the name of the invisible blacksmith underwent changes, and imagination
embroidered upon the common web some particular details.
Wieland, who is also named “ Geinkenschmid,” is associated in
certain localities, with a hull; which recalls to mind that one manufactured
by Dsedalus, to satisfy the immodest passion of Pasiphae,
the “ all-illumining” spouse of Minos—whom Hellenic tradition
makes a king of Crete, hut who is encountered both amidst the
Arians and the Germans. Among the Aryas'he hears the name of
Manou, or rather of Manus. He is a legislator-king; having for his
brother Tama, the god of the dead; just as Minos’s brother was
Rhadamanthus (Rhada-maji-thus). This last, as well as Yama, is represented
with a wand in his hand, and judging in the 'infernal
regions. Among the Germans, Manus is called Mannus. He is
also (a man and) an ancient king, who, like the Indian Manus, is an
A d am , the first author of mankind.
I must refer to the learned work of M. A. K u h n those who wish
to penetrate deeper into these curious comparisons. The glimpse I
have just given, shows how much of authority they add to those
analogies that the comparative study of languages has furnished us.
Our German philologists have felt this, inasmuch as they insert, in
the same periodical repertory, mythological researches of this kind,
purely linguistic. I would add, that such comparative examinations
enable us to comprehend better the nature and the history of the
Hellenic religion in particular, and the religions of antiquity in
general. This method yields us the key to a multitude of myths
which we could not decipher did we not mount up tt> their Asiatic
origines. Allow me'yet again to offer a short example.
According to the Grecian fable, Aemon was the father of Ouranos.
The motive for this filiation had not until now been pierced through.
Why should the most ancient of the gods, their supreme father,
have had an “ anvil” for his own father? such being1 the Greek
signification of this word. Sanscrit can alone tell us, — as M. R.
R o t h , one of the most ingenious and skilful Orientalists of Germany,
has remarked. The Sanscrit form of this Greek name is Agman,
and the word signifies, at one and the same time, “ anvil” and “ sky”
(or heaven). The myth becomes intelligible.1 Here, as in innumerable
other cases, the god receives for his progenitor another personification,
from the same part of nature that he represents. And, in
the same manner that Rhea has engendered Remeter,—that is to say,
the “ mother-earth,” because Rhea (as the meaning of her name
indicates) is a personification of the Earth; so, likewise, as Helios
(the sun) had for his father Hyperion, that is to say, again the sun,—
did Ouranos (the sky) receive birth from Acrrion,—whose name
has the same acceptation. But, whilst the word Acmon passed into
Greek with the sense of “ hammer,”—against which that of “ anvil”
was easily interchangeable—it lost, among the Hellenes, the meaning
of “ sky,” and thus the myth, transported into Europe, ceased to
possess significance any more.
In the presence of analogies and connections so conclusive, it is
impossible to supposé simply that a population of the same race, and
with the same fundamental stock of language, was spread from India
and Persia to Britain and Erin : we must necessarily suppose that the
peoples coming from Asia had imported into Europe their idiom and
their traditions. Must it hence be admitted that this portion of the
earth had not then been already populated; and that those Asiatic
tribes, which took the leadership of this long defile of conquerors,
found nothing before them but solitudes ?
It is again the study of languages that will furnish us with the
reply.
I have stated that all the idioms of Europe belong to the Indo-
European stem ; three groups (or if you will, three languages), forming
the only exception; without speaking, be it well understood, of
the Turkish, scarcely implanted on this side of the Bosphorus, and
whose introduction dates but from a few centuries ; nor comprising,
either, the Maltese,—solitary vestige of Saracenic dominion in Italian
lands.
The first group is represented by the Basque tongue, or the Mskari,
which embraces but two dialects. The second is the Finnish group,
comprising the Lapponic, the Finnic or Suomi, and the Esthonian
spoken in the northern part of Livonia, as also at the islands of (Esil
and Dago. Lastly, the third group reduces itself to the Magyar, or
Hungarian, which links itself to the Finnish group through an indirect
relationship.
We know how the Magyar introduced itself into Europe. It is
the tongue of the ancient Huns, who, mingling with the populations
of Dacia and Pannonia, gave birth to the Hungarians ; but we are
less advanced as regards what concerns the history of the Finnish
and the Basque languages.
W i l h e lm v o n H u m b o ld t , who devoted himself to researches of
great interest upon the Basque tongue, has shown that this language
had of yore a much more extensive domain than the little corner of
land by which it is now confined. Names of places belonging to
the whole of southern France, and even to Liguria, prove that a
population of Enscarian idiom was anciently spread from the Alps
to the occidental extremity of Spain. These people were the Iberes,
Iberians, yonderers ; and the Basque is the last relic of their tongue.