NO. XXI.

ON THE ARYAN THEORY OF LANGUAGE:

BY

DR. SCOULAR.

[Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 7th December, 1863.]

DR. SCOULAR read a paper "On the Aryan Theory of Language," chiefly with the view to correct the errors into which Mr. John Crawford the author of the "6 History of the Indian Archipelago," has fallen in a paper read to the Ethnological Society of London on this theory. This theory of the origin of language is more generally received on the continent than in Great Britain. The theory is that the languages spoken from Bengal to Ireland are all to be traced from a primitive tongue spoken by a people settled to the north-west of India, termed by the ancients Aryans-that this Aryan race subsequently spread themselves over the country originally occupied by the Allophylian or Finnish tribes. This primordial race, though now covered by the Aryan, occasionally cropped out, as it were, in the Basque and Finnish tribes. With reference to Mr. Crawford's first objection to this theory, which is that the Aryan race, being an agricultural people, were not likely to undertake foreign emigration, Dr. Scoular remarked that the very reverse of this was the case, as only such a people could form permanent settlements, whereas a horde of nomads could only make good a settlement upon a people previously civilized. It was only a great agricultural people, such as the Greeks, Romans, and modern Europeans, which succeeded in making permanent settlements among barbarous tribes. Another objection of Mr. Crawford's was the different physical features and intellectual characters of the Aryan tribes, some being black, like the Hindoos, and others pale, like the Swedes. To this Dr. Scoular answered that this objection had no bearing on the question, in so far as it was a question of grammar, not of physiology. Mr. Crawford also endeavoured to show that in the Celtic languages words traced to the Aryan were derived from

the Latin by means of the early Roman missionaries. To this Dr. Scoular replied that the Irish numerals had far more affinity with the Latin than those of the Welsh, while the latter were in daily contact with the Romans when the Irish had no other influence than through a few missionaries; in fact, some of the Irish numerals had more affinity to the Greek than to the Latin. Also, that the supposed Latin words quoted by Mr. Crawford were more easily derived from the Aryan than the Latin. Besides, there were a great number of Aryan words in Irish which did not exist in the Latin, and could not be derived from that source. But Mr. Crawford virtually abandoned his own theory when he was compelled to admit that the Sclavonic languages had borrowed from the Sanscrit or Aryan; and the idea that the Sanscrit in the Greek was derived from the Persians, and communicated by the Greeks to the Latins, was a sufficiently wild hypothesis, as we know that the epics of Homer were composed long before the Persian invasion of Asia Minor. These observations of Mr. Crawford would appear to have misled Sir Charles Lyell, who had fallen into the additional mistake of imagining that the laws of the Aryan tongue applied to every other language. Dr. Scoular observed that languages did not graduate into each other as Sir Charles Lyell imagined, but there were groups of languages with which transition was almost impossible, as in the Aryan, Shemitic, and Chinese. The principal object of Dr. Scoular's remarks, as above indicated, was to show that the advocates of transmutationism, when they seek for proofs, or at least analogies in favour of their doctrine, have misunderstood the subject, and merely intruded their own vague and superficial opinions.

NO. XXII.

SUGGESTIONS OF OBJECTS OF ARCHEOLOGICAL INTEREST IN THE WEST OF SCOTLAND:

BY

COSMO INNES, Esq.

[Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 29th January, 1864.]

A STRANGER coming from the quiet atmosphere in which I dwell, and landing in the whirl and clang of your great city, is apt to be surprised that any of you can shut out the pressure of business, the excitement of mercantile adventure, so as to give his mind, for even a short time, to objects of literature or science, still more to our peculiar study, which very practical men for the most part regard as trifling.

And yet Glasgow is pre-eminently a place for the study of antiquities, were it only to enable you to compare your present and past state-to look back to the little rural village clustered beneath your grey cathedral-to the days when your University had not yet shed learning and science over the land-when your river flowed clear and unpolluted to the sea-when foreign trade was unthought of— when the biggest vessels at the Broomielaw were gabbarts from the lochs within the Mull-when cotton was an unknown word-when men had not dug for iron nor even for coal; and to contrast your present city, its "streets of palaces and walks of state," the crowd of busy commerce in Argyle Street, the miles of masts on both sides of your river, the wealth and splendour of your houses and manner of living-to compare Glasgow past and Glasgow present!

