Chapter XXII: Part 22

From 1884 onwards the history of Indo-China may be divided into two distinct periods, characteristic of the political conception and governmental system adopted by the French government. In the first period, 1884-1891, the French agents in Tongking and Indo-China generally proceeded under cover of the treaty of 1884 with the definite conquest and annexation of Tongking and also Annam. Cochin-China itself openly designed to seize the southern provinces of Annam, upon the borders of which it lay. This policy, momentarily checked by the war with China, was vigorously, even violently, resumed after the treaty of Tientsin (June 1885). The citadel of Hué was occupied in July 1885 by General de Courcy. The Annamese government forthwith decided upon rebellion. An improvised attack upon the French troops was led by the ministers Thu-yet and Thu-ong. The revolt was promptly suppressed. The regent Thu-yet and the king Ham-N'ghi (crowned in August 1884) fled. At this time the French government, following a very widespread error, regarded Tongking and Annam as two distinct countries, inhabited by populations hostile to each other, and considered the Tongkingese as the oppressed vassals of the Annamese conqueror. To conquer Annam, it was said, would liberate Tongking. This misconception produced the worst consequences. With the flight of the king civil war commenced in Annam. The people of Tongking, whose submission the court of Hué had not dared to demand, began to rise. Taking advantage of this state of anarchy, pirates of the Black Flag, Chinese deserters and Tongkingese rebels devastated the country. The occupation of Tongking became a prolonged warfare, in which 25,000 French, compelled to guard innumerable posts, had to oppose an intangible enemy, appearing by night, vanishing by day, and practising brigandage rather than war. The military expenditure, met neither by commerce, which had become impossible, nor taxation, which the Annamese could not pay nor the French receive, resulted in heavy deficits. The resident-general, Paul Bert, who hoped to gain the confidence of the mandarins by kindness and goodwill, did not succeed in preventing, or even moderating, the action of the military régime. Than-quan, Hon-Koi, Lao-Kay, Pak-Lun and Kao-Bang were occupied, but the troops were driven back to the delta and almost invested in the towns. Disappointed in his hopes and worn out rather by anxiety than work, Paul Bert succumbed to his troubles in November 1886, seven months after his arrival in the country. His successors possessed neither the strength nor the insight necessary to grapple with the situation. M. Constans, however, appointed "provisional" governor-general after the death of M. Filippini, succeeded to a certain extent in reviving commerce in the towns of the delta. MM. Richaud, Bihourd and Piquet, successors of M. Constans, were all powerless to deal with the uninterrupted "bush-fighting" and the augmentation of the deficit, for no sooner was the latter covered by grants from the mother country than it began to grow again. At the close of the financial year in 1890 France had paid 13,000,000 francs. In April 1891 the deficit again approached the sum of 12,000,000 francs. The rebels held almost all the delta provinces, their capitals excepted, and from Hanoi itself the governor-general could see the smoke of burning villages at the very gates of his capital.

At this point a complete change of policy took place. M. de Lanessan, a Paris deputy sent on a mission in the course of 1887, made himself acquainted, with the government and the court of Hué. He recognized the absolute falsity of the story which represented the Tongkingese as the oppressed subjects of the Annamese. He demonstrated the consanguinity of the populations, and after intercourse with the regents, or ministers, of Hué he realized that the pacification of the country depended upon harmonious relations being established between the general government and the court. Appointed governor-general with the fullest powers on the 21st of April 1891, he presented himself at Hué, concluded with the _comat_ an agreement based on the principle of a "loyal protectorate," and reassured the court, up to this point uneasy under menace of annexation. The _comat_ shortly issued a proclamation under the great royal seal, never hitherto attached to any of the public acts imposed upon the king by the governors, who had been unaware of its existence. In this proclamation the king ordered all his subjects to obey the governor-general and to respect him, and commanded rebels to lay down arms. The effect was immediate--disorders in the delta ceased. The pirates alone, in revolt against the king of Annam and all authority, continued their brigandage. But the governor-general instituted four "military districts," the commanders of which were commissioned to destroy the pirates. At the same time he placed a force of native police, the _linh co_, at the disposal of the mandarins, hitherto regarded with suspicion and intentionally deprived of all means of action. Order was restored within the delta. In the mountainous districts infested by pirates roads were opened and posts established. The chief haunts of the pirates were demolished, and during 1893 the foremost pirate chiefs gave in their submission. The Indo-Chinese budget regained its balance. On the Chinese frontier agreements were concluded with Marshal Sou, in command of the Chinese forces, regarding the simultaneous repression of piracy in both countries. But on the Mekong difficulties arose with the Siamese. For centuries Siam had occupied the right bank of the Mekong, and her troops had crossed the river and occupied the left bank. Luang-Prabang was in the hands of the Siamese, who had also established posts at Stung-treng and elsewhere. Friction occurred between the French agents and Siamese soldiery. After the death of Inspector Crosgurin on the 5th of June 1893 the French government occupied Stung-treng and Khong. France demanded explanations and redress at Bangkok, but the court refusing concessions, an ultimatum was presented to the king by M. Pavie, French minister to Siam. The terms of the ultimatum not having been complied with within the given time, the French flotilla, consisting of the gunboats "L'Inconstant" and "La Comète," crossed the bar of the Menam on 13th July 1893, forced the entrance of the channel, and anchored at Bangkok, before the French legation. A second ultimatum was then presented. It contained the following conditions:--First the occupation of Chantabun by the French until the Siamese should have entirely evacuated the left bank of the Mekong; secondly, the Siamese to be interdicted from maintaining military forces at Battambang, Siem-Reap, and generally from establishing fortified positions within 15½ m. of the right bank of the Mekong; thirdly, Siam to be interdicted from having armed boats on the great lake Tonle-Sap. This agreement was executed immediately, the Laotians being eager parties to it. On the 29th of September 1893 the king of Luang-Prabang made his submission to the French government, and besought it to use its influence with the court of Siam for the return to their families of the sons of princes and mandarins then in schools at Bangkok. The Siamese evacuated the left bank of the Mekong, and France took possession of Laos, a treaty, on the basis of the ultimatum, being signed on the 1st of October 1893. The disputes to which this affair with Siam had given rise between France and Great Britain were amicably settled by an agreement concluded on the 15th of January 1896. This "declaration," virtually ratifying the treaty concluded in 1893 between France and Siam, settled the limits of the zones of influence of the two contracting powers in the north of the Mekong regions and on the frontiers of Siam and Burma. Great Britain resigned to France the regions of the Muong-Sing which she had previously occupied. The great part of Siam included in the Menam basin was declared neutral, so also the Me-ping basin in the north, Meklong Pechaburi and Bang Pa Kong rivers in the south. The neutral zone, 15½ m. wide on the right bank of the Mekong, was formally recognized.

