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« on: June 22, 2019, 10:26:32 AM »
https://archive.org/details/aboriginalsiberi00czap/page/166Full text of "Aboriginal Siberia : a study in social anthropology" ABORIGIXAL SIBERIA A STUDY IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YOBK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UKIVERSm' AIJOHKJINAL SIBERIA A STUDY IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY BY M. A. CZAPLICKA SOMERVILLE COLLEGE, OXFORD WITH A PREFACE BY R. R. MARETT READER IX SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD PRESIDENT OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1914 PREFACE BY K. R. MARETT When, somewhat light-heartedly, I suggested to Miss CV.ap- licka, after she had taken the Oxford Diploma in Anthropology, that she might most fruitfully undertake a monograph on the aboriginal tribes of Siberia, I confess that I had no clear idea of the magnitude of the task proposed. The number of Russian authorities concerned — not to speak of the students of other nationahties — is simply immense, as Miss Czaplicka's biblio- graphy clearly shows. Moreover, as must necessarily happen in such a case, the scientific value of their work differs con- siderably in degree ; so that a great deal of patient criti- cism and selection is required on the part of one who is trying to reduce the evidence to order. Now I am sure that Miss Czaplicka has proved herself competent to do this sifting properly. As a result, those students belonging to western Europe who could make nothing of the Russian originals — and alas, they compose tlie vast majority — will henceforth be in a position to fi-ame a just notion of the social anthropology of these interesting peoples of the Far North. Hitherto, they have had to depend largely on the recent discoveries made by the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, or else to go back as far as the classical researches of such writers as Castren or Pallas. Of course there remains much to be accomphshed still. In particular, so far as I can judge, the data in regard to social organization are altogether incomplete, and should be made vi PREFACE :v first consideration \>y those trained anthropologists who in the future may be concerned with this region. Needless to say, antin-upc)k>gical science is quite insatiate ; wherefore, despite the excellence of most of the material already collected, it is necessary to insist that a far more intensive study of these tribes is needed, and that tlie time fur making acquaintance with their culture in its aboriginal state is fast slipping away. Indeed, apart from its intrinsic interest, the present survey is of the utmost value simply as a guide to the future explorer. Miss Czaplicka's work may be said, I think, to cover the social anthropology of the aboriginal tribes of Siberia. The pliysical anthropology, archaeolog}', and technology she does not profess to touch in the present work. On the other hand, the main aspects of the social life are dealt with adequately ; and she has had the happy thought to prefix, in accordance with modern metiiod, an account of the geographical conditions to which the native institutions so closely and characteristically respond. Now it might seem at first sight that such a work as this, consisting as it primarily does in the systematic presentation of tlie results of a large number of first-hand authorities, can leave little scope for originality, except in so far as a critical handling of sources must always depend in the last resort on the personal judgement. It seems to me, however, that Miss Czaplicka has in several inq)ortant respects contributed new ideas of great interest and importance. In the first place, her classification of ethnic groups is, so far as I know, her own ; and the fimda- mental contrast upon which it is based between Palaeo-Siberians, namely, the ancient inhabitants of the country', and Neo-Siberiaus, namely, all those peoples who have come northwards at any time during, let us say, the last milieu ium, but liave already been resident there long enough to have become differentiated PREFACE vii from ilulr kinsmen in the south, offers a working distinction of first-rate value. There may he, nay, there undoubtedly is, a plurality of racial types within each of the groups so dis- tinguished ; but, from the standpoint of social anthropology, it seems of primaiy importance to lay stress on the affinities produced by culture-contact. In the next place, Miss Czaplicka has dealt with the problem of the nature of Shamanism in a very novel and, I think, satisfactory way. Tlie difficulty is that, on the one hand, some anthropologists have been wont to use the term Shamanism as a general expression applicable to the magico-religious life of all primitive peoples, at any rate in so far as the notion of ' possession ' constitutes a dominant note ; while, on the other hand. Shamanism is sometimes treated as if it stood for a specific type of religious experience confined to Northern Asia, and ^\^th- out analogy in any other part of the world. Miss Czaplicka, how- ever, deftly steers a middle course, doing justice to the peculiarities of the local type, or (shall we say ?) types, and yet indicating clearly that a number of elements common to the life and mind of primitive mankind in general have there met together and taken on a specific shape. Moreover, Miss Czaplicka has ven- tured to place her own interpretation on the very curious phenomena relating to what might be termed the sexual am- biguity of the Shaman. I am inclined to believe that her theory of the Shaman's relegation to a third or neutral sex will be found to throw much light on this veiy curious chapter of social anthropology. Lastly, Miss Czaplicka, with the help of what would seem to be somewhat scattered indications derived from the first-hand authorities, has put together what I take to be the first systematic account of those remarkable facts of mental pathology summed up in the convenient term 'Arctic Hysteria '. This side of her work is all the more important viii PREFACE because, apai-t from tlicse facts, it is difficult or impossible to api)reciate justly the religious life of these Siberian tribes ; and to say the religious life of a primitive i)eople is almost to say their social life as a "svhole. It remauis only to add that British anthropologists will be sincerely grateful to Miss Czaplicka for having introduced them to the splendid work of their colleagues of eastern Europe. What a love of science must have burned in their hearts to enable them to prosecute these untiring researches in the teeth of tlie icy blasts that sweep across tundra and steppe! The more, too, ishall we have reason to congratulate them, if, as a result of the scientific study of the aborigines of Siberia, practical measures are taken to shield them from the demora- lization which in their case can be but a prelude to extinction. Unlovely in their ways of life as to us they may appear to be, these modern representatives of the Age of the Eeindeer typify mankind's secular struggle to overcome the physical environ- ment, be it ever so inhospitable and pregnant with death. We owe it not only to the memory of our remote forefathers, but to ourselves as moral beings, to do our best to preserve these toilers of the outer marge whose humble life-history is an epitome of hmnauity's ceaseless effort to live, and, by making that effort socially and in common, hkewise to live Avell. AUTHOR'S NOTE Are there any true aborigines in Siberia, as there are in Australia anil Africa? This is a question not infrequently asked in England, and Siberia is sometimes regarded as a country originally peopled by political exiles and criminals. Only lately has it been realized that, apart from the interest and sympathy aroused by the former and the curiosity felt concerning the latter, Siberia and its people present an in- teresting variety of subjects for study, and especially for anthro- pological and archaeological research. In the vast mass of literature written on the people of this country, there is nothing which can serve as a comprehensive and concise handbook for the study of anthropology. The works of early travellers which deal with the area as a whole give us nothing beyond general impressions and items of curious information ; while the profound and systematic study made lately by the Jesup Expedition is too extensive and detailed for the ordinary student, and further it deals only with the north-eastern district. The Memoir of the Jesup Expedition is practically the first work of the kind published in English — that is if we except transla- tions of the writings of some of the earlier travellers mentioned above, such as Ki-asheninnikoff and Pallas. Many Russian men of science, who have recently published special works on different districts, take occasion to deplore, in their prefaces, the lack of such a handbook. It is the object of the author, before personally investigating conditions in the country itself, to make an attempt to supply this need ; for comparative work of this kind is a task for the study rather than the field. In the compilation of a work of this kind one realizes only too well the lack of arrangement and the unequal value of the available materials. On the one hand, one finds numerous detailed descriptions of one single characteristic of a people or of a ceremony ; on the other, a bare allusion to some custom or a mere cursory account of a whole tribe. Thus the Buryat X AUTHORS NOTE scholar, Dordji lianzaroft'/ complains: 'The Orientalists have long occii[»iecl tiiemselvcs with the inhahitants of the interior of Asia, hut their attention was primarily directed to the w^ars of the Mongols, wliile the customs, habits, and beliefs of this j)eople were neglected as unimportant in historical research. The faith of the Mongols ])revious to their acceptance of Buddhism lias received no study at all, the reason being a serious one, the inadecpiacy of the materials for such research.' Banzarotf, who has described the Black Faith of the Mongols, was himself seriously hampered by the vagueness of the Russian as Avell as the Mongol literature on the subject ^ ; and this in spite of the fact that the religious side of native life has always received more attention from writers on Siberia than the social side. One of the most earnest pleas for the immediate and syste- matic study of the Sil)erian aborigines comes from Yadrintzeff,^ who was iunong their ti-uest friends. Lastly, Patkanoff',"* to whom we owe many statistical and geographical works on Siberia, and who is the editor of the Central Statistical Com- mittee, refers to the immense amount of material collected, varying in period, quality, place and aspect to an extent which greatly impairs its usefulness ; and he considers this to be the reason why the ethnological literature of Europe is either silent on the subject of Siberia, or merely touches on it lightly. The same writer enumerates three errors frecpiently met with in descriptions of the country : (1) Confusion of the tribes. Thus explorers have failed to distinguish until lately the Gilyak from the Tungusic tribes ; the Ostyak-Samoyed have been confounded with the Ugrian Ostyak : the Turkic tribe of Altaians proper, because they were ruled for some time by the Kalmuk, are often called 'the Mountain (or White) Kalmuk', and are by some writers actually confused wath the Kahnuk, who ai-e Mongols ; and so on. (2) Incorrectness in delimiting frontiers. (3) In- accuracy in reckoning the numbers of natives. ' The Black Faith, or SJiamanishi among the Moiujoh, 1891, p. 1. - Op. cit., p. 3. ' The Sibcriati Aboricfinea, thiir Moile of Life and Present Condition, Petersburg, 1891, Treface. * Statistical Data for the Racial Composition of the Population of Siberia, its Language and Tribes, Petersburg, 1912, p. 1. AUTHOR'S NOTE xi The second i>t these errors is due to the fact that many tribes are either nomads or mere wanderers. As to the numerical reckoning of the peoples, the payment of i/asi/k (taxes) being made proportionate to the numbers of the tribe, the natives are not anxious to assist in revealing the true state of affaii-s. Of the numerous important problems which confront us in the study of Siberia, one of the most interesting is that attacked by the Jesup Expedition, namely, the connexion between the Asiatic aborigines of the North-East and the North-Western Amerinds. Also there is the question of the relation between the Neo-Siberians and the Palaeo-Siberians, and the question of the relation of the different tribes within these groups to each other. The question of the migrations of the last ten centuries is closely connected with the foregoing subjects of research, and no less imi>ortant is the study of whatever information can be gathered concerning tribes Avhich have become extinct almost within the present generation, such as the Arine, Kotte, Assan, and Tuba,^ of which the last named were related to the Ostyak of the Yenisei.- Some Turkic tribes of the Altai still call themselves Tuba, a fact which suggests the possibility of an admixture with the old Tuba of Yenisei.^ The Ostyak of Yenisei are themselves dying out ; so also are the Yukaghir of the north-east. The latter are the last survivors of a large ' All these tribes are referred to in Chinese chronicles of the seventh century as the nation of Tupo, inhabiting the region of the Upper Yenisei and the northern Altai. - Yadrintzeff, op. cit., preface, p. 8. ^ No longer ago tluin the year 1753 Gmelin saw some of the Arine (Deniker, Races of Man, 1900, p. 366), but already in 1765-6 Fischer states that the Arine no longer exist [Sihirische Geschtchte, 1768, pp. 138- 387). Castren (1854-7) came across some five Kotte who made it possible for him to learn their language (EfJinol. Varies, uher die alfaisch. Volk., 1855, p. 87). The Omok, living in large numbers between the rivers Yana and Kolyma, are mentioned in Wx-angefs work, Jounuii to the North Coast of Siberia and the Polar Sea, 1841, p. 81. Argentotf speaks of the Chellag in his The Northern Land, I. R. G. S., 1861, vol. ii, p. 18. Mention is made of the Anaul in Muller's Sammlung ion linssische Geschichte, 1758, vol. iii, p. 11. From these sources we learn of great tribal meetings between the Chellag and the Omok, and of wars between the Cossacks under Dejnefl' and the Anaul in 1649. Deniker supposes (Tfie Races of Man, 1908, p. 370j that the disappearance of the tribes is more apparent than real, that the Anaul and the Omok (whose name is a general term, signifying • tribe 'j were in fact branches of the Yukaghir, and that the Chellag were a Chukchee tribe. But this is mere conjecture (see Schrenck, TJie Natives of the Amur Coiintri/, 1883, p. 2). xii AUTHOR'S NOTE family of tribes which included the now extinct Omok, Chellag, and Annul. Indeed, until Jochelson liad investigated the Yuka- ghir, it Avas generally tliought that they, too, were extinct, or had become absorbed by the Lanuit-Tungus. If the Kanichadal had not been described by Steller and Krasheuinnikoff, we sliould now have as little knowledge of them as we have of the extinct tribes, since the Kamchadal are now quite intermixed with Eussians. Perhaps the most neglected of the surviving peoples are the Tungus and the Ostyak of the Yenisei ; for the north-east is ' under the microscope ' of American workers (including some Russian scientists), and the Samoyedic and Fimiic tribes are being investigated l»y the scientists of Finland. As to the Mon- gols and Turks, they have always been to some extent under the eye of the Orientalists both of Russia and of western Europe, though the anthropology of the Orient has been over much neglected in i'a\our of its linguistics and literature. The author has found it impossible to include in the present work an account of the physical anthropology and technology of the aborigines of Siberia. Xor has it been possible to describe here the prehistoric life of this region, of which the Yenisei valley alone can supply so wide a field for research. These will form the subject of a future work. Before closing these observations the author would like to say a few words with regard to the orthography of the non-English words which occur in the text and notes. All native as well as Russian terms have l^een spelt as simply as possible, allowance being made for the fact that all foreign vowel sounds are pronounced by English people in very nmch the same way as those of modern Italian. The names of Polish authors, as they are written in Latin letters, have been left un- changed. The Russian names ending similarly to the Polish {sJci or cJii) are variously spelt elsewhere in Latin characters. In regard to this point, the author has borrowed a hint from the only modern original article on this region written in English by a Russian, namely The Bunjats, by D. Klementz, in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Klementz AUTHORS NOTE xiii has adopted the same spelling for the ending of Russian names when written in Latin characters as for similar Polish names (i.e. not ski/ or sJcii but sJci). The native words taken from the publications of the Jesiip N. P. Expedition are written minus the numerous phonetic signs. Any one desiring more intimate linguistic acquaintance with them can always refer to the original. There is one sound, veiy often met with in the native words used in this work, which it is impossible to transliter.ato into western European tongues, namely a hard /. written f in Polish, and in Russian ordinary I witli a hard vowel following. Thus the words Allakh, Boldokhoy ought to be pronounced some- thing like Aouakh, Booudokhoy. The following abbreviations have been used : I. R. A. S. — Bulletin of the Imperial Russian Academy of Science. I. R. G. S. — Bulletin of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. E. S.S. I. R.G.S.— Bulletin of the East Siberian Section of the Im- perial Russian Geographical Society (the Ethnographical Section). W. S.S. I. R.G.S. -Bulletin of the West Siberian Section of the Im- perial Russian Geographical Society (the Ethnographical Section). A.S.I. R. G. S. — Bulletin of the Amur Section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. S. S. A. C— Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Amur Country. I. S. F. S. A. E.— Bulletin of the Imperial Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography. J. N. P. E. — Memoir of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. R.A.J. — Russian Anthropological Journal. E. R. — EtJinological Review. L. A. T. — Living Ancient Times. E.R. E. — Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
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« on: June 22, 2019, 10:01:04 AM »
Uno Holm berg.
by Vasiliev (Sbornik Muzeya po Antrop. i Etnogr. pri Akad. Nayk, VIII, 42) in his remark: when the shaman takes on his bird-costume, he becomes possessed of a wonderful power of flight, he can fly into all worlds. The interpretation is sup¬ ported by the fact that the Siberian peoples often talk of the
Fig. 14. Buriat shaman of a our time with his »hobby- horses», to which little bells, skins, etc., are attached. After a photograph by B. E. Petri.
»flight» of the shaman. In a Yenisei-Ostiak tale it is related how the soul of the first shaman Doh, in his attempt to fly to the heavens, lost its hold on the back of the shaman costume and fell to the earth (Anucin, Ocerk samanstva, Sbornik Muz. Antrop. i Ernogr. pri Akad. Nauk, II, 2, 7—8). Here the sha¬ man costume, obviously one of the bird-type, is seen plainly as the conveyor of the shaman. At times one sees also little figures of the shaman on the backs of shaman costumes. The Yenisei-Tungus make these figures of leather. It is further said that if the figure should fall from the costume during the shaman’s rites, a great misfortune befalls him. Sometimes
The shaman costume and its significance.
a strap or a chain is attached to the back or the head-dress of the costume, the shaman being then said to hold on to and steer his conveyor by means of this (Pripuzov, Svedeniya, Izv. Vost.-Sib. 0. R. G. O. XV, 3—4, 65). The belief in question is at the same time a proof that the shaman costume as such has at one time represented a certain fixed animal. On inquir¬ ing of the Tungus the significance of the shaman costume, the author was told that it was the »shadow» or »shade» of the shaman. The Yenisei-Ostiaks on their part explained it as the »power» of the shaman, pointing out that when the shaman dresses himself in a bear-costume over his naked body, as the habit has been, he becomes possessed of the powers of the bear. 1 During the incantations the author has often heard a shaman imitate the growl of the bear. Without doubt, he believed himself at such times to represent the bear. Also the Vasyugan- and Northern Ostiaks are aware of a ^ear- shaped spirit», which is »essential» to the shaman for his jour¬ neys to the under-world (Karjalainen, Jugr. usk. 570—2, 587). From these beliefs, which vary slightly among the dif¬ ferent peoples, but which doubtlessly spring from a common origin, we can therefore conclude that the shaman costume performs the same duties as his iyd-kyl. This appears also clearly from the Golde tale of a certain large bird, adressed in the tale as shaman, which flew into a tree and there began to flutter its wings and feathers, when the latter changed im¬ mediately into the iron hangings of the shaman costume (Sim- kevits, 63). This part of the tale resembles the earlier men¬ tioned Finnish conception of a shaman-bird, which when shot down changes into an old Lapp.
On the grounds of the comparative material collected, we can thus declare as the result of our investigation that the
1 The dressing of the shaman costume over the naked body was a common custom also among the Tungus (Pallas, Merkwiirdigkeiten, 241; Gmelin, Reise, II, 44).
36
shaman costume, in the form in which it appears among the majority of the Siberian peoples, is an attempt at the repre¬ sentation of the soul of the shaman, which wanders during the performance of his art in the form of some animal. The belief from which the costume has sprung, always the same even down to its details among peoples dwelling great distances apart, as is shown by the wide-spread conception of fighting »soul-animals», would seem to be an inheritance from a com¬ mon, ancient civilization comprising the peoples of Arctic Europe and Siberia.
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« on: June 22, 2019, 10:00:32 AM »
And yet, in any case, ideas corresponding to the totemism of the Indians have at one time prevailed among the Siberian peoples. Of this, incontestable evidence is to be found. Al¬ ready before McLennan had drawn the attention of investiga¬ tors to totemism and before the appearance of Long’s work, Ph. J. von Strahlenberg in his »Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa unci Asia» of 1730, relates in a description of the beliefs of the Yakuts, among other things, the following (378): »Otherwise, each family has a special animal, which is regarded by it as holy, e. g'., the swan, the goose, the raven, etc., the animal worshipped by a family never being eaten by any member of the same, though others may eat of its meat.» An equally valuable item of information regarding the Yakuts has been preserved in the appendix to Scukins Russian work »A Journey to Yakutsk)), published in 1844, which comprises, according to the author »two old manuscripts)). Here we find the following: »Further, each family has its own special pro¬ tector or mediator. These are fancied as a white-lipped stal¬ lion, a raven, a swan, or in the shape of other animals. Such animals are never used for food» (Poyezdka v Yakutsk, 276). More indefinite is a third report, according to which the Ya¬ kuts refuse to eat the swan on the grounds that their ances¬ tors had appeared in the shape of swans (Castren, Nord. Rei- sen, III, 329).
The shaman costume and its significance. 25
In Central Asian tales the swan is generally described as a female being. Among the Buriats a tale runs of three swans who once descended to a lake to swim. They took off their swan-garments, turning into three beautiful maidens. A hunter who lay hidden on the shore took one of the swan- garments and hid it. After the swan-women had bathed to their satisfaction, they hurried to the shore to dress, and then the one whose clothes had been stolen was left behind naked when the others flew away. The hunter took her to wife and she bore him eleven sons and six daughters. Once, after the lapse of a long period, the woman remembered her swan- dress and asked her husband where he had hidden it. As the man was assured that his wife no longer had any wish to leave him and their children, he decided to give her the wonderful garment again. With her husband’s permission she dressed herself in the garment to see how she looked in it. But as soon as she had got on the garment she flew up through the smoke- hole and floating above her earthly home shouted to her fam¬ ily: »Ye are earthly; beings and must stay on the earth, I am from Heaven and shall fly back there!*) She continued further, saying: »Each spring and summer, when the swans fly northward and return again, ye shall follow certain cere¬ monies in my honour.)) And with that she disappeared into the sky. It is related in addition how one of the daughters tried to prevent the mother’s flight by seizing her feet, which, as the daughter’s hands were dirty, became blackened. That is why swans have black feet (Skazaniya buryat, Zap. Vost.- Sib. 0. Rusk. Geograf. 0. I, 2, 114—117).
This tale resembles certain others known in Europe, but with the Buriats it is connected with beliefs and ceremonies.
The Yenisei-Ostiaks also believe swans to be female beings, declaring them to be subject to menstruation like women. Certain Buriat tribes trace their descent ( ulkhci ) from a swan. In one of their songs it is said: »0f the thousand-numbering Khangin-tribe the uthka Is the bird sen, the Serel-Mongols
26
Uko H o l m b e r g.
ulhka is the bird khurn (Khangalov Nov. mater., Zap. Vost.- Sib. 0. Rusk. Geogr. 0., II, 1, 74—5). The words sen ( = Mong. tsen) and kluin denote the Siberian swan. It is uncertain from this whether the swan is the male or female progenitor of the family. Much more common is the belief that some animal is the male progenitor of a tribe or a people. L. J. Sternberg (Sbornik Muz. Antrop. i Etnogr. pri Akad. Nauk III, 167) says that there are many tribes or families on the Amur, which trace their descent from the tiger or the bear on the grounds that the mothers have related dreams in which they lived in marital relations with these animals. In this connection the following Buriat tale is of interest: In the beginning humans knew nothing of either sickness or death, until evil spirits began to persecute them with these calamities. The gods then sent an eagle from the heavens to protect them. For this purpose the eagle came down to act as a shaman on the earth. But although it protected them from evil spirits, the people did not understand its significance, and thus it was compelled to return to the gods. The gods then exhorted it to make over its shaman nature to the first human it should meet with on the earth. The eagle now approached a woman who had left her husband and was sleeping under a tree, with the result that the woman became enceinte. After this, the woman returned to her husband and in the course of time bore a son who became the first shaman (Agapitov and Khan¬ galov, Materialy, Izv. Yost.-Sib. A. Rusk. Geograf. 0. XIV, 1—2, 41—2).
Many Central Asian peoples relate tales of their descent from some animal. The progenitor of the Bersit-tribe living near the Altai is said to have been a wolf. The origin of the Mongols is dealt with in several myths. In one it is told how two khans warred together for a long time, bringing death to the people, so that in the end only one woman was left. This woman met a hear with whom she had two children; from these sprang the Mongols. According to' another myth the woman
The shaman costume and its significance.
27
bore the bear a man-child, who walked on all fours at first. After his fore-legs had been broken off, this ancestor of the Mongols began to live like a human being and to eat meat instead of grass. The Kirghis declare themselves to be de¬ scendants of a wild boar and for this reason refuse to eat pork (Potanin, Ocerki, II, 161—2, 164—5). In Buriat myths it is related how their fore-father, Bukha noyon (’bull-master’) fought with the mottled bull of the famous Taijikhan. The animal in question, which was extremely large and powerful, had boasted once: »Whoever in the world dares to compete with me, let him try his strength!*) Bukha noijon changed himself into a blue-grey bull and went to Taijikhan to fight his mottled bull. During the day-time he fought as a bull, but during the nights he kept company with Taijikhan’s daught¬ er, in the shape of a beautiful youth. After a time the daughter became heavy with child and said to Bukha noyon that the time was near when she would give birth. Then Bukha noyon ripped the child from its mother’s womb and with his horns tossed it across Lake Baikal. Vanquishing finally the mottled bull, Bukha noyon swam over the lake, found the child on the shore and began to feed it. A shaman woman discovered later the child, which »sucked at the breast of the blue-grey bulb, and took it into her care, giving it the name Bulagat. The two sons of the latter, Khori and Buriat are the progenitors of two large tribes (Skaz. buryat, Zap. Vost.-Sib. 0. Rusk. Geogr. 0. I, 2, 94 ff.).
