Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

extreme south and towards Chili; finally, Gochabamba in Bolivia, and Caltchaki on the eastern slope of the Andes, surround the somewhat narrow domain of Aymara, which appears to be entirely distinct from these. The mechanism of Quicha seems to be nearly identical with that of the other agglutinative idioms of America; relatively rich in compounds of a reasonable length (tchimpu, cloud, rasu, block of snow, Chimborazo), it abounds in forms with suffixes and in derivatives of great length. It has no gender; the noun and the verb are confounded; the particles of case, the personal and possessive pronouns, suffice for all the shades of thought. The language is guttural and affects doubled. initial letters, ttanta, bread, ppatcha, dress. Spoken

side by side with Spanish in the towns of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and almost exclusively in the mountainous districts, and in the north-west of the Argentine Republic, Quicha has furnished to Spanish a number of geographical and local terms, among others the names of the llama, the vigogne, and the alpaca. It was not written before the conquest; the Peruvians, in spite of their advanced civilisation, had not even attained to the riddles of the hieroglyph; they still used knots of different coloured ribbons as mnemonics. These were called quipos, and have a family likeness to the rows of seeds or shells which the Red Indians of the north threw in front of them to mark the different stages of their discourse.

The Peruvians, like the Mexicans, have survived in great numbers the terrible Catholic invasion, and though long overwhelmed by the blow which had fallen on them, long stupefied by superstitions far inferior to their ancient religious beliefs, they are now raising their heads and claiming their place among free peoples. The rest of the American peoples, the most

vigorous, the most worthy to live, have perished or are about to disappear before the greed of the European immigrants. Without hunting-grounds, without game, they are condemned to die out. Only the poorest specimens of American humanity, the Abipones, the Charruas, the Botocudos, and in the extreme north the Kienas and the Athabasks, the dwellers in thickets, in deserts, in the torrid or the frozen zones, may count upon a respite of a few centuries.

Our summary review of the agglutinative languages is terminated. We have seen that, simple or complex, their structure is founded solely upon the addition, to one or more invariable themes or radicals, of subordinate roots, emptied of their proper sense and reduced to affixes, suffixes, infixes, and prefixes. The immense majority of these languages have never been written: driven out to the borders of civilisation, into countries not easily approachable by Europeans, they continue to vegetate obscurely. But a few more favoured groups, preserved, and even developed, by civilisation, have attained to some literary life. Japanese, Mandchu, Mongolian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Dravidian, Malay, Georgian, Basque, Greenland, Algonquin, Mexican, and Quicha have all contributed, in very different measure indeed, to the progress of human intelligence. Their names are worthy to be remembered.

We pass by an easy transition from the agglutinative class to the inflected class. We shall find in the latter all that can be done by suffixation. A single thread separates inflexion from agglutination—that is, the possible variation of the root syllable; a very slight acquisition, which, while it stops the abuse of suffixation, allows of the expression of every shade of the idea without lengthening the word, and also of attaching a general idea to all the derivatives from the same root.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SEMITIC WORLD.

Noah, Ham, and Shem-Conjectures on the origin of the Semites— Ethnical variety, linguistic unity-Exodus of the Canaanites : Hyksos, Phoenicians, Hebrews-Jews and Syrians crushed in the struggle with Egypt and Assyrians-Rule of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans-Appearance of the Arabs—Christianity and Islam— Tardy revenge of the Semites-Character of the inflexion and structure of the word in the Semitic languages-Northern branch of the Semitic family-1. Arameo-Assyrian group: Chaldean, Nabatean, Syriac, Syro-Chaldean, Assyrian - 2. Canaanitish group: Phoenician, Punic, Samaritan, Moabitish, &c., HebrewSouthern branch: Arabic, Himyarite, Ghez or Ethiopian.

THE peoples whom we are accustomed to call Semitic have always ignored their relations with the Biblical patriarch Shem, son of Noah. But if we disregard the letter of the precious record, compiled and recast many centuries after the events which are therein transformed into legendary fables, if we consider in themselves the names of Noah, Ham, Shem, and Cush, we shall readily overlook the inexactitude of the name given by the moderns to the Chaldeans, the Arameans, the Canaanites, and to the Arabs. For Noah is a Semitic god of great antiquity, Nouach, a genius with four outspread wings, god and saviour, the spouse of Tihavti, the fecundity of the abyss; Ham was Khemos, the god of the Moabites, and perhaps identical with the Egyptian Khem; we find Cush among the Cossians or Kissians of the Euphrates, and among the southern peoples whom the Pharaohs fought on the

two shores of the Red Sea; "the vile Cush," said the Egyptians; but they none the less gave to their royal princes the title of Prince of Cush, which shows the importance which they attached to the subjugation of these Cush or Cushites, the Ethiopians of Herodotus, cut in two by the Semitic expansion; as for Shem, it is difficult not to recognise in him Samas, Samson, the sun-god of the Assyrian pantheon.

Cushites, Hamites, Semites are far from being synonyms; but it is hardly possible to doubt their relationship, or at least the intimacy of their primitive connection. Only it is very difficult to determine the vicissitudes of their prehistoric life. Experts differ; some, M. Renan, for example, assigning to the Semites a northern origin; others think, with Echrader, that the nucleus of the race was formed in the centre and west of the Arabian peninsula, where the language approaches most nearly to the supposed mother-tongue, where the Chaldean legends and divinities have least penetrated, though they form the common ground of thought among the other Semites. Finally, since philologists are agreed in recognising affinities, rudimentary but probable, between the Khamito-Berbers and the Semites, it is hard to conjecture where they both came from, or where we should place the common country where they possessed a common idiom.

We must be content to know that their separation was accomplished at the time when Menes came down. from Upper Egypt to the Delta to found the ancient empire and Memphis, about five thousand years before our era. At that date the languages of the Nile and of the Libyan desert had reached the extreme limit of the agglutinative stage, which they have not over-stepped; and the Semites were doubtless progressing towards

the inflected period. Thenceforward the two races have no point of contact except the Isthmus of Suez. The one, without advancing farther than Mount Sinai, develops its precocious yet enduring civilisation, builds towns, pyramids, and temples, and, from the worship of animals and of the Nile, rises to the religion. of the sun, of fire, and to the belief in immortality. The other