the _famuli_, or the family, or the
clients, though the first _s_ is irregular, and can be defended only
on the ground of mistaken analogy. _Bhratar_, _frater_, brother, was
the supporter; _svastar_, _soror_, sister, the comforter, &c.

What do a few objections signify? The whole picture remains, as if we
could look into the _vesa_, the [Greek: oikos] the _veih_, the home, the
village of the ancient Aryans, and watch them, the _svas_, the people,
in their mutual relations. Even compound words, such as _vis-pati_,
lord of a family or a village, have been preserved to the present day
in the Lithuanian _Veszpats_, lord, whether King or God. It is enough
for us to see that the relationship between husband and wife, between
parents and children, between brothers and sisters, nay, even between
children-in-law and parents-in-law, had been recognized and sanctified
by names. That there are, and always will be, doubts and slight
differences of opinion on these prehistoric thoughts and words, is
easily understood. We were pleased for a long time to see in _vidua_,
widow, the Sanskrit _vidua_, i. e. without a man or a husband. We now
derive _vi-dhava_, widow, from _vidh_, to be separated, to be without
(cf. _vido_ in _divido_, and Sk. _vidh_), but the picture of the Aryan
family remains much the same.

When these and similar antiquities were for the first time brought to
light by Bopp, Grimm, and Pott, what wonder that we young men should
have jumped at them, and shouted with delight, more even than the
diggers who dug up Babylonian palaces or Egyptian temples! No one did
more for these antiquarian finds and restorations than A. Kuhn, a
simple schoolmaster, but afterwards a most distinguished member of the
Berlin Academy. How often did I sit with him in his study as he
worked, surrounded by his Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit books. In later
times also, when I had made some discoveries myself as to the
mythological names or beings identical in Vedic and Greek writings,
how pleasant was it to see him rub his hands or shake his head. Long
before I had published my identifications they were submitted to him,
and he communicated to me his own guesses as I communicated mine to
him. Kuhn would never appropriate what belonged to anybody else, and
even in cases where we agreed, he would always make it clear that we
had both arrived independently at the same result.

It is in the nature of things that every new generation of scholars
should