Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/286

262 appearance in the west points to a familiarity with the creature after the Hindoos reached Southern India and to an early traffic by the Arabian Sea in ivory.

The interest of this whole question for the student of the Scots vernacular lies in the evidence it affords of a primitive unity within that circle of the West Aryans, known as the Low-Germans or Teutons of the flat shores bordering on the lower Rhine, the Baltic and the North Seas, to which not only our northern speech but also our characteristic cultural development belongs. It is beside this point to follow the question into those wider issues which go to the root of the whole science of Comparative Philology. Suffice it to indicate in brief the conclusions arrived at by so eminent an anthority as Professor A. H. Sayce in his "Principles of Comparative Philology." He there shows how the philological point of view has changed in recent years. Notably has Sanskrit been dethroned from the commanding position on which its far-reaching discovery had placed it. The study of anthropology and folk-lore, of Assyrian and Egyptian records, and of living tongues now growing under primitive conditions in the dark places of the earth have all profoundly affected accepted theories.

On the question of the original home and unity of the Aryans Professor Sayce adopts Latham's view and assigns a centre of distribution inclining more to Europe than to Asia. He holds that the European vocalic system is older than the Indic, and that the East Aryans are the latest and most distant. A permanent cleavage between East and West Aryans seems to have been effected by an inrush of Northern Turanians, to whom are due the cuneiform inscriptions of the Babylonian tablets. On these no Aryan elements appear earlier than the seventh century When or how, again, the West Aryans distributed themselves over the Central Plain of Europe and roamed westwards to the Danube, the Rhine, and the Baltic it is impossible to say. That the wandering instinct was strong within these pioneers of Western civilisation is writ large in history. We find Wulfila's converts flourishing under conditions of comparative enlightment in the Danube valley as early as the fourth century, determined Teutons pouring out of the forests of Central Germany gave imperial Rome for centuries