The Portland daily press., 1890-05-31
ALAS POOR ARYAN.
Canon Taylor Has Almost Demon
strated That He Never Existed.


Max Muller and his school took it for
granted too readily that the Aryan race
must have originated in Central Asia,
and spread from thence to India in one
direction, and to Europe in the other.
They took 1t for granted, too, that San
scrit must necessarily approach more
nearly to the primitive Aryan tongue
than any other language of which re-
mains have descended to us. The last
ten years have seen the final overthrow
Of both these rough-and-ready provis-
ional theories.
Penke and his school have demon
strated, almost beyond the possibility Of
q doubt, that the Aryans were rather Of
European than Asiatic origin; rather
northern or intermediate than q south
ern race. Evidence has been brought
forward to show that Lithuanian ap-
proaches still more closely than Sanscrit
to the earliest form of the Aryan tongue;
and now Canon Taylor comes to the
front to convince us that, Of the two
great prehistoric races Of Europe, the
primitive Aryan is to be identified rather
with the smaller, darker and broad
headed type than with the taller, fairer
and long skulled Scandinavians who
have been almost always accepted tin
quite lately as the purest representatives
Of the unmixed Aryan blood.
The general result of this mastery and
exhaustive SURVEYOR, brief and popu-
lar as 1t is, it deserves to be called both
mastery and exhaustive-will be to de-
throne that almost mythical animal, our
Aryan ancestor, from the pinnacle Of
superiority on which he had been placed
by the poetic fancy Of fashionable Max
Mullerism. 1t is hardly too much to say
that Canon Taylor has demolished for
ever our Aryan ancestor-the idyllic an
cestor, that is to say, that we all knew
and loved and were 80 Unfortunately proud
of. His searching examination of the
neolithic culture shows us almost conclu-
sively that the primitive Aryans were
barbarians in very early stage of no.
mad existence, unacquainted with met
ais, clad mainly in skins, dwelling by
summer in huts and by winter in circu-
lar rooted pits, but roaming for the most
part in wagons with their focks and
herds over an immense area of sparsely
populated pastoral country.
They were not advanced philosophers;
they were pure minded poetical patri-
archs; and they were not UNNECESSARILY
superior to all other competitors. Few
things have been done in reconstruction-
airy history to equal the interesting chap
ter on the Neolithic Culture, in which
our latest iconoclast proves bit by bit,
and step by step, these two cardinal
rinciples-frst, that the neolithic in
habitants Of Central Europe were, some
Of them at least, primitive Aryans, and,
secondly, that their civilization is shown
dence to have reached only the simple
and undeveloped level of pastoral tribe
In its stone age.
Hardly less valuable than this are the
chapters on the Aryan race, in which
our author discusses with perfect candor
and freedom from bias or prejudice the
question whether the primitive Aryan is
to be identified with the dolichocephaic
or the brachycephalic type; that on the
evolution of Aryan speech, in which he
traces in great part the origin of the
various languages into which the Aryan
tongue split up in its diffusion to racial
or local peculiarities of voice and voice
organ in non-Aryans who adopted with
variations) the dialect of their more cul-
tivated neighbors, and, above all, that on
the Aryan mythology, which almost
completely pulverizes the supposed COM
mon pantheon and executes a delightful
triumphal dance over the PROSTATE bodies
of the Vedic deities.
Altogether, the book is most whole
some protest against an undigested mass
Of improved assumptions. The pendu-
lum may possibly have swung for the
moment trifie too far in the opposite
direction; but it is great gain at least
to havereduced our Aryan ancestor from
the exalted and incongruous position of
a sort Of primitive breechless Oxford don
to something like prosaic and average
equality with the general run of semi
civilized neolithic European herdsmen.