March of the Aryan
not south, according to the popular view, but right hand, because- the Aryans found it on their right in their downward progress. The agglutinative language*[1] is perhaps a link between this region, and the early civilizations of Eurasia and Eurafrica. The Aryans are said to have produced the articles which Dravidian traders took to Babylonia and Asia Minor. But it requires a good deal of imagination to picture a connexion with pre-Semitic Mesopotamia (using the word in the wider sense) and India.
THE ARYAN HOME.
The Aryan home seems to have been (as we might suspect) the most fertile and the richest part of the country. It was an adoptive home, and it is to be feared that the original possessors had to be dislodged before it could be occupied, a process which we repeatedly witnessed in the great drama of ancient history which we glanced at in the last volume. We may conjecture that the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes were the first to attract our cousins, regions probably much more fertile in those early days than they are at present. The next steps may have been through Badakshan and Khokand (?) to the valley of the Helmund (Seistan), and when Indian soil was actually invaded, the region to succumb first can be guessed by anyone at all acquainted with the subject. It is the great 'gate' or 'key'of India, lying on the route which her invaders have always chosen, the only part of the country really demanding attention on the
- ↑ The philologist ought, perhaps, to tell us if the non-Aryan languages of India - Telugu, Canarese, etc. - really suggest such a link.
