cattle,--from
which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages.

The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are
these. Some 3000 years B.C.,[33] the Aryans, as yet undivided into
Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living
in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was the centre. Here they
must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language,
the mother-tongue of those which we know. They were essentially a
pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes. They had oxen,
horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls. Herds of cows fed in
pastures, each the property of a community, and each with a cluster of
stables in the centre. The daughters[34] of the house were the
dairy-maids; the food was chiefly the products of the dairy and the flesh
of the cattle. The cow was, however, the most important animal, and gave
its name to many plants, and even to the clouds and stars, in which men
saw heavenly herds passing over the firmament above them.

But the Aryans were not an exclusively pastoral people; they certainly had
barley, and perhaps other cereals, before their dispersion. They possessed
the plough, the mill for grinding grain; they had hatchet,[35] hammer,
auger. The Aryans were acquainted with several metals, among which were
gold, silver, copper, tin. They knew how to spin and weave to some extent;
they were acquainted with pottery. How their houses were built we do not
know, but they contained doors, windows, and fireplaces. They had cloaks
or mantles, they boiled and roasted meat, and certainly used soup. They
had lances, swords, the bow and arrow, shields, but not armor. They had
family life, some simple laws, games, the dance, and wind instruments.
They had the decimal numeration, and their year was of three hundred and
sixty days. They worshipped the heaven, earth, sun, fire, water, wind; but
there are also plain traces of an earlier monotheism, from which this
nature-worship proceeded.

Sec. 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology of the
Vedas.

So far Comparative Philology takes us, and the next step forward brings us
to the Vedas, the oldest works in the Hindoo literature, but at least one
thousand or fifteen hundred years more recent than the times we have been
describing. The Aryans have separated, and the Hindoos are now in India.
It is eleven centuries before the time