The foregoing examples show clearly that the conception of animals as the ancestors of different tribes is by no means strange among the Siberian peoples. A common extraction demands also certain duties from each individual claiming part in the same. Thus, Khangalov (Predaniya, Zap. Vost.- Sib. 0. R. G. 0. II, 2, 21) relates that e. g'., the Buriats of the Sartul tribe »do not eat the blood of animals because their shamanistic origin ( utkha ) forbids this, especially do they refrain from consuming the blood of the shaman-animals of the Sartul
28
U N o Hoimbekg.
tribe». From this it can not, however, be concluded whether the tribe actually believes itself to be descended from these animals. Generally, shamanism is in close connection with so many widely differing animals that the significance of each of these is not always correctly understood by the tribes them¬ selves. On entering the dwelling of a Buriat shaman, we see
Fig. 12. Skins of Buriat shaman’s assistant-animals.
After a photograph hy B. E. Petri.
hanging on the back-wall great quantities of the skins of dif¬ ferent small wild animals, which skins are regarded by the shaman as his sacred property and from each of which he believes himself to obtain assistance in his shamanistic duties (Fig. 12). Among the most northern peoples, such as the Yakuts, Dolganes and Tungus, certain birds such as the diver, the goose, the swan, the eagle etc., enjoy so great a respect that even their names are never mentioned and it is regarded as wrong to point at them with the finger. Should the hunters find the dead bodies of these birds in the forest, they entomb it with ceremony on a kind of scaffolding in the air. Neither do they ever hunt these birds. But as these species seem, at least at
The shaman costume ancl its significance.
29
the present time, to be as sacred to all, it is hard to decide whether this ancient manner of doing honour is derived from totemistic beliefs. One fact at least is certain, viz., that the birds which we see reproduced in the shaman costumes are regarded as a kind of spirit-animal. Stranger is the fact that the shaman resorts to the assistance of so many animal-helpers at the same time. When a Tungus from the Yenisei River begins to practise his art in his forest, he builds a special tent, on the outside of and around which he places long poles or posts bearing effigies, besides of the sun, moon and the thunder- bird, also of the crane, the diver, the swan, the wild duck and the cuckoo, all carved in wood. Wooden effigies of animals are also placed around him on the floor of the tent, behind the fireplace of which the shaman stands. On his left are the bur¬ bot, the wolf, the otter and the sea-trout; on his right the nelma (a species of fish), the snake, the lizard and the bear, while in front of him there is still an animal resembling a lizard. When beginning,'in the silence of the night, to the accompani¬ ment of a drum, his mighty song, the shaman believes he can call to his assistance the various representatives of nature from the air and the water, from land and forest, each of which will render him some special kind of help. That these assis¬ tant-animals of the shaman are believed to have special duties also elsewhere, appears from a Buriat shaman-song, in which it is said: »The grey hare is our runner, the grey wolf our mes¬ senger, the bird Khon our khubilgan, the eagle Khoto our emissary» (Khangalov, Nov. mater., Zap. Vost.-Sib. 0. R. G. 0. II, 1, 95). The word khubilgan denotes a metamorphosis (khubilkhu = to change in shape). Each Buriat shaman has, according to Zatoplayev (Nekat. pov., Zap. Vost.-Sib. 0. R. G. 0. II, 2, 9) his own khubilgan, some in the shape of an eagle, some a vulture, some a frog, etc.
Which of the foregoing animal phantasies may the sha¬ man costume be said to represent? Without doubt, the animal
30
Uno H o l si b e n g.
it, as a whole, is intended to represent must have some quite special significance. In seeking an answer to this question, we must first remember that we have in our possession costumes representing only a few different species of animals, though the bird-type of costume can certainly include different spe¬ cies of birds. Further, as costumes of the bear-type would seem to be rare, we have left only the deer (reindeer) and bird- costumes as representatives for the beliefs of the majority of peoples, both being met with among the same people. Should, the solution of the problem of these costumes be found in totem- ism, we should in consequence have to assume that the countless Siberian tribes trace their descent from either the deer (reindeer) or bird. With regards to the eagle-costume, the Buriat tale given earlier of an eagle as the »father of the first shaman» would seem to point to an assumption that the costume also is a heritage of this ancestor. We know also that the eagle is regarded as a sacred bird. We must take into consideration, however, that tribes possessing a reindeer-clad shaman by no means neglect to hunt or to eat the animal in question. The Yenisei-Ostiaks, among whom the author dis¬ covered a bear-shaman, explained expressly that this did not form any hindrance to their enjoying a bear-steak. We must therefore dismiss the theory of totemism.
The Dolganes relate further of a certain protective spirit of the shaman, this also having the form of an animal. They point out that although the shaman has many assistant-spirits, which appear in the form of various animals, each shaman has but one iya-kyl (’mother-animal’), on which his life and death depends. This spirit-animal is said to appear to the shaman only three times in the course of his life, once when he feels the first call to take up the profession of shaman, the second time when he reaches middle-age and the third time at his death, when also the spirit-animal is believed to die. Should the shaman’s spirit-animal for some accidental reason
The shaman costume and its significance.
31
be killed, death results immediately for the shaman also. In addition, it is said that if a shaman meet by accident the »anim- al» of some enemy shaman and succeed in frightening it to death, the shaman owning the »animal» dies at the same time (Vasilif.v, Izobrazenia, Ziv. Star. XVIII, 1—4, 277—8).
Fig. 13. Sainoyede shaman from the Ket river. Bear-type costume. After a photograph by Kai Donner. (Note the iron »bone» hanging under the sleeve.)
A similar belief exists among the Yakuts, whose language is spoken by the Dolganes. SeRosEVSKiY (Yakuty, 626) mentions as the most mighty spirit-animals of the shamans the bull, the stallion, the bear, the elk and the eagle. Unhappy, says the writer in question, is the shaman whose iya-kyl has the form of a dog or a wolf. This because the dog never leaves the shaman in peace, but ceaselessly »gnaws at his heart and troubles his body» with its teeth. The shamans are made aware of the appearance of a new shaman by the sight of a new iya-kyl. These spirit-animals differ from totem-animals above all in one respect, viz., that they are spirits whom »only the shamans
32
U N O H O L M B E R G.
can see». When two shamans fall out, so believe the Yakuts, their »animals» begin to fight each other. The struggle may last for months, even for years. The shaman whose »animal» finally wins, emerges whole from the fight, but the one whose »animal» is killed dies himself. A sickness of the shaman is regarded as a sign that his iya-ktjl is engaged in one of these struggles.
The foregoing reports show plainly that this invisible »mother-animal» stands in so close a connection with the sha¬ man himself that it can hardly be regarded as having origin¬ ated in anything less than the soul of the shaman, which appears outside of the body of its owner in the shape of some animal.
Similar conceptions are found among the Samoyedes. According to Tretyakov (Turukhanskiy kray, 212) the Samo¬ yedes of the Turuchansk District imagine each shaman to possess a »servant», »shaped like a reindeers, which remains constantly in the neighbourhood of its master. It is connected with the latter by means of a mysterious band, which is ex¬ plained as stretching farther and farther according to the distance the »servant» is sent on its master’s errands. Some¬ times, two or three other shamans commence with united forces an attack on some hated colleague by sending out their spirit-reindeer, which together attack the »reindeer» of the latter. As the lonely reindeer’s powers decline and it becomes exhausted, the shaman owning it dies. T. Lehtisalo collected similar beliefs among the Yuraks, who also tell of shamans fighting in the shape of reindeers. The last-named investigator knew of a case in which an image of a dead shaman was carved in the form of a reindeer, the relatives preserving the image in memory of the shaman (cfr. Jurakkisamoj. lauluista, Kale- valas. vuosik. II, 98—100).
The corresponding beliefs of the Lapps were written down in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by missionaries in Scandinavian Lapland. For the sake of comparison, let us
The shaman costume and its significance. 33
examine the following description by J. Kildal: »When two shamans have sent out their »reindeer» to fight each other, it happens that according to whether the struggling »reindeer» wins or looses, the respective shaman gains the victory or is vanquished; if one reindeer tosses off a horn from the other, the shaman whose »reindeer» has suffered the loss falls ill; if one »reindeer» kills the other, the shaman whose »reindeer» is killed dies. In the fight it happens also that in the degree the fighting »reindeer» becomes tired and exhausted, the sha¬ man on whose behalf the »reindeer» fights, feels himself tired and exhausted (Reuterskiold, Kallskrifter, 92). Besides in the form of a reindeer, the Lapps believed the soul of the shaman could travel in other forms, e. g., as a bird. The latter was also used as a means of fighting. H. Forbus says that when a Lapp commences a fight with another noidde he sends his bird, vurnes lodde, in case he happens to possess one, against the latter (Reuterskiold, 67). In Finland, also, tales are told of how the Lapp noita flies through the air like a bird, and how, if one of these birds be shot, an old Lapp sorcerer falls to the ground. These tales, which the author has himself heard in Northern Tavastland and which obviously mirror Laplandic beliefs, show the bird as a direct metamorphosis of the shaman, or, as the Buriats would say, as his khubilgan.
That also the Goldes (a Tungus tribe) living in the Amur valley possess similar ideas is shown' by their belief that the shaman, whose duty it is to escort the dead to the under-world, travels there in »the shape of a reindeer», carrying the soul of the dead on his back (Simkevits, Materialy, Zapiski Priamursk. 0. R. Geogr. 0. II, 1, 18).
Let us now turn once more to the shaman costume. Can the latter be connected in some way with the spirit-animal of the shaman dealt with in the foregoing? Often, the tribes themselves explain it as a medium of travel for the shaman. The conception of the Yakuts is obviously correctly interpreted
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Fig. 4. The iron »paAVS» attached to the mouths of the sleeves in Yakut shaman costumes. After V. N. Vasiliev.
causes, but, despite unimportant, local differences, as the out¬ come of a common idea binding together peoples dwelling far apart and speaking different languages. Each original costume Avill be seen to aim, with all its parts, at a representation of the idea of some special a n i m a 1, forming a complete Avhole from headdress to footwear, the iron plates attached to the surfaces of the different parts of the costume imitating the bones of the animal’s skeleton. In the sleeAT, for example, Ave see the bones of the limb corresponding to the human arm: in the upper part the humerus, in the loAver the ulna, beside this the radius, all long pieces of iron-plate; to the mouth of the sleeve, Avhenever special gloA r es are not used, a rude effigy is attached, made of the same iron and sometimes resembling the human hand with its fingers (Fig. 4). The latter fact need not imply, as Troscanskiy (Evol. fern, very, 136) assumes, that the iron objects attached to the costumes have originally
14 Uno Holm berg.
represented the human skeleton. On the sides of the cloak we have the »ribs», on the shoulders the »shoulder-blades» and on the upper edge to the front, below the throat, the »clavicles», etc., etc. In the footwear, also, we find bones contained in the foot. The number of the animals whose skin and bones, so to speak, the shaman thus takes on, is limited to very few species. From among the northern tribes only three are known to us, so that we can speak of three types of costume: the deer, be a r and b i r d types. As is natural, these varying types from the animal world give to the re¬ spective costumes their own peculiar character.
Extremely common is the shaman costume aiming at the representation of some bird. This type may readily be recognised by the build of the cloak, in which long strips of chamois leather and other hangings hang from the under-seam of the sleeve as »wings», and Fig. 5. similar strips of leather from the lower edge,
lungus sha- lengthening towards the back into the »tail>> man’s footwear. " 1 „ , ....
Bird-type. of the bird (Fig. 1). llie small leaf-like, or
cylindrical pieces of iron, with which the cos¬ tume is hung all over, sometimes even the boots, are called »feathers» by the people. The footwear belonging to these cos¬ tumes shows on the front side a bird’s foot portrayed in strips of leather or in rows of beads and ending, sometimes in three, sometimes in five outspread toes (Fig. 5). The headdress is usually made of bird’s feathers, having often a kind of beak in its fore-part, with large, staring eyes made of beads on either side. The pieces of iron-plate related earlier as repre¬ senting the skeleton, form, naturally, here the bones of a bird (cfr. V.' N. Vasiliev, Samanskiy kostyum, Sbornik Muzeya po Antrop. i Etnol. pri I. Akad. Nauk, VIII, 1 ff- and E.
15
The shaman costume and its significance.
Pekarsiciy— V. Vasiliev, Plasc i buben,
Materialy po Etnogr. Rossii, I, 93 ff.).
In the case of the deer-type, the most attention is awakened by the head-dress, which is generally formed of iron bands running round the head and crossways from four different points over the head, with two iron objects like branched horns rising from the junction of the cross-bands (Fig. 6). This head¬ dress is, in fact, the point by which the costumes of this type are most easily recognised. But also the cloak, the round¬ ed tails of which are sometimes pointed, attempts in its own fashion an imitation of the animal it is intended to represent (cfr. Fig. 11). Gmelin (Reise, II, 44—5) relates having seen in the eighteenth century a Tungus-shaman with a cos¬ tume, on both shoulders of which stood an iron, branched horn. 1 The costumes of this type differ further from those of the bird-type in that the long »wings» hanging from the lower seams of the Yenisei-Ostiak shaman
sleeves are here absent. Where shorter liea (J- dr ess. Deer-type.
Alter V. I. AnuCin.
strips are thus attached, they are termed
»hairs» by the people (cfr. Pripuzov, Izv. Vost.-Sib. 0. R. Geogr. 0. XV, 3-4, 65). The iron skeleton represents the bones of a deer.
1 Another report by Gme.lin (Reise, durch Sib. II, 83) says »die Schamanen batten auf einer jeden Schulter zwey eiserne zackichte, doch nicht allzulange Horner aufgesteckt». Similar iron figures on the back of the shaman were used among the Buriats, the Yeuisei- Ostiaks (cfr. Fig. 11) and the Samoyedes.
16
Even though the latter type would not seem to have been used as far south as the bird-type, which has an almost entire monopoly of the Altai and Sayan Districts and of North Mongolia, it has still been extremely common everywhere in North Siberia, from the dwelling-places of the Samoyedes to those of the eastern Tungus tribes. The earliest illustration of the type is to be found in Nic. Witsen’s work »Noord en Oost-Tartarye (II, 663 ) 1 . It is uncertain whether the iron horns which, attached to shaman head-dresses, have been found in some burial-places among the Buriats are in¬ tended to represent the horns of a reindeer, as is the case among the northern tribes, or whether some other species of deer has furnished the prototype of the costume to which they have belonged (Fig. 7). In the eighteenth century Pallas (Reise, III, 182) relates having seen a Buriat shaman with iron horns in his head-dress resembling those of the moun¬ tain-deer. Potanin (Ocerki, IV, 54) tells of the existence in the Irkutsk Museum of a Buriat shaman head-dress, the horns of which are spade-like, reminding one of the horns of the elk. However this may be, it is indisputable that the horns of the Buriat shaman differ considerably in form from those found .among more northern tribes, where they are obviously inten¬ ded to picture reindeer-horns.
Costumes of the b e a r-type are restricted, so far as our knowledge of them goes, to a much smaller area. A specimen of this type was brought by Kai Donner to the Ethnographical Museum at Helsingfors from the Ket River Samoyedes (cfr. Fig. 13). Its most recognisable feature is the head-dress cut from the head of the bear, the nostrils of the bear being dis-
1 Witsen relates, indeed, that the same Tungus shaman had a reindeer head-dress and bear-footwear (cfr. Mordvinov, Vestnik R. Geogr. O. 1860, 2, 62), but a combination of this nature can hardly be an original primitive creation, the other shaman costumes at least aiming, as a general rule, in their entirety at the representation of -one species of animal only.
The shaman costume and its significance. 17
cernible in the skin. Although the cloak itself is, as usual, made of reindeer chamois, a general habit is to edge the collar and the mouths of the sleeves with bearskin. Besides among the Samoyedes, the bear-type was known among the Yenisei-Ostiaks. In the author’s travels in the valley of the Yenisei, an opportunity occurred of seeing a shaman in whose
Iron objects belonging to a sha- Yenisei-Ostiak shaman footwear
man costume, found in the grave with its iron fittings (see context),
of a Buriat shaman. Bear-type.
(Head-dress, ribs etc.)
costume special attention was drawn to the long boots, to each of which pieces of iron corresponding to the bones of a bear’s feet were attached, the knee-cap being among them. The most remarkable fact was that the bones of the fore and hind legs of the bear were represented in the same boot; highest up, the two thigh-bones were attached to the inner and outer sides of the upper of the boot, which covered the shamans
2
18
Uno Holjibebg,
thigh, the four shank-bones were attached to four different sides, the paw of the fore-leg was attached to the front of the foot, the hind-paw to the heel (Figs. 8 & 9; cfr. Anucin, Ocerk sam., Sbornik Muz. Antrop. i Etnogr. pri I. Akad. Naiik II, 2, 42 ff.). Whether this latter habit is of later date, it is impossible for the author to judge, but the general fashion among the Siberian shaman was to attach the »fore-legs» of the animal they wished to represent to the sleeves of the cloak. That a similar habit has prevailed among the Yenisei-peoples also, is shown by Mordvinov’s description (Vestnik R. Geograf. 0. 1860, 2, 62), in which, among other matters, it is related that gauntlets with »iron claws» attached formed a part of the shaman’s costume. 1 The shaman seen by the author bore a bearskin headdress surrounded by an iron band, from the front of which rose an object resembling the blade of a knife and curving backwards. With this, it was explained, he clove the air. In no other part than the head-dress and the boots could the author descry anything awakening recollections of the bear (Fig. 9).
By comparing the shaman costumes among themselves we have thus been able to find a common idea hidden in them. Besides the attempt at an imitation of some animal by the costume as a whole, we have discovered a desire to represent the skeleton of the animal with iron objects. The latter obser¬ vation raises the question — is the Siberian shaman costume then a phenomenon of the iron age? Without doubt the an-
1 Cfr. Georgi (Bemerkungen, I, 280), who describes a 'Fungus costume: »An den Armeln sitzen vorne Handschuli, langst dem Arm liegen eiserne Bleche gleicli Schienen». Further he remarks: »Die Striimpfe sind wie die Armel beharnischt». Gmelin’s words (Reise II, 193) »lederne Striimpfe, die stark mit Eisen von oben bis unten be- schlagen waren und an dem Elide fiinf eiserne Zelien hatteno probably denote such boots in which only one foot of the animal is represented. Such boots are found in Russian museums.
The shaman costume and its significance. 19
swer is in the affirmative, as far as its components are restric¬ ted to iron. Even as such, judging from the spread of the habit, it is naturally comparatively old. The fact that none of these easily verifiable objects have been found in excava-
Fig. 9. Yenisei-Ostiak shaman. After a photograph by the author,
tions among the burial-places of the Finno-Ugrians, with the exception, perhaps of the Ostiaks, shows that the use of the shaman costume, in this form at least, had not penetrated into the midst of these peoples. In estimating, however, the age of the shaman costume, we must take into consideration that not all of the costumes are bound in any essential man¬ ner to the use of iron; there are also such, in which no iron, or only a nominal quantity of this metal was used. These are mostly costumes collected among the tribes living around the Altai, the bird-type appearing here being apparent only in the shape of the costume itself, which is further fitted with birds’
r
20 Uso Holiiberg.
feathers and wings. As remarked by A. 0. Heikel (Finskt Museum, 1896), the head-dress of the Soyot shaman was some¬ times made of the skin itself of an owl, neither the wings nor the head being absent. The wings of the same large bird are mentioned by von Lankenau (Globus, XXII, 279) as having also been attached to a shaman costume at the shoulders. An extremely valuable bird-costume with birds’-feather head¬ dress, and foot-wear made to resemble birds’ feet, was procured from the Soyots by 0rjan Olssen for the museum at Christiania (Fig. 10). Similarly with the bird-type cos¬ tumes, those of the deer and bear-types have at one time been forced to be satisfied with objects taken direct from nature. Certain older sources point clearly to this state of affairs. Not only the skin of a bear’s head has been deemed sufficient for a shaman head-dress, but as the aforementioned Mordvinov (62) points out, the shamans of the Turuchansk District have used natural bears’ paws in place of the paws of iron. And as certainly, reindeer horns have at one time as such awakened attention on the head-dress of the deer-clad shaman. 1 If such be truly the case, then the shaman’s costume cau perhaps be a memorial of an extremely ancient age.
The question remains as yet unexplained — why the shamans have regarded it as necessary to dress in the appa¬ rition of a certain animal. Is it to be supposed, as Karjalai- nen assumes, that the habit has sprung merely from the belief that the shaman must, in the exercise of his art, »hide his everyday appearance in order to remain untroubled at other
1 Naturally, the skins or other tokens of animals other than the species aimed at by the costume as a whole may often be seen hung on a shaman costume. Thus, e. g., on the bear-footwear of a Yenisei- Ostiak costume one sometimes sees a small iron object attached, which is intended to represent the foot of a swallow. The purpose of these is apparently the wish to secure additional magic powers for the use of the shaman on his spirit-journeys.
The shaman costume and its significance. 21
times from the side of the spirits he must raise for the perfor¬ mance of his duties*? In other words, is the only purpose of the costume »the deceiving of the spirits#? Describing the costume of the Samoyede shaman, Kai Donner (Sip. samo- jedien kesk. 144) remarks in passing that the shaman bore »a cap embellished with the sign of his tote m-a n i m a 1».
Fig. 10. Soyot shaman. Bird-type costume. After a photograph by 0rjan Olssen.
As the different parts of the costume have at one time formed a whole, the afore-mentioned remark awakens the point that the shaman costume as a whole was an attempt at the rep¬ resentation of the totem-animal.
We are thus brought to consider the relationship of sha¬ manism to totemism. By the latter is intended a belief met with among primitive peoples, viz., that certain families or clans are descended from some animal, the name of which is then used by the family, the animal in question being treated with so great a respect by the members of the family that they neither hunt nor kill it, still less eat the meat of the same. If the dead body of such an animal be found, it is buried with great ceremony. As is known, the term »totemism» is derived
22
UNO H O L M B E R G
from the word totem, which in the language of a certain tribe of Indians means the descent of the clan or family. The word, together with the beliefs connected with the same, was first brought forward by a Canadian merchant J. Long, who tra¬ velled much among the Indians. About 50 years ago, Me Lennan began to discuss totemism in its religious aspect and its relation to the history of civilization. Later, the matter has been studied by numerous investigators, who succeeded in finding corresponding beliefs among other primitive peoples, some going even so far as to see remains of totemism in almost every form of animal-worship. Therefore, before seeking signs of totemism in the animal-costume of the Siberian shaman, we must endeavour to find out whether the Siberian peoples have actually possessed beliefs which might be compared with totemism.
N. Haruzin has written a special study called »The Oath of the Bear and the Totemistic Origin of Bear-worship among the Ostiaks and Vogules» (Etnograf. Obozr. 1898), the title already showing that the investigator in question bel¬ ieves in the existence of totemism in the bear-worship of the Ugrian tribes in Siberia. The manner in which the foregoing peoples, and likewise the Lapps, have treated the bear is not sufficient proof of totemism in the true sense of the word. The respect shown to the bear, which can easily be ascribed to other reasons, is here general and not the private matter of individual tribes or clans. And in addition, it is to be observ¬ ed that this respect was not great enough to prevent either the hunting or the eating of the animal. The bones of the bear were, it is true, buried, or an attempt at their preserv¬ ation made by other means, but this habit also may be explain¬ ed without having recourse to totemism.
