ion? And even if the
Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write--to every educated Hindu an
absurdity--they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000
years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics. Negative
proof, perhaps? Granted: yet no more so than their own, and most
suggestive.

And now we may turn to the Pelasgians. Notwithstanding the rebuke of
Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating
"the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the
subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is
conjectured to have been from--(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from
some (b) mariners--from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be
sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their
Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy,"
the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their
"Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have
been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they could not have been either
of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on
Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks--
though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language." Further,
unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to
Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common
Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then
how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages?
The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who
place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of
historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous
language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now
extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they
be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data
in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people,
chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though
preferring peace. We are told that they built canals, subterranean
water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent
construction. And their religion and worship originally consisted in a
mystic service of those natural powers--the sun, wind, water, and air
(our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is