In 1904, by a new Franco-Siamese treaty setting aside that of 1893, Chantabun was evacuated and the neutral zone renounced in return for the cession of the provinces of Bassac and Melupré and the district of Dansai (comprising the portion of Luang Prabang on the right bank of the Mekong) and the maritime district of Krat. By a further convention in 1907 Siam ceded the provinces of Battambang, Siem-Reap and Sisophon, and received in return the maritime province of Krat and the district of Dansai ceded in 1904. At the same time France abandoned all designs on territory of Siam by giving up certain areas obtained for the purposes of railway building on the right bank of the Mekong.

After the recall of M. de Lanessan in 1894 (see above), and before his successor, M. Rousseau, was able to acquaint himself fully with the condition of the country, military expeditions began again and the deficit soon reappeared. Tranquillity, however, being restored, attention was given to public works. On the 12th of October 1895 M. Rousseau left to ask parliament to vote a loan of 100,000,000 francs. On the vols., of February 1896 a law was passed authorizing a loan of 80,000,000 francs, and on the 14th of March 1896 an office for the financial control of the government-general of Indo-China was established. In the interval a French company had obtained from China a concession to prolong the railway from Langson to Lungchow on a tributary of the Canton river. M. Rousseau, who died on the 10th of December 1896, was replaced by M. Dourner, previously minister of finance, under whose government was realized, as has been before stated, the union of Indo-China. On the 20th of December 1898 M. Doumer obtained from parliament authorization to contract a loan of 200,000,000 francs, the proceeds of which were appropriated to the construction of railway lines.

AUTHORITIES.--M. J. F. Gamier, _Voyage d'exploration en Indo-Chine_
(Paris, 1873); J. M. A. de Lanessan, _L'Indo-Chine française_ (Paris,
1889); P. Doumer, _L'Indo-Chine française_ (Souvenirs) (Paris, 1905);
F. Bernard, _Indo-Chine_ (Paris, 1901), L. Salaun, _L'Indo-Chine_
(Paris, 1903); A. Girault, _Principes de colonisation et de
législation coloniale_ (Paris, 1907); M. Petit, _Les Colonies
françaises_ (2 vols., Paris, 1902); J. C. Gervais Courtellemont,
_L'Indo-Chine_ (Paris, 1902); A. Neton, _L'Indo-Chine et son avenir
économique_ (Paris, 1904); A. Pavie, _Mission Pavie Indo-Chine_
(1879-1895); _Géographie et voyages_ (Paris, 1901-1906); H. Lorin, _La
France: puissance coloniale_ (Paris, 1906); M. Monnier, _La Tour
d'Asie: Cochinchine, Annam, Tonkin_ (Paris, 1899); E. Bonhoure,
_L'Indo-Chine_ (Paris, 1900); R. Castex, _Les Rivages indo-chinois_
(Paris, 1904); L. de Reinach, _Le Laos_ (Paris, 1902) (this work gives
a very complete bibliography); _Annuaire général administratif,
commercial et industriel de l'Indo-Chine_ (Hanoi); _Revue Indochinois_
(Hanoi); C. Madrolle, _Guide-Books_ (Paris, 1904-1907); _Bulletin
économique de l'Indo-Chine_ (Saigon). (J. M. A. de L.; R. Tr.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See also ANNAM, CAMBODIA, COCHIN-CHINA, KWANG-CHOW BAY, LAOS,
TONGKING.

[2] This does not apply to the budget of Cochin-China, which is voted
by the colonial council and approved by the governor-general alone.

[3] This does not include the expenditure on account of the 3% loan
of £8,000,000, which is inscribed in a special account. The debt of
the government-general of Indo-China is composed as follows:--

+---------------------------+--------------+-----------------+
| | Nominal | Nominal Capital |
| | Capital. |in circulation on|
| | | Jan. 1, 1907. |
+---------------------------+--------------+-----------------+
| 2½% Loan of 1896 (Annam- | | |
| Tongking) | £3,678,000 | £3,342,800 |
| 3½ % Loan of £8,000,000 | | |
| issued from 1899 to 1905| 8,748,260 | 8,640,060 |
+---------------------------+--------------+-----------------+
| Total | £12,426,260 | £11,982,860 |
+---------------------------+--------------+-----------------+

[4] The transit trade between Hong Kong and Yun-nan via Tongking is of
considerable importance (see TONGKING).

INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. The Indo-European (I.E.) languages are a family of kindred dialects spread over a large part of Europe, and of Asia as far as India.

The main branches so far identified fall easily into two groups of four. These groups are distinguished from one another by the treatment of certain original guttural sounds, _k(c)_, _g_, _kh_, _gh_, which one group shows as consonants, while the other converts them into sibilants. The variation is well shown in the word for "hundred": Gr. [Greek: he-katon], Lat. _centum_, Old Irish _cet_; Sanskrit _satam_, Zend _satem_, Lithuanian _szimtas_, Old Bulgarian (Old ecclesiastical Slavonic) _suto_. In the first three the consonant is a hard guttural (the Romans said _kentum_, not _sentum_), in the others it is a sibilant (the Lithuanian _sz_ is the English _sh_).

The first group (generally known as the _centum_-group) is the Western and entirely European group, the second (generally known as the _satem_-group) with one exception lies to the east of the _centum_-group and much its largest part is situated in Asia. To the _centum_-group belong (1) Greek; (2) the Italic languages, including Latin, Oscan, Umbrian and various minor dialects of ancient Italy; (3) Celtic, including (a) the Q-Celtic languages, Irish, Manx and Scotch Gaelic, (b) the P-Celtic, including the language of ancient Gaul, Welsh, Cornish and Breton: the differentiation, which exists also in the Italic languages, turning upon the treatment of original _kw_ sounds, which all the Italic languages save Latin and the little-known Faliscan and the (b) group of the Celtic languages change to _p_. With these go (4) the Germanic or Teutonic languages, including (a) Gothic, (b) the Scandinavian languages, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic--differentiated in historical times out of a single language, Old Norse,--(c) West Germanic, Including English and Frisian, Low Frankish (from which spring modern Dutch and Flemish), Low and High German.

To the _satem_-group belongs (1) Aryan or Indo-Iranian, including (a) Sanskrit, with its descendants, (b) Zend, and (c) Old Persian, from which is ultimately descended Modern Persian, largely modified, however, by Arabic words. This group is often divided into two sub-groups, _Indo-Aryan_, including the languages of India, and _Iranian_, used as a general title for Zend and Old Persian as the languages of ancient Iran. Although the sounds of Indo-Aryan and Iranian differ considerably, phrases of the earliest form of the one can be transliterated into the other without change in vocabulary or syntax. (2) To the west of these lies Armenian, which is so full of borrowed Iranian words that only in 1875 was it successfully differentiated by Hübschmann as an independent language. It is probably related to, or the descendant of, the ancient Phrygian, which spread into Asia from Thrace by the migration of tribes across the Hellespont. Of ancient Thracian unfortunately we know very little. (3) North of the Black Sea, and widening its borders in all directions, comes the great Balto-Slavonic group. In this there are two branches somewhat resembling the division between Indo-Aryan and Iranian. Here three small dialects on the south-east coast of the Baltic form the first group, Lithuanian, Lettish and Old Prussian, the last being extinct since the 17th century. The Slavonic languages proper themselves fall into two groups: (a) an Eastern and Southern group, including Old Bulgarian, the ecclesiastical language first known from the latter part of the 9th century A.D.; Russian in its varieties of Great Russian, White Russian and Little Russian or Ruthenian; and Servian and Slovene, which extend to the Adriatic. (b) The western group includes Polish with minor dialects, Czech or Bohemian, also with minor languages in the group, and Sorb. In the _satem_ division is also included (4) Albanian, which like Armenian is much mixed with foreign elements--Latin, Greek, Turkish and Slavonic. The relation between it and the ancient Illyrian is not clear.

Besides the languages mentioned there are many others now extinct or of which little is known--e.g. Venetic, found in clearly written inscriptions with a distinctive alphabet in north-eastern Italy; Messapian, in the heel of Italy, which is supposed to have been connected with the ancient Illyrian; and possibly also the unknown tongue which has been found recently on several inscriptions in Crete and seems to have been the language of the pre-Hellenic population, the finds apparently confirming the statement of Herodotus (vii. 170) that the earlier population survived in later times only at Praesos and Polichne. Names of deities worshipped by the Aryan branch are reported to have been discovered in the German excavations at Boghaz-Keui (anc. _Pteria_, q.v.) in Cappadocia; names of kings appear in widely separated areas elsewhere in Asia,[1] and a language not hitherto known has recently been found in excavations in Turkestan and christened by its first investigators Tocharish.[2] So far as yet ascertained, Tocharish seems to be a mongrel dialect produced by an intermixture of peoples speaking respectively an I.E. language and a language of an entirely different origin. The stems of the words are clearly in many cases I.E., but the terminations are no less clearly alien to this family of languages. It is remarkable that some of its words, like _ku_, "dog," have a hard _k_, while the other languages of this stock in Asia, so far as at present known, belong to the _satem_-group, and have in such words replaced the _k_ by a sibilant.

