Page:Alexander Macbain - An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.djvu/25



belongs to the Celtic group of languages, and the Celtic is itself a branch of the Indo-European or Aryan family of speech; for it has been found that the languages of Europe (with the exception of Turkish, Hungarian, Basque, and Ugro-Finnish), and those of Asia from the Caucasus to Ceylon, resemble each other in grammar and vocabulary to such an extent that they must all be considered as descended from one parent or original tongue. This parent tongue is variously called the Aryan, Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, and even the Indo-Celtic language. It was spoken, it is believed, some three thousand years B.C. in ancient Sarmatia or South Russia; and from this as centre the speakers of the Aryan tongue, which even then showed dialectal differences, radiated east, west, north and south to the various countries now occupied by the descendant languages. The civilization of the primitive Aryans appears to have been an earlier and more nomadic form of that presented to us by the Celtic tribe of the Helvetii in Caesar's time. Here a number of village communities, weary of the work of, agriculture, or led by the desire of better soil, cut their crops, pulled down their lightly built houses and huts, packed child and chattel on the waggons with their teams of oxen, and sought their fortune in a distant land. In this way the Celts and the Italians parted from the old Aryan home to move up the Danube, the former settling on the Rhine and the latter on the Gulf of Venice. The other races went their several ways—the Indians and Iranians eastward across the steppes, the Teutons went to the north-west, and the Hellenes to the south.

The Aryan or Indo-European languages fall into six leading groups (leaving Albanian and Armenian out of account), thus:—

I. or, divisible into two branches:


 * (a) Indian branch, including Sanskrit, now dead, but dating in its literature to at least 1000 and the descendant modern (dialects or) languages, such as Hindustani, Bengali, and Mahratti.

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