Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/764

698 the Indian Ocean, and the later disappearance of such land by changes of level of the earth s surface. If, again, the relation of the Dravidian (non-Aryan) population of Southern and Central India to that of Australia be real, and the re lationship seems to be sufficiently established, the presence in India of this race seems also to require the former occur rence of great alterations in the distribution of sea and land across the equatorial region of the Indian Ocean, and probably an alternation or repetition of movements such as our better knowledge of other parts of the earth shows us to have been normal rather than abnormal. That changes on a very great scale have taken place in Southern Asia in the very latest geological periods is well established, and as was before observed (par. 44), thess hypotheses are supported by direct geological evidence, and corroborated by the facts of botanical and zoological distribution.

124. In looking back on the materials at our com mand for ascertaining how the existing condition of the earth and its inhabitants has been brought about, we are generally forced to the conclusion that they are but frag mentary and disappointing ; this is more especially the case in dealing with our own race. Of historical records there are hardly any that extend to seven centuries before the Christian era, except those in the form of monuments and of fragmentary and obscure inscriptions. What is left of more remote antiquity is little more than the material wreck of human societies ; the living forces that carried them forward have necessarily escaped us, except as matter of conjecture.

125. Of prehistoric man little has yet been discovered in Asia; but a sufficient number of stone and bronze implements or weapons has been found in various parts of India to show that the first steps of the human race in civilisation are everywhere almost identical.

126. The feeble light thrown on the earliest history of the Aryan race exhibits it as a pastoral people occupying the valleys and mountains along the Oxus. In its proximity to the south were the Semitic races, distributed from Syria to the Euphrates and Persia, and perhaps further east. These two races are seen to have spread across Southern Europe, North Africa, and South-western Asia; the Aryans sup plying their language to the greater part of Europe and of the temperate zone of Asia, from the Mediterranean to India; the Semites giving theirs to Arabia, Syria, and North Africa. It is supposed that the population of the Their mi- area referred to was thus distributed by reason of migrations caused by pressure from Mongolian tribes on the north, such as is known to have arisen since the historical period. Possibly the movements may have been due to changes in the climate, and the gradual diminution of the rain-fall (of which there is evidence), which might have rendered the area originally occupied by the Aryans unable to support them. But it may be regarded as certain that the Brahminical race, formerly dominant in Upper India, entered that country from the north-west as invaders. The ascertained connection of the languages of India and of the intermediate tract with the ancient Aryan or Vedic language, the fact that the founders of the Brahminical faith fixed themselves in or near the mountains of Northern India, the greater predominance of the Aryan type in this region, the separation of a privileged higher from a servile lower class or caste, and the general evidence of the diffusion of Indian civilisation from west to east, with many other circumstances, tend to corroborate such a view. An intrusion of Aryans into the countries originally occupied by the Semites seems also to have taken place in ages. Iran or Persia. As the Aryan language developed into the Sanskrit in India, so in Persia it gave birth to the Zendic or Pehlvi, the language of the sacred books of the Fire-worshippers; and as the Aryans seem to have borrowed the Dravidian letters in the former country, so they adopted those of the Semites, or ancient Assyrians, in the other. The European branch of the Aryans, the Hellenic races, likewise appear to have had no letters of their own, and to have borrowed a Semitic alphabet from the Phoenicians. The Bactrian Aryans used an archaic quasi-Phoenician alphabet in North India till 250 B.C., about which time the Pali letters, on which the Devanagari alphabet was based, are known to have been current. 127. The races that formerly occupied the plains of Mesopotamia and the neighbouring mountains the Babylonians and Assyrians are, next to the Egyptians, those whose monuments and inscriptions supply the earliest definite records of mankind, going back possibly nearly 4000 years from the present time. These, and the corre sponding remains of the Egyptians, which are of even greater antiquity, taking us back perhaps 6000 years or more, indicate that powerful kings then ruled over these countries, with frequent changes in the boundaries of the separate states, under conditions not very greatly different from those that continued until the kingdoms disappeared before the progress of Roman or Mahometan power. How long these races may have taken to arrive at the state of civilisation in which they were as they first become known to us it is impossible to say; but there is nothing to suggest that their condition is to be accounted for other wise than by prolonged gradual transformations, such as they and all other races are known to have undergone in the time subsequent to that from which our historical records commence.

128. The task of tracing from these remote epochs to more recent times the mutual relations that have arisen between the people of the several parts of Asia and the surrounding countries, leads us to a review of the history of the continent, of which a very brief outline will be attempted. From this we shall see how the progressive races of Europe appear to have had their origin in Asia ; how in Asia and Egypt were taken the first steps in human civilisation and learning ; how in Asia arose all the forms of religion which have so greatly influenced the history of man, the Yedantic, the Buddhist, the Hebrew, and, more especially, Christianity and Mahometanism ; how the move ments of the population of Central Asia have affected the surrounding regions ; and lastly, how the condition of almost the whole continent has, from the earliest ages to the present day, been one to invite foreign conquest, and to lead to the supremacy of foreign races over all its parts.

129. The earliest event in Hindu chronology which has any pretence to being called historical is the war of the Máhábhárat. The account of this is contained in a poem, written about 500 B.C., which is one of the Vedas. It seems to have been a contest between two branches of the house reigning in Northern India, and to have occurred about 1400 B.C. The accounts of antecedent periods are manifestly mythical, and merely indicate the probability of the gradual progress of the conquering Brahminical race from west to east. The Vedas are a collection of hymns and heroic poems, containing the religious doctrines of the Aryans at that remote period, and embodying the earliest system of philosophy which we possess. The inroad of Alexander the Great to the Sutlej (Hyphasis) in 350 B.C. affords a landmark in a very obscure past. The Greek colony left in Bactria survived nearly to the Christian era. In 550 B.C. was born, in Northern India, Sakya, the founder of Buddhism. This was a development of the Vedic theology; in the course of two or three centuries it became dominant in India, whence it was carried into Tibet and China, and at length became, and still remains, the religion of the greater part of Asia, though it eventually declined in India, and has now almost entirely disappeared from the 