A similar treatment fell to the lot of other wild animals which were hunted. The procedure of the Lapps in these cases is described by P. Thurenius (I. Fellman, Handl. och upp- satser I, 392) as follows: »The bones of the bear, the hare and
The shaman costume and its significance
23
the lynx must be buried in dry, sandy hills or hidden in cre¬ vices among the mountains, where they are safe from dogs and other beasts of prey. This is done because the afore-men¬ tioned animals live on dry ground; on the other hand, the
Fig.lt. Yenisei-Ostiak shaman costume seen from behind. Deer-type. After V. 1. AnuCin. (Note the iron ribs and the iron horns at each end of the topmost iron object.)
bones of such as live in the water are buried in springs.» 0. P. Niurenius (Archives des Trad. Popul. Sued. XVII,4, 19) re¬ lates in addition that even the bones of the wolf were preserved by hanging the skeleton to a tree. Similar examples are to be found among all the Siberian tribes. Ionov (Sbornik Muz. Antrop. i Etnograf. pri Akad. Nauk, IV, 1, 20) says that after killing an elk the Yakuts kept the bones intact, in which state they were taken to the forest. Similarly, he states that the skinned carcase of the fox was wrapped round with hay and either buried in the ground or sheltered in trees in the forest. That some practical reason lay behind these actions ap-
24
U N O H O L M B E R G.
pears with all clearness from the explanations of the people themselves. Thus a Lapp from Gellivara, on being asked why he placed the head, feet and wings of a capercailzie hunted by him on a certain stone, answered that »new. birds grew from them, which he then could shoot» (Pehr Hogstrom, Beskrif- ning, 183). An anonymous writer, describing the preserving of the bones of the bear among the Lapps, states that »they believe the bear to rise again and suffer himself to be shot» (Le Monde Oriental, 1912, 37). Animals are thus believed to be in some manner immortal, if the skeleton be preserved. This, however, is far from what is usually meant by totemism.
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« on: June 22, 2019, 09:59:06 AM »
https://archive.org/details/TheShamanCostumeAndItsSignificanceTHE SHAMAN COSTUME AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE BY UNO ITOLMBERG TURKU 1922 Helsinki 1922, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Kirjapainon Osakeyhtio. The Shaman Costume and its Significance. It is unknown whether the ancient Finnish sorcerer, noiia, who for the performance of his duties fell into »trances», pos¬ sessed any special magic equipment. The Finnish word kan- nas, appearing in North-Finnish and Russian Carelian folklore denotes the magic drum of the Lapps. Whether any other Finno-Ugrians than the Lapps, and in addition, the Ostiaks and Vog'ules in Siberia should have used these drums, we have no information. Even in excavated graves no traces of them have been found. Still more difficult is the tracing of a shaman costume for the Finno-Ugrians, which costume, together with the drum, formed the most important equipment of the Siberian shaman. It was believed, indeed, in Russian Carelia, that the pow¬ er of the noiia was transferred to his pupil, should the sor¬ cerer present the latter with his cap and tinder-box. Simul¬ taneously, the former owner of these articles lost his magic powers. Also in some of the initiation ceremonies for a new noiia, the!' head-dress had a certain significance attached to it, therone performing the ceremony placing his cap on the head of the one to be initiated. Further, attention is drawn to the head-dress of the noiia by those folk-songs, in which the word lakkipdd (’becapped’) is used as a variant for the name of the sorcerer. Can it be possible that these slight items of knowledge, in particular the last-mentioned, contain, as Julius Krohn (Suomen suvun pak. jumalanpalv. 129) assu¬ med. »a memorial of a special shaman costume in Finland))? The belief that a person could transfer his powers to an¬ other along with some object with which he has for a longer period been in close connection is based on a very common magical conception, and need not as such presuppose any¬ thing out of the common in the article itself. The term, also, lakkipaa, as a name for the sorcerer, need not imply the exis¬ tence of a special head-dress for the shaman, in some manner connected with his activities. It may mean only that the noita wore his cap in the performance of his duties. In this way we know the Lapps to have acted. Among the old people in Fin¬ nish Lapland a memory still exists of the covering of the sor¬ cerer’s head each time he began his incantations (Appelgren, Muinaism. Ylidist. Aikak. V, 60)./ But in spite of this there are no traditions among the Lapps regarding the existence of a special shaman-cap or costume. I he latter are unmentioned in the accounts of missionaries dating from the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, neither is there any note of them in the earliest account of all, written in the thirteenth century, which otherwise desci i- bes in detail the magic ceremonies and the magic drum of the Western Lapps, even to the pictures on the latter (P. A. Munch, Symbolae ad historian! antiquiorem rerum norvegicarum, 4—5, De finnis). All that is mentioned is that when the sorcerer made his preparations for the task imposed on him by his posi¬ tion, he placed himself Hinder an outspread cloth» ( magus ex- tenso panno sub quo se ad profundus veneficas incantationes praeparet), which in all probability covered his head and fea¬ tures. The spread cloth cannot mean a regular shaman costume; there is no doubt but that the alien eye-witness would have mentioned the fact, had the Lapp shaman actually r dressed himself in a special costume. On the base of information from Russian Lapland, Satkov (Izv. Arkhang. O. d. Iz. R. Seveia, 1911, 486—7) speaks of a kind of shaman-belt in three colours used there, which was girded on by the sorcerer before falling asleep, in the belief that he would obtain desired information The shaman costume and its significance. 5 during his sleep. The habit, of all to judge an isolated, private one, is probably a later invention, as it is in conflict with at least that conception of other Lapps, viz., that the noidde, and even his assistant, as related by Leem (Beskrivelse, 475), must take off their belts, which were obviously believed to prevent the soul of the shaman from leaving his body. A simi¬ lar belief is met with in Siberia, e. g., among the Yakuts, whose shaman Solovyev (Sbornik gaz. »Sibir» I, 410) says he lets loose the bands of belts and even of hair. If thus we find no trace or mention of any kind of shaman costume among the Lapps, amongst whom the shaman with his drum has existed up to a quite recent time, there is still less reason to suppose the Finns proper, or the other Baltic Finns, to have preserved a memory of a shaman costume, which in the mists of anti¬ quity may have been in use among them. Neither do we find among the Volga peoples or the Per- mians (Sirians and Votyakes) any signs hinting at the use of a special shaman costume by their sorcerers. Not even in the Life of St. Stefan (f 1396), the converter of the Sirians, which otherwise contains valuable information regarding the beliefs and customs of those times, among other matters a mention of the famous sorcerer, Pam, is there anything said which could point to the existence of special equipment among these shamans of the earliest stage. Not until we come to the Ugrian dwelling-places in Siberia do we find any mention of such. Even here, however, the reports of the use of a shaman costume are restricted to the most northern and eastern Ostiak territories, and it is difficult to be quite certain whether the custom in question relates to the Ostiaks or their neighbours, the Samoyedes. Should the Ostiaks in some districts have made use of shaman costumes, the custom might still, as Kar- jalainen (Jugral. usk. 554) points out, be explained as having sprung from an alien, Samoyede example. Among the Samoyedes, shaman costumes are met with 6 Uno Holmbekg. already on the European side. Veniamin (Vestnik R. Geogr. 0. 1855, 118), whose account deals with the Yuraks of the Mezen District in the Government of Archangel, relates that Fig. 1. Yakut shaman costume seen from behind. Bird-type. After E. Pekarskiy. (Note the ribs and the bones of the arm hanging under the sleeves.) the local shamans used a long chamois cloak of reindeer-skin, which was »decorated with tassdls, iron figures, buttons, and other pendants». As the most important feature of the shaman costume he mentions a special head-dress, called the »eye- coverer». Finscii (Reise, 55), who in his wanderings in the The shaman costume and its significance. 7 seventies in Siberia saw a Samoyede shaman dressed in a soil¬ ed white cloak, decorated with galloons, relates having heard that leather costumes fitted with iron plates were no longer the fashion». The Samoyede costume with »iron gewgaws» attached has, however, in other places, been in use much later, although the best preserved specimens are now perhaps collected already in the museums. Closely related with these »iron costumes*) is without doubt the one described by Beliavskiy in his work »A Journey to the Arctic*), published in 1833. This costume, called Ostiak by him, is »sewn of reindeer-skins, and is long and fitted with sleeves. Its significance lies in the number of metal hooks, rings, plates and rattles which, mostly of iron, cover the costume so completely that it is impossible to see of what material the latter is made*). In addition, he relates of a special shaman head-dress, which was made of strips of cloth of different colours. Sometimes the shaman would add to the above an iron ring round his head »to show that other¬ wise the skull might burst with the power of his wizardry* (Poyezdka, 115). Karjalainen (Jugr. usk. 552) assumed that Beliavskiy no describes sights seen by him when he speaks of »the iron material and the exaggerated number of gew¬ gaws*). However this may be, the foregoing description is typical of the shaman costumes of many of the North Siberian tribes. Gazing at these costumes, the question arises — what has been the original purport of these strange garments? Kar¬ jalainen discusses the question in his work »The Religion of the Ugrians*) and comes to the conclusion that »the purpose of the costume was apparently twofold; partly it was intended to affect the spectator, but the main purpose was probably directed towards the spirits. The effigies of animals are the shaman’s assistants, containing thus his magic powers, the rings and metal figures, little bells etc., give forth music. 8 But m addition, according to the views prevalent in many districts, it was essential for Fig. 2. Covering for the breast worn by Yakut shaman. After E. Pekarskiy. a shaman to hide his everyday apparition when performing his duties, in order to be left in peace at other times by the spirits which he had called to his assistance while practising his art; the purpose of the co¬ stume was thus also to deceive the spirits*) (Jugr. usk. 552; cfr. Miiiailovskiy, Samanstvo, 72 —3). This explanation by Kar- jalainen undoubtedly hits the mark in its reading of the purp¬ ort of the animal effigies at¬ tached to the costume, but the significance of the costume it¬ self would seem to be unclear to him. A closer insight into the mat¬ ter is possible only after the sifting of a wide field of com¬ parative material. And for this reason we will examine all the shaman costumes which have been in use among the large Altaic race of Siberia. To this same civilization, embracing the use of the shaman costume, belong also the Yenisei-Ostiaks, the Samoyedes, and the Ug- rians living in the vicinity of the latter, as far as they can actually be said to have made use of shaman costumes. The most eastern tribes of North Siberia, such as the Chukchee, the Koriaks etc., who have also possessed shamans, but who form another circle of civilization, fall outside of the bound¬ aries of this investigation. The tribes belonging to the Altaic The shaman costume and its significance. 9 race whom we know to have used shaman costumes are thus: the various Tungus tribes, the Yakuts and the Dolganes, small Tartar tribes living in the vicinity of Altai mountains, the north¬ ern Mongols and the Buriats. Most probably these costumes have earlier been used also by Kirghis and the other southern Tartar tribes before their conversion to Islam, and similarly, by the Kalmucks, before these went over to the religion of the Thibetans. Many even of the Tartar tribes from around the Altai have given up the use of shaman costumes, nor have the Buriats preserved theirs, but the iron objects found in the burial-places of the shamans show the latter to have dressed themselves in earlier times in costumes similar to those used even to-day among the more northern tribes. Generally, shaman costumes are beginning to decline everywhere, although the belief in shamanism still prevails. Certain older sources already relate of Siberian shamans who practised their art in everyday dress. These reports may pos¬ sibly have their foundation in the unwillingness of primitive peoples, more especially their shamans,. to show their most sacred possessions when this can be avoided, but it is also known with certainty that the old costumes had in some di¬ stricts already at an early date lost their earlier importance, as soon as their purpose had been forgotten. The other magic instruments, such as the drum, would seem to have been more essential to the shaman, and their use has there¬ fore been able to survive that of the costumes. The development from a costumed shaman to one with¬ out. special garments has however proceeded, and still pro¬ ceeds, gradually. In the twinkling of an eye no old beliefs or customs can altogether disappear. While the complete shaman costume was composed earlier of many separate art¬ icles of clothing: the cloak itself, a covering for the breast hung round the neck under the opening of - the cloak, high footwear, these reaching at times high enough to cover the thighs, gloves or gauntlets and a head-dress, one can observe 10 Uno Holmbeeo. during the degeneration of the costume how generally first the gauntlets — if these have actually been everywhere in use — and then the boots disappear. The cloak # and the head-dress seem able to contend for themselves longer, sometimes the former, sometimes the latter remaining behind as a memento of the ancient costume of the shaman. The earlier head¬ dress has in some places been supersed¬ ed by gewgaws hung round an ordinary cap or, as is the case with the Lebed- Tartars, simply by a woman’s veil wound round the head while practising Bpdte the art of shamanism (Fig. 3; K. Hilden, BP fpyt. Terra, 1916, 136 ff.). The Buriats have ,S' I:;'‘ r. . begun, in the place of the former co- J stumc and drum, to use two sticks, which they call »horses» (hobbyhorses), Lebed-Tartar 3 ' shaman the handles of which they sometimes in his present attire, carve into the shape of a horse’s head After a photograph by an( j phe lower ends to resemble hoofs (Fig. 14). At times, the middle of the stick is made to look like a »knee» (Agapitov and Kiiangalov, Izv. Yost.-Sib. 0. R. Geogr. 0. XIV, 1 —2, 42—3). A similar method of communication has been known also to the Black- forest Tartars, who called however only one of the sticks the ’horse’ (Potanin, Ocerki, IV, 54). Generally, small bells, the. skins of small wild animals, etc., have been tied to these hobby¬ horses (cfr. Scand. ganritf). The degeneration of the shaman costume among even the northern tribes implies not only the disappearance of vari¬ ous parts of the costume, but also the falling-away and loss of the articles made of iron and other materials which formerly were hung on the costume. In older times the usual custom on the death of a shaman was to array the latter in the costume The shaman costume and its significance. 11 in which he had practised his art, the body being then placed either in a burial-place on the ground or more often in the aerial tomb generally used by Siberian tribes. Later, it has become the habit in many places for the relatives to rip off all the metal figures and gewgaws from the shaman’s costume at his death, and to preserve them until a new shaman of the same family appears, when the gewgaws are attached to his costume, if possible, in their right places. It is possible, how¬ ever, for small mistakes to occur,(which are then handed down in the family to the following costumes. The investigator need not be led astray by these accidents, provided he has a suffi¬ ciency of costumes as material and can compare- these. Fully complete shaman costumes with all the essential parts intact and the various objects belonging to the same are seldom met with nowadays even in the remotest districts of Siberia. But in the museums at Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Minusinsk, Krasnoyarsk etc and, above all, in the great museums at Petro- grad, we can become acquainted with wealthy and invaluable collections of costumes and objects, including complete sha¬ man costumes, the whole forming a material widely illustra¬ tive of shamanism. And with the help of these complete cos¬ tumes we can use for our investigation also other costumes, more or less affected by the tooth of time; and in their light, the scanty descriptions of shaman costumes met with here and there in literature relating to Siberia become possessed of great importance. Starting from these different sources of information, our collection of facts is wide enough to admit of an attempt at a reconstruction of the intention of the said costumes. To reach down to the marrow of the question we must first establish the fact that not all of the many »gewgaws» with which the costume was hung are as common or as essential. Many of them are accidental, and these have each their own history. But even those objects, which over a wide area, in the cos- 12 UNO H O L M B E R G tumes of different peoples, would seem to play an important part, are not always so closely connected with the costume as a whole as to throw light on the nature of this peculiar gar¬ ment. Of these secondary objects, as they might well be ter¬ med, which are usually made of iron, may be mentioned the sun and moon, a kind of metal mirror with figures of twelve animals representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac (some¬ times roughly imitated also by certain northern tribes), a round flat ’earth-disc’, through the hole in the centre of which the shaman is said to visit the underworld, and further, figures representing certain species of assistant-animals to the shaman, quadrupeds, reptiles, fish, snakes and, in special measure birds, mostly the loom and other diving birds, which are regard¬ ed as sacred] and are believed to assist the shaman on his spirit-journeys (Figs. 1, 2, 11). The more assistant-animals a shaman possessed, their effigies in iron or brass or their skins being sometimes hung also from the head-dress of the shaman, the more mighty was he in the eyes of his tribe. Altogether for the sake of this outward reputation, however, these effi¬ gies Avere not attached to the costume, each having its oavii significance. In many costumes the effigies of human-like spirits e\ r en are seen. Besides these objects, important enough from the sha¬ man’s point of vieAV, but secondary in importance compared with the costume itself, and A\ r hose intention we do not intend to study in detail, their significance being often independant of the costume, the latter contains, especially among the northern tribes, many other objects of iron, which are an integral part of the costume and tend to make the same heavy and uncom¬ fortable. Generally, the costumes are also in this respect not ahvays as perfect, iioav this and now that iron plate or hanging having dropped off; often, they have strayed from their orig¬ inal site, sometimes only one or two being left to shoAV the origin of the costume. In this state, as individual phenonema, The shaman costume and its significance. 13 their meaning cannot be divined. Not until Ave liave before us a Avell-preserved shaman costume with all its parts from head-dress to footAvear, not set together of parts of different costumes, as is sometimes the case in museums, and has pos¬ sibly also happened in practice, but forming a whole, then only does the secret of these mysterious costumes seem to solve itself. They are seen, not as products of the temporary whims of individual shamans or as the result of accidental
666
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667
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THE ARYAN RACE.
naturally arose in the village of ancient Arya must be the final type of government of the world.
One highly important result must attend this ultimate condition, — namely, the abolition of war; for the basic principle of republican government is that of the yielding of private in favor of general interests, and the submission of all hostile questions to the arbitrament of courts and parliaments. Abundant questions rise in America which might result in war, were not this more rational method for the settlement of disputes in satisfactory operation. In several minor and in one great instance in American history an appeal has been made from the decision of the people to that of the sword. But with every such effort the principle of rule by law and by the ballot has become more firmly established, and admission of this principle is becoming more and more general as time goes on.
Unfortunately, in the world at large no such method exists for arranging the relations of states, and many wars have arisen over disputes which could satisfactorily have been settled by a congress. This is being more and more clearly recognized in Europe, and a partial and unacknowl- edged confederacy of the European States may be said to exist already. But the only distinct and declared avoid- ance of war by parliamentary action was that of the Ala- bama Commission, which satisfactorily settled a dispute which otherwise might have resulted in a ruinous war between America and England. This principle of con- federacy and parliamentary action for the decision of in- ternational questions is young as yet, but it is grow- ing. One final result alone can come from it, — a general confederacy of the nations, becoming continually closer, must arise, and war must die out. For the time will FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
329
inevitably come when the great body of confederated na- tions will take the dragon of war by the throat and crush the last remains of life out of its detestable body. We can dimly see in the far future a period when war vTill not be permitted, when the great compound of civilized na- tions will sternly forbid this irrational, ruinous, and terrible method of settling national disputes, and will not look quietly on at the destruction of human life and of the re- sults of human industry, or the wasteful diversion of in- dustry to the manufacture of instruments of devastation. When that age comes, all hostile disputants will be forced to submit their questions to parliamentary arbitration, and to abide by the result as individuals submit to-day to the decision of courts of law. All civilized men and na- tions of the far future will doubtless deem it utter madness to seek to settle a dispute or reach the solution of an ar- gument by killing one another, and will be more likely to shut up the wTarrior in an insane asylum than to put a sword in his hand and suffer him to run amuck like a frantic Malay swordsman through the swarming hosts of industry. Such we may with some assurance look forward to as the finale of Aryan political development.
Religiously the antique Aryan principle has similarly declared itself. Religious decentralization was the con- dition of worship in ancient Arya, and this condition has reappeared in modern America. The right of private thought and private opinion has become fully established after a hard battle with the principle of religious autoc- racy, and to-day every man in America is privileged to be his own priest, and to think and 'worship as he will, irrespective of any voice of authority.
In moral development the Aryan nations are steadily 330
THE ARYAN RACE.
progressing. The code of Christ is the accepted code in nearly all Aryan lands. It is not only the highest code ever promulgated, but it is impossible to conceive of a superior rule of moral conduct. At its basis lies the principle of universal human sympathy, — that of interest in and activity for the good of others, without thought of self-advantage. Nowhere else does so elevated a code of morals exist, for in every other code the hope of re- ward is held out as an inducement to the performance of good acts. The idea is a low one, and it has yielded low results. The idea of unselfish benevolence, and of a practical acceptance of the dogma of the universal brotherhood of mankind, is a high one, and it is yielding steadily higher results. Aryan benevolence is loftier in its g^ade and far less contracted in its out-reach than that of any other race of mankind; and Aryan moral belief and action reach far above those displayed by the Confucian, Buddhistic, and Mohammedan sectaries.
Industrially the Aiyans have made a progress almost infinitely be}Tond that of other races. The development of the fruitfulness of the soil; the employment of the energies of Nature to perform the labors of man ; the extensive in- vention of labor-saving machinery; the unfoldment of the scientific principles that underlie industrial operations, and of the laws of political economy and finance, — are doing and must continue to do much for the amelioration of man. It is not with the sword that the Aryans will yet conquer the earth, but with the plough and the tool of the artisan. The Aryan may go out to conquer and possess ; but it will be with peace, plenty, and prosperity in his hand, and under his awakening touch the whole earth shall yet “ bud and blossom as the rose.” FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
331
There is but one more matter at which we need glance in conclusion. In original Arya the industrial organiza- tion was communistic. Yet we must look upon this as but a transitional state, a necessary stage in the evolution of human institutions. In the savage period private property had no existence beyond that of mere personal weapons, clothing, and ornaments. In the pastoral period it had little more, since the herds, which formed the wealth of the people, were held for the good of all; there was no personal property in lands, and household possessions were of small value. In the village period, though the bulk of the land was still common property, yet the house-lot, the dwelling, and its contents were family possessions. The idea of and the claim to private property has ever since been growing, and has formed one of the most important instigating elements in the development of mankind. This idea has to-day become supreme; the only general com- munism remaining is in government property, and the principle of individualism is dominant alike in politics, re- ligion, and industry. Such a progressive development of individualism seems the natural process of human evolu- tion. The most stagnant institution yet existing on the earth is the communistic Aryan village. The progress of mankind has yielded and been largely due to the estab- lishment of the right to private property. Nor can we believe that this right will ever be abrogated, and the stream of human events turn and flow backward toward its source. The final solution of the problem of property- holding cannot yet be predicted, but it can scarcely be that of complete communism or socialism. The wheels of the world will cease to turn if ever individual enterprise becomes useless to mankind. 332
THE ARYAN RACE.
Yet that individualism has attained too great a domi- nance through the subversion of natural law by force, fraud, and the power of position, may safely be declared. Individualism has become autocratic over the kingdom of industry, and Aryan blood will always revolt against au- tocracy. In the world of the future some more equitable distribution of the products of industry must and will be made. The methods of this distribution no one can yet declare ; but the revolt against the present inequitable con- dition of affairs is general and threatening. This condition is not the result of a natural evolution, but of that preva- lence of war which long permitted force to triumph over right, and which has transmitted to the present time, as governing ideas of the world, many of the lessons learned during the reign of the sword. The beginning of the em- pire of peace seems now at hand, and the masses of mankind are everywhere rising in rebellion against these force-in- augurated ideas. When the people rise in earnest, false conditions must give way. But it is a peaceful revolution that is in progress, and the revolutions of peace are much slower, though not less sure, than those of war. The final result will in all probability be some condition intermediate between the two extremes. On the one hand, inordinate power and inordinate wealth must cease to exist and oppress the masses of mankind. On the other hand, abso- lute equality in station and possessions is incompatible with a high state of civilization and progress. It belongs, in the story of human development, to the savage stage of existence, and has been steadily grown away from as man has advanced in civilization. The inequalities of man in physical and mental powers are of natural origin, and must inevitably find some expression in the natural organi- FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
333
zation of society. They cannot fail to yield a certain in- equality in wealth, position, and social relations. We can no more suppress this outcome of natural conditions than we can force the seeds of the oak, pine, and other forest trees alike to produce blades of grass. Enforced equal- ity is unnatural, in that it is opposed to the natural in- equalities of the body and mind of man, and it could not be maintained, though a hundred times enacted. And the inevitable tendency of even its temporary prevalence would be to check progress and endeavor, and to force human society back toward that primitive stage in which alone absolute communism is natural and possible. To find complete equality in animal relations we must go to those low forms of animal life in which there is no discov- erable difference in powers and properties. The moment differences in natural powers appear, differences in condi- tion arise; and the whole tendency of animal evolution has beeu toward a steadily increasing diversity of powers and faculties, until to-day there exist greater differences in this respect in the human race than at any previous period in history. These mental and physical differences cannot fail to yield social, political, and industrial diver- sities, though laws by the score or by the thousand should be enacted to suppress their natural influence upon human institutions.
