Page:Race Life of the Aryan Peoples Vol 1.djvu/18

 mon many of the kin evidences just adduced, the Brahmins of India, the Medo-Persians of Iran, the Græco-Latins, the Celts, the Slavs, and the Teutons. Within these are again subdivisions into yet smaller groups or families.

The name comes to us through the Sanskrit, the oldest of the written tongues of the Aryan peoples. In the Vedas the Brahmins speak of their ancestors as the Arya, and of the older homeland as Arya Avarta, that is, the homeland of the Arya. In the Zend, the Iranic branch of that older Aryan speech, the word is Airya. Yet the word in both the Sanskrit and the Zend is only a derivative. The root form goes back to an older speech even than that of the Brahminic Vedas or the Iranic Avestas, and in root form is found in other Aryan speech than the two just instanced. In Latin it is found in arare; in Greek, aroun; in Slavonic, orati; Gothic, arjan; Welsh, arad; Old English, erien. In all, the meaning is to plow or till. Yet back of the verbal form can be traced a substantive form meaning earth. It is to be found in our modern English word earth; in German, erde; Danish, aarde; Latin, arvum; Greek, era. In all these tongues the root ar enters into many secondary forms and combinations; but back of all, sometimes difficult to trace, yet there, is that older idea of the earth. It all points back to one common speech which was mother alike to Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, and the Slavic, Celtic, and Teutonic tongues. To that primitive