Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/40

 2O A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD^A AND ASSYRIA. languages of all those peoples, though various enough, had certain O O II O O features in common. No one of them reached the delicate and complex mechanism of internal and terminal inflexion ; they were guiltless of the subtle processes by which Aryans and Semites ex- pressed the finest shades of thought, and, by declining the sub- stantive and conjugating the verb, subordinated the secondary to the principal idea ; they did not understand how to unite, in an intimate and organic fashion, the root to its qualifications and determinatives, to the adjectives and phrases which give colour to a word, and indicate the precise role it has to play in the sentence in which it is used. These languages resemble each other chiefly in their lacunae. Compare them in the dictionaries and they seem very different, especially if we take two, such as Finnish and Chinese, that are separated by the whole width of a continent. It is the same with their physical types. Certain tribes whom we place in the Turanian group have all the distinctive character- istics of the white races. Others are hardly to be distinguished from the yellow nations. Between these two extremes there are numerous varieties which carry us, without any abrupt transition, from the most perfect European to the most complete Chinese type. 1 In the Aryan family the ties of blood are perceptible even between the most divergent branches. By a comparative study of their languages, traditions, and religious conceptions, it has been proved that the Hindoos upon the Ganges, the Germans on the Rhine, and the Celts upon the Loire, are all offshoots of a single stem. Amon and another are only perceptible in the case of tribes living in close neighbourhood to one another, who have had mutual relations over a long course of years. In such a case the natural affinities are easily seen, and a family of peoples can be established with certainty. The classification is less definitely marked and clearly 1 M.ASPERO, Histoire ancienne, p. 134. Upon the etymology of Turanians see MAX MULLKR'S Science of Language, 2nd edition, p. 300, ct scq. Upon the constituent characteristics of the Turanian group of races and languages other pages of the same work may be consulted. . . . The distinction between Turan and Iran is to be found in the literature of ancient Persia, but its importance became greater in the Middle Ages, as may be seen by reference to the great epic of Firdusi, the Shah-Namch. The kings of Iran and Turan are there represented as implacable enemies. It was from the Persian tradition that Professor Miiller borrowed the term which is now generally used to denote those northern races of Asia that are neither Aryans nor Semites.