But the existing and growing inequality in wealth and position is equally out of consonance with the lessons of Nature, since it is much in excess of that which exists in human minds and bodies, and is in numerous cases not the result of ability7, but of fraud, of special advantages in the accumulation of wealth, or of an excessive develop- ment of the principle of inheritance. This evil must be 334
THE ARYAN RACE.
cured. How, or by what medicine, it is not easy to de- clare. No man has a natural right to a position in society which his own powers have not enabled him to win, nor to the possession of wealth, authority, or influence which is excessively beyond that due to his native superiority of intellect. That a greater equality in the distribution of wealth than now exists will prevail in the future can scarcely be questioned, in view of the growing determi- nation of the masses of mankind to bring to an end the present state of affairs. That the existing degree of communism will develop until the great products of human thought, industry, and art shall cease to be private prop- erty, and become free to the public in libraries, museums, and lecture-halls, is equally among the things to be desired and expected. But that superior intellect shall cease to win superior prizes in the “ natural selection” of society, is a theory too averse to the teachings of Nature and the evident principles and methods of social evolution ever to come into practical realization in the history of mankind. INDEX
Aborigines of Europe and Asia, Gl,
G2.
Abraham, patriarchal position of, 115; ancestral relation to Jews, 1G0.
Abyssinia ns, 17.
iEnotrians, 78.
Afghans, race-type of, 84.
Africa, English settlements in, 298; Aryan advance in, 301, 315; Arab advance, 303; probable future con- dition, 313; race-mingling in Cen- tral, 314; west-coast colonies, 314; Congo region, 314; probable effect on natives, 315; future race-rela- tions, 31G.
Africans, increase of, in America, 311.
Agassiz on Indians and Negroes of Brazil, 7, note.
Agglutinative languages, methods of, 198; where used, 198.
Agni, myth of, 144, note.
Agriculture, original localities of, 49.
Ahriman, original myth of, 222; con- test with Ormuzd, 222; evil crea- tions, 223.
Ahura Mazda, 222.
Alexandria, scientific schools of, 284.
Algiers, French province, 313; railroad southward, 315.
Altmark, land-communism in the, 124.
America, Aryan settlements in, 297; treatment of Indians, 305; decrease of aborigines, 311; future state of races, 312; democracy, 324, 325; rule of law, 328; democracy in reli- gion, 329; industrial development, 330.
American languages, lack of abstrac- tion in, 195, 197; word-compound- ing, 196.
American races, imaginative faculty in, 25.
American village system, 123, 126; clan-organization compared with Aryan, 172.
Americans, muscular energy of the earlv, 275, 27G; rudimentary art, 282.'
Analysis in language, 203-208; modern results of, 209.
Anaxagoras, idea of deity of, 241.
Ancestor-worship, 133-35; evidences of, 137, 138.
Anglo-Saxons, deficiency of abstrac- tion in language of, 93, 94; system of law, 175; epic of Beowulf, 258.
Apollo, Cuma?an, statue of, 141.
Aquitani, character of the, 69.
Arabia, permanence of conditions in, 319; security against invasion, 319; how commerce mav penetrate, 319.
Arabian empire, science in the, 284; commerce, 28G, 287.
Arabians, poetry of the, 271; their conquests, 294; driven from Spain, 295; migrations in Africa, 303.
Arabs, affinities of, to the Negro race- type, 1G, 314.
Architecture, prehistoric European, 27G; Melanochroic, 27G, 277; Egyp- tian, 277 ; Hindu, 278, 279; Greek, 279; Gothic, 280.
Aristotle, philosophy of, 241, 242; founds science of observation, 283. 336
INDEX.
Art of the ancients, 278, 280; of the moderns, 280, 281; of non-Aryans, 2S2.
Arthur, Kin.tr, Welsh legends of, 202; use of by Trouvères, 242.
Arya, ancient, no State religion in, 153; cradle of liberty, 15-4: devel- opment of democracy. 187; method of worship, 219; communism, 301.
Aryan, derivation of term, 90.
Aryan clan, comparison of, with American, 172; religious freedom, 172, 173; democracy, 173; political conditions, 174; common duties, 174; blood-revenge, 175; tribal com- binations, 175 ; clan-council, 17G; simplicity of organization, 170; military system, 177; guilds, 177; chieftainship, 17S, 179.
Aryan family, property of, 109; or- ganization, 110; persistence, 111; how composed, 135, 139; religious system, 13G; symbolism of common meal, 130.
Aryan languages, persistence of, 37; loss of names for animals, 42; early dialects, G1; verbal affinities, 90; dictionary, 92; physical significance of original words, 93; comparison with Semitic, 200; outgrowth from Mongolian, 201; analytic methods, 206; modern results of analysis, 207; ancient synthetic complexity, 207; rapid analysis in Middle Ages, 208; growth of modern conditions, 209; attempts to form sub-groups, 212.
Aryan literature, superiority of the, 243; development of epic poem, 243; compared with non-Arvan, 2G9; lyric poetry, 270, 271; high intel- lectuality, 272.
Aryan migrations, effect of primitive, 230; energy, 290; early extension, 231: checks to. 231, 292; internal movements, 232; conquest of Semi- tic and Hamitie regions, 292; early historical movements, 233; rever- sion,' 293; loss of territory, 234; expansion resumed, 295; results, 29G; commercial migration, 297;
America occupied, 297, 300; Pacific islands and India, 298, 300; set e- ments in Africa, 298; character of modern, 297-99; extension, 300; regions occupied, 300, 301; moral effects, 304; beneficial influences, 303; effect on aborigines, 311; in Africa, 313-15; moral development, 329, 330.
Aryan mythology, origin of the, 141; development, 142; heaven-deities, 143; myths of the Vedas, 144.
Aryan philosophy, high character of the, 233.
Aryan race, 1-5; migratory energy, 11; expanding tendency, 15; deriva- tion, 16; mental fusion of sub-races, 2G, 218; intellectual comparison,
with yellow and black races, 27; review of development, 27; linguis- tic divisions, 28; original home, 30, 37, GO; languages, 32; Asiatic theory of Aryan home, 38. 39; its insufficiency, 39, 40, 42; European theory, 41; argument from lan- guage, 42; Peschel’s views, 42, 43; other European theories, 43; climate and habits, 43, 44 ; pastoral pursuits, 47, 48; change of habits, 49; devel- opment, 51; the Caucasus as the primitive seat, 51, 52; early condi- tion, 57, 58; energy, 59; original divisions, G4; sub-races, 92; influ- ences controlling development, 215; non-specialization, 21G; superiority of intellect, 217.
Atyan religion, double system of, 132; mythology, 132; ancestor-worship. 133, 134;* family rites, 135, 130; burial-customs, 130; secrecy of house- worship, 134, 138: clan-worship, 139-41; effect of migration on wor- ship, 145.
Aryan village system, unfoldment of the, 185.
Aryans, southern migration of the, 74; developmental influences, 85; agri- cultural migration, 85; race-min- gling, 87; linguistic persistence, 87; build no monuments, 89 ; their INDEX.
337
record, 90; domesticated animals, 94; pastoral terms, 90; agricultural customs, 95-97; trees and metals known, 97; houses, 97; domestic life, 98; family relations, 98, 99; hunting customs, 99; navigation, 100; war, 100; knowledge and be- liefs, 101; religion, 101; political system, 102; later conditions, 104; barbarism, 105 ; land-communism, 110; village group, 117; patriarch- ism, 117; democracy, 118; land- division, 118; family property, 118, 119; kinship, 139; religious history of western division, 14G, 147; lack of priestly authority in West, 150; political evolution, 188; links of affinity, 189; comparison of phi- losophy with other races, 229; fer- tility of imagination, 240, 200; epic poetry, 247; comparative powers, 273; superior mental energy, 274, 277, 278; their art, 2S9, 281; science, 282-85: machinery, 285; commerce, 2SG, 287; moral standard, 287-89; treatment of Indians, 304; results, 305; historical movements, 310; race- fusions, 310; race-influence on Mon- golians, 310; in Pacific islands, 317; in Asia, 317, 31S; comparison with the Chinese, 321; steady progress, 322; mental conquests, 322, 323; review of political evolution, 323- 27.
Asia, state of Aryan population in, 290; Russian conquests, 2D8 ; Aryan advance, 301; Arvan population, 317, 318.
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There remains the probable future of the Aryans in Asia to pass in review. Here we find almost everywhere the same determined Aryan advance. During the last century the Aryan empire in Asia has been very greatly increased in dimensions. Nearly every trace of non-Aryan rule has been swept from India. Burmali promises to become an English province. The eastern coast of Indo-Cliina is rapidly becoming a French one. If we may judge from past history, Siam, the only province of that region which 318
THE ARYAN RACE.
yet fully retains its independence, will eventually fall under Aryan control. Persia, after being successively overrun by Arab, Turk, and Mongol, is to-day mainly Aryan in the race-characteristics of its civilized inhabitants. The Afghans and Belooches are principally Aryan. The whole of Asia to the north of the regions here mentioned, with the exception of the Chinese empire, is to-day under Rus- sian rule, and becoming rapidly overrun by Russian mer- chants and colonists. That a very general race-mingling will eventually take place throughout this wide region is probable. The distinctive Mongolian features and mental conditions will become modified, and there can be little doubt that the Slavonic type of language will gradually crush out the less-cultured tongues of the region named.
In southwestern Asia there remain the Semites of the desert region and the Turks of Syria and Asia Minor. The latter would to-day be under Russian rule but for the jealousy of Europe. As a race they are becoming more and more assimilated to the Aryans, and their race-dis- tinction promises completely to die out in the near future. In regard to government and civilization, they must accept the Aryan conditions, or fall under Aryan control. There is no other alternative possible.
If we look, then, over the whole world of the future, it is to behold the almost certain dominance of the Aryan type of mankind over every region except two, which alone have held and promise to hold their own. These are the regions of Arabia, and China and Japan. In these por- tions alone of the whole earth do we find a national energy and the existence of conditions that seem likely to repel the Aryan advance. T\re may briefly glance at the possible future of man in these two regions. FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
319
Since history began, Arabia has remained in an almost unchanged condition. Militant civilization has raged for thousands of years in the surrounding regions, but Arabia has lain secure behind her deserts. Kingdoms and em- pires have risen and fallen everywhere around this silent peninsula; yet the waves of war have broken in baflled fury upon its shores. It has poured out its hordes to conquer the civilized world, but these have brought back no civilization to its oases. It is to-day what it was three thousand years ago, — a land defying alike the sword and the habits of the civilized world. The Egyptian, the Mongol, the Turk, and the Aryan have alike retired baffled from its borders and left it to. its self-satisfied sleep of barbarism. Is this to be the story of the far future as it has been of the far past? Shall civilization never pen- etrate the Arabian desert, and Aiyan rule and Aiyan commerce stand forever checked at the edge of its deadly wall of sand?
Hardly so. Modern civilization has resources which even the desert cannot withstand. A plan to conquer the desert has already been tried in the Soudan, and a similar one in Algeria. The railroad and the water-pipe may ac- complish that task in which all the armies of the past signally failed. The camel, the ship of the desert, cannot compete with the iron horse, and it is among the probabili- ties’of the future that commerce will thus penetrate to the interior of Arabia, and rouse that sleeping land to a vital activity it has never known. Civilization can scarcely fail to make its way into the Arabian oases with their enter- prising populations, Aryan influence to awaken the active- minded Arabs to a realization of the wealth which lies undeveloped around them, and the oldest of known lands 320
THE ARYAN RACE.
to join the grand movement of mankind toward the en- lightenment of the future. Civilization must and wdll prevail over every land which barbarism now holds in its drowsy grasp, and the deserts of the world, which have so long defied its march, may yet become the slaves of the railroad and the water-pipe.
In regard to China and Japan we have before us but a question of time. The strong practical sense of their people has been abundantly demonstrated, and they need but be made clearly to perceive the advantages of Aryan methods and habits to adopt them eagerly. Japan has already realized this fact, and is introducing the conditions of Western enlightenment with a rapidity that is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of mankind. Such is not the case with the Chinese. Their long con- servatism and their high opinion of their intellectual and industrial superiority have hindered them from fully con- sidering the advantages possessed by the “outside barba- rians.” Yet such a state of affairs cannot persist. The Chinese have the same practical sense as the Japanese ; and though their acceptance of the conditions of European civilization may be a slower, it will be as sure a process. Thought has never been asleep in that old land. It has simply been moving in the unchanging round of the tread- mill. If it once escapes into the broader air, the stagnant conditions of Chinese civilization must give way before it, and new laws, new industries, and new ideas make their way into that realm of primitive thought.
We are here concerned with the two peoples of mankind who are least likely to fall under Aryan domination. Were they to continue dormant, they could scarcely avoid this fate. But they are not continuing dormant, and the prob- FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
321
ability is that, ere many years have passed, both China and Japan will be in a condition to defy Aryan conquest. As they become open to Aryan ideas, however, they will be- come more and more open to Aryan settlement, and an enlivening influence of fresh thought and fresh blood may thus penetrate to the very central citadel of Mongolian civilization. 'Work and thought together cannot fail to bring the antique realm of China into line with the modern and energetic nations of the Aryan West.
When this condition is realized, the commercial activity
of the Aryans will undoubtedly have a rival. The Chinese
are already actively commercial, and have established
themselves as merchants upon many quarters of the Pacific
region. Their migratory activity is also considerable. In
the future we may look forward to a more vigorous contest
between Chinese and Aryans in both these particulars.
But it is not likely to grow very active until after the
Aryans have become firmly established in every quarter of
the globe. The awakening of China must be too late to
give her any large share of the prize of commercial wealth
and of dominion over new lands. Where the Arvan has
•/
firmly set his foot the Chinaman can never drive him out. Nor need we look upon such a probable future activity of the Chinese race as the misfortune which Chinese emigra- tion appears to us to-day. The Chinaman of the future will undoubtedly be a higher order of being than the China- man of the present. He cannot but have new ideas, new hopes, new desires, and new habits. Into his dull prac- ticality some higher degree of the imaginative and emotional must flow from connection and perhaps race- mingling with the Aryan type of man. It will un- doubtedly be a slow process to lift the Chinaman from
21 322
THE ARYAN RACE.
the slough of dead thought in which he has so long lain. Yet we are dealing here with the far future ; and to an industrious, practical, and thinking people everything is possible.
Such are some rapid conclusions as to the possible future relations of human races and the general conditions of mankind. Doubtless they may prove in many respects erroneous, and influences which we cannot yet foresee may arise to vary and control the movements and mingliugs of mankind. Yet in the past, in despite of all seemingly special and voluntary influences which have affected the course of human development, the general and involuntary have held their own. The thinking and persistently enter- prising race of Aryans has moved steadily forward toward dominion in both the physical and the mental empire of the world. Starting in a narrow corner of the earth, probably on the border-line of Europe and Asia, it has spread un- ceasingly in all directions. The contest has been a long and bitter one. At times the impulsive force of alien races has checked and turned back the Aiyan march. Yet ever the Aryan force has triumphed over these ob- stacles, and the march has been resumed. It is still going on with undiminished energy, and it will hardty come to a halt until it has reached the termination above indicated.
The march inward has been as persistent and energetic as the march outward. The kingdom of the mind has been invaded as vigorously as the kingdom of the earth. And the conquests in this direction have been as important as those achieved over alien man and over the opposing conditions of Nature. In this direction, indeed, human progress promises to go on with undiminished energy after the earthly domain is fully occupied, and physical FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
323
expansion is definitely checked. The mental empire is a boundless one. Man may lay a girdle around the earth, but the universe stretches beyond the utmost human grasp. The kingdom of knowledge has already yielded many valuable prizes to the intellectual enterprise of Aryan man, yet it is rich with countless stores of wealth, and in this domain there is room for endless endeavor. Thought need not fear any exhaustion of the world which it has set out to conquer.
If the general conditions displayed at the earliest discov- erable era of the Aryan race have manifested themselves persistently till the present time, the same may be declared in a measure of the more special conditions. The devel- opment of man has taken place under the force of the in- herent conditions of his physical and mental nature, and no matter how the circumstances of history might have varied, the final result could scarcely have been different from what we find it. We have endeavored to point out in preceding sections that the primitive evolution of man led inevitably to certain political relations, there named the patriarchal and the democratic. Of these the latter was the highest in grade, and directly developed, in ancient Arya, from a preceding patriarchal condition. We find this stage clearly reached nowhere else among primitive mankind, though it was closely approached in the Ameri- can Indian organization, whose early condition strikingly resembled that of the Aryans.
These two conditions of barbarian organization have worked themselves out to their ultimate in a very interest- ing manner. All the early empires arose under patriarch- al influences and became absolute despotisms. Of these China is the only one that yet persists from archaic times, 324
THE ARYAN RACE.
though recent kingdoms of the same type have grown up under Mongolian influence in Persia, Turkey, and Russia. All the modern Aryan kingdoms outside of Russia and Persia are more or less democratic, and possess that primi- tive feature of ancient Ary a, the popular assembly. Pop- ular representation — a mouthpiece of the people in the government — is the stronghold of democracy; and to this the Aryans alone, of all the races of mankind, have ever firmly held.
It is remarkable how the primitive Aryan principle of organization has retained its force through all the centuries of war and attempted despotism, and how clearly it has established itself in the móst advanced modern govern- ment. Efforts numberless have been made to overthrow it. Popular representation has been prevented, despotism established, and the aid of religious autocracy brought in to hold captive the minds of men. In Russia the ancient democratic institutions have been completely overthrown, as a result of the Mongol conquest, and replaced by a patriarchal despotism. l"et these efforts have everywhere failed. Even in Russia the democratic Aryan spirit is rising in a wave that no despotism can long withstand. In Germany the recent effort to establish paternal rule is an evident failure, and must soon succumb to the peaceful rebellion of the people. In France monarchy has van- ished. In England it exists only on sufferance of the rep- resentatives of the people. But in America alone can the ancient Aryan principle be said to have fully declared itself, and the government of the people by the people to have become permanently established.
America may be particularly referred to from the in- teresting lesson of human development it displays. It FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
325
offers a remarkable testimony to the action of natural law- in human progress, and the inevitable outworking of con- ditions in spite of every opposing effort or influence. In the government of the United States we possess the direct outcome of the government of ancient Ary a, an unfold- ment of the governing principle that grew up naturally among our remote ancestors, with as little variation in method as if it had arisen without a single opposing effort. It is the principle of decentralization in government as opposed to that of centralization. There are but two final types of government which could possibly arise, no matter how many intermediate experiments were made. These are the centralized and the decentralized, the patriarchal and the democratic. To the persistence of the former it is necessary that the ruler shall be at once political and religious despot. He must sway the minds of his people, or he will gradually lose his absolute control over their bodies. In China alone does this condition fully exist, and to it is due the long persistence of the Chinese form of government. In all the Aryan despotisms of to-day the autocratic rule can only persist during the continued ignorance of the people. In none of them is the emperor a spiritual potentate. With the awaking of general intel- ligence free government must come.
The Aryan principle of government is that of decentral- ization. And as no Aryan political ruler has ever suc- ceeded in becoming the acknowledged religious head of his people, every effort at despotic centralization has failed or must fail. Local self-government was the principle of rule in ancient Arya, and it is the principle in modern America. There the family was the unit of the government. With its domestic relations no official dared interfere. The vil- 326
THE ARYAN RACE.
lage had its governmental organization for the control of the external relations of its families, under the rule of the people. The later institution of the tribe had to do merely with the external relations of the villages ; it could not meddle with their internal affairs.
As we have said, this principle has been remarkably per- sistent. It unfolded with hardly a check in Greece. In the Aryan village two relations of organization existed, — the family and the territorial. In Greece the former of these first declared itself, and Greek political societ.y became divided into the family, the gens, the tribe, and the State. The family idea was the ruling principle of organization. It proved, however, in the development of civilization, to be unsuited to the needs of an ad- vanced government, and it was replaced by the territorial idea. This gave rise to the rigidly democratic government of later Attica. It was composed of successive self-gov- erning units, ranging downward through State, tribe, town- ship, and family, while the people held absolute control alike of their private and their public interests. At a later date the growth of political wisdom carried this principle one step farther forward, and a league or confederacy of Grecian States was formed. Unfortunately this early out- growth of the Aryan principle was possible in city life alone. Country life and country thought moved more slowly, and the wrorld had to await, during two thousand years of anarchy and misgovernment, the establishment of popular government over city and country alike.
In the United States of America the Grecian com- monwealth has come again to life, and the vital Aryan principle has risen to supremac}7. AYe have here, in a great nation, almost an exact counterpart of the small FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
327
Grecian confederacy. The family still exists as the unit element, though no longer as a despotism. Then come successively the ward or the borough, the city or the township, and the county. Over these extends the State, and over all, the confederacy or United States. In each and all of these the voice of the people is the governing element. And in each, self-control of all its internal interests is, or is in steady process of becoming, the admitted principle. It is the law of decentralization car- ried to its ultimate, each of the successively larger units of the government having control of the interests which affect it as a whole, but having no right to meddle with interests that affect solely the population of any of the minor units.
Such is the highest condition of political organization yet reached bv mankind. It is in the direct line of natural political evolution. And this evolution has certainly not reached its ultimate. It must in the future go on to the formation of yet larger units, confederacies of confedera- cies, until finally the whole of mankind shall become one great republic, all general affairs being controlled by a par- liament of the nations, and popular self-government being everywhere the rule.
This may seem somewhat visionary. Yet Nature is not visionary, and Nature has declared, in a continuous course of events, reaching over thousands of years, that there is but one true line of political evolution. Natural law may be temporarily set aside, but it cannot be permanently ab- rogated. It may be hundreds, but can hardly be thou- sands of years before the finale is reached; yet however long it may take, but one end can come, — that of the confederacy of mankind. The type of government that 328
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THE ARYAN RACE.
This Spanish region, however, is the one black spot in the history of modern migration. Elsewhere the good has far surpassed the evil. No one can for a moment hold that the Africans or the Australians are the worse off for the Aryan settlements upon their soil. Nor can it be maintained that an extension of these settlements will work any actual harm to the aborigines. At present they are in a debased condition, and are subject to constant outrage and injustice from their rulers or from hostile bands. The influence of Europeans is steadily in the interest of peace, security, and prosperity; and fiercely as they have been often opposed by natives of the countries colonized, yet as a rule these natives have been fighting against their own advantage. "Wherever the Aryan race has become definitely established, and peaceful conditions succeeded, the condition of the natives has been improved, the wealth of their country developed, all the needs of a comfortable life increased, peace has succeeded to war, security to outrage, and the happiness of mankind has steadily augmented.
The true effect of Aryan migration has been the ex- tension of the realm of modern civilization, of Christian ethics, of stable and just political conditions; of active industry, peaceful relations, and security in the possession of property; of human liberty and intellectual unfold- ment; of commerce and developed agriculture ; of rail- roads, telegraphs, books, tools, abundance of food, lofty thoughts, and high impulses; and of the noblest standard and most unfolded practice of morality and human sym- pathy the world has yet attained. We can scarcely name in comparison with this great benefit the small increase of evil, the degree of human suffering which can be attributed HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
307
to the Aryans alone, in excess of that which would have existed without them. As a whole it must be admitted that the Aryan migration has acted and is acting for the best interests of all mankind ; and it cannot consis- tently be deprecated for the minor amount of evil it has originated. XIII.
THE FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
NE important effect of the long process of human evo-
lution which we have considered in the preceding pages has been such a mingling of the races of man- kind as in considerable measure to blur the lines of race- distinction. This mingling, which began in prehistoric times, has proceeded with enhanced rapidity during the historic period, — that of active migration and of decreas- ing devastation. The movements of savage races and of races in the lower stages of barbarism are apt to be an- nihilating ones. Of this we have historic instances in the wars of the American Indians, of the Mongolian nomads, and even of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of England. The captive must have some value to the conqueror ere he will be permitted to live, and the practice of slavery produced the first great amelioration of human brutality. The captors ceased to burn or otherwise slaughter their captives when they discovered that a slave was of more value than a corpse ; and the class of conquered subjects who had been previously massacred were now set to work. In modern times a second step forward has been taken. The captive is no longer made the personal slave, but merely the political subject of the captor, and the ancient feeling of hostility to the non-combatant is rapidly dying out. Migratory peoples no longer make a desert for the FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
309
growth of their colonies, but simply establish their laws and introduce their customs in all newly occupied regions, and mingle freely with their new subjects.
