Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/156

ASIA. occupants of Asia Minor, and of the two, the Aryans seem by far the more important. Indeed, the influence of the Caucasian population, comprising the Georgians and the Mingrelians, with their related tribes, the Lesghians and the Circassians, upon the Aryo-Semitic culture of Asia Minor, must have been exerted in prehistoric times. Both Aryan and Caucasian yielded before the Semite peoples, who advanced from the interior of the Arabian Peninsula and spread over the region from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. The Semitic tribes became differentiated into three groups, the Aramaic, including the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans; the Canaanite, including the Philistines, the Hebrews, and the original inhabitants of Palestine; and the pure Arabian group, which comprised those who remained in the Southern Peninsula. Of the three stocks, only the Jews, as representatives of the second, and the Arabs, have survived. Farther to the east, on the plateau of Iran, the highlands of Pamir, and in the plains of India, lived and still lives the third branch of the white race — the Aryan or Indo-Germanic, which may be subdivided into the two great groups of Indians and Iranians. The former would include the ancient peoples whose tongue still survives in literature as the Pāli and Prākrit, and the modern Indian stocks of the Bengali, Sindhs, Hindustani, Marathi, Gujerati, Punjabi, and Nepali. The Iranian group would comprise the old and new Persians with their related stems, the Kurds and the Beluchis, the peoples of Afghanistan, and, lastly, the Armenians. In addition to the definitely determined members of the white race some ethnologists are inclined to find Caucasian elements in such peoples as the Khmers of Cambodia, the Miao-tse of southern China, and the Aino of Japan; these, however, for lack of authoritative information must be relegated to the category of unclassified breeds. Finally, there has undoubtedly been a considerable infusion of Aryan blood into the Mongolian hordes in some parts of Tibet. China, Farther India, and perhaps some of the neighboring islands.

In the history of civilization the part played by the white race of Asia is of surpassing importance. The great empires of antiquity arose among the Semites of Mesopotamia and the Aryans of Iran and Hindustan. The art of writing, literature, the sciences, political institutions, were developed here to a higher degree of perfection than even in ancient Egypt. Above all, the white race in Asia has been the promulgator of the world's great religions. From the Asiatic Semites came Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism — three faiths which embrace the whole western world. From the Asiatic Aryans came Zoroastrianism with its great principle of the conflict between good and evil, destined subsequently to influence the Jew and the Christian; Brahmanism, which is the ritualistic and sacerdotal expression of the Aryan nature; and Buddhism, which may be considered as the Aryan anticipation of Christianity. From the last developed Jainism and Lamaism. The spread of Aryan Buddhism in Eastern Asia, with its influence on the social life of the people corresponds to the expansion of Semitic religions in the West.

. The yellow race is the most typically Asiatic of all. It numbers seven-tenths of the population of the continent, and covers practically all its extent outside of the domains of the Aryo-Semites — into which, indeed, it has not failed to intrude, first in prehistoric ages and again in modern times, with the result that there is a large Mongolian element in the Caucasians of Asia Minor, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, and India. The race may be divided into two great geographical groups — one in the north, embracing all the tribes of Siberia and Turkestan, with their centre somewhere near the Altai Mountains; the other in the south, comprehending the peoples of China and Farther India, with their primitive home in the mountains of Tibet. (1) The Siberian branch of the yellow race includes a large variety of stocks. In the extreme north, on the borders of the Arctic Ocean, live a handful of aboriginal groups, the survivors of numerous tribes which lived there in ancient times, destined themselves to speedy extinction. Such are the Yukaghirs, the Tchuktchis, the Namollos, the Koriaks, and the Kamchatkans, numbering in all about ten thousand. Farther west is the great Ural-Altaic stock, consisting of a large number of families which are themselves subdivided into powerful tribes. These include the Samoyed group, which comprises the Yenisei and the Ostiaks, living near the shores of the Arctic; the Finno-Lapponic group, including the Votiaks, Mordwins, and Voguls, dwelling in the neighborhood of Tobolsk, Tomsk, and the Ural Mountains, as well as the Magyars of Hungary and some of the population of the Balkan region and European Russia, now Aryanized as to speech; the Turko-Tatar group, Yakuts, Uigurs, Turkomans, and Khirgiz, occupying a vast territory in Southwestern Siberia and Central Asia; the Mongol group, subdivided geographically into North Mongols, the East Mongols, and West Mongols (Kalmuks), with their centre of population around Lake Baikal, but found also in the region bounded by the Volga, the Don, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea, and in China; finally, the Tunguse group, consisting of the Tunguses proper, the Manchus, and the Orotong peoples which dwell in the forests of Eastern Siberia and extend into Northern China. To the Siberian branch also belong the Japanese, the Koreans in part, the natives of the Liu-Kiu Islands, and, some would have it, the Aino. In Turkestan and the region of the Caucasus are minor peoples of mixed origin, who belong by language or by blood to the Siberian branch of the yellow race.

(2) The southern branch of the yellow race, the Sinitic or Tibeto-Chinese, embraces the Chinese proper, with many variations in language and much mixture of blood: the Tibetans, to whom should be added as related by blood more than by language, minor peoples of the southern slope of the Himalayas; the races of Farther India, comprising the Annamese, the Burmese, the Siamese, the Cambodians, the Karens, the Khamtis. and a ntimber of others. In addition, some ethnologists make the Malays and Polynesians, and even the Amerinds, mere subdivisions of the yellow race. The two great branches of the yellow race diverge in the mode of inflecting their language, just as the two great branches of the white race in Asia, the Semites and the Aryans do, the Siberian peoples possessing polysyllabic agglutinative vernaculars, while those of the Chinese peoples are monosyllabic,