Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples : a manual of comparative philology and the earliest culture : being the "Sprachvergleichung und urgeschichte" of Dr. O. Schrader / translated by Frank Byron Jevons from the second revised and enlarged German edition, with the sanction and co-operation of the author.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples : a manual of comparative philology and the earliest culture : being the "Sprachvergleichung und urgeschichte" of Dr. O. Schrader / translated by Frank Byron Jevons from the second revised and enlarged German edition, with the sanction and co-operation of the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    MAX MULLER. their peaceful words in common; hence it is that all differ so strangely in their warlike expression. Thus the domestic animals are generally known in England and India by the same name, while the wild beasts have mostly different names even in Greek and Latin {Select Essays, i. p. 343). According to Whitney, the domestic animals that had been tamed were the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the pig, and the dog, to which Benfey further adds the goose and the duck. Agriculture, too, was already pursued, and. wheat and barley cultivated {Benfey and Whitney); further all three inquirers agree that the Indo-Europeans even then possessed houses and walled strongholds or towns (Sans, puri = G. ttoAis). On the other hand, they speak with an uncertain voice on, and at different times give different answers to the question, what metals were known to the primeval Indo-Germanic period 1 Thus Max Miiller, in his essay referred to above (1856), had spoken of iron as a metal known to the Indo-Europeans. In his Lectures on the Science of Language (1866 German, 1864 English edition, ii. 218), on the other hand, he endeavours to provide ample demon- stration that iron was still wanting to the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion. Benfey actually comes to three different conclusions with regard to the equation Sans, dyas, Lat. aes, Goth. aiz. Whereas in the Preface, p. viii, he was of the opinion that it probably had the meaning of bronze, in his History of Comparative Philology he extends its meaning to metal generally, subse- quently, bi'onze, iron. Finally Chr. Hostmann [Archiv f. Anthropologic, ix. p. 192) declares: Th. Benfey, who reserves explanation in detail for another occasion, authorises me to state that there is nothing in Sanskrit scholarship nor in linguistic research in the domain of the Indo-Germanic languages, incon- sistent with the results of my investigations, while as regards the knowledge of iron in the primeval Indo-Germanic period, they are rather in complete harmony. Whitney expresses himself with the most caution : The use of some metals was certainly known; whether iron was amongst them is open to question. Special attention is devoted by Max Miiller to the family life of the ancient Indo-Europeans. He does not indeed lay any weight on the mere fact that the names for father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, are identical in most Indo-Germanic languages. The high development and elevated morality of the Indo-Germanic family he rather sees, as we have noticed that Justi saw, in the meaning of the roots from which the Indo-Germanic family names are derived. The name of milkmaid, given to the daughter of the house, opens before our eyes a little idyll of the poetical and pastoral life of the early Aryans. One of the few things by which the daughter, before she was married might make herself useful in a nomadic household, was the milking of the cattle, and it discloses a kind of delicacy and humour even in the rudest state of society, if we imagine a father calling his daughter his little milkmaid