It is owing partly to the fine building material among which your city stands; but it appears to me to be by far a nobler town-speaking of its streets and buildings-than any of the great emporiums of England. But the streets and buildings are the least part: knowing as I do something of its past history, I have always considered the growth and rise of Glasgow and its trade as the most remarkable of any city in the world.

However interesting it may be to speculate on the state of our country and people at the time when the trade of the Clyde was carried on in little canoes; when the alluvial flat where the forest of masts is now seen on both banks of the Clyde was a swamp, with the fine river taking its course, and often changing its course through it, -I say, however interesting it might be to call up in imagination that early state of Scotland and its inhabitants, it would not serve any good purpose to the antiquary. I believe we may safely leave the enquiry to the geologist. If we could indeed learn anything from the rude barks of the state of art among their builders-if we could arrive at any probable conclusion of the race that first floated on your noble river-if we could even guess their family from the shape of their skulls-that might be worth any amount of trouble and expense. But I think it is not so. We find the canoes of twin islands of the same cluster in the Pacific differ more markedly than any one of those rude shells of oak differs from another in the other extremity of Europe, where the difference was caused only by the shape and size of the trees. Then as to the people and their skulls, what is so fallacious! You pick up a skull beside an ancient monument, and you found your theory on the presumption that it was of the same people who raised the monument. But that grey stone and its neighbouring cemetery may have been a place of interment from the earliest population, and down to present times. As long as it is the practice of men to bury where others have buried before, so long must we distrust the archæologist's reasoning about skulls from the place of their interment.

We may pass over the Roman occupation of our country almost as lightly. It was certainly very limited both in extent and time. The camp at Ardoch is perhaps worthy of more careful examination than it has met with; and the great wall of Antonine, which terminates so near your city, is a tempting mine to explore. But let the explorer be satisfied with Roman remains, inscriptions, altars. The country through which it passed, the tribes it was intended to repress, were perhaps unnamed, certainly held as barbarous and unworthy of description by those Southern warriors. Yet it is to them we would now turn with warmest interest.

The fine collection of remains from the wall preserved in your University has been described in the authorized work, Monumenta Romani Imperi, and discussed by Alexander Gordon, Horsley, Professor John Anderson (1800), and later and more satisfactorily

by the late Robert Stuart in his Caledonia Romana. I do not know that these works leave much to be desired on this subject, and yet it would be worthy of some enlightened scholar blessed with abundance, to make a complete survey of our Northern wall, accurately examining any remaining forts, and endeavouring to fix the precise points of its termination, both of which are strangely subject of doubt. In some respects the Antonine wall is more worthy of such careful survey and description than the southern one, on which the Duke of Northumberland is at present carrying on an investigation, with the assistance of Dr. Collingwood Bruce, on a scale of princely extent and expense. The sections that would be occasionally necessary for such a work would no doubt repay a zealous archæologist with a quantity of Roman sculptures, inscriptions, pottery, perhaps implements, weapons, arms, and ornaments, but all Roman, throwing light perhaps on the name of the general or the centurion, the legion or cohort employed on the work-of fame and great interest to the gossips of the Roman forum; but how much more we should value some memorial of the natives, with whom we might claim kindred! It would be worth while digging if we could hope to find any mention-even à name-of tribes whom the Romans called HorestiiMæate-could we discover the native name of Galgacus-whether there ever was a country called Caledonia-a people of Caledonians!

I trust to be pardoned for passing over the history of the kingdoms of Cumbria and Strathclyde. If you try to read Ritson's "History of the Caledonians" you will readily forgive me for declining to follow him in that world of conjecture. Let us take the few facts we learn from writers like Gildas, and the more reliable Bede, of that curious cleft rock, that natural fortress of Dumbarton, the Aleluyd, the rock of Clyde of these authors, which must have been an object of interest as soon as our bays and friths were navigated even by canoes. It was certainly, at the very earliest period of what we can call history, looked upon as a strong fortress (arx munitissima), whether entirely trusting to its natural strength or helped by some rude fortifications. Shall we say it was the capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde? Alas! are we quite sure the king of Strathclyde had a capital-or did he roam at large through Lennox and Clydesdale and Ayr? I do not put this as a mere sceptical puzzle; I wish to draw your attention to that state of society when the bond of union was kinship, when the nation was the tribe or the cluster of tribes, not necessarily fixed to certain seats; on the con