Page:The American encyclopedia of history, biography and travel (IA americanencyclop00blak).pdf/36

 and the central plains of Asia, shading off in these last into the Mongolian Such is a convenient division of the Caucasian stock; a more profound investigation, however, might reduce the five races to these two—the Semitic and the Indo-Germanic; all civilized languages being capable, it is said, of being classified under these three families—the Chinese, which has monosyllabic roots; the Indo-Germanic (Sanscrit, Hindoostanee, Greek, Latin, German, and all modern European languages), which has dissyllabic roots; and the Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic, &c.), whose roots are trisyllabic. Retaining, however, the fivefold distribution which we have adopted, we shall find that the history of the world, from the earliest to the remotest times, has been nothing else than the common Caucasian vitality presenting itself in a succession of phases or civilizations, each differing from the last in the proportions in which it contains the various separate elements.

It is advisable to sketch first the most eastern Caucasian civilization—that is, that of India; and then to proceed to a consideration of the state of that medley of nations, some of them Semitic, some of them Indo-Persian, and some of them Armenian, out of which the great Persian empire arose, destined to continue the historic pedigree of the world into Europe, by transmitting its vitality to the Pelasgians.

One of the great branches, we have said, of the Caucasian family of mankind was the Indo-Persian, which, spreading out in the primeval times from the original seat of the Caucasian part of the human species, extended itself from the Caspian to the Bay of Bengal, where, coming into contact with the southern Mongolians, it gave rise, according to the most probable accounts, to those new mixed Caucasian-Mongolian races, the Malays of the Eastern Peninsula; and, by a still farther degeneracy, to the Papuas, or natives of the South Sea Islands. While thus shading off into the Mongolism of the Pacific, the Indo-Persian mass of our species was at the same time attaining maturity within itself; and as the first ripened fragment of the Mongolians had been the Chinese nation, so one of the first ripened fragments of the Indo-Persian branch of the Caucasians seems to have been the Indians. At what time the vast peninsula of Hindoostan could first boast a civilized population, it is impossible to say; all testimony, however, agrees in assigning to Indian civilization a most remote antiquity. Another fact seems also to be tolerably well authenticated regarding ancient India; namely, that the northern portions of it, and especially the north-western portions, which would be nearest the original Caucasian seat, were the first civilized; and that the civilizing influence spread thence southwards to Cape Comorin.

Notwithstanding this general conviction, that India was one of the first portions of the earth's surface that contained a civilized population, few facts in the ancient history of India are certainly known. We are told, indeed (to omit the myths of the Indian Bacchus and Hercules), of two great kingdom—those of Ayodha (Oude) and Prathisthana (Vitera)—as having existed in northern India upwards of a thousand years before Christ; of conquests in southern India, effected by the monarchs of these kingdoms; and of wars carried on between these monarchs and their western neighbors the Persians, after the latter had begun to be powerful. All these accounts, however, merely resolve themselves into the general information, that India, many centuries before Christ, was an important member in the family of Asiatic nations; supplying articles to their commerce, and