The result of this is necessarily a considerable oblitera- tion of race-distinctions. Such an obliteration has been visibly going on since the early days of history, while many traces of its prehistoric activity yet exist. We have already dwelt upon the probable partial mingling of the Xanthochroic and Melanochroie races in ancient Arya. This was succeeded by a considerable fusion of the migrat- ing Aryans with the aborigines of conquered provinces. The almost pure Xanthoehroi of the original Celtic migra- tion appear to have so thoroughly mingled with a super- abundant population of European aborigines as nearly to lose their race-characters, and to suffer marked changes in their mental constitution. In Hindustan a similar min- gling, though probably a less complete one, took place. Religious antipathy here acted as a check of growing intensity to race-amalgamation. An active race-mingling appears to have taken place in Germany and Russia. Scandinavia remained the only home of people of pure Xanthochroic blood. The probability is, as we have al- ready suggested, that the southern Xanthoehroi had min- gled with the Melanochroi at a very early period, but that the infusion of alien blood was much less decided in the northern section of the race, and that the northern Aryan migrants were nearly pure Xanthoehroi. Such seems to be the case from the fact that their most northerly portion is yet of pure blood, and that this was the condition of the Celts and Teutons of early history. The main mingling with the Semitic Melanochroi was probably that of the southern branches, who may have been, from a very 310
THE ARYAN RACE.
remote period, in direct contact with the Semites. The mingling of the other Aryan branches with alien races seems to have mainly taken place after the era of their migration.
As we have seen in the last section, however, the com- pletion of the original Aryan migration was succeeded by a long period in which the main Aryan movements were con- fined to Aryan lands. There was a very considerable min- gling of blood between the different branches of the Aryans, but the amalgamation with alien races was greatly reduced. Almost no mixture with the Mongolians took place. To the south, however, there was more mingling, and the Se- mites and Hamites must have received a strong infusion of Aryan blood. This period was followed by that of the Arabian and the Mongolian migrations and conquests, and a very considerable new blood-mixture occurred upon Ar}ran soil. In Russia and in the Aryan districts of Asia this must have added ver}T considerably to the obliteration of race-lines in those regions. Yet with all the long-con- tinued amalgamations we have here considered, it is re- markable with what vigor the Aryan holds his own. ITis vital energy everywhere bears him up against alien influ- ences. The main change produced in his race-character- istics is that of color. He varies greatly from fair to dark, but his special physiognomy has been nowhere ob- literated. The Mongolian type of face has nowhere driven out the Aryan, but, on the contraiy, shows a disposition to vanish whenever the two races come into contact. In like manner the Aryan language and the Aryan mentality have held their own against all opposing influences. This is the case in Persia and India, which have been the seat of the fiercest Mongolian inroads, while the Mongolian in- FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
311
vaders of Turkey have lost in great measure the physical characters of their race, partly by intermarriage, but equally where no apparent intermarriage has taken place.
The more recent era of Aryan migration has not been an annihilating one in the ancient sense. Yet it has had a very marked annihilating effect in a modern sense. The migrants to America, for instance, have not greatly re- duced the numbers of the aborigines by the sword ; but they have largely destroyed them by the contact of civili- zation. They have brought with them diseases, habits, and vices to which civilization has become acclimated, but which have flowed like destroying angels over the barba- rian lands. Rum and the small-pox have killed far more than the sword, while the plough has ruined the harvest of the arrow. In Spanish America hard work and brutality have had a similar effect. The race-mingling between the Aryan colonists and the Indians has been comparatively slight. There has been simply an industrial struggle for existence, and the Indian, from his non-adaptation to those new life-conditions, has in great measure vanished from his ancient localities. His place has been filled by a less desirable element, — that of the African, whose mil- lions perhaps fully replace all the vanished aborigines of America. If so, the non-Aryan inhabitants of America are as numerous as ever, while they have been lowered in type both ph}Tsically and mentally by this unfortunate change.
As to the future of human races in America, no satisfac- tory decision can be reached. The problem is a highly complex one. America is a grand storehouse of nations, the reservoir of the overflow from the Old "World. Between the Aryan sections of this migration a very free mingling 312
THE ARYAN RACE.
takes place, and there is arising an American race-type of well-marked character. There has also been considerable mingling of Aryan with Indian, particularly in Spanish America. As the Indians become civilized and agricultural in habits, it is probable that this amalgamation will go on at an increased rate, and it is quite possible that the In- dians may finally disappear as a distinct race, swallowed up by the teeming millions of Aryan colonists. If they hold their own, it will be in the tropical regions of South America, where the conditions of Nature are opposed to the progress of civilization. Yet we can scarcely doubt that civilization will yet conquer even the Brazilian forests, and that the debased aborigines of that region will vanish before it.
The one perplexing problem of America is the Negro. Between him and the white the race-antipathy seems too strong for any great degree of amalgamation ever to take place, while the mulatto has the weakness and infertility of a hybrid. In tropical America, indeed, there is a quite free mingling of whites, Indians, and Negroes; but the result of this amalgamation is a class that greatly lacks sta3Ting qualities. The American Negro has marked per- sistence, while there is little promise that he can be raised to the level of Aryan energy and intellect. Mentally his only strong development is in the emotional direction, — the most primitive phase of mental unfoldment. Yet he is increasing in numbers with a discouraging rapidity. In this, however, there seems no threat to Aryan domination. The negro is normally peaceful and submissive. His lack of enterprise and of mental activity must keep him so. Education with him soon reaches its limit. It is capable of increasing the perceptive, but not of strongly awakening FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
313
the reflective, faculties. The Negro will remain the worker. There is nothing to show that he will, at least for a long period to come, advance to the rank of the thinker. Of the two great modern divisions of civilized mankind, the work- ers and the thinkers, the Negro belongs by nature to the former class. He will probably long continue distinctly7 separate from the Aryans as a race, — a well-marked laboring caste among the non-differentiated whites of America.
As to the future of the continent of Africa, it may pass through conditions somewhat similar to those that have taken place in America ; but these changes will be attended with less barbarity, since the moral status of the white race has very considerably advanced during the past four centuries. The wave of Aryan migration has as yet but begun to break upon African soil. Only in the far South has it pressed to any extent inward. But an inward pres- sure has now fairly set in, and it may perhaps not cease until Africa has come completely under Aryan rule, and is veiy largely peopled by Aryan inhabitants. The Aryan settlements in the South promise to become paralleled by Aryan settlements in the North. Algiers is now a French province, Tunis is on the road to the same condition, and Morocco is threatened both by France and Spain, while Egypt is under English control. The march of events cannot go backward. There is very little reason to doubt that the whole region of northern Africa will eventually come under Aryan influence and become the seat of a growing Aryan population. And here a decided race- mingling will very probably take place in the future, as between the two sub-types of the Caucasian people in the far past. 314
THE ARYAN RACE.
Central Africa is being invaded by both these sub-types. Of these invasions the Melanochroic is to a considerable extent an amalgamating one. Between Arab and Berber and Negro, probably of close original race-affinity, there seems very little blood-antipathy; and Africa is full of sub-types of man, produced quite probably by a free min- gling of the black with the Melanochroic race. How long this mingling has been going on, it is impossible to decide, and it is equally impossible to conjecture to what varied race-combinations in the far past the present inhabitants of Africa are due. But it is very evident that the future dealings of the Aryans with the Africans will not be con- ducted to any important extent with the race-counterparts of the American Negro. The American slaves were princi- pally brought from nearly the only region of Africa inhab- ited by the typical Negro, and they thus represent the least-developed people of that continent. The majority of the African people are by no means lacking in energy and warlike vigor, nor in the elements of intelligence. Many of them seem to stand midway in these characteristics be- tween the pure Negro of the western tropics and the Arabs and Berbers of the North. And the vanguard of Aryan migration may meet as hostile and resolute a resistance as that experienced from the American Indians.
The whole western coast of Africa, and to some extent the eastern, is at present dotted with Aryan colonies. None of these penetrate far inward, the unhealthfulness of the climate more than the opposition of the Negro checking their advance. But the key to the centre of the continent has been found in a great navigable river, the Congo, whose affluents spread far their liquid fingers through that fertile unknown land. In this line Aryan migration has FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.
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fairly begun its inward march. It will meet with hostile tribes. Wars will take place. Forcible seizure and ex- tinguishment of African governments will follow. Aryan control will be established over African populations. Many of the Africans will vanish before the Aryan weapons of rifle and whiskey-bottle. All this may be looked for as an almost inevitable consequence of the discovery that the Congo offers a new and valuable channel of commerce. The railroad past the rapids, and the steamboat on the river, cannot fail to subdue Central Africa, — far more quickly, perhaps, than the plough subdued America. Eventually this inward movement may meet with a north- ward movement from the South-African settlements. Nor is it possible at present to decide what may be the final out- come of English wars in the Soudan and in Abyssinia, and of French settlements in Algeria. For years past the Aryan influence in these regions has been steadity on the increase, and it may eventually make its way deeply into Africa from these directions toward the Aiyan vanguard pressing inward from the West. A railroad is already pushing southward in Algeria, which may eventually cross the Sahara and reach the long-hidden city of Tim- buctoo, toward which a railroad is also advancing from the South. As yet little more has been done than was accom- plished by the Aryans in America during the sixteenth century. But there is every reason to believe, from what we know of the Aiyan and the African character, that the final result will be the same. Africa will become a new empire of the Aryans. But the position of the mi- grants will be rather that of a ruling than of an inhabiting race. The condition of the Africans is markedly different from that of the Indians. They are much less warlike, and 316
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much more agricultural. They will undoubtedly remain upon the soil as its cultivators, while the role of the Aryans will be that of merchants, rulers, and artisans, in ac- cordance with their position as the thinking and dominant minority. In fact there is some reason to believe that the march of events in the future will bring the African and the American continents into conditions of some degree of similarity. Through all the warmer regions of America the Negroes are increasing with great rapidity. They exist, and long may exist, as a working caste under Ai'3Tan dominance. Some similar relation of Aryans and Africans is not unlikely to arise on African soil, and the final relation of races in the warmer tropics of both hemispheres may be that here indicated, — a large population of Af- rican agricultural laborers, adapted by their physical nature to a tropical climate, and a smaller population of Aryan merchants, artisans, and rulers, mainly escaping the deleterious influence of tropical climates by city residence. In the higher and more healthful tropics and the semi- tropics the Aryan population must approach in numbers that of the tropically adapted race ; and it must retain a great numerical excess, as now, in the temperate re- gions, to whose climate the Aryan is physically adapted.
That a race-mingling will take place between these two widely distinct types of man seems now extremely improb- able. For a very long period to come it is certain that the physical and mental antipathy which now exists will be in no important degree overcome, and for many centuries in the future the demarcation may remain as strongly de- clared as now. TYhat the final race-relation will be it is impossible to predict. There is no strong antipathy be- tween the native races of the temperate zones of the earth, FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACKS.
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the Aryan, Indian, Mongolian, and Melanoeliroic ; and these may mingle in an increasing ratio until their race-distinc- tions in great measure disappear. In such a case the only marked race-demarcation remaining will be that of white and black, respectively the man of the temperate and the man of the tropical climates of the earth. But the Indians of America and the Melanochroi of Africa have but little race-antipathy to the Negro, and their offspring is of a higher type than that of the Aryan and the Negro. It is possible, therefore, that the pure black may eventually vanish in an intermediate race, as is already so largely the case in Africa.
In the island region of the Pacific it is highly probable that the Aryan dominion, which is now firmly established in every island of any marked agricultural value, will grow more and more decided, and that the aborigines, or their Malayan successors, will eventually fall generally under Aiyan rule. The lower aborigines will very prob- ably vanish. They lie too far below the level of civilized conditions to survive the contact with civilization; and only those of declared agricultural habits, and the active Malays, are likely to remain as subjects of the growing Aryan rule.
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It may be said that of the energy of the Aryans and the non-Aryans the former has proved persistent, the latter spasmodic. No sooner was the condition of affairs above mentioned established than the unceasing pressure of Aryan energy again began to tell, and a new process of Aryan expansion to set in. And this process has been continued with unceasing vigor till the present day. The Aryans of Spain began, from a mountain corner, to exert a warlike pressure upon the Arabian conquerors of their land. Step by step the Arabs were driven back, until they were finally expelled to the African shores. Simultaneously a vigorous effort was made to wrest Syria from its Arab lords. All 296
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Europe broke into a migratory fever, and the Crusades threw their millions upon that revered land. But all in vain. The grasp of the Moslem was as yet too firm to be loosened by all the crusading strength of Europe.
At a later date the Mongol hold was slowly broken in Russia, and the Slavonic Aryans regained control of their ancient realm, while the invasion of the Turks was checked, and a reverse movement begun which has con- tinued to the present day. As for the Magyars of Hun- gary, their realm has been partly reconquered by Aryan colonists, its civilization and government are strictly Aryan, and the Mongolian characteristics of the predomi- nant race have been to a considerable extent lost. Europe has been reoccupied by the Aryans, with the exception of a few Turks who are left upon its borders by sufferance, and the Mongoloids of the frozen North. In Asia the Aryan spirit has declared itself less vigorously ; yet Persia, Afghanistan, and India have declined little if at all in the percentage of their Aryan populations, while Aiyan dominance has replaced the Mongol rule in India. As for the Aryan physical type, it seems to be killing out the type of the Mongolian in all regions exposed to its influence. Thus the Osmanli Turks have gained in great measure the European physical organization, this applying even to the peasantiy, whose religious and race prejudices must have prevented much intermarriage with the Aryans. It looks, in this instance, like an effect of climate, physical sur- roundings, and life-habits similar to that which, as we have conjectured, caused the original evolution of the Aryan race. The same influences may have had much to do with the loss of Mongolian characteristics in the Magyars of Hungary. HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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But the Aryans have been by no means contented with this slow and as yet but partially completed recovery of their ancient realm. Only the mutual jealousy of the na- tions of Europe permits aliens yet to occupy any portion of this soil, and it is plainly apparent that the complete restoration of Aryan government over all its ancient do- minions is a mere question of time. But the slow steps of this internal movement have been accompanied by an external one of vast magnitude. After its long rest the Ai’3Tan race has again become actively migratoiy, an ex- pansive movement of great energy has set in, and the promise is that ere it ends nearty the whole of the habi- table earth will be under Aryan rule, infused wTith Aryan civilization, and largely peopled with Aryan inhabitants.
It is the control of the empire of the ocean that has been the moving force in this new migration. The former one was checked, as we have said, upon the ocean border. Navigation had not yet become an Aryan art. But the rise of ocean commerce gave opportunity for a new out- push of no less vigor than that of old. "When once the European navigators dared to break loose from sight of land and brave the dangers of unknown seas, a new chap- ter in the history of mankind began. The ships of Europe touched the American shores, and with phenomenal rapid- ity the invaders took possession of this new-discovered continent. Not four centuries have passed, and yet America, from its northern to its southern extremities, is crowded with men of Aryan blood, and the aborigines have in great measure vanished before the ruthless foot- step of conquest.
In the East the activity of Aiwan migration has had more difficulties to contend with, yet its energy has been 298
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no less declared. The island continent of Australia has become an outlying section of the Aryan dominions, and in many of the fertile islands of the Pacific the aborigines are rapidly vanishing before the fatal vision of the Euro- pean face. The non-Aryan rulers of India have been driven out, and England has succeeded to the dominion of this ancient realm. And finally the u dark continent ” of Africa is being penetrated at a hundred points by the foot of the invader, and is already the seat of several Aryan states.
Side by side with this oceanic migration has been a no less active and important expansion by land. The Sla- vonic Allans of Russia had no sooner fairly driven out their Tartar conquerors and acquired a stable government than they resumed their ancient migratory expansion and began to press their way into that vast region of northern and central Asia upon whose borders the ancient Aryan advance had paused. Siberia fell before their arms, and this great but frozen region was added to their empire. More recently they have taken possession of the western steppes, seized a considerable region of Chinese Mongolia, and forced their way deeply into Turkestan. All western Asia to the borders of China, Afghanistan, and Persia is to-day a Russian province, and still the march of conquest goes on. Of the regions of the ancient non-Aryan mi- gratory activity none, with the exception of Arabia and Chinese Mongolia, is free from the Aryan grasp or the preventive influence of Aryan control. The barbarian out- breaks of the past can never be repeated.
In regard to this modern migrator}7 activity some further remarks may be made. It is in a great measure a com- mercial one, and has been very closely governed in its HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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movements by those of commerce. It had its origin in the Phoenician trading-stations, and subsequently in the Greek colonies. It passed from branch to branch of the Aryan peoples in strict accordance with the shiftings of commerce. At the period of the discovery of America there was a very general commercial activity in the At- lantic nations of Europe, and all of these simultaneously took part in the struggle for territory that followed. Por- tugal, Spain, France, Holland, and England each claimed a share in the rich prize. At a later date, however, Eng- land rose to unquestioned supremacy in the commercial world, and this was accompanied by a similar rise to su- premacy in colonizing efforts. The England of to-day is extended until it has its outlying members in almost every region of the habitable earth. The other Aryan peoples, on the contrary, with the exception of Russia, have lost in great measure their national migratory activity, as they have lost their commercial enterprise. The Celts and Germans still migrate largely as individuals, but this mi- gration mainly goes to feed colonies of English origin and to add to the English-speaking populations of the earth. The very recent colonizing movements of Germany are acts of the Government, and it remains to be seen if they will be supported by the people. The same may be said of the colonial enterprises of France. They are Gov- ernmental enterprises only, while the people are among the least migratory in spirit of any European nation. Only in England, of all the commercial nations of Europe, are the people and the Government moving hand in hand.
Thus the Aryan migration has to-day reached a highly interesting stage. The boundary lines which restrained it several thousand years ago and which remained its limits 300
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until within recent times, have been overleaped, and a new migration, with all the energy of the old one, is in process of completion. This migratory movement is at present largely confined to two of the Aryan peoples, — the Eng- lish and the Russian. The former has broken through the ocean barrier ; the latter through the desert barrier, — the two limits to the ancient migration. The English move- ment is entirely oceanic, the Russian entirely terrestrial. The English represents the modern commercial migration ; the Russian is a survival of the primitive agricultural mi- gration. These two peoples form the vanguard of the Aryan race in its double march to gain the empire of the earth. By a strange coincidence their movements converge upon one region, — that of India, one of the great prizes of commerce and war in all the historic ages of mankind. On the borders of this land the two waves of migration have nearly met, and the lords of the land and the sea threaten to join in battle for its mastery. Aryan is again face to face with Aryan as in the era of the past, and, as then, the migratory march may end in a fierce strife of these ancient cousins for a lion’s share of the spoils.
The Aryan outposts of to-day are being pushed forward so rapidly that they cannot be very definitely named. The whole of the great continent of America has become an Aryan region, with the exception of the inaccessible for- ests of central Brazil and some few minor localities. In ‘ the eastern seas the great island of Australia has become Aryan ground to the inner limit of its fertile land. In most of the rich islands of the Pacific the Aryan grasp has been firmly laid upon the coast-regions, though the abo- rigines as a rule hold their own internally. The vege- table wealth of these fertile islands has become the prize HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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of Aryan commerce. In Asia one of the ancient Aryan lands, the kingdom of Persia, is under Mongolian rule, though its population continues largely of Aryan blood. But in return the greater portion of the old Mongolian territory has fallen under Aryan dominion, and the out- posts of European rule have been pushed across Asia to the Pacific in the north, and to the western borders of China in the central region. Again, in the southeast, in that remote region which stayed the march of the ancient Aryans, the modern Aryans are slowly pushing their way. England years ago laid her hand on the western coast- lands and occupied the maritime region of Burmah, while she has recently seized on the whole of that kingdom. France has taken as firm a hold on the eastern coast, over which she exerts a controlling influence. Siam, the re- maining independent region of Indo-China, will probably yet fall under the rule of these enterprising invaders.
Africa tells a somewhat similar story. France has regained from the Mohammedan rule a large section of the old Roman region in northern Africa. England has become the virtual lord in Egypt, and may eventually become the acknowledged lord. Southern Africa, for a long distance northward from the Cape, has become English and Dutch territory. Portugal holds large dis- tricts on both the eastern and the western coasts. Of the remaining coast-lands, all the western border and a con- siderable portion of the eastern are claimed by European nationalities, while in the region of the Congo a strong inward movement is on foot, and the International Asso- ciation lays claim to an immense territory in Central Africa, — a region with a population of perhaps forty mil- lions, who do not dream that they have gained new lords 302
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on paper. Such is the borcler-land, actual and claimed, of modern Arya, — the result of four centuries of commer- cial and colonial enterprise. The Aryan region of old has been much more than doubled by this new movement. The hold is yet to some extent simply the grasp of an army or of a document. But the colonist is advancing in the rear of the army, and the merchant in the rear of the document; and the story of Aryan enterprise is but half told.
If now we seek to review what the other races of man- kind have done, in rivalry with this energetic movement, a few words will suffice to tell the tale. The alien outflow is confined to three peoples alone. The first of these is the Chinese, some portion of whose crowding millions are forced to seek other homes afar, and whose strongly practical disposition has produced a degree of commercial enterprise. Yet the results of this movement have been as yet of secondary importance. It has made itself felt in some regions of the Pacific, and to a minor extent in America. Yet it can never attain a vigor comparable to the Aryan while Chinese civilization and Chinese ideas remain in their present state. The Chinaman is not yet cosmopolitan like the Aryan ; the world is not his home ; and wherever he goes he dreams of laying his bones to rest in Chinese soil. 'While such ideas persist, the Aryans need fear no powerful competition from this ancient realm. As for the neighboring Japanese, they have so far shown no disposition to wander. They are in no sense a migra- tory people.
The second non-Aryan migratory people is the Arabian. The migratory spirit which has in all historic times affected the Semites has by no means died out; and while Europe HISTORICxVL MIG RATIONS.
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is grasping the African shores, the Arabs are penetrating every portion of the interior of that continent. But their movements are commercial only, not colonial. The sole political grasp of Arabia on African soil is in the region of Zanzibar. Elsewhere their political dominion is but that of the wandering tribe. The Arabs of to-day are not in the state of civilization requisite to active colonization, while there is no pressure of numbers in the home region to enforce a border outgrowth. Thus there can be said to be no combined Arabian competition with the Aryans for the political possession of Africa. The empire-forming enterprise of the Arabians of old has apparently died out; and while they retain all their ancient commercial activity, they manifest no inclination to gain political control of African soil.
The third migration referred to comes from Africa itself. It no longer exists, but has had the unfortunate effect of very considerably extending the area of the Negro race, — the least-developed section of the human family. This migration has been solely an involuntary and unnatural one. It is not the outcome of enterprise among the migrants, but of the enslaving activity of the Aryans, and has resulted in widely extending the limits and increasing the numbers of the most unenterprising and unintellectual of human races. The migration of Africans to the shores of America has proved a highly undesirable result of Aryan enterprise, and has produced a rapidly increasing population of American Negroes, who cannot but remain an awkward problem for the civilization of the future. This people has the unlucky characteristic of prolific increase, and the unsealing of the continent of Africa by the slave-dealers has proved like the unsealing of the 304
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magic jar brought up in his net by the Arabian fisherman. A living cloud has issued, which cannot be replaced in its former space, and the sealed-up dwarf has been permitted to expand to the stature of the released giant. This en- forced outpour of the African race is one of the several unfortunate results of the over-greed of Aryan colonists. It has proved far the most unfortunate feature of modern migratory activity by its extension of the domain of low intellectuality upon the earth.
We may close with one further consideration, — that of the comparative good and evil resulting from this modern Aryan outgrowth. That it has been conducted brutally, no one would think of denying. The laws of morality and of natural right have been abrogated in dealing with alien races ; and had these been wild beasts instead of men, they in many cases could not have been more cruelly treated or rapidly annihilated. Yet if we could strictly compare the good and evil produced, there can be no question that the former would, so far as man as a whole is concerned, far outweigh its opposite.
