Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/21

Rh not, of course, form one nation. India is almost a continent like Europe. From the earliest times its richness has attracted various and successive immigrants and invaders, Asiatic and European. Its inhabitants differ as much as the various continental races, and speak languages equally distinct.

We have first the aboriginal primitive tribes, who, migrating from Central Asia and the steppes of Tartary and Tibet, entered India by successive incursions.

Then we have the great Hindū race, originally members of that primeval family who called themselves Arya or noble, and spoke a language the common source of Sanskṛit, Prākṛit, Zand, Persian, and Armenian in Asia; and of the Hellenic, Italic, Keltic, Teutonic, and Slavonic languages in Europe. Starting at a later period than the primitive races, but like them from some part of the table-land of Central Asia—probably the region surrounding the sources of the Oxus, in the neighbourhood of Bokhara—they separated into distinct nationalities, and peopled Europe, Persia, and India. The Hindū Āryans, after detaching themselves from the Persian branch of the family, settled in the Paṅjāb and near the sacred river Sarasvatī. Thence they overran the plains of the Ganges, and spread themselves over the region called Āryāvarta (see p. xvi, note 1), occupying the whole of Central India, coalescing