay, they were brave enoughte make encroachment upon the Aryas themselves. Thefoes of the Aryas round the Panjab could not be totallyexterminated for that would leave the problem of theorigin of the Dasa class amongst the Aryas unexplained.Again the Aryan "invaders" of Tndia, who were certainlynot nomads14 could not be supposed to have brought asufficient number of women with them so as to avoid allmatrimonial relationship with the vanquished Dravidianpopulation of the Punjab, which could not be totally des-troyed. Now if the Aryas were invaders in India, the fusionof the Aryan and the Dravidian blood must have taken placein the Panjab enormously, for which there are no ethnicgrounds for supposing that it was so, there is everything tooppose it whilst anthropologists still assure us. Even theChurhas of the Panjab do not betray

their Dravidian origin.The Aryas in the North and the Dravidians in South-India,


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40with, the mountain barriers of the Vindhya betweenthem, always lived as foreigners to each other, till thedays of the Bamayana whioh refers to the Dravidians ofthe South as strange creatures-bears and monkeys, indeed!We need not therefore invoke the ghost of the Dravidiansin the northern Panjab in order to dispel it. The Aryasin India therefore need not be in a state of permanentcontiguity with an alien race they may have theiralien neighbours85, but not rivals on the same land. TheKolerians36 may pentrate India from the north-east andthe Dravidians may spread over from the west or the southupwards, but North-India, whioh they might haveentered ouly to be enslaved but which in their bold adven-tures they could not conquer, presented them with a solidblock of Aryan obstruction and supremacy. The Vedioscholars are of opinion that the Vedic Aryas were not familiarwith the sea87 and they only reached the low-waters of thejSindh in their later expansion from the north or the north-west frontier of India. But as far as our theory of thehome of the Aryas in the north-western Himalayas and itsfootlands is concerned it is immaterial whether the Panjabwas ever populated with an alien population or not. Evenif it was, it does not affect our theory, for the Panjab orthe land of the Sapta Sindhus was only the firstempire of the , Aryas but not their cradle-land whichwe .locate round about the head-waters or the upperwaters of some of the Sapta Sindhu rivers in theHimalayas, and not below on the plains. Even in the exten-sive Himalayas, the Aryas may have had to fight theirenemies of alien-race, that hovered round their home, andmade raids on it.87 ' The ancient Aryas therefore mayoriginally have been hillmeu secluded in the valleys in thenorth-western Himalayas and their footlands, but nottotally shut out from all contact with alien races tl^itsurrounded them and whom they encountered with


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4ffrequent success during the course cf their later expansionin and outside India. Thus both from the linguistic andthe anthropological point of view there is nothing- todebar us from thinking that the Aryas were autochtononspeople to the north of India.

But it will again be objected that the Aryas do appearin the Rig-Veda as a fighting people and if they did notfight against the DravidiansortheKolerians in the Panjabthey must have fought against some foes, some of whomwere certainly non-Aryas. We admit that the AryasWere a fighting race and that they fought against thenon-Aryas too, but that does not signify that the Aryaswere foreign invaders and the non-Aryas were the invadedIndians. The non-Aryas known as the Dasyus in theVeda, we have already suggested, formed a belt roundthe home of the Aryas in the north-west Himalayasand its lowlands, and frequently raided the fertilecountry of the Aryas, who iu return, routed them back totheir own country. The Himalayas and the Panjab, inthe north, form a vast tract of hill and plain and there isno reason to suppose that the Himalayas and the Panjabwith their vast mountainous regions, thick forests, andnumerous barriers of hills and lands and rivers and avariety of climatic and physical conditions should nothave furnished a home for more than one ethnic type ofrace from the most ancient times, which different types ofrace as their number grew and as they came in contactwith each other in Ifcter times, led themselves to warfareand the consequent subordination of the weaker andthe domination of the superior race. It is obvious thatthe incident of warfare among the Aryas and the non-Aryas led, in cbufse of time, to mutual influences in theirlanguages, tod thei* art of living. But they way fightand yet be the natives of the same country. Thua theobjection against the Aryan home in India based on the


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487. A passing reference may again be made to