What are the actual facts concerning the suffering which the aborigines of the earth have endured from Aryan hands, and the change for the worse in their condition produced by Aryan occupation? The treatment of the American Indian is usually considered as a flagrant ex- ample of injury to the aborigines. Yet it cannot be justly said that the Indians of the United States have been at any time visited with more suffering, and made the subjects of greater outrage, during the Aryan occupation, than they were ordinarily exposed to before that occupa- tion. The preceding period was one of incessant wTar, outrage, slaughter, and torture of prisoners. Security HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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nowhere existed, and it was impossible for any civilizing progress to take place. The wars which the Indians waged with the Europeans were but a continuation of those they had always previously waged. The slaughter of Indians was in no sense increased, while there was produced a mitigation of the more revolting features of Indian conflict. And the Aryan wars with the Indians were waged in the interests of peace. They have steadily decreased in violence and frequency, and an increasing justice and security in the conditions of Indian life have replaced the old rule of injustice and insecurity, which but for the European colonization would still have continued. It may safely be declared, then, that the Indians have been benefited far more than they have been injured by the Aryan conquest, and that to-day they exist in a far higher state of security, comfort, and happiness than they would have attained if that conquest had not been made.
Similar remarks can be applied to the Aryan conquests in every region, with the one exception of Spanish Amer- ica. Here two civilized empires were overturned by colonists whose civilization was, in certain respects, of a lower grade, and millions of people were reduced from a state of plenty, and comparative freedom and happiness, to one of want, slavery, and misery. And yet, so far as the actual progress of civilization is concerned, the general interests of mankind have not suffered by this outrage. A civilization of a higher grade has succeeded the imper- fect conditions of the Aztec and Peruvian States, and the mass of the human inhabitants of these regions are in a supe- rior condition to-day than they would have been but for the Aryan conquest. The low conditions of Indian have been replaced by the high conditions of European civilization.
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The Arabian empire served as the connecting-link be- tween the thought of the ancient and modern world. We cannot exactly say the Arabians, for this broad empire clasped the thinkers of nearly all of civilized mankind within its mighty grasp. It handed down Greek philoso- phy and science to modern Europe, — the former with many additions but no improvements, the latter considerably advanced. The Arabian fancy played with Greek philoso- phy, but was incapable of developing it, or even of fully comprehending it. But observation and experiment needed no vigorous powers of the intellect, and in this direction many important discoveries were added by the Arabians to the science of the Greeks. As to the vast results of scien- tific observation of the modern Aryan world, nothing need here be said. The coffers of science are filled to bursting with their wealth of facts.
But science has by no means been confined to observa- tion. The Aryan imagination has worked upon its store of facts as actively as of old it worked upon its store of fancies, and has yielded as abundant and far more valuable OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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results. Nature is being rebuilt in the mincl of man. One by one her laws and principles are being deduced from her observed conditions, and man is gaining an ever-widen- ing and deepening knowledge of the realities of the uni- verse in which he lives. And he is beginning: to “ know himself ” in a far wider sense than was in the mind of the Grecian sage when he uttered this celebrated aphorism. The imagination of the past dealt largely with legend, with misconceptions of the universe, with half observations, and devised a long series of interesting but valueless fictions. The imagination of the present is dealing more and more with critically observed facts, and deducing from them the true philosophy of the universe, that of natural law, and of the unseen as logically demonstrable from the seen. This great field of intellectual labor be- longs to the Aryans alone. The other races of mankind have not yet penetrated beyond its boundaries.
Modern Aryan civilization is made up of many more elements than those whose development we have hastily reviewed. One of the most marked of these is that of labor- saving machinery. This is somewhat strictly confined to modern times and to the Aryan nations. Beyond this limit it has never existed in other than its embryo state. Tools to aid hand-work have been devised, but the employ- ment of other powers than the muscles of man to do the labor of the world is almost a new idea, scarcely a trace of it being discoverable beyond the borders of what we may denominate modern Arya. The immense progress made in the development of this idea is comparable with the unfoldment of science, and together they form the back- bone of modern civilization. Knowledge of Nature, and industrial application of this knowledge, have given man a 286
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most vigorous hold upon the universe he inhabits; and in place of the slow, halting, and uncertain steps of progress in the past, he is now moving forward with a sure and solid tread, and down broad paths of development as firm and direct as were the great high-roads that led straight outward from Rome to every quarter of the civilized world.
The progress of commerce, of finance, and of inquiry into the underlying laws of social aggregation and political economy, has been no less great. Here, too, we must confine ourselves to the limits of the Aryan race, so far as modern activity is concerned. Commerce, however, had its origin at a very remote period of human history, and attained a marked development in Semitic lands before the Aryans had yet entered the circle of civilization. There is every reason to believe that the ancient Baby- lonians had a somewhat extensive sea and river commerce at a very remote epoch. They were succeeded by the Phoenicians, who displayed a boldness in daring the dan- gers of unknown seas that was never emulated by their successors, the Greeks. The overlaud commerce of the Phoenicians was also very extensive. Since the origin of Greek commerce, however, little activity has been shown in this direction by non-Aryan peoples, with the one ex- ception of the Arabians, who carried on an extensive ocean commerce in their imperial era, and who to-day penetrate nearly every region of Africa in commercial enterprises. In this respect, also, modern China manifests some minor activity. Yet the Aryans are, and have been, the great commercial people of the earth, and have developed mer- cantile enterprise to an extraordinary degree. Commercial activity has been handed down in an interesting sequence from branch to branch of the Aryan race, the Greeks, the OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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Venetians, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch each flourishing for a period, and then giving way to a successor. To-day, however, commercial activity is becoming a common Aryan characteristic, and though England now holds the ascendency, her position is no longer one of assured supremacy. A century or two more will probably find every Aryan community aroused to ac- tive commercial enterprise, and no single nation will be able to claim dominion over the empire of trade. That any non Aryan nation will at an early period enter actively into competition in this struggle for the control of com- merce, is questionable. The Japanese is the only one that now shows a strong disposition to avail itself of the advan- tages of Aryan progress, China }ret hugging herself too closely in the cloak of her satisfied self-conceit to per- ceive that a new world has been created during her long slumber.
There is one further particular in which comparison may be made between the Aryan and the non-Aryan races of mankind,—that of moral development. In this direction, also, it can readily be shown that the Aryans have progressed beyond all their competitors. This, however, cannot be said in regard to the promulgation of the laws of morality, the great body of rules of conduct which have been developed for the private gov- ernment of mankind. It is singular to find that no im- portant code of morals can be traced to Aryan authorship, with the single exception of the Indian branch of the race. There we find the Buddhistic code, which is cer- tainly one of remarkable character, but which has in very great measure lost its influence upon the Aryan race. Alike the morality and the philosophy of Buddhism have 288
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almost vanished from the land of their birth, and this religious system is now nearly confined to the Mongo- lian race, while its lofty code of moral observance has lost its value as a ruling force in the modern Bud- dhistic world.
A second great code of morals is that of Confucius, and constitutes essentially the whole of Confucianism. This religion of educated China consists simply of a series of moral rules, of a character capable of making a highly elevated race of the Chinese, had they any de- cided influence. They are studied abundantly, but only as a literary exercise. The moral condition of modem China indicates very clearly that the Confucian code is one of lip-service only. It has made but little impres- sion upon the hearts of the people.
The third and highest of the three great codes of morals is of Semitic authorship, being the lofty doc- trine of human conduct promulgated by Christ. So far as the mere rules of conduct embraced in it are concerned, it differs in no essential features from those already named. Its superior merit lies in its lack of appeal to the selfish instincts, and its broad human sym- patli3T. Buddhism warns man to be virtuous if he would escape from earthly misery. Confucianism advises him to be virtuous if he would attain earthly happiness. Do good, that you may attain Nirvana. Do good to others if you wish others to do good to you. These are the dogmas of the two great non-Christian codes. Do good because it is your duty, is the Christ dogma. Sin de-
files, virtue purifies, the soul. All men are brothers, and should regard one another with brotherly affection. “Love one another.” This is the basic command of the OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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code of Christ. And in this command we have the high- est principle of human conduct, — a law of duty that is hampered by no conditions, and weakened by no promises.
It is singular that the creed of Christ has become the creed of the Aryan race alone. The Semites, even the Hebrews, of whose nation Christ was a scion, ignore his mission and his teachings. But throughout nearly the whole of the Aryan world it is the prevailing creed, and its code of morals is to-day observed in a higher degree than we find in the moral observance of the remainder of mankind. Elsewhere, indeed, there is abun- dance of private and local virtue, and rigidly strict ob- servance of some laws of conduct, though others of equal value are greatly neglected. But nowhere else has human charity and the sense of human brotherhood attained the breadth they display in the Aryan world, and nowhere else can the feeling of sympathy with all mankind be said to exist. There is abundance of evil in the Aryan nations, but there is also abundance of good; and the minor sense of human duty which is elsewhere manifested is replaced here with a broad and lofty view that fairly stamps the Aryan as the great moral, as it is the great intellectual, race of mankind.
19 XII
HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
WHEN history opens, it reveals to ns the Aryan race in possession of a vast region of the eastern hem- isphere, including some of its fairest and most fruitful por- tions. How long it had been engaged in attaining this expansion from its primitive contracted locality ; what bat- tles it had fought and what blood shed; what victories it had won and what defeats experienced, — on all this human annals are silent. Rut we may rest assured that many centuries of outrage, slaughter, misery, and brutality lie hidden in this prehistoric abyss. Millions of men were swept from the face of the earth, millions more deprived of their possessions, and even of their religions and lan- guages, millions incorporated into the Aryan tribes, during this expansion of primitive Arya. The relations of human races, which had perhaps remained practically undisturbed for many thousands of years, were largely changed by this vigorous irruption of the most energetic family of man- kind. It was as if an earthquake had rent the soil of hu- man society, broken up all its ancient strata, and thrown mankind into new and confused relations, burying the old lines of demarcation too deeply to be ever discovered.
The Aryan migration displays the marks of a high vigor for so barbaric an age, and was probably the most ener- getic of all the prehistoric movements of mankind. It met with no check in Europe except in the frozen regions of HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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the extreme North, and there it was Nature, not man, that brought it to rest. Such also was probably the case in northern Asia. The deserts and the mountain-ranges there became its boundaries. China lay safe behind her almost impassable desert and mountain borders. In the south of Asia only the Semites held their own. They offered as outposts the warlike tribes and nations of Syria and Assyria. Possibly an era of hostility may have here existed ; but if so it has left no record, and there is nothiug to show that the Aryans ever broke through this wall of defence. But the remainder of southern Asia fell into their hands, with the exception of southern India with its dense millions of aborigines, and the distant region of Indo-China, on whose borders the Aryan migration spent its force.
Such is the extension of the Aryan world with which history opens. It embraced all Europe, with the exception of some minor outlying portions and probably a con- siderable region in northern Russia. In Asia it included Asia Minor and the Caucasus, Armenia, Media, Persia, and India, with the intermediate Bactrian region. These formed the limits of the primitive Aryan outpush, and it is remarkable that it failed to pass beyond these borders, with the exception of a temporary southward expansion, for two or three thousand years. It made some external conquests ; but they were all lost again, and at the opening of the sixteenth century the Aryan race was in possession of no lands that it had not occupied at the beginning of the historical period.
This is a striking circumstance, and calls for some in- quiry as to its cause. "What was the influence that placed this long check upon the Aryan outflow? The acting in- 292
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lluences, in fact, were several, which may be briefly named. A chief one was the almost insuperable obstacle to further expansion. Many of the boundaries of the new Aryan world were oceanic, and the art of navigation was as yet almost unknown to the Aryan race. Other boundaries were desert plains that offered no attraction to an agricul- tural people. The purely pastoral and nomadic days of the race were long since past. In the East the boundary was formed by the vast multitudes of Indian aborigines, who fiercely fought for their homes and made the Hindu advance a very gradual process. In the South warlike Assyria formed the boundary, and the Semitic world sternly held its own.
As Aryan civilization progressed, the great prizes of ambition were mainly included within the borders of the Aryan world. There is no evidence of a loss of the original migratory energy; yet it was no longer an energy of general expansion, but of the expansion of the separate branches of the race. The Aryan peoples made each other their prey, and the outside world was safe from their in- cursions. The only alluring region of this non-Aryan world was that of the Semitic nations and of Egypt. This fell at length before Aryan vigor, and became succes- sively the prey of Persia, Greece, and Pome. Aud the thriving settlements which the Phoenicians had established in northern Africa fell before the arms of Rome. Such was the only extension of the borders of the Aryan world which history reveals, and this extension was but a tempo- raiy one. After a thousand years of occupancy the hold of the Aryans upon the Semitic and Ilamitic regions was broken, and the invading race was once more confined within its old domain. HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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It is not necessary to repeat in detail the historic move- ments of the Aryans of ancient times. These are too well known to need extended description. They began with the rebellion of the Medes against Assyrian rale, and with the subsequent rapid growth of the Persian empire, which overran Ass3Tria, Syria, and Egypt. At a later date the Greeks made their great historical expansion, and under Alexander gained lordship over the civilized Aryan world. Still later the Romans established a yet wider empire, and the world of civilization was divided between Rome and Persia. The finale of these movements was the irruption of the Teutons upon the Roman empire, which buried all the higher civilization under a flood of barbarism.
Thus for about a thousand years the great battle-field of the world had been confined mainly within Aryan limits, and the other races of mankind had remained cowed spec- tators, or to some extent helpless victims, of this bull-dog strife for empire. The contest ended with a marked de- cline in civilization and a temporary loss of that industrial and political development which had resulted from many centuries of physical and mental labor. The Aryan race had completed its first cycle, and swung down again into comparative barbarism, under the onslaught of its most barbarous section, and as a natural result of its devastat- ing and unceasing wars.
And now a remarkable phase in the history of human events appeared. The energy of the ancient Aryan world seemed to have spent its force. That of the non-Aryan world suddenly rose into an extraordinary display of vigor. The Aryan expansion not only ceased, but a reverse move- ment took place. Everywhere wre find its borders con- tracting under a fierce and vigorous onslaught from the 294
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Mongolian and Semitic tribes. This phase of the migra- tory cycle we may run over as rapidly as we did that of the expanding phase.
The first marked historical movement in this migratory series was that of the Huns, who overran Slavonic and pushed far into Teutonic Europe, and under the fierce Attila threatened to place a Hunnish dynasty on the throne of imperial Rome. The next striking movement was the Arabian, which drove back the wave of Aryan conquest from the Semitic region, from Egypt, and from northern Africa, and brought Persia and Spain under Arabian domi- nation. The third was that of the Turks, who replaced the Arabian rulers of Persia, conquered Asia Minor, and finally captured Constantinople and the Eastern Empire, extending their dominion far into Europe and over the Mediterranean islands. The fourth was that of the Mon- gols, under Genghiz Khan and Timur, which placed a Mon- gol dynasty on the throne of India and made the greater part of Russia a Mongol realm. We need not mention the minor invasions, of temporary effect, which broke like fierce billows on the shores of the Aryan world and flowed back, leaving ruin and disorder behind them. It will suffice to describe the contraction of the borders of the Aiyan region which succeeded this fierce outbreak of the desert hordes upon the civilized world.
All the historical acquisitions of the Aryans were torn from their hands. The Semitic region became divided be- tween the Turks and the Arabians. Egypt and northern Africa were rent from the Aryan world. In the East, Per- sia, India, and the intermediate provinces, though with no decrease in their Aryan populations, lay under Mongol rule. In the West, Spain had become an Arabian kingdom. HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.
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A Hungarian nation in central Europe was left to mark the onslaught of the Ilunnish tribes. In eastern Europe, the Tartars occupied Russia in force, and held dominion over the greater part of that empire. Farther south, the Turks were iu full possession of Asia Minor and Armenia, held the region of ancient Greece and Macedonia, and extended their barbaric rule far toward the centre of Europe. The contraction of the aucient Aryan region had been extreme. As a dominant race they held scarce half their old domin- ions, while in many regions they had been driven out or destroyed, and replaced by peoples of alien blood.
Such was the condition of Europe at the close of the Middle Ages. The first cycle of human history had be- come completed, the expansion of the Aryans had been succeeded by a severe contraction, the growth of ancient civilization had been followed by a partial relapse into bar- barism, human progress had moved through a grand curve, and returned far back toward its starting-point. Such was the stage from which the more receut history of man- kind took its rise.
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For pure activity of work the Mongolians have been un- surpassed, and no difficulty seems to have deterred them in the performance of the most stupendous labors. The Aryans have never displayed an equal disposition to hand- labor,— not, however, from lack of energy, but simply that Aryan energy is largely drafted off to the region of the brain, while Mongolian energy is mainly centred in the muscles. The Aiyan makes every effort to save his hands. Labor-saving machinery is his great desideratum. The Mongolian, with equal native energy, centres this energy within his muscles, while his brain lies fallow. The Chi- nese, for instance, are the hardest hand-workers in the world. The amount of purely physical exertion which they perform is nowhere surpassed. The productiveness of their country, through the activity of hand-labor alone, is considerably superior to that of any other country not possessed of effective machinery. But in regard to thought they exist in an unprogressive state. Little has been done by the brain to relieve the hand from its arduous labor. Chinese thought is mainly a turning over of old straw. The land is almost empt}T of original mental productions.
If we consider the record of the Mongolians of the past the same result appears. They have left us monuments of strenuous work, but none of highly developed thought. China, the most enlightened of Mongolian nations, has an immense ancient literature, but none that can be compared with Aryan literature in respect to display of mental ability. Its highest expression is its philosophy, and that, in intellectual grasp, is enormously below the contemporary philosophy of India. But in respect to evidences of muscular exertion it has no superior. The Great YYall of China far surpasses in the work there embodied any other OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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single product of human labor. Yet it is in no sense an outcome of advanced thought. It is the product of a purely practical mind, and one of a low order of intelli- gence, as evidenced by the utter uselessness of this vast monument of exertion for its intended purpose. The Great Canal of China is another product of a purely practical intellect. Every labor performed by China has a very evident purpose. It is all industrial or protective. There are no monuments to the imagination. Y"et the lack of mental out-reach has prevented any great extension of labor-saving expedients. At long intervals, during the extended life of the nation, some useful invention has appeared, — such as that of the art of printing. Yet for much more than a thousand years this art has remained in nearly its original stage, while in Europe, during a con- siderably shorter period, it has made an almost miraculous advance. Among the few illustrations of non-practical labor in China are its pagodas, which seem like the play- things of a rudimentary imagination wdien compared with the architectural monuments of Europe.
If now we review the products of the American abo- rigines, whose closest affinities are certainly with the Mongolians, we arrive at a similar conclusion. There is evidence of an immense ability for labor, but of no superior powers of thought. The quantity of sheer muscular exertion expended on the huge architectural structures and the great roads of Peru, the immense pyramids of Mexico, and the great buildings of Yucatan, is extraordinary. The huge mounds erected by the ancient dwellers in the Mississippi valley are equally extraordinary, when we consider the barbarian condition of their builders. There is here no lack of muscular energy. No people of native 276
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indolence could have erected these monuments, or have even conceived the idea of them. There is abundant ability to work displayed, but no great ability to think. The great roads of Peru are products of a practical mind. In regard to the remaining works, they were largely incited by religious thought. They yield us in massive walls and crude ornamentation the record of the highest imaginative out-reach and artistic power of the American mind. When we come to examine them we find that their main ex- pression is that of hugeness. Their art is rudimentary, except in some few striking instances in the Maya archi- tecture and statuary of YTicatan. There are indications of intellectual ability, but it remains in its undeveloped stage. Energy is not lacking, but it is mainly confined to the muscles, and but slightty vitalizes the mind.
We have evidences of similar conditions in the works of architecture remaining from the pre-Aryan age of Europe. The huge monoliths of Stonehenge, Avebuiy, and Carnac, and the Cyclopean walls of Greece and Italy (the latter possibl}7 of Aryan formation), indicate a race or an era when muscle was in the ascendant and thought in embiyo. The idea was the same as that indicated in the structures of Asia and America, — to astound future man with edifices that seem the work of giant builders. No indication of the loftiest conception of architectural art appears,—that of the simple combination of the ornamental with the practical, and the restriction of size to the demands of necessity and the requirements of graceful proportion. To astonish by mere hugeness is a conception of the unde- veloped mind. Blind force can raise a mountain mass ; only higlil}7 developed intellect can erect a Greek temple.
The Melanochroic division of the white race repeats in OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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its work the Mongolian characteristic of hugeness. Yet it indicates superior thought-powers, and has attained a much higher level of art. In the extraordinary archi- tectural and artistic monuments of Egypt the power of sheer muscular vigor displayed is astounding. The world has never shown a greater degree of energy; but it is rather energy of the hands than of the mind. The ru- dimentary idea of vast size is the main expression of these works; and though they have sufficient artistic value to show a considerable mental unfoldment, yet hugeness of dimensions and the power of overcoming difficulties are their overruling characteristics. The old rulers of Egypt were eager to show the world of the future what labors they could perform ; they were much less eager to show what thought they could embody.
And yet among the monuments of Egypt and those of the sister nations of Assyria and Babylonia we find our- selves in a circle of thought of far higher grade than that displayed by the Mongolian monuments. There is indi- cated a vigorous power of imagination and an artistic ability of no mean grade, while strong evidence appears that but for the restraint of conventionality and the distracting idea of hugeness, art would have attained a much higher level. The rudiment of the Greek temple appears in the architecture of Egypt and Assyria, and the former is a direct outgrowth from the latter in the hands of a people of superior intellectuality.
If the Negro is indolent both physically and mentally, the Mongolian energetic physically but undeveloped men- tally, and the Melanochroi active physically and to some extent mentally, in the Aryan we find a highly vigorous and developed mental activity. Though by no means 278
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lacking in ph}Tsical energy, the mind is the ruling agent in this race, muscular work is reduced to the lowest level consistent with the demands of the body and the in- tellect, and every effort is made to limit the quantity of work represented in a fixed quantity of product. Waste labor is a crime to the Aryan mind. Use is the guiding principle in all effort. It is to this ruling agency of the intellect over the energies of a muscular and active organism that we owe the superior quality, the restricted dimensions, and the vast quantit}T of Aryan labor products. In this work pure thought is far more strongly represented than pure labor.
In the two great intellectual Aryan peoples of the past, the Greek and the Hindu, the artistic products are strik- ingly in accordance with the character of their respective mentality. The work of the Hindu displays an imagina- tive exuberance, with a lack of reasoning control. In it we have rather the idea of vastness than of hugeness, a vague yet strong mental upreach, while a superfluity, al- most a wildness, of ornament testifies to the unrestrained activity of the imagination. There is indicated no con- trolling idea of utility. The Hindus were almost devoid of practicality. Their architecture seems an embodiment of their philosophy, —daring, unrestrained, and unpractical throughout. In their older cave-temples, such as that at Elephanta, sheer labor is the strongest characteristic; but it is labor underlaid with a vigorous sense of art. In the extraordinary excavations at Ellora an exuberant imagi- nation carries all before it, and we seem to gaze upon an epic poem in stone, rendered inartistic by its endless superfluity of ornament.
In Greek architecture and in all Greek art. on the con- OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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trary, are visible the evidences of a subdued imagination. In breadth and height of imaginative conception the Greek mind is in no sense iuferior to the Hindu, but it is every- where restrained by the habit of observation and by a sense of the logical fitness of things. The Hindu looked inward for his models, and built his temples to fit the con- ceptions of his imagination. The Greek looked outward, found his models in the lines and forms of the visible, and sought to bring his work into strict conformity with the grace, harmony, and moderation of external Nature. In this effort he attained a remarkable success. True art was born with him. All excess and exuberance disap- pears, the wings of the imagination are clipped, and its flights kept down to the level of the visible earth. The idea of the practical is everywhere combined with that of the ornamental. The subordination of the mind to the teachings of visible Nature is rigidly maintained. Greek art is the actual, reproduced in all its lines and propor- tions, and with a strictly faithful rendering that detracts from its value as a work of the intellect, while adding to it as a work of art.
The defect of Greek art lies in an excess of this re- straint. It sins in one direction, as Hindu art does in the other. The wings of the imagination are too severely clipped. It is undoubtedly a high conception of art accu- rately to reproduce in marble the exact details and propor- tions of the human frame. But the Greek fixed his eyes so closely upon the body that he in a measure lost sight of its animating soul. This is not the highest conception of art. To imitate physical Nature exactly, was a great achievement; and this the Greek artist attained to a de- gree that can never be surpassed. But to reproduce the 280
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mind in the body, is a greater achievement; and in this direction Greek art made but the preliminary steps.
