Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/36

16 porcus, taurus, canis, are Sanscrit words. Even in that remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand, we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture at that period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single exception of 🇬🇷, which philologically represents the Sanscrit yavas, but denotes in Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may all be referable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the other hand, the name of one cereal, common to the Greeks and Indians, only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild in Mesopotamia, not that they already cultivated grain. While, however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most important words bearing on this province of culture are to be found indeed in Sanscrit, but as a rule in a more general signification. Agras with the Indians means a level surface in general; kûrnu, anything pounded; aritram, oar and ship; venas, that which is pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are thus very ancient; but their more definite reference to the field (ager), to the grain to be ground (granum), to the implement which