our language and worship our gods--is a course which only
men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of
pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
Iran.

At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes
migrating across the snow of the Himalaya southward towards the 'Seven
Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penjab, and the Sarasvati),
and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time
they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the
Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The
evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence
worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would
have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship
between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether
Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What
other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not
yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of
which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to
persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors
were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English
soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the
veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury
now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language,
would reject the claim of a common descent and a spiritual
relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live
in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of
the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be
shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for
father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears,
for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like
the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and
whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we
recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his
head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea,
all must yield befo