Till the latter part of the 18th century it was the universal practice to refer all languages ultimately to a Hebrew origin, because Hebrew, being the language of the Bible, was assumed, with reference to the early chapters of Genesis, to be the original language. Even on these premises the argument was unsound, for the same authority also recorded a confusion of tongues at Babel, so that it was unreasonable to expect that languages thus violently metamorphosed could be referred so easily at a later period to the same original. The first person to indicate very briefly the existence of the Indo-European family, though he gave it no distinctive name, was Sir William Jones in his address to the Bengal Oriental Society in 1786. Being a skilled linguist, he recognized that Sanskrit must be of the same origin as Greek, Latin, Teutonic (Germanic) and possibly Celtic (_Asiatic Researches_, i. p. 422; _Works_ of Sir W. Jones, i. p. 26, London, 1799). Unfortunately Sir William Jones's views as to the relationship of the languages were not adopted for many years by later investigators. He had said quite definitely, "No philologer could examine them all three (Sanskrit, Greek and Latin) without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists." Friedrich Schlegel, who learnt Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton in Paris nearly twenty years later, started the view that Sanskrit, instead of being the sister, was the mother of the other languages, a mistake which, though long since refuted in all philological works, has been most persistent.

Curiously enough the history of the names given to the family is obscure. The earliest known occurrence of the word "Indo-European" is in an article in the _Quarterly Review_ for 1813[3] by Dr Thomas Young. The term has been in use in English and in French almost continuously since that date. But a glance at Dr Young's article will show that he included under Indo-European many languages like Basque, Etruscan and Arabian (his term for Semitic), which certainly do not belong to this family of languages at all; and if the term is taken to mean, as it would seem to imply, all the languages spoken in India and Europe, it is undoubtedly a misnomer. There are many languages in India, as those of the Dravidians in Southern India and those of Northern Assam, which do not belong to this family. On the other hand there are many languages belonging to the family which exist outside both India and Europe--Zend, Old Persian, Armenian, Phrygian, to say nothing of languages recently discovered. The term most commonly used in Germany is "Indo-Germanic." This was employed by Klaproth as early as 1823. It is said not to have been invented by him, but by whom and when it was invented is not quite ascertained.[4] It is an attempt to name the family by its most easterly and most westerly links. At the time when it was invented it had not yet been settled whether Celtic was or was not a member of this family. But in any case the term would not have been wrong, for members of the Germanic stock have been settled for above a thousand years in Iceland, the most westerly land of Europe, and for the last four centuries have increasingly dominated the continent of America. As has been pointed out by Professor Buck of Chicago (_Classical Review_, xviii. p. 400), owing to the German method of pronouncing _eu_ as _oi_, the word "Indo-Germanic" is easier for a German to pronounce than "Indo-European." Attempts to discover a more accurate and less ponderous term, such as "Indo-Celtic" or "Celtindic," have not met with popular favour. Aryan (q.v.) is conveniently brief, but is wanted as the proper term for the most easterly branch of the family. What is wanted is a term which does not confuse ethnological and linguistic ideas. Not all speakers of any given language are necessarily of the same stock. In ancient Rome Latin must have been spoken by many slaves or sons of slaves who had no Latin blood in their bodies, though a slave if manumitted by his master might be the father or grandfather of a Roman citizen with full rights. Plautus and Terence were both aliens, the one an Umbrian, the other an African. The speakers of modern English are even a more multifarious body. A possible name for the family, implying only the speaking of a language of the stock without any reference to racial or national characteristics, could be obtained from the name for man, so widely though perhaps not altogether universally diffused throughout the family--Sanskrit _viras_, Lithuanian _wyras_, Lat. _vir_, Irish _fer_, Gothic _waír_, &c. If the speakers of these languages were called collectively _Wiros_, no confusion with ethnological theories need arise.

It is customary to talk of the roots, stems and suffixes of words in
the Indo-European languages. These languages are distinguished from
languages like Chinese by the fact that in the great majority of words
suffixes can be separated from roots. But the distinction between them
and the so-called agglutinative languages is one of degree rather than
of kind. In the agglutinative languages, or at any rate in some of
them, some of the post-fixed elements have still an independent value.
In the Indo-Germanic languages no one can say what the meaning of the
earliest suffixes was. Suffixes which have developed in individual
languages or individual sections of this family of languages can often
be traced, e.g. the often quoted -_hood_ in English words like
"manhood," or the English -_ly_ in "manly," which has gradually
extended till it is actually attached to its own parent _like_ in
"likely." But all recent investigation goes to show that before the
Indo-European languages separated they possessed words with all the
characteristics which we recognize in substantives like the Latin
_dominus_ or verbs like the Greek [Greek: deiknytai]. Or, to put the
same fact in another way, by the comparative method it is impossible
to reach a period when the speakers of Indo-European languages spoke
in roots. A "root" is only a convenient philological abstraction; it
is merely the remnant which is left when all the elements that can be
analysed are taken away; it is therefore only a kind of greatest
common measure for a greater or smaller body of words expressing
modifications of the same idea. Thus, though by no means the earliest
form of the word, the English _man_ might be taken as the "root" from
which are derived by various suffixes _manhood_, _manly_, _mannish_,
_manful_, _manned_ (past tense), _manned_ (participle), _unman_,
_mannikin_, &c. How far the suffixes which can be traced back to
Indo-European times (i.e. to a time before the separation of the
languages) had existence as separate entities it is impossible to say.
From what we see of the later history of the languages it is much more
probable that both forms and signification were very largely the
result of analogy. For in the making of new words analogy plays a much
larger part than any reference to general principles of formation or
composition. New words are to a large extent, even in modern times,
the invention of persons unskilled in the history of language.

