lation in race very approximate to the Tartar, and which was, consequently,
itself allied to the Finnish race, did precede the Aryas in
old Hindostán.
One must not judge of the intellectual and social condition of
these aborigines from the literary movement that has been wrought
in the body of the Tamoul, which was the counterblast of that grand
intellectual movement represented to us by the Sanscrit, and was
certainly due to the Aryan influence. In order to judge what these
primitive populations of Hindostán had been, one must go and study
their scattered remains. This has been done, quite in recent times,
by the English, to whom we owe some most interesting details about
these antique tribes. These débris of primeval Indian nationality are
now distributed in three distinct parts of the peninsula. The first
are met with in the heart of the Mahanuddy, as far as Cape Comorin ;
being the Bheels, the Tudas, the Meras, the Coles, the Gondes or
Khonds, the Soorahs,- the Paharias, &c. The second inhabit the
northern section towards the Himalaya; such are the Eadjis or
Dorns, and the Brahouis. The third occupy the angle that separates
the two peninsulas of India, and which is designated by the
name of Assam, as well as that mountainous band constituting the
frontier between Bengal and Thibet.
The whole of these tribes live even now as they lived very many
centuries ago. They are agricultural populations, who, from time to
time, clear with fire a portion of the jungle or the forest. The word
which, amongst these people, renders the idea of culture, signifies
nothing else than the cutting down of the forest. The Aryas, on the
contrary, were a pastoral people ; and in India, as in many other
countries, the shepherds triumphed over“the farmers. Everything,
furthermore, announces among these Dravidian people much gentleness
of character, which is again a distinctive trait of the Mongols
and of the Finnish populations. Their worship must have been
that naturalistic fetishism which remains the religion of the Bodos,
the Dhimals, and the Gondes. They adored objects of nature. They
had deities that presided over the different classes of beings and the
principal acts of life; and they knew naught of sacerdotal castes-
or of any other regular organization of worship. Some usages,
preserved even at this day among several of these indigenous tribes,
show us that woman, at least the wife, enjoyed among them a very
great degree of independence.
The facts accord, then, with linguistics to show us how, within
that portion of Asia comprehended between the Euphrates and
Tigris, and the Indus, there had existed a more intelligent and
stronger race, that, at a very early day, divided itself into two
branches, of which one marched into Europe, and the other into
Hindostán; both encountering, in each new country, some popula-
lations of analogous race, and possibly allied, whom they subjugated,
and of whom they became the superior caste—the aristocracy.
The two inferior castes of India, the Vaisyas and the Soudras, are
but the descendants of such vanquished nations,—the anterior type
of India’s autochthones being even yet represented in a purer state
by some of the Dravidian “ hill-tribes” above described.
But, alongside of this grand and powerful race of Aryas and
Iranians, there appears, from the very remotest antiquity, another
race, whose territorial conquests were to be less extended and less
durable, but of whom the- destinies have been glorious also. It is the
Semitie (Shemitie, Shemitish) or Syro-Arabian race. From the banks
of the Euphrates to the. shores of the Mediterranean, and to the
extremity of the Arabic peninsula, this race was expanding itself.
Its great homogeneity springs from the close bonds which combine
together the different dialects of its tongue. These dialects are the
Aramaean, the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Ohaldsean and the Ethiopic.
By their constitution, all these idioms distinguish themselves
sharply from the Indo-European languages. They possess neither
the same grammatical system, nor the same verbal roots. In Semitic
languages, the roots are nearly always dissyllabic; or, to speak
with philologists, triliteral, that is to say, formed of three letters: and
these letters are consonants; because, one of the most distinctive
characteristics of the Semitic tongues is, that the vowel does not
constitute the fundamental sound in a word. Here vowels are
vague, or, to describe them otherwise, they have not any settled
fixed-sound, distinct from the consonant. They become inserted, or
rather, they insinuate themselves between strong and rough consonants.
Hothing of that law of harmony of the Ougro-Tartar or
Dravidian tongues, nothing of that sonorousness of Sanscrit, of Greek,
and neo-Latin languages,—exists in the Semitic. Man speaks in
them by short words, more or less jerked forth. The process of
agglutination survives in them still; not, however, completely, as
in the Basque. There are many flexions in them, but these flexions
do not constitute the interior of words.
Since the publication of M. E r n e s t E e n a n ’s great labors upon the
history of Semitic languages, we are made perfectly acquainted with
the phases through which these languages have passed.
They have had, likewise, their own mould, which they have been
unable to break, even while modifying themselves. The Rabbinical,
the “bfahwee ” or literal Arabic, in aspiring to become languages
more analytical than the Chaldee or the Hebrew, have remained, not