A History of Agriculture in India v1.c24.5

v1.c24.5

The findings of these scholars were confirmed by Max Müller, who worked in England from 1849 to 1862 under the patronage of the Directors of the East India Company, and translated the Vedas and other sacred texts of the Hindus into English. Max Müller states that a language bears the impress of the earliest thoughts of men often buried under the layers of new thoughts, and philology reveals the very elements and roots of human speech and thought. He concluded that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Zend are sister languages derived from a common ancestral language which was spoken by the Aryans in their original home. The terms for god, house, father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, dog, cow, heart, tears, axe and tree are identical in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and German languages. The domestic animals are generally known by the same name in these languages while wild beasts have different names. “Before the Hindus migrated to the southern peninsula of Asia”, observes Max Müller, “and before the Greeks and Germans had trodden the soil of Europe, the common ancestors of these three races spoke one and the same language, [Figure: Fig. 149. The home of the Aryans is southern Russia—the land around the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. From that area they spread to Iran and Asia Minor. From Iran some hordes migrated to India (Courtesy : UNESCO)]