The first to point out that the term Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic)
was not used uniformly in one sense was Professor Kretschmer in his
_Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache_ (Göttingen,
1896), pp. 9 ff. It is in fact used in three senses. (1) Indo-European
is treated as preceding and different from all its descendants, a
single uniform speech without dialects. But, strictly, no such
language can exist, for even individual members of the same family
differ from one another in pronunciation, vocabulary, sentence
formation, etc. Thus it appears impossible to ascertain what the
Indo-European term for the numeral 1 was, since different languages
show at least four words for this, three of them presenting the same
root with different suffixes: (a) Sanskrit _eka_ (= *[Greek:
oi]-quo-); (b) Zend _aeva_, Old Persian _aiva_, Greek [Greek:
oi-([digamma])o-s] (= *[Greek: oi]-uo-); (c) Greek [Greek: oinê],
"ace," Latin _unus_ (older _oenus_), Old Irish _oen_, Gothic _ains_,
Lithuanian _vénas_ (where the initial _v_ has no more etymological
signification than the _w_ which now begins the pronunciation of the
English _one_), Old Bulgarian _inu_; (d) Greek [Greek: eis, en] (=
*_sem-s_). But the Indo-European community must have had a word for
the numeral since the various languages agree in forms for the
numerals 2 to 10, and the original Indo-European people seem to have
been able to count at least as far as 100. On the other hand, if the
Indo-European language must have had dialects, the line of
differentiation between it and its descendants becomes obliterated.
(2) But even when a word is found very widely diffused over the area
of the Indo-European languages, it is not justifiable to conclude that
therefore the word must have belonged to the original language. The
dispersion of the Indo-European people over the areas they now
inhabit, or inhabited in the earliest times known to history, must
have been gradual, and commerce or communication between different
branches must have always existed to some extent; the word might thus
have been transmitted from one community to another. When a word is
found in two branches which are geographically remote from one another
and is not found in the intermediate area, the probability that the
word is original is somewhat stronger. But even in this case the
originality of the word is by no means certain, for (a) the
intervening branch or branches which do not possess the word may
merely have dropped it and replaced it by another; (b) the
geographical position which the branches occupy in historical times
may not be their original position; the branches which do not possess
the word may have forced themselves into the area they now occupy
after they had dropped the word; (c) if the linguistic communities
which possess the word have a seaboard and the intervening communities
have not, the possibility of its transmission in connexion with early
sea-borne commerce must be considered. At the dawn of European history
the Phoenicians and the Etruscans are great seafarers; at a later time
the Varangians of the North penetrated to the Mediterranean and as far
as Constantinople; in modern times sea-borne commerce brought to
Europe words from the Caribbean Indians like _potato_ and _tobacco_,
and gave English a new word for man-eating savages--_cannibal_. Thus
with Kretschmer we must distinguish between what is common
Indo-European and what is original Indo-European in language. (3) A
word may exist in several of the languages, and may have existed in
them for a very long time, and yet not be Indo-European. Hehn (_Das
Salz_, ed. 2, 1901) rejects _salt_ as an Indo-European word because it
is not found in the Aryan group, though in this case he is probably
wrong, (a) because, as has been shown by Professor Johannes Schmidt,
its irregular declension (_sal-d_, genitive _sal-nes_) possesses
characteristics of the oldest Indo-European words; (b) because the
great plains of Iran are characterized by their great saltness, so
that the Aryan branch did not pass through a country where salt was
unknown, although, according to Herodotus (i. 133), the Persian did
not use salt to season his food. Since Kretschmer wrote, this argument
has been used very extensively by Professor A. Meillet of Paris in his
_Dialectes indo-européens_ (Paris, 1908). In this treatise he brings
forward arguments from a great variety of facts to show that in the
original Indo-European language there were dialects, the Aryan,
Armenian, Balto-Slavonic and Albanian, as we have seen, forming an
oriental group with novel characteristics developed in common,
although in various other characteristics they do not agree. Similarly
Italic, Celtic and Germanic form a Western group, while Greek agrees
now with the one group now with the other, at some points being more
intimately connected with Italic than with any other branch, at others
inclining more towards the Aryan. This grouping, however, is by no
means exclusive, members of either group having characteristics in
common with individuals of the other group which they do not share
with the other languages of their own group (Meillet, p. 131 ff.).