Griersona's argument that since the Pamir and the Dardiolanguages show greater affinity with the Iranian andthe Proto-Iranian languagas than with Sanskrit, the Aryasin the north must have come from outside India: Butthe said affinity, in our humble opinion, can best beexplained on the basis of closer communication of thenorthern Aryas with the Iranians than with the Aryasof India proper who cultivated Sanskrit, and we need nottherefore take away the Arya from India in order toaccount for the proposed affinity between the Indian andthe Iranian languages The Vedio language itself cannotbe said to be free from dialectical variety88 in North-India.Another view of the facts noted by Grierson may alsobe taken, according to which the Pamir languages maybe said ta mark a transitional stage between the Vedioand the Iranian languages as the Vedio or the Pre-vadiopeople Aryas or non-Aryas adopting the Aryan langu-ages- passed on from India to Iran. With regard to theDardio languages, it, can be said with confidence on theauthority of good Indian tradition,89 that the speakers ofthe language the Pisaoha* or the non-Aryas, belongedto the same race of PisacTias in India as outside India.The Indian Pisaehas formed an intermediary link betweenthe outer-Pisachas and the Indian Aryas. Thus theycarried the Aryan language outside India and in themouth of these non-Aryas, the Pre-Vedio-Vedio-Sanskritassumed a shape which distinguished the Iranian fromthe Vedio language. Grierson makes no further pointto prove the immigration of Aryas into India. Hisreferences to the Vedio passages are futile40. The Aryasmay fight with the Aryas in the Veda and yet they maynot be the earlier or the later occupants of India. Suchfights are quite natural in a tribal form of society whichwe notioe in the Veda.


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44Thus there is nothing left to prove that the ancient

Aryas whose immediate lineal- descendants composed theVeda and who laid the foundations of the ancientSanskrit language and literature in India which languageatnd literature both reflect the Aryan genius, in its{nllness, as if in a mirror, were originally Europeanswho had found their way to India from such distantlands as the north of the Blaok Sea in Europe, or theBockitno Swamps in Germany, or Sweden and Norway,pr the forests of Central Europe, or the woodlands ofBohemia, or that they had come from the southern steppesof Russia, or Siberia or from the high-lands of Persia orArmenia or Anatolia or from Central Asia or from theSemitic Valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, or fromabove the arctic regions in the post-glacial epoch of theearth's history. In their zeal to support the theory of theEuropean home of the Aryas even such cautious writersand notable scholars of today, as Macdonell and others,have made occasional use of their free imagination andhave attempted to turn a piece of fiction into a fact ofhistory. For example, it is pointed out that the Aryasout-side India did not know an elephant and as theyentered India for the first time, they were struck by thestrange animal and thus they gave it the name of Hastin,or an 'animal with a hand. 7 One fails to understandwhat has the admission of Aryas into India got to dowith the appellative name Hasti. Why could not theAryas be natives of India and at the same time givetho elephant a name such, as Hastin or an 'animal with ahand', marking it out from all other animals of th*forest, having been struck naturally by the animal'sunique and prominent trunk. The Sanskrit language isfull of such appellative names as Vfi-nara, Sftkh&-Mrig^$ikhand-in, etc. etc, Now in order to explain the originof each of these names pointing out some prominent


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45features of these animals, we do not propose each time,a fresh invasion of the Aryas into India from Europe orany country outside India. The fact is that when manfor the first time gave names to animals, he must havebeen struck by the prominent feature of the animal,according to which he designated it. Now in course oftime, under the influence of the wear and tear of language,some words lost their appellative force, while the othersretained it, and therefore they always appear as freshand newly invented. This should be simple enough to astudent of the history of language. Thus the Aryas mayoriginally belong to India and their words may breathefreshness of meanings. These words may be missing in theAryan languages outside India, as the objects for whichthey stood were themselves missing. The language ofthe Aryas again cannot be said to have any traces oflong journeying behind it. The Aryas therefore were notamong the wild Asiatic hordes who invaded India, assome scholars have supposed, nor were they the firstEuropean invaders into India, as Macdonell has fondlydescribed them. We shall see that Providence hadoriginally put the Aryas in the Himalayas which gavethem their character, intelligence, and strength in factall that they possessed and gave to the world.

Thus, having cleared the ground so far, we nowproceed to establish our theory of the primitive home of theAryas in India. Our reasons may be set forth as below :

I.Every student of the science of comparative philology

knows that the Vedic Sanskrit preserves most faithfully theaccent of the Aryan mother-tongue, although, quite natural-ly, traces of the original Aryan accent are also noticeablein some other Aryan languages such as the Greek andthe Pre-Qermanic languages etc. But as Brugmann notes,* " The Hindus preserved on the whole the primitive


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46Indo-Q-ermanic position of the word-accentAs regards sentence-accent, Sanskrit appears to havepreserved the old position almost invariably". Withregard to the other Indo-European languages, it is statedthat there is no information of the accentuation of the oldIranian dialects41 ; that the accentuation of the old Armenianwas only expiratory ; that in Greek the secondary accentconquered the primitive Indo-Germanic accent, and therewas considerable levelling of the accent in the case form,and that the Greek acute and the circumflex resembled thebroken tone and the slurred tone which Lithuanian couldpreserve ; and with regard to Latin it is pointed out thatthe primitive Indo-Qermanic accentuation had alreadyduring the primitive Italic unity, undergone a completerevolution and given birth to initial accentuation in oldIrish; it is pointed out that eve

home of aryas 1930

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