angements, especially, are fitted
to survive and to develop. The early domestic architecture of the
Aryan countries, while it belongs to a much later period, yet gives
good evidence that the patriarchal ideal of the family was part of
the common inheritance. In every country they conquered the Aryans
lived in large patriarchal households. The sons, with their wives and
children, remained under their father's roof, the father being judge
and priest of this domestic community. We can specify other features
of the society connected with this type of household. As the family
increases and becomes too large to dwell under one roof, another
house is built, in which son or grandson, with his wife, founds a new
family. Thus a group of families arises, all related to each other by
blood, and in a position of equality, but looking to the original
house as their centre. This type of society must have been carried to
India by the Aryan invaders, who there set up patriarchal
establishments in houses which are similar in arrangement to those of
North Holland, of Iceland, or of early England. The men who lived in
this way were not agriculturists, they were shepherds and huntsmen,
and when they settled in a district they were wont to force the
former dwellers in it to till the land for them as their
inferiors.[4]

[Footnote 4: See two recent works by Mr. G. L. Gomme, _The Village
Community_ and _Ethnology in Folklore_; also Hearn's _Aryan
Household_.]

It is this type of civilisation which overspread the lands in early
times, and by its coming created in most instances a new world. Some
of the Aryan peoples made more rapid progress than others. They
passed early into the age of metals, and appear before us at the dawn
of history with fully-formed institutions, which bear the impress of
patriarchal ideas. Others remained longer in the stone age, and only
in historic times received the impulse which caused them to advance
to the rank of nations. The arts and inventions which are found in
many or in all of them are not necessarily a common inheritance from
the undivided Aryan age. Many of them may have come into being in
each of the lands independently, or one Aryan people may have
borrowed them from another at a later time. Starting from the common
stock of civilisation, the various races worked it out each in a way
of its own, and often, as we shall see, with wonderful similarities.

Is it possible to give any description of the rel