From all this it is clear that in many cases it must be extremely
uncertain what is original Indo-European and what is not. Some general
characteristics can, however, be predicated from what is handed down
to us in the earliest forms of all or nearly all the existing
languages. (1) The noun had certainly a large number of distinct cases
in the singular: nominative, accusative, genitive, ablative, locative,
instrumental, dative.[5] In the plural, however, there was less
variety, the forms for dative and ablative being from the earliest
times identical. In the dual, the oblique cases cannot be restored
with certainty, so little agreement is there between the languages. In
the locative-singular the ending -_i_ seems to have been of the nature
of a post-position, because in various languages (notably in Sanskrit)
forms appear without any suffix. In the locative plural also the
difference between the -_su_ of Sanskrit and early Lithuanian
(Slavonic -_chu_) on the one hand, and of -[Greek: si] in Greek on the
other, seems to be best explained by supposing that the -_u_ and -_i_
are postpositions, a conclusion which is strengthened by the Greek
rule that -[sigma]- between vowels disappears. In the instrumental
singular and plural it is noticeable that there are two suffixes--one,
represented in Germanic and Balto-Slavonic only, beginning with the
sound -_m_, the other, surviving in most of the other languages for
the plural, going back to an Indo-European form beginning with -_bh_.
Professor Hirt of Leipzig has argued (_Idg. Forschungen_, v. pp. 251
ff.) that -_bh_- originally belonged to the instrumental plural (cf.
the Lat. _filiabus_, _omnibus_, &c.), and the forms with -_m_- to the
dative and ablative. But this is merely a conjecture, which has no
linguistic facts in its favour, for the -_bi_ of the Latin dative
_tibi_, which has parallel forms in many other languages, belongs to
the pronouns, which show in their declension many differences from the
declension of the noun (cf. also Brugmann, _Grundriss_ (ed. 2), ii. 2,
p. 120). (2) The adjective agrees with its noun in gender, number and
case, thus introducing a superfluous element of agreement which is not
found, e.g. in most of the agglutinative languages. Thus in phrases
like the Greek [Greek: hê kalê korê] or the Latin _illa pulchra
puella_ the feminine gender is expressed three times, with no
advantage, so far as can be detected, over the modern English, _that
fair maid_, where it is not obviously expressed at all. In this
respect and also in the employment of the same case endings for the
plural as well as the singular, in the plural after a syllable
expressing plurality, the agglutinative languages have a distinct
superiority over the Indo-European languages in their earliest forms.
Some languages, like English and Modern Persian, have practically got
rid of inflexion altogether and the present difficulty with it;
others, like modern German, as the result of phonetic and analogical
changes have even intensified the difficulty. (3) In the personal
pronouns, especially those of the first and second persons, there is
widely spread agreement, but more in the singular than in the plural.
Forms corresponding to the English _I_ and _thou_, the Latin _ego_ and
_tu_, are practically universal. On the other hand the demonstrative
pronouns vary very considerably. (4) The system of numerals (subject
to slight discrepancies, as that regarding 1 mentioned above) is the
same, at least up to 100. (5) In the verb there were at first two
voices, the active and the middle, and three moods, the indicative,
the subjunctive and the optative. It has been suggested by Professors
Oertel and Morris in _Harvard Studies_, xvi. (p. 101, n. 3) that the
similarity which exists between the earliest Greek and the earliest
Aryan in the moods is the result of a longer common life between those
two branches. But of this there is no proof, and the great difference
in the treatment of the sounds by these two branches (see below)
militates very strongly against the supposition. The tense forms
indicated originally not relations in time but different kinds of
action. The distinctive forms are the present, the perfect, and the
aorist. The present indicated that an action was in progress or
continuous, the aorist on the other hand regarded the action as a
whole and, as it were, summed it up. The aorist has sometimes been
said to express instantaneous action, and so it does. But this is not
the essence of the aorist; the aorist may be used also of a long
continued action when it is regarded as a whole. Greek shows this very
clearly. In Athenian official inscriptions it was usual to fix the
date of the record by stating at the commencement who was the chief
magistrate (archon) of the year. This was expressed by the imperfect
([Greek: êrche]). But when reference was made to a past archonship,
that was expressed by the aorist ([Greek: êpxe]). The same
characteristic is evident also in prohibitions; thus, in Plato's
_Apology of Socrates_, [Greek: mê thorybêsête] is "Do not begin to
make a disturbance," [Greek: mê thorybeite] is "Do not keep on making
a disturbance." These points are most easily illustrated from Greek,
because Greek, better than the other languages, has kept the
distinctive usages of both moods and tenses. The perfect as
distinguished from the other forms expresses either repetition of the
action, emphasis, or the state which results from the action expressed
by the verb. Different languages regard this last in different ways.
Sometimes the state resulting from the action is so characteristic
that the perfect is almost an independent verb. Thus in Greek [Greek:
ktaomai] is "I acquire," but [Greek: kektêmai] (the perfect) is "I
possess," the result of the action of acquiring. On the other hand the
perfect may mean that the action has come to an end. This is specially
common in Latin, as in Cicero's famous announcement of the execution
of the Catilinarian conspirators,--_Vixerunt_ ("They have lived" =
"They are no more"). But it is by no means confined to Latin. The
pluperfect, the past of the perfect, is a late development and can
hardly be reckoned Indo-European. In Greek the forms clearly arise
from adding aorist endings to a perfect stem. The forms of Latin are
not yet completely explained--but it is certain that the specially
Latin meaning expressing something that was past at a time already
past (relative time) is a late growth. When Homeric Greek wishes to
express this meaning it uses most frequently the aorist, but also the
imperfect as well as the pluperfect, the notion of relative time being
derived from the context. In the earliest Latin the pluperfect is not
uncommonly used with the value of the aorist perfect. As regards the
future it is difficult to say how far it was an original form. Some
languages, like Germanic, preserve no original form for the future.
When the present is found not to be distinctive enough, periphrastic
forms come in. In other languages, like Latin and Greek, there is
constant confusion between subjunctive and future forms. It is
impossible to distinguish by their form between [Greek: deixô]
(future) and [Greek: deixô] (subjunctive), between _regam_ (future)
and regam (subjunctive). A special future with a suffix -sio- (_syo_)
is found only with certainty in the Aryan group and the Baltic
languages. The future perfect is, strictly speaking, only a future
made from a perfect stem; in the Latin sense it is certainly a late
development, and even in early Latin, _videro_ has occasionally no
different meaning from _videbo_. The imperative, which was originally
an exclamatory form to the verb, of the same kind as the vocative was
to the noun, and which consisted simply of the verb stem without
further suffixes, developed, partly on the analogy of the present and
partly with the help of adverbs, a complete paradigm. The infinitives
of all the languages are noun cases, generally stereotyped in form and
no longer in touch with a noun system, though this, e.g. in early
Sanskrit, is not always true. The participles differ only from other
adjectives in governing the same case as their verb; and this is not
an early distinction, for in the earliest Sanskrit all verbal nouns
may govern the same case as their verb.

