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 ASPECTS OF THE ARYAN QUESTION 33 1

arises a new connotation for the word Aryan ; having been already extended from the Iranians of the Veda to cover all the Indo-Europeans, it now becomes, instead of a vague ethnic term, the name of a race in the zoological sense.

I share, indeed, this view that the dominant classes among the Aryans of the Veda were dolicho-blond, and perhaps also the mass of the people were dolicho-blond. This last, however, is so uncertain that one must regard the use of the term Aryan as equivalent to dolicho-blond as a case of very possibly con- fusing the part with the whole. The word Aryan, however, in thus changing its meaning, has become so elastic that it is still preferable for our purposes to such terms as Galatic, Germanic, or Kymric, which refer to definite peoples, each of which was without doubt dolicho-blond, but each of which represented only a small part of that race.

With these explanations as to terms, we may turn to another preliminary matter. In a work devoted to the Aryans it would hardly do to dodge altogether the so-called "Aryan question." The "Aryan controversy" has consumed whole reams of paper and has played a considerable part in the literature of the last half of the century. The interest of this controversy is, how- ever, now for the most part only historical ; the only point still debatable is the part played by the dolicho-blond race in the evolution of the proto-Aryan civilization. Reserving my space for the results of my own researches as to Homo Europceiis, I will here, as elsewhere where adequate monographs already cover the ground, simply refer the reader to the existing literature of the Aryan question, and, in particular, to the works of Penka, Taylor, and Salomon Reinach."

■ Reinach, VOrigine dts Arytns: Histoirc tfune controverse, Paris, 1892.

This work is devoted to the Aryans in the ethnographic, not in the anthropological, sense ; that is, to the discussion of the Aryan peoples, considered without reference to their physical type. It includes a nearly complete bibliography of all the previous linguistic, ethnographic, and historical works bearing upon the subject. The author, who in this book does not decide between the different views, has in a later work accepted the hypothesis of the European origin of the Aryans (" Le mirage oriental," Anthropotogie, 1893, IV. 539-78, 699-732).

The twofold thesis of the European origin of the Aryans and of the prevalence among them of the dolicho-blond type — this last the Aryan question in the anthro- pological sense — has been expounded by several writers. It dates back to Bulwer