https://archive.org/details/aboriginalsiberi00czap/page/166


Full 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.

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

3























34


35

https://archive.org/details/TheShamanCostumeAndItsSignificance

THE 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

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.

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.

315

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

317

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.

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.

285

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

287

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

289

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.

291

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

293

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

295

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.

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

THE AKYAN RACE.

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.

265

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

267

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

269

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

• 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.

271

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

18
 274

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

Ifi
 242

THE ARYAN RACE.

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

245

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

247

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

249

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

251

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

THE ARYAN RACE.

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.

253