The great statues of Greece represent types, not indi- viduals. They display the mental characteristics of fear, modesty, terror, dignity, and the like, in the gross, not in detail. Their works are like the combined photographs by which the general typical features of groups of men are now reproduced. The special and individual varieties of these characters are never represented. It is the same with Greek architecture. It contains the harmonies and proportions of physical Nature, but it is empty of the deep spiritual significance with which Nature is everywhere per- vaded. It is a magnificent body, but it lacks the soul. The same would doubtless prove to be the case with Greek painting, had it been preserved. It is largely the case with Greek literature. Its characters are t}Tpes of man more largely than they are individual men. Too strict devotion to the seen is the weak point in Greek thought. Its flight lies below the level of the unseen.
Modern Aryan art has taken a higher flight. 'While paying less attention to the bod}T, it has paid more to the soul. In Gothic architecture the imagination displays a certain extravagance of manifestation ; but in it there is embodied something of that profound and awe-inspiring spiritual significance of Nature which Greek art fails to manifest. Modern sculpture, while it does not attain to the Greek level of physical perfection, indicates a higher ideal of mentality. It represents the individual instead of the group, and seeks to reproduce human emotion in its special, instead of its general varieties of manifestation. But the true modern arts, those best suited for mental em- bodiment, are painting and music. Of these the former OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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attained some ancient development; the latter is strictly modern as an art. It is mainly in these, and particularly in music, — the latest production of Aryan art, —that the soul shows through the thought, and that man has broken the crust of clay which envelops his inmost being, and auimated the products of his art with the deep spiritual significance that everywhere underlies Nature. In the work of the modern artist, in fact, we seem to have found the true middle line between the opposite one-sidedness of Greek and Hindu art. In the former of these the vis- ible too strongly controls ; in the latter the invisible. In the one the logical, in the other the imaginative, faculty of the mind attains undue predominance. The modern artist seeks to make these extremes meet. He fails to rival the Greek in the physical perfection of his work mainly be- cause his thought looks deeper than mere ph}Tsical perfec- tion ; he fails to display the Hindu exuberance of fancy from the fact that he never loses sight of the physical. As a consequence, his work pursues the mid-channel be- tween the logical and the imaginative, and reproduces Nature as it actually exists,—everywhere a body ani- mated by a soul. It is the individual that appears in modern art, as it is the individual that rules in modern society. In ancient nations the individual was of secon- dary importance. The group was the national unit alike in the family, the village, the gens, the tribe, and the va- rious subdivisions of the State. The individual was im- perfectly recognized in society, and became as imperfectly recognized in art.
In respect to the art of the non-Aryan nations little need be said. It lay far, often immeasurably, below the level of Aryan art. What the art of Egypt might have 282
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attained if freed from the restraint of conventionalism, it is difficult to say. It would probably even then have ended where Greek art began, as we find to be the case with the less conventionalized art of Assyria. The art of the Americans was far more rudimentary. In one or two examples it approaches the character of Greek art, but as a rule it is rather grotesque than artistic. The same re- mark applies to the art of modern China. It belongs to the childhood of thought.
The world of science is almost completely an Ai^an world. In this important field of thought the non-Aryan races of mankind stop at the threshold of discovery. Their most important work is in the formation of the calendar, to which strict necessity seems to have driven them. In this direction considerable progress was early attained. Each of the primitive civilizations measured the length of the year with close exactness, the Mexicans par- - ticularly so, their calendar being almost equally accurate with that of modern nations. This was a work of pure observation, and astronomical conditions seem strongly to have attracted the attention of early man. In fact the only extended series of scientific observations in the far past of which we are aware, is that of the Babylonians, in their close watch upon the movements of the stars and their study of eclipses. As to the accuracy and actual value of this work, we really know very little. Some sim- ilar observations were recorded by the Chinese. But nearly all the actual results of science which the Aryan has received from the exterior world consist in these few astronomical observations, — the partial settlement of the length of the year, its division into months and weeks, and the similar division of the day into its minor portions. OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
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On this small foundation the Aryans have built an im- mense superstructure. Aryan science began with the Greeks, whose tendency to exact observation made them critically acquainted with many of the facts and conditions of Nature. Y"et during' all the early eras of Greek enlight- enment the activity of the imagination prevented this habit of observation from producing valuable scientific results. It was devoted principally to the purposes of philosophy and art. It was necessary that able men, in whom logic was superior to imagination, should arise ere science could fairly begin. The first of these men we find in Thucy- dides,— a cool, practical thinker, who made history a science. The second of marked superiority was Aristo- tle,— the true founder of observational science, which had but a feeble existence before his day. His teacher, Plato, was a true Greek, with all the fervor of the Hellenic im- agination. Aristotle was essentially a logical genius. An effort to bring himself into conformity with the prevailing conditions of Greek thought forced him into various lines of speculation ; but the ruling tendency of his mind was toward incessant observation of facts for the accumula- tion of exact knowledge. There had been preceding Greek naturalists. Several noted physicians, particularly Hippocrates, had made medical investigations. Aristotle made use of the work of these men ; but it is doubtful if it was of much extent or accuracy. To it he added a great accumulation of facts, while laying down the laws of logi- cal thought, which he was the first to formulate, and to which little of value has been since added.
Any review of the subsequent history of science in the Aryan world is beyond our purpose. It is far too vast a subject to be even named at the conclusion of a chapter. 284
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It will suffice to say that the Greek mind seized with avid- ity upon the new field of labor thus opened to it. It was native soil to Greek thought, although it yet lay fallow. The tendency of the Hellenic race to critical observation had for centuries been fitting them for the work of re- search into the facts of Nature ; and had the Greek intel- lect remained in the ascendant there is no doubt that the schools of Alexandria would have been the focus of a great scientific development during the ancient era. As it was they performed a large amount of good work, and built a broad foundation for the future growth of this new product of the human understanding.
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tiguous Finns, whom we have viewed as nearly related in race to the Slavonic Aryans, have evolved an epic poem of some considerable merit, and of interest as the latest work of this character to come into existence in the primitive method. Its elements long existed among the Finnish people as a series of heroic legendary bal- lads, the work of arranging which into a connected epic form was due to Dr. Lönnrot, of Helsingfors, who col- lected from the lips of the peasantry, and published in 1835, the epic production now known as the Kalevala, the “Home of Heroes.” These legends belong mainly to the pre-Christian period of Finnish culture. They centre, in true epic style, round the hero Wainamoinen, whose deeds, with those of his two brother heroes, form the theme of a series of connected lays, which fall to- gether into a poem almost as homogeneous as the Iliad. It is a work instinct with mythology. It opens with a myth of the creation of the universe from an egg, and is full of folk-lore throughout. The heroes of Kaleva, the land of happiness, bring down gifts from Heaven to mortals, and work many magic wonders. Yet they min- gle in the daily life of the people, share their toils, and enter into their rest. They are, as Mr. Lang says, “ exaggerated shadows of the people, pursuing on a heroic scale, not war, but the common business of peace- ful and primitive men.” Yet the poem is not without its warlike element, — in the struggle of the heroes of Kaleva with the champions of Pohjola, the region of the frozen North, and of Luonela, the land of death. It ends, after many vicissitudes, in the triumph of Wai- namoinen and his followers over their foes. Of the merits of this poem, Max Müller remarks: “From the 264
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mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected, equalling the Iliad in length and completeness, — nay, if we can forget for the moment all that tee in our youth learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful.” In metre and style it resembles Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” which imitates it with some exactness.
Though the Slavonic people have produced no heroic epos of this completeness, they are not without their heroic poetry. The success attained by Dr. Lönnrot in studying the popular poetry of Finland has led to like efforts in Russia, with very marked results. Two great collections of the epic lays of the Russian people now exist,—that published by P. N. Ruibnikof in 18G7; and that of P. R. Kiryeevsky, which is not yet completed. These lays were collected from the lips of the Russian peasantiy, the whole country being traversed by the ardent explorers in their indefatigable search for the old songs of the Slavonic race. The Builinas, or historic poems, thus rescued from oblivion seem naturally to fall into several cycles, each with its distinct characteristics. Of these the most archaic lays deal with the “Elder He- roes,” and are evidently of mythologie origin. Closely connected with these in character is the cycle named after Vladimir the Great. This is the epos of the “ Younger Heroes,” — the ancient paladins of the country, like those of the Charlemagne and Arthur legends. The third is known as the Novgorod cycle, and deals with the remote era of historic Russia. The fourth is the Royal or Mos- cow cycle, and has the personages of actual history for its heroes.
These Russian songs show no tendency to centre round any single hero, and thus offer no opportunity for their THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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concentration into a single connected poem. In the his- tory of national epic poetry, in fact, we seem to distinguish two distinct lines of development. One of these is that pursued by Persia, Rome, and Russia, in which no single hero has concentrated the attention of singers, and the flow of song takes in a long succession of fabulous and historical champions. The other is that pursued by the remaining Aryans, in which song centred itself around one or a few great warriors, mostly of mythological origin, and the series of songs naturally combined into a connected narrative. This is the more archaic stage of the two, or perhaps the one that indicates the most active imagination, and it is the one to which all the naturally evolved epic poems of the world are due.
The production of heroic poetry by the Aryan peoples by no means ceased with their stage of half-barbaric de- velopment. Numerous valuable epic poems have been produced in the age of civilization; but of these we need say nothing, as they are secondary products of the human mind, and not the necessary outcome of mental evolution. They are only of value to us here as evidences of the continued vigor of the Aryan imagination. One only of these presents any of the characteristics of a naturally evolved work. This is the great poem of Dante, the Dicina Commedia, in which the Middle-Age mythology of the Christian Church has become embodied in song, the record of a stage of thought which can never be repro- duced upon the civilized earth. The Inferno of Dante is the mediaeval expression of a succession of extraordinary conceptions of the future destiny of the soul. These are of strict Aryan origin, since all non-Aryan nations have had very vague conceptions of the punishment of the 266
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wicked. The extreme unfoldment of the hell-idea we owe to the Hindu imagination, and a less exaggerated one to that of Persia. It would be difficult to conceive of a more grotesquely extravagant series of future tortures than those of the Buddhistic liell. These ideas have been carried by the Buddhists to China, while they gave the cue to Mohammed and instigated the hell of the Koran. Their final product is the hell of mediaeval Europe, and they have attained poetical expression in Dante’s In- ferno. We may therefore fairty class this poem with the primitive epics of mankind, as it gives poetic expression to a stage of human culture and a natively evolved series of mythical conceptions which have died out with the advance of civilization, but which were as essential ele- ments of thought-development as the worship of mythical deities and the admiration of heroic demigods.
We have given considerable attention to the development of Aryan epic poetry from the evidence which it presents of the distinctly superior character of the Aryan imagina- tion to that of the other races of mankind. None of these can be fairly said to have reached the epic level of thought. The Aryans have continuously progressed beyond this level. But the steps of this progression can here but con- cisely be indicated. The epic spirit in ancient Greece unfolded in two directions, one producing the imaginative historical narrative, the other giving rise to the drama. The former of these in that actively intellectual land quickly developed into history in its highest sense, yielding the rigidly critical and philosophical historical work of Thucydides. The latter as quickly gave rise to a succes- sion of the noblest dramatic productions of mankind, those of the three great tragedians of Greece. Elsewhere in the THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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ancient world the course of development was much the same. Rome produced no native drama of literary value, but in historic production it rivalled the best work of Greece, passing from the half-fabulous historical legends of Livy to the critical production of Tacitus. In this re- spect practical Rome was in strong contrast to imaginative India, in which land history remained undeveloped, while a drama of considerable merit came into existence.
If now we consider the unfoldment of modern European literature, it is to find it pursue a somewhat different channel, and reach results not attained in ancient times. The rhymed romance of chivalry was the direct outgrowth of the epic spirit in mediaeval Europe, and was accom- panied by metrical histories as fabulous as the romance. In their continued development these two forms of litera- ture deviated. The history of fable gradually unfolded into the history of fact. Prose succeeded verse, and criticism replaced credulit}7. The rhymed romance, on its part, de- veloped into the prose romance, and lost more and more of its magical element, until it full}7 entered the region of the possible. It still continued tedious and extravagant, but had got rid of its old cloak of mythology.
Ancient fiction reached a stage somewhat similar to this, though not by the same steps of progress. In the later eras of Greece romantic fictions appeared, comprising pastoral, religious, and adventurous tales similar to those which were the ruling fashion of a few centuries ago in Europe. But there was little trace of the allegory, which became such a favorite form of literature with our fore- fathers. In India this development stopped at a lower stage, that of fable and fairy lore. But in this field the active Hindu imagination produced abundantly, and 268
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directly instigated the Persian and Arabian magical liter- ature. Through the latter its influence entered modern Europe. Collections of the Hindu tales were extant in the Middle Ages, and from them seems to have directly out- grown the short novel or tale, which attained such popu- larity and reached its highest level of art in the Decameron of Boccaccio.
But in more modern times the imaginary narrative has passed onward to a far higher stage than it attained in the ancient period, and has yielded the character-novel of our own day, — a literary form in which the combined imagina- tion and reason of the Aryan mind have gained their lofti- est development. The novel is the epic of the scientific and reflective era. It has cast off the barbaric splendor of the mantle of verse and of magical and supernatural embellishments, and has descended to quiet prose and actual life conditions. It has left the heroic for the do- mestic stage. It has replaced the outlined characters of the epic by critical dissections that reveal the inmost fibres of human character. The stirring action of the epic has in it been replaced in great part by reflection and mental evolution. It forms, in short, the storehouse into which flows all the varied thought of modern times, there to be wrought into an exact reproduction of the physical, social, and mental life of man.
The modern drama unfolded at an earlier date than the novel. But its evolution was a native one only in Spain and England. Elsewhere it was but an imitation of the drama of the ancient world. It attained its highest level in the works of Shakspeare, which indeed prefigured the modern novel in the critical exactness and mental depth of their character-pictures and in the reflective vein which THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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underlies all their action. As complete reproductions of intellectual man, and dissections of the human understand- ing in its every anatomical detail, they probably stand at the highest level yet reached by the powers of human thought. The remaining outgrowth of epic narrative, that of prose history, has likewise attained a remarkable devel- opment in modern times, and has become as philosophical and critical as the narrative of ancient times, with few exceptions, was crude, credulous, and unphilosophical.
If an attempt be made to compare the literary work of the non-Aryan nations in these particulars with the Aryan productions, it will reveal a very marked contrast between the value of the two schools of thought. Noth- ing need be said of the fictitious or historical literature of the ancient non-Aryan civilizations. It lay in intellectual power very far below the level attained by Greece. The only important literary nation of modern times outside the Aryan world is China. In the making of books the Chinese have been exceedingly active, and their literature is enormous in quantity; the Europeans scarcely surpass them in this respect. But in regard to quality they stand immeasurably below the Aryan level.
Though China has produced no epic poem, it has been very prolific in historical and descriptive literature and in what is called the drama and the novel. Yet in its his- torical work it has not gone a step beyond the annalistic stage. The idea of historical philosophy is yet to be bom in this ancient land. As for tracing events to their causes, and taking that broad view of history which converts the consecutive detail of human deeds into a science, and dis- plays to us the seemingly inconsequential movements of nations as really controlled by necessity and directed by 270
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• the unseen hand of evolution, such a conception has not yet entered the unimaginative Chinese mind.
As regards the Chinese drama and novel, they are utterly unworthy of the name. Character-delineation is the distinctive feature of the modern novel, and of this the novel of China is void. It consists mainly of inter- minable dialogues, in which moral reflections and trifling discussions mingle, while the narrative is made tedious by its many inconsequential details. The stories abound in sports, feasts, lawsuits, promenades, and school exam- inations, and usually wind up with marriage. There is abundance of plot, but no character. Their heroes are paragons of all imaginable virtues, — polished, fascinating, learned; everything but human. The same may be said of the Chinese drama. It is all action. Reflection and character-analysis fail to enter. There are abundance of descriptions of fights and grand spectacles, myths, puns, and grotesque allusions, intermingled with songs and bal- lets. The plot is sometimes very intricate, and managed with some skill; but often the play is almost destitute of plot, though full of horrible details of murders and ex- ecutions. Fireworks, disguised men, and men personating animals, are admired features of those strange spectacles; but as for any display of a high order of intellectuality, no trace of it can be discovered in the dramatic or fictitious literature of this very ancient literary people.
There is no occasion, in this review, to consider all the many divisions into which modern Aryan literature has unfolded. There is, however, yet another of the ancient and naturally evolved branches of literature to be taken into account. AVe have said that the general course of poetic development seems to have been from the religious THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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through the heroic lyric to the epic. But lyric poetry con- tinued its development, accompanying and succeeding the epic. It has indeed come down to our own times in a broad flood of undiminished song. It is with the lyric, truly so called, that we are here concerned, — the poetry of reflection, the metrical analysis of human emotion and thought, in contrast with the poetry of action. To this may be added the poetry of description, of the love-song, and of the details of common life, with all their numerous varieties.
In this field of literature alone the other races come more directly into comparison with the Aryan. Prolific as every branch of the Aryan race' has been in lyric song, the remaining peoples of civilized mankind have been little less so, and in this direction have attained their highest out-reach of poetic thought. The Hebrews specially ex- celled in the lyric. In the poem of moral reflection and devotion, in the delineation of the scenes and incidents of rural life, and in the use of apposite metaphor, they stand unexcelled, while in scope of sublime imagery the poem of Job has never been equalled. This poetry, how- ever, belongs to a primitive stage of mental development, — that in which worship was the ruling mental interest of mankind. The intellect of man had not expanded into its modern breadth, and was confined to a narrow range of subjects of contemplation.
At a later period the Semitic race broke into a second outburst of lyric fervor, — that of the Arabians in their im- perial era. But this failed to reach any high standard of intellectual conception. Their poems were largely devoted to love and eulogy ; and while they had the same metrical harmony ns their direct successors, the works of the Trou- 272
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baclours and the Minnesingers, they, like these, were largely void of thought, and lacked sufficient vitality to give them continued life. In China, again, we find a very considerable development of non-Aryan lyric song, coming down from a very early period of the nation. And these lyrics have often much merit as quiet pictures of life; but it cannot be claimed that they show any lofty intellectual power. For the highest development of the lyric, as of every form of literary work, we must come to the Aryan world, where alone thought has climbed and broadened, reaching its highest level and its widest outlook, and sink- ing to its profoundest depth of analysis of the mental universe. So far as literature embodies the powers of the human intellect, it points to the Aryan development as supremely in advance of that of the other races of mankind. XL
OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.
IT is necessary, in continuation of our subject, to con- sider the comparative record of the Aryan and the other races of mankind in respect to the development of art, science, mechanical skill, and the other main essentials of civilization. In doing so, certain marked distinctions make themselves apparent, and it seems pos- sible to draw broad lines of demarcation between the principal races. If we consider the Negro race from this point of view, it is to find a lack of energy both physical and mental. Nowhere in the region inhabited by this race do we perceive indications of high powers either of work or thought. No monuments of architecture appear; no philosophies or literatures have arisen. And in their present condition they stand mentally at a very low level, while physically they confine themselves to the labor ab- solutely necessary to existence. They neither work nor think above the lowest level of life-needs; and even in America, under all the instigation of Aryan activity, the Negro race displays scarcely any voluntary energy either of thought or work. It goes only as far as the sharp whip of necessity drives, and looks upon indolence and sunshine as the terrestrial Paradise.
The record of the Mongolian race is strikingly different. Here, too, we find no great scope or breadth of thought, but there is shown a decided tendency to muscular exertion.
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versification. As compared with the Hindu epics, it displays the artistic moderation of Greek thought in con- trast with the unpruned exuberance of the Oriental imagi- nation. Even the gods which crowd its pages are as human in their lineaments as a Greek statue, and we are every- where introduced to the society of actual man, with his real passions, feelings, and sentiments, instead of to a congeries of phantasms whose like never drew breath in heaven, earth, or sea.
The Odyssey has been subjected to criticism of the same character, and with like indefinite results. There can be no doubt that here also we have to do with one of the favorite heroes of Greek legend,—the wise, shrewd, hard- headed old politician Ulysses, in contrast with the fiery Achilles, uncontrollable alike in his fury and his grief. They are strongly differentiated types of character, both to be found in the mental organization of the Greek, and perhaps chosen from an involuntary sense of their fitness. We need not here follow Ulysses in his wan- derings and his strange adventures by land and sea. They simply indicate the conception of the ancient Greek mind, yet firmly held in mythologie fetters, of the conditions of the world beyond its ken. Yet a considerable change had taken place in the ruling ideas between the dates of the two poems. The turbulent Olympian court of the Iliad has almost disappeared in the Odyssey, and Zeus has developed from the hot-tempered monarch of the Iliad into the position of a supreme moral ruler of the uni- verse. If both poems are the work of one hand, which is now strongly questioned, the poet must have passed from the ardent and active youth of the Iliad to the re- flective era of old age and into a period of developed 254:
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religions ideas ere he finished his noble life-work with the Odyssey.
Of the remaining epic work of Greece nothing need be said. The true epic spirit seems to have died with Homer ; and though many heroic poems were afterward produced, they lack the lofty poetic power of the ancient Muse. But one work need be named here, the Theogony of He- siod, as at once partly an epic poem, and partly a mytho- logical record. To a certain extent it may be classed with the Icelandic Eddas and the Persian cosmogony; though the scheme which it presents is less connected and complete, and it cannot lay the same claim to the title of a philosophy of mythology. On the other hand, it details many stirring scenes, and its description of the battles between Zeus and the Titans has an epic power which approaches that of Milton’s story of the war on Heaven’s plains.
The epic poetry of Rome may be dismissed with a few words. That the Romans possessed the vigor of imagi- nation and the boldness and sustained energy of concep- tion necessary to work of this description, is sufficiently attested by the JEneid of Virgil. But it is with a native epic growth that we are here concerned, not with a second- ary outcome of Greek inspiration. A study of ancient Roman history reveals the fact that abundance of epic material existed. This history is in great part a series of legends, many of which are doubtless prose versions of old heroic lays. Cicero remarks that “ Cato, in his Origines, tells us that it was an old custom at banquets for those who sat at table to sing to the flute the praiseworthy deeds of famous men.”1 He further regrets that these
1 Quaestioncs Tuscul. iv. 2. THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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lays had perished in his time. Other writers give similar testimony; and it is highly probable that the stories of the warlike deeds of Iloratius, Mucius, Camillns, etc., were largely poetic fictions, designed to be sung in the halls of the great nobles of these clans. We find here no clustering of legend round the names of single heroes, as in ancient Greece. The scope of Homan thought lay below the level of the demigods. It was practical throughout, and per- mitted but minor deviations from the actual events of history. Thus Roman legend is more in the vein of that of Persia, which was spread over a long line of fabulous kings, instead of concentrating itself around a few all- glorious champions. Rome, however, produced no Fir- dusi to embalm its legends in the life-like form of song. Yet the history of Livy may almost be called an epic in prose. It is the nearest approach which Rome made to a national epic, and prose as it is, the great work of Livy deserves to be classed among the heroic epics of the world.
It is in strong confirmation of the intellectual energy of the Aryans to find that the remaining and more barbaric branches of the race, equally with the Greeks and Hindus, produced their epics of native growth. And it is of inter- est to find that the Teutonic and Celtic epic cycles display the true epic condition of the concentration of a series of heroic lays around one great national hero. With the Teutonic people a native Homer arose to give epic shape to the floating lays of the past. This cannot be affirmed of the Celts, whose ancient heroes owed their final glory to foreign hands.
The Germans possess more than one collection of an- tique lays, such as the poem of Gudrun, and the Helden- 256
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buck, or Book of Heroes. But it is to the Nibelungen-lied that they proudly point as a great national epic, the out- growth of their heroic age. Nor is this pride misplaced. The song of the Nibelung is undoubtedly a great and noble work, unsurpassed in the circle of primitive warlike epics except by the unrivalled Iliad. It is full of the spirit of the old German lays, such as Tacitus tells us the Germans of his time composed in honor of their great warriors. It is full also of mythological elements, to such an extent that it is difficult to discriminate between the deific and the human origin of its heroes. In its central hero, Siegfried, the Achilles of the song, and in the heroic maiden Brunhild, we undoubtedly have mythological char- acters. But in others, such as Etzel and Dietrich, can be traced such well-known historical personages as Attila, the leader of the Iluns, and Theodoric, the Gothic king. Siegfried and Brunhild appear in other legends besides those of the Nibelung, and we find the former in the Vol- sung lay of the Eddas as Sigurd, who fought with the dragon Fafnir for the golden hoard. This golden hoard is a moving impulse in the Teutonic legendary cj'cle. Siegfried has become the possessor of the enchanted treas- ure of the Nibelungs, and, like Achilles, has been made invulnerable, except in a spot between his shoulders, which replaces the heel of Achilles.