The system here sketched in the barest outline tended steadily to fall
into decay. The case system was not extensive enough to express even
the commonest relations. Thus there was no means of distinguishing by
the cases between starting from outside and starting from inside,
ideas which, e.g. Finnish regards as requiring separate cases; without
a preposition it was impossible to distinguish between _on_ and _in_,
though to the person concerned there is much difference, for example
between being on a river and in a river. There are other difficulties
of the same kind. These had to be got over by the use of adverbs. But
no sooner had the adverbs become well established for the purpose of
defining these local relations than the meaning was felt to exist more
in the adverb than in the case ending. For this syntactical reason, as
well as for mechanical reasons arising from accent (q.v.), the case
system in some languages fell more and more into desuetude. In
Sanskrit it has been kept entire, in Balto-Slavonic the only loss has
been the disappearance of the original genitive and its replacement by
the ablative. In Latin the locative has been confused with the
genitive and the ablative, and the instrumental with the ablative. The
loss of the locative as an independent case had not long preceded
historical times, because it survives in Oscan, the kindred dialect of
the neighbouring Campania. Greek has confused ablative with genitive,
except for one small relic recently discovered on an inscription at
Delphi; in the consonant stems it has replaced the dative by the
locative form and confused in it dative, locative and instrumental
meanings. In some other members of the family, e.g. Germanic, the
confusion has gone still farther.

The fate of the verb is similar, though the two paradigms do not
necessarily decay at the same rate. Thus Latin has modified its verb
system much more than its noun system, and Greek, while reducing
seriously its noun forms, shows a very elaborate verb system, which
has no parallel except in the Aryan group. From the syntactical point
of view, however, the Greek system is much superior to the Aryan,
which has converted its perfect into a past tense in classical
Sanskrit, and to a large extent lost grip of the moods. The decay in
Aryan may be largely attributed to the power, which this group
developed beyond any other, of making compounds which in practice took
the place of subordinate sentences to a large extent. The causes for
the modifications which the Latin verb system has undergone are more
obscure, but they are shared not only by its immediate neighbours the
other Italic dialects, but also to a great degree by the more remote
Celtic dialects.

The origin and spread of the Indo-European languages has long been, and remains, a vexed question. No sooner had Bopp laid the foundation of Comparative Philology in his great work, the first edition of which appeared in 1833-1835, than this question began to be seriously considered. The earlier writers agreed in regarding Asia as the original home of the speakers of these languages. For this belief there were various grounds,--statements in the Biblical record, the greater originality (according to Schlegel) of Sanskrit, the absurd belief that the migrations of mankind always proceeded towards the west. The view propounded by an English philologist, Dr R. G. Latham, that the original home was in Europe, was scouted by one of the most eminent writers on the subject--Victor Hehn--as lunacy possible only to one who lived in a country of cranks. Latham's view was first put forward in 1851, and in half a century opinion had almost universally come over to his side. Max Müller indeed to the last held to the view that the home was "somewhere in Asia," and Professor Johannes Schmidt of Berlin, in a paper read before the Oriental Congress at Stockholm in 1889, argued for a close contact between early Indo-European and Assyrian civilization, from the borrowing of one or two words and the existence of duodecimal elements in the Indo-European numeral system side by side with the prevalent decimal system--the dozen, the gross, the long hundred (120), &c. At 60 the systems crossed, and 60 was a very characteristic element in Assyrian numeration, whence come our minutes and seconds and many other units.[6]

Even before Latham a Belgian geologist, d'Omalius d'Halloy, in 1848
had raised objections to the theory of the Asiatic origin of the
Indo-Europeans, but his views remained unheeded. In 1864 he brought
three questions before the _Société d'anthropologie_ of Paris: (1)
What are the proofs of the Asiatic origin of Europeans? (2) Have not
inflectional languages passed from Europe to Asia rather than from
Asia to Europe? (3) Are not the speakers of Celtic languages the
descendants of the autochthonous peoples of Western Europe? (Reinach,
_op. cit_. p. 38). Broca in replying to d'Omalius emphasized the fact
which has been too often forgotten in this controversy, that race and
language are not necessarily identical. In 1868 Professor Benfey of
Göttingen argued for the south-east of Europe as the original home,
while Ludwig Geiger in 1871 placed it in Germany, a view which in
later times has had not a few supporters.

Truth to tell, however, we are not yet ready to fix the site of the
original home. Before this can be done, many factors as yet
imperfectly known must be more completely ascertained. The prehistoric
conditions of Northern, Western, Central and South-eastern Europe have
been carefully investigated, but important new discoveries are still
continually being made. Investigation of other parts of Europe is less
complete, and prehistoric conditions in Asia are at present very
imperfectly known. In Western Europe two prehistoric races are known,
the palaeolithic and the neolithic. The former, distinguished by their
great skill in drawing figures of animals, especially the horse, the
reindeer, and the mammoth, preceded the period of the Great Ice Age
which rendered Northern Europe to the latitude of London and Berlin
uninhabitable for a period, the length of which, as of all geological
ages, cannot definitely be ascertained. For the present purpose,
however, this is of less importance, because it is not claimed that
the Indo-European stock is of so great antiquity. But when the ice
again retreated it must have been long before Northern Europe could
have maintained a population of human beings. The disappearance of the
surface ice must have been followed by a long period when ice still
remained underground, and the surface was occupied by swamps and
barren tundras, as Northern Siberia is now. When a human population
once more occupied Northern Europe it is impossible to estimate in
years.

