traced
upwards. Sanscrit is not the source of these tongues but an older
sister of the group; the mother language, which the facts prove to
have at one time existed, was a highly-inflected speech, and is
perhaps more nearly represented by Lettic than by Sanscrit; but it
can now be known only by a study of the common features of its
surviving children.

The fact that the peoples named above are related to each other in
point of language led at once, when it was discovered, to the
conclusion that they were also of the same race, and must have come
originally from the same quarter of the world. Where, then, was the
early home of the undivided Aryan[1] race, from which the swarms
first issued which were to conquer and rule the various lands? At
first it was found in the East; the fact that Indian civilisation was
much earlier in time than that of any other Aryan people, naturally
suggested this. Professor Max Mueller described in a very poetical way
how the European as well as the Indian must find in the East the
cradle of his race. From the high tableland of Asia, it was held, the
superior races came who were to rule nearly the whole of Europe,
while another migration descended towards Persia and the plains of
India.

[Footnote 1: "Aryan" was the name of the conquering race of India.
The title "Indo-European" tells us that the race now dwells in India
and in Europe. "Indo-Germanic" describes the group by its Eastern,
and what is supposed to be its principal Western, member.]

The theory, however, which placed the home of the Aryans on the
inhospitable steppes, the "high Pamere," of Asia, did not long
command assent; and attempts were made to place that home elsewhere,
in the valley of the Danube, on the south shores of the Baltic, or
even in the Scandinavian peninsula. The conquest, it is argued,
cannot have come from the East; it is much more probable that Aryan
speech and custom originated in the West, where it has the larger
number of representatives, and that it spread eastward. The more
extreme step has also been taken of denying that the Aryans are
related to each other at all in point of race. Unity of language, it
is argued, is no proof of unity of race--a glance over the British
Empire or even the British Islands is enough to show this. It is
maintained, therefore, that the relationship of the Aryan peoples is
not one of race but only of language and of culture; the word Aryan
denotes no more than a certain