But the hoard of gold is a secondary motive in the Nibelungen-lied. Its mythologie fiction has almost van- ished, and has been replaced by human motives, human passions, and human deeds. Man has dwarfed the gods in this outcome of German thought. It is the truly human passion of jealousy, the hot rivalry of the two queens, Brunhild and Kriemhild, and the bitter thirst of the latter TIIE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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for revenge, that carry us through its stirring epic cycle of treachery, war, and murder. There is nothing in the whole circle of song more terrible than the finale of this vigorous poem, the pitiless battle for vengeance in the blood-stained banquet-hall of the Huns. Of the name of the poet who shaped the old ballads into the enduring form of the Nibelungen-lied we have no more than a conjectural knowledge. This work was apparently done about the year 1200 ; but the lays themselves perhaps reach back to the fifth or sixth centuries. The epic work was done by a master-hand, who has moulded the separate songs, sagas, and legends into a well-harmonized single poem with a judgment and ability that shows the possession of a vigor- ous genius.
The Nibelungen-lied is not a courtly poem. It is full of the rudeness and passion of a barbaric age, though the conditions of Middle-Age society, with its combined cru- elty and chivalry, and the sentiment of the age of the Minnesingers, have not been without their effect in soften- ing the spirit of the older lays, and in giving a degree of poetic splendor to the crude boldness of archaic song. It falls far below the Iliad in all that constitutes a great work of art, yet it is instinct with a fervent imagination, a fiery energy, and a truly epic breadth of incident. Its descriptive power, the fine characterization of its person- ages, and the skilful handling of the plot, indicate both an age of considerable literary culture and a high degree of poetic genius in the narrator, while the Teutonic spirit is shown in its deep feeling for the profound and mysteri- ous in human destiny. Opening with a calm and quiet detail of peaceful incidents, we soon find the poem plung- ing into the abyss of jealousy, rivalry, murder, and all the
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fiercer passions. The hand of the assassin finds the vul- nerable spot in Siegfried’s body, the fatal spot left un- bathed by the magic dragon’s blood, and he falls a victim to Brunhild’s relentless hate. From this point onward the poem gathers force as it flows, until it sweeps with the fury of .a mountain-torrent toward its disastrous finale in the terrible retribution exacted by the hero’s vengeance- brooding wife. The death-dealing spirit of ancient trag- edy finds its culmination in the story of awful bloodshed in which the murderons Hagen and his companions meet their deserts at the court of the Huns. The terrible energy with which the poem closes finds nothing to surpass it in the most vigorous scenes of Homer’s world-famous works.
One more poem of epic character, the product o'f the Teutonic Muse, may be here mentioned,—the most archaic and barbarous of all epic songs. This is the primeval English epic, the poem of Beowulf,—the work of the Anglo-Saxons in their days of utter barbarism and heathen- ism, probably before they left their home on the Continent to fall in piratical fury on England’s defenceless shores. We have here no chivalry, no sentiment, no softness. All is fierce, rude, and savage. The superstitions of an age of mental gloom form the web of the poem, which is shot through and through with the threads of mythologie lore. It is, as Longfellow remarks, “like a piece of ancient armor, — rusty and battered, and yet strong.” The style is of the simplest. The bold metaphorical vein of later Anglo-Saxon poetry is wanting; the poet seems intent only on telling his story, and has no time for episodes and metaphors. Yet Beowulf is the far-off progenitor of the knight-errant of chivalry; and the song is such as the un- cultured, yet vigorous-minded, bards of the heathen Saxons THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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might have sung in the rude halls of half-savage thanes,— ale-quaffing, stool-seated Berserkers, listening in the light of flaring and smoking torches to the stirring lay of human prowess and magic charms.
AYe are told how Beowulf, the sea Goth, fought unarmed with Grendel the giant, and destroyed the monster, after the latter had slain scores of beer-drunken doughty Danes in the great hall of King Hrothgar the Scylding. There succeeded a terrible fight in the dens whither Beowulf had followed the GrendeTs mother, a witch-like monster. Here he slew dragons and monsters that blocked his way; and after a hard struggle with the grim old-wife, seized a magic sword which lay among the treasures of her dwell- ing, and “with one fell blow let her heathen soul out of its bone house.” 1 To this strongly told bit of heathen lore are added eleven more cantos, relating the deeds of the sea-king in his old age, when he fought with a monstrous fire-drake which was devastating the land. He killed this creature, and enriched the land with the treasure found in its cave ; yet himself died of his wounds.
Here again we have the magic treasure of Teutonic lore, destined to be fatal to its possessor, as the Nibelung hoard was to the hero Siegfried. It is undoubtedly an out- growth of Northern mythology, and perhaps had its origin in the treasures of the dawn or of the summer of ancient Aryan myth. As an epic, the poem possesses much merit. It is highly graphic in its descriptions, while the story of its battles, its treasure-houses, the revels and songs in the kings’ halls, and the magical incidents with which the poem is filled, are told with a minuteness that brings clearly before our eyes the life of a far ruder age 1 Longfellow, Poets and Poetry of Europe, p. 4. 260
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than is revealed by any other extended poem. As Long- fellow sa}Ts, “ we can almost smell the brine, and hear the sea-breezes blow, and see the mainland stretch out its ‘sea-noses’ into the blue waters of the solemn main.” This rude old song, so fortunately preserved, yields us striking evidence of the intellectual vigor of the fathers of the English race.
The Celtic Aryans have been quite as prolific as any other branch of the race ; and though they present us with no completed epic, they have preserved an abundance of those heroic tales which form the basis of epic song. While the Germans of the Continent and the Saxons of England were plunged in the depths of barbarism, the Irish Celts manifested a considerable degree of literary activity, and produced works on a great variety of subjects, whose origin can be traced back to the early centuries of the Christian era. Among these were numerous heroic legends which centred around two great traditional cham- pions of the past. One of these cycles of epic la}7s, whose heroes have almost vanished from the popular mind, relates the deeds of a doughty hero, Cuchulaind, of whose mighty prowess man}7 stirring stories are told. The central tale is the Tain Bo Cuailnge, or the “Cattle Spoil of Cualnge,” which tells how Cuchulaind defended Ulster and the mystic brown bull of Cualnge single-handed against all the forces of Queen Medb of Connaught, the original of the fairy- queen Mab. Around this vigorously told story cluster some thirty others, descriptive of the deeds of the hero Cuchulaind, of Medb the heroine, and of many great cham- pions of the past. As a whole, it forms a complete epic cycle, and needed only the shaping and pruning hand of some able poet to add another to the national epics of TIIE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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the world. These legends, as they exist now, are in twelfth-century manuscripts, of mixed prose and verse; hut for their origin we must go hack to the vanished hards of many centuries preceding.
In addition to this epic cycle of heroic song, the Irish have the fortune to possess another, equally extensive, and of much more modern date,—the story of Finn, the son of Cumall, who is still a popular hero in Ireland, though his predecessor has long heen forgotten. Finn and the Fennians may have had a historical basis, though there can he very little of the historical in the stories relating to them, with their abundance of magical incidents and extra- ordinary adventures. The Fennian tales probably only be- gan to he popular about the twelfth century, and new ones continued to appear till a much later period, one of them being as late as the eighteenth century. These legends are very numerous, and they may claim to have found their epic poet in a bard of alien blood; for it seems certain that the heroes of both these cycles of songs were popu- lar in the Highlands of Scotland, and that Macpherson’s Ossian, though doubtless due, as a poem, to his own mind, contains elements derived by him from the popular Highland heroic lore. Ossian is Oisin, the son of Finn, while the hero himself is represented in Fingal; and char- acters of both the Irish legendary cycles are introduced. Much as the statement of Macpherson concerning the origin of this poem has been questioned, it may have equal claim to the title of a naturally evolved epic as the Nibelungen-lied or the Iliad. For in none of these cases are we aware to what an extent the final poet manipulated his materials, or how greatly he transformed the more an- cient lays and legends. 262
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The Welsh division of the Celts seems to have been nearly as active as the Irish in literary work, and pro- duced its distinct epic cycle in the heroic lays of King Arthur, — the popular hero of the age of chivalry and of modern English epic song. This hero of fable, with his Round Table of noble knights, and the deeds of the enchanter Merlin, was first introduced to Middle-Age Europe in the fabulous British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, written early in the twelfth century. The Arthurian legends yielded nothing that we can call an epic, but they gave inspiration to a marvellous series of rhymed romances, the work of the French Trouvères. The French, however, were not without a native hero of romance of older date in their literature than the Arthur myths. This was their great King Charlemagne, who, with his twelve peers, formed the theme of an interminable series of Chansons de Gestes, or legendary ballads, in which the epic spirit became diffused through a wide range of rude and magical romance. King Arthur succeeded Charlemagne as a popular hero at a period of more cul- ture and softer manners, and the poems of which he and his knights form the heroes are the finest in that tedious series of magical romances with which the Trouvères and their successors deluged the literature of the chivalric age, until they finally sank into utter inanity, and were laughed out of existence by Cervantes in his inimitable satire of Don Quixote.
In this review of the early poetry of the Aryans there is one branch of the race }^et to be considered, and one remaining epic to be described. The Slavonians have not been without their literary productions, though none of their poetry has reached the epic stage. But the con- THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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This was deeply worked by Plato, his great disciple, whose system of Ideas replaced the old systems of things, and with whom the supreme and all-embracing idea, the absolute Good, became the God, the divine creator and sustainer. Finally followed Aristotle, with his strongly scientific turn of mind and his highly indefinite metaphysi- cal conception of the fluctuations between Potentiality and
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Actuality, the variation from matter to form, from form- less matter to pure or immaterial form. To these concep- tions were added cosmological notions largely derived from the old mythology. But the value of the thought of Greece was not so much for its deductive as for its induc- tive labors. It tended constantly toward a scientific research into the basis of matter and mind, and never began by cutting loose from the actual, as in Hindu thought.
The mental acumen of these two highly intellectual branches of the ancient Aryans approached equality; but the real value of their work differed widely, mainly as a consequence of their different standpoints of thought. The speculations of the Greeks were based on observed facts, those of the Hindus on mythological fancies. As a consequence, the Greeks have worked far more truly for the intellectual advancement of mankind. If we come to glance at modern philosophy, a strikingly similar parallel appears. The Germans, the metaphysicians of the modern age, have inclined toward the Hindu line of pure deduc- tion, and built vast schemes of philosophy with little more solid basis than the doctrine of emanation. The English and French, on the contrary, have developed the Greek line of science, and based their philosophies on observed facts. Their schemes do not tower so loftily as those of Germany, but they are built on the ground, and not on the clouds, and are likely to stand erect when the vast edi- fices of pure metaphysics have toppled over in splendid but irremediable ruin. X.
THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
IT is not our intention to enter upon the task of a general review of the vast field of Aryan recorded thought, but merely to offer a comparative statement of the literary position of the several races of mankind, in evidence of the superiority of the Aryan intellect. Lite- rary labor has been by no means confined to this race. Every people that has reached the stage of even an im- perfect civilization has considered its thoughts worthy of preservation, its heroes worthy of honor, its deeds worthy of record. But so far as the intellectual value of lite- rary work is concerned, the Aryans have gone almost infinitely beyond the remainder of mankind.
All early thought seems naturally to have flowed into the channel of poetry, with the exception of certain dry annals which cannot properly be classed as literature. This poetry, in its primary phase, appears to have been always lyrical. It was apparently at first the lyric of worship. This was followed by the lyric of action, and this, in its highest outcome, by the epic,—the combined and organized phase of the heroic poem. It is of interest to find that the Aryans alone can be said to have fairly reached the final stage of the archaic field of thought, the epic efforts of other races being weak and inconse- quent, while almost every branch of the Aryan race rose to the epic literary level. 244
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Of the antique era of the religious lyric little here need be said. TTe find it in the hymns of the Vedas and of the Zend-Avesta, in the early traditional literature of Greece, and in the ancient Babylonian hymns to the gods, some of which in form and manner strikingly re- semble the Hebrew psalms. As to the second poetic period, that of the heroic song, or the record of the great deeds of the gods and demigods, little trace re- mains. Heroic compositions, as a rule, have ceased to exist as separate works, and have either become compo- nent parts of subsequent epics, or have vanished. As to valuable epic literature, however, it is nearly all confined within Aryan limits.
Modern research into the fragmentary remains of the ancient Babylonian literature has brought to light evi- dence of a greater activity of thought than we formerly had reason to imagine. And among the works thus re- covered from the buried brick tablets of the Babylonian libraries are portions of a series of mythological poems of a later date than the hymns. These productions are considered to form part of an antique and remarkable poem, with a great solar deity as hero, — an epic centre of legend into which older lays have entered as episodes. It appears to have consisted of twelve books, of which we possess two intact, — the Deluge legend, and that of the descent of Istar into Hades ; while part of a third exists, in which is described the war of the seven evil spirits against the moon. The Assyrians are supposed to have also had their epic, in imitation of this older work, and the Semiramis and Ninas of the Greeks are considered by M. Lenormant to have been heroes of this legendary circle of song. However that be, it cannot be THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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claimed that either in poetic or artistic ability the Se- mitic mind displayed any exalted epic powers. So far as we are able to judge of this work from its scanty remains, it is devoid of all that we are accustomed to consider literary merit, and is full of hyperbolical extravagance.
Of the Semitic races, indeed, the Hebrews alone pro- duced poetry of a high grade of merit. Of this Hebrew literature we shall speak more fully farther on, and it must suffice here to say that none of it reached the epic level. It is, as a rule, lyrical in tendency. Hebrew literature, however, is not without its heroic characters. We find them in Noah, Samson, David, Daniel, and others who might be named; but none of these were^ made heroes of song, but were dealt with in sober prose, — as we shall find later on was the fate of the heroes of Roman legend. The Hebrew intellect, indeed, was largely practical in its tendencies, its imagination was subdued, and though its literature contains many excit- ing legendary incidents, these are all couched in quiet prose, while its poetry fails to rise above the lyric of worship or of pastoral description. The nearest approach to an epic poem is the grand book of Job, of unknown authorship. The literature of Assyria, of which abundant relics are now coming to light, is yet more practical in character than that of the Hebrews, and resembles that of the Chinese in literalness. There is no poetry ap- proaching in merit the elevated lyrical productions found in the Hebrew scriptures, and, like the Chinese, it is largely devoted to annals, topography, and other practical matters. The Semitic race as a whole appears to have been deficient in the higher imagination, though possessed of active powers of fancy. To the latter are due abundant stores of legend, 246
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often of a highly extravagant character; but we nowhere find an instance of those lofty philosophical conceptions, or of that high grade of epic song or dramatic composi- tion, which are such frequent products of Aryan thought, and which indicate an extraordinary fertility of the imagi- nation in the Aiyan race.
Egypt produced little work of merit from a literary point of view. The religious literature consists of cer- tain hymns of minor value, and the well-known “ Ritual of the Dead.” Similar to this is the “Ritual of the Lower Hemisphere.” These ritualistic works can scarcely be called literary productions, and are marked by an inex- tricable confusion. So far as the display of intellectual ability is concerned, they are almost an utter void. In addition to its tyrics, Egypt has one work which has been dignified with the title of epic, though it should rather be viewed as an extended instance of those heroic legends whose confluence is needed to constitute a true epic production. It forms but the first stage in the pro- duction of the epic. This poem is credited to a scribe named Pentaur, and is devoted to a glorification of the deeds of Rameses II. in a war which that monarch con- ducted against the Cheta. He seems to have been cut off from his troops by the enemy, and to have safely made his Avay back to them. But the poem tells us that the mighty hero fell into an ambuscade of the Cheta, and found himself surrounded by two thousand five hun- dred hostile chariots. Invoking the gods of Egypt, the potent warrior pressed with his single arm upon the foe, plunged in heroic fuiy six times into their midst, cov- ered the region with dead, and regained his army to boast of his glorious exploits. It is a bombastic and THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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inartistic production ; but such as it is it seems to have struck the Egyptian taste as a work of wonder, and has been engraved on the walls of several of the great tem- ples of the land. The most complete copy of it is writ- ten on a papyrus now in the British Museum.
The remaining antique non-Aryau civilization, that of China, is utterly void of any epic productions, either in the ultimate or in the germ. The imagination necessary to work of this kind was wanting to the Chinese. Their decided practical tendency is abundantly shown in their close attention to annalistic history and to such sub- jects as geography, topography, etc. But no heroic le- gend exists, and but little trace of the devotional poetry with which literature begins elsewhere. The Confucian “ Book of Odes,” which contains all we possess of the antique poetry of China, is mainly devoted to the con- cerns of ordinary life. It has little of the warlike vein, but much of the spirit of peaceful repose. We are brought into the midst of real life, with domestic con- cerns, religious feeling, and family affection replacing the wild “outings” of the imagination which are shown in all the ancient Aryan literature. After the Confucian period Chinese song gained a somewiiat stronger flight, and the domestic ballad wras replaced by warlike strains and mythologie songs. But no near approach to epic composition wras ever attained.
If now wre enter upon Aryan ground we find ourselves at once upon loftier peaks of thought, and in a higher and purer atmosphere. Almost everywhere epic poetry makes its appearance at an early stage of literary cultivation as the true usher to the later and more practical branches of literature. These antique epic creations of the Aryans 248
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may be briefly summarized. As in philosophy, so in po- etry, India and Greece take the lead; the Ramayana vying, though at a much lower level of art, with the Iliad of Greece. Of the two ancient epics of the Hindus, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the former is the older, while it is more the work of a single hand, and shows few signs of that epic confluence of legend which strongly characterizes the latter. And of the two, the Ramayana is the more mythological, the Mahabharata the more historical in character.
Legend credits uorthérn India in these early days with two great dynasties of kings, known respectively as the Solar and the Lunar dynasties. The Ramayana describes the adventures of a hero of the solar race. Rama, the hero, is a lineal descendant of the god of the sun, and is himself adored as an incarnation of Vishnu. Every- where in the poem we find ourselves on mythological ground, and the only historical indication it contains is that of the extension of the Aryan conquest southward toward Ceylon. The story describes the banishment of Rama from his hereditary realm and his long wanderings through the southern plains. His wife, Sita, is seized by Ravana, the giant ruler of Ceylon. Rama, assisted by Sugriva, the king of the monkeys, makes a miraculous conquest of this island, slays its demon ruler, and recovers his wife, the poem ending with his restoration to his ancestral throne.
The style of this poem is of a high grade of merit, and it takes a lofty rank among the works of the human im- agination. In the first two sections there is little of extravagant fiction, though in the third the beauty of its descriptions is marred by wild exaggerations. It is THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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evidently in the main the work of one hand, not a welding of several disjointed fragments. There are few episodes, while the whole latter portion is one unbroken narrative, and there is shown throughout an unvarying skill and poetical power and facility. It is credited to a single poet, Valmiki. This name signifies “ white ant-hill,” and it is very doubtful if it represents a historical personage. However that be, the Ramayaua is a homogeneous and striking outcome of ancient thought.
The Mahabharata is a work of very different character. It is rather a storehouse of poetic legends than a single poem, and is evidently the work of many authors, treating subjects of the greatest diversity. It is of later date than the Ramayana, and more human in its interest, but is far below it in epic completeness and unity. Y"et it is not without its central story, though this has almost been lost under the flood of episodes. It is the epic of the heroes of the lunar dynasty, the descendants of the gods of the moon, as the Ramayaua is the heroic song of the solar race. Bharata, the first universal monarch, who brought all kingdoms “under one umbrella,” has a lineal descend- ant, Kuril, who lias two sons, of whom one leaves a hun- dred children, the other but five. The fathers dying, the kingdom is equitably divided among these sons, the five Pandavas and the hundred Kauravas. The latter grow envious, wish to gain possession of the whole, and pro- pose to play a game of dice for the kingdom. The Pandavas lose in this strange fling for a kingdom ; but the Kauravas agree to restore their cousins to their share in the throne if they will pass twelve years in a forest and the thirteenth year in undiscoverable disguises. This penance is performed; but the Kauravas evade their 250
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promise, and a great war ensues, in which the Pandavas ultimately triumph. "Whether this war indicates some actual event or not, is questionable; but this part of the work is well performed, the characters of the five Pandavas are finely drawn, and many of the battle-scenes strikingly animated.
But this main theme forms but a minor portion of the work. It is full of episodes of the most varied character, and contains old poetical versions of nearly all the ancient Hindu legends, with treatises on customs, laws, and re- ligion, — in fact, nearly all that was known to the Hindus outside the Vedas. The main story is so constantly interrupted that it winds through the episodes “like a pathway through an Indian forest/’ Some of these episodes are said to be of “rare and touching beauty,” while the work as a whole has every variety of style, dry philosophy beside ardent love-scenes, and details of laws and customs followed b}T scenes of battle and bloodshed. Many of the stories are repeated in other words, and the whole mass, containing more than one hundred thousand verses, seems like a compilation of many generations of Hindu literary work. Yet withal it is a production of high merit and lofty intellectual conception.
In regard to the Persian branch of the Indo-Aryans, it 37ields us no ancient literary work in this exalted vein. That considerable legendary poetry existed we have good reason to believe; but it does not seem to have centred around a single hero, as elsewhere, but to detail the deeds of a long series of legendaiy kings, many of wiiom were undoubtedly historical personages. It was late in the history of the Persians when these legends became con- densed into a single work, the celebrated Shah Xamah of THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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Firdusi, which forms, as Malcolm observes, “ deservedly the pride and delight of the East.” It professes to be but a versified history of the ancient Persian kings, from the fabulous Kaiomurs to the fall of the second empire under Yezdijird. But no trace remains of the documents em- ployed by the poet, while his work is to so great an extent legendary that it has all the elements of the epic except that of a central hero. The work itself displays the highest literary skill and poetical genius, and, as Sir John Malcolm remarks, u in it the most fastidious reader will meet with numerous passages of exquisite beauty.” The narrative is usually very perspicuous, and some of the finest scenes are described with simplicity and elegance of diction, though the battle-scenes, in which the Persians most delight, are by no means free from the Oriental besetting sin of hyperbole.
Of the epic poetry of Greece, and particularly the great works attributed to Homer, little here need be said. The Iliad and Odyssey are too well known to readers to need any description. Modern research has rendered it very probable that these works, and the Iliad in particular, are primitive epics in the true sense, being condensations of a cycle of ancient heroic poetry. The antique Greek singers were not without an abundant store of stirring legends as subject-matter for their songs. These legends have become partly embodied in poetry, partly in so-called history; and in them mythology, history, and tradition are so mingled that it is impossible to separate these con- stituents and distinguish between fact and fancy. But of all the legendary lore of the Greeks, that relating to the real or fabulous siege of Troy seems most to have roused the imagination of the early bards, and brought into being 252
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a series of the most stirring martial songs. These as a rule centred around the deeds of one great hero, Achilles, the scion of the gods, the invulnerable champion of the antique world.
Little doubt is entertained by critics that the Iliad con- tains the substance of a number of ancient lays devoted to this one attractive subject. But if so, there can scarcely be a doubt that these lays were fitted by a single skilful hand into the epic framework of the Homeric song. AYe may as well seek to divide Shakspeare into a series of successive dramatists as to break up Homer into a c}Tcle of antique poets. Alen of his calibre do not arise in masses, even in the land of the Hellenes ; and though there can be little question that older material made its way into the Iliad, there can be as little question that it was wrought into its present form by one great genius, and fitted by one skilful hand into the place which it occupies. Another theory offered is that the nucleus of the poem and a portion of its incidents are the work of a single great poet, while episodes of other authorship were worked into it at a later period. But a more probable supposition would seem to be that Homer, like Shakspeare, dealt with heroic legends of earlier origin, ancient ballads whose substance w*as worked into the nucleus of the poem by that one great genius whose vital intellect inspirits the whole song. This would explain at once the discrepancies that exist between the subject and handling of the several cantos, and the considerable degree of unity and homogeneity which the poem as a whole possesses. It need scarcely here be said that the Iliad stands at the head of all epic song, alike in the manner of its evolution, the lofty poetic genius which it displays, and the exquisite beauty of its THE ARYAN LITERATURE.
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