The problem may be attacked from the opposite direction. How long
would it have taken for the Indo-European stock to spread from its
original home to its modern areas of occupation? Some recent writers
say that it is unnecessary to carry the stock back farther than 2500
B.C.--a period when the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were
already ancient. Wherever the original home was situated, this date is
probably fixed too low. The discussion, moreover, is in danger not
only of moving in one vicious circle but in two. (a) The term
"Indo-European stock" necessarily implies race, but why might not the
language have been from the earliest times at which we can trace it
the language of a mixed race? (b) It is usual to assume that the
Indo-European stock was tall and blond, in fact much as the classical
writers describe the early Germans. But the truth of this hypothesis
is much more difficult to demonstrate. In most countries known to the
ancients where blond hair prevailed, at the present day dark or brown
hair is much more in evidence. Moreover the colour of fair hair often
varies from childhood to middle life, and the flaxen hair of youth is
very frequently replaced by a much darker shade in the adult. It has
been often pointed out that many of Homer's heroes are _xanthoi_, and
it is frequently argued that [Greek: xanthos] means blond. This,
however, is anything but certain, even when Vacher de Lapouge has
collected all the passages in ancient writers which bear upon the
subject. When Diodorus (v. 32) wishes to describe the children of the
Galatae, by whom apparently he means the Germans, he says that their
hair as children is generally _white_, but as they grow up it is
assimilated to the colour of their fathers. The ethnological argument
as to long-headed and short-headed races (dolichocephalic and
brachycephalic) seems untrustworthy, because in countries described as
dolichocephalic short skulls abound and vice versa. Moreover this
classification, to which much more attention has been devoted than its
inventor Retzius ever intended, is in itself unsatisfactory. The
relation between the length and breadth of the head without
consideration of the total size is clearly an unsatisfactory
criterion. It is true that to the mathematician ¾ or 6/8 or 9/12 are
of identical value, but, if it be also generally true that mental and
physical energy are dependent on the size and weight of the brain,
then the mere mathematical relation between length and breadth is of
less importance than the size of the quantities. Anthropologists
appear now to recognize this themselves.

The argument from physical geography seems more important. But here
also no certain answer can be obtained till more is known of the
conditions, in early times, of the eastern part of the area.
According to Ratzel[7] the Caspian was once very much larger than it
is now, and to the north of it there extended a great area of swamp,
which made it practically impossible for the Indo-European race to
have crossed north of the Caspian from either continent to the other.
At an early period the Caspian and Black Sea were connected, and the
Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles were represented by a river which
entered the Aegean at a point near the island of Andros. While the
northern Aegean was still land divided only by a river, it is clear
that migration from south-eastern Europe to Asia Minor, or reversely,
might have taken place with ease. Even in much later times the
Dardanelles have formed no serious barrier to migration in either
direction. At the dawn of history, Thracian tribes crossed it and
founded, it seems, the Phrygian and Armenian stock in Asia Minor; the
Gauls at a later time followed the same road, as did Alexander the
Great a generation earlier. At the end of the middle ages, Asia sent
by way of the Dardanelles the invading Turks into Europe. The Greeks,
a nation of seafarers, on the other hand reached Asia directly across
the Aegean, using the islands, as it were, as stepping-stones.

Though much more attention has been devoted to the subject by recent
writers than was earlier the practice, it is doubtful whether
migration by sea has even now been assigned its full importance. The
most mysterious people of antiquity, the Pelasgians, do not seem to be
in all cases the same stock, as their name appears merely to mean "the
people of the sea," [Greek: Pelasgoi] representing an earlier [Greek:
pelags-koi], where [Greek: pelags] is the weak form of the stem of
[Greek: pelagos], "sea," and [Greek: -koi] the ending so frequent in
the names of peoples. A parallel to the sound changes may be seen in
[Greek: misgô], for *[Greek: mig-skô], by the side of [Greek:
mig-nymi]. As time goes on, evidence seems more and more to tend to
confirm the truth of the great migrations by sea, recorded by
Herodotus, of Lydians to Etruria, of Eteocretans both to east and
west. An argument in favour of the original Indo-Europeans being
seated in north-western Germany has been developed by G. Kossinna
(_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1902, pp. 161-222) from the forms and
ornamentation of ancient pottery. It has certainly not been generally
received with favour, and as Kossinna himself affirms that the
classification of prehistoric pottery is still an undeveloped science,
his theory is clearly at present unequal to the weight of such a
superstructure as he would build upon it. As the allied sciences are
not prepared with an answer, it is necessary to fall back upon the
Indo-European languages themselves. The attempt has often been made to
ascertain both the position of the original home and the stage of
civilization which the original community had reached from a
consideration of the vocabulary for plants and animals common to the
various languages of the Indo-European family. But the experience of
recent centuries warns us to be wary in the application of this
argument. If we cut off all past history and regard the language of
the present day as we have perforce to regard our earliest records,
two of the words most widely disseminated amongst the Indo-European
people of Europe are _tobacco_ and _potato_. Without historical
records it would be impossible for us to discover that these words in
their earliest European form had been borrowed from the Caribbean
Indians. Most languages tend to adopt with an imported product the
name given to it by its producers, though frequently misunderstanding
arises, as in the case of the two words mentioned, the _potato_ being
properly the yam, and _tobacco_ being properly the pipe, while _petum_
or _petun_ (cp. _petunia_) was the plant.[8]