to a whale-groupie of nations an epithet which,iderived from,
the patriarch of one division, excludes all the rest. The name,
of Syro-Arabians, formed on. the same principle as the now ge-
nerallj admitted term of Indo-Europeans, would be a much
more suitable expression The limits of tgjyida and Arabia,
iri their most extensive sense, jointly, comprise nearly all the
countries inhabited by people who spoke the idiom o f these
nations.
To races who spoke, kindred-dialects-of the %ro,Arabian
language mankind in general are indebted, even more than to '
those nations who, in later periods, acquired and imparted a
iighei* culture in the arts of life. While the. adventurous
spint and inventive genius, of one of these races explqred all
the coasts and havens of the ancient world, and_first taught
remote nations the use of letters and of iron -tools, to. search
th e ir soil for metals, and to till itt.fo r the-bearing of
grain,- ether tribes - cultivated the rich plains of Upper Asia
und reared the magnificent seats o f jb e earliestytnonarchiea,
Nineveh and Babylon, where the pomp and luxury of the East
were first displayed, and the royal city of Solomon, the only
seat of the pure worship of God, WherA- a sublim§ literature
was cultivated, superior in its simple majesty.'to the finest
productions of the classical age, and preserving a portrait of
the human mind in the infancy of "our-ruee.
The Syro-Arabiantribes lost, at an early period, theiF^ ascendency
among the civilized nations of the world. Five
cénturies before the Christian era the Japetie nations began,
to dwell in the tents of Shem, and from that time Me.des and
Persians, Greeks and Romans, and lastly Turks, have suoesi
sively domineered over the native inhabitants of Western
Asia. The original tribes, cooped up within narrow ,limits>
or expelled, spread themselves in colonies through distant
lands. North Africa and Spain, and nearly all the islands
of the Mediterranean received colonies from the Phoenician
coast.
Paragraph 3.—Second Groupe.—Indo-European or Iranian
Nations.
' A‘;; second1 grab pe of nations, more widely spread and
consisting of Oiere numerous tribes than the preceding, has
rCCClved thfe ,e p ith ^ ibf^thdi'Indo-European race.* Against
the’u’se o f! this name no o'bjectibn'exists, except that it is too
'W i f : id teL: I shall often substitute
for it''the term Iraniariy ta!ken from the country, which, as
it is sfei.’rfebly^ poWiBle to doubt, was the original abode of
thetface.
I ! shall Purvey "the history ofparticu lar ttbtiCtos belonging
11 this Roup'd1; diieF! sfhall endeavour to "give an account of
their ^relations’’ to Cach Other, Hvfreh l proceed''to describe the
pophlatibh of each'Cdtfntry, which derived frbm this source its
principal slf©^‘o f inhabitants. * In this place I shall observe,
th at th e Indo-EuropCan nations have been divided by the
affinitiesHbr their languages into two principal which
ihi^htv;be termed the Indian and the Median, or the southern
and northern* ’ Sterns$ The former* - Class have languages of
whicfrbeitMF'the'1 forms haVes been^bfetter preserved, or they
weife; ’briginally liiCre elabbrate ,alnd refined in grammatical
structure than the idioms of the latter, oWingy perhaps, to an
earlier cultivation of poetry, and in part'to an earlier acquaintance
with thfe art of writing* Among ~the mbre obvious traits
of distinction between them, and thbse which require, in
order to'be' perceived, the least' Studied- examination, is the
peculiarity that, in the interchange*bf consonants, discoverable
when‘the words of one idiom are compared with those of
another, the Median, and all its branches, frequently substitute
hardgbttifrals dr aspirates for the soft and sibilant letters
of the Indian. ’Tb ^th^ Median or northern branch belong
hiore Especially all the Persian and the Germanic languages;
to the southern,1 the Safiskfif> and the classical languages of
Greece and Italy. The other language^ of Europe belonging
* Schloezer, and some other German writers, term these nations the Japetie