but for the Fatherland, and you have richly returned the love which I felt
for you from the first moment, and have faithfully reciprocated a
friendship which constitutes an essential portion of my happiness. I
therefore thank you all the more for all the love and friendship of your
last letters. I can only excuse myself _by my book_ for not having sooner
thanked you. I soon perceived that _you were quite right_, that the
chronological researches on Indian antiquity have led to nothing more sure
than the conviction that the earlier views, with few exceptions, were
wrong or without foundation. As soon as I acquired this conviction,
through reading the last works on the subject (Lassen and Roth), I grew
furious, as it happens to me from time to time, and at the same time
reawoke the longing after the researches which I had to lay aside in 1816,
and which I now determined to approach again, in the course of my work,
which is chronological in the widest sense. After I had read all that is
written, I let Haug come to me in the Whitsun holidays. He brought with
him the translation I wished for of the _First Fargard of the Vendidad_;
and you can imagine my delight, when in Books XII. and XIII. he discovered
for me (purely linguistically) the two countries, the non-appearance of
which was the _only_ tenable counter-reason which opposed itself to the
intuition to which I had held fast since 1814--namely, that this document,
so ancient in its primitive elements, contained nothing less than the
history of the gradual invasion, founding of states, and peopling of Asia
by the Aryans. How could Kandahar and Kabul be missing if this were true?
Without the least _suspicion_ of this historical opinion, Haug proved to
me that they are not wanting. Petermann will make the whole clear in a
little map, such as I showed him. You will find it in the sixth volume.
Then he rejoiced my heart by translating some _single hymns of the
Rig-veda_, especially in Book VII., which I found threw great light on the
God-Consciousness, the faith in the moral government of the world. _He
comes to me_: from the 1st of August he is free in Bonn, and goes for the
Zend affairs to Paris, marries his bride in Ofterdingen, and comes here to
me on the 1st of October for _Mithridates_ and the Old Testament, the
printing of which begins in January, 1857, with the _Pentateuch_. With him
(in default of your personal presence) I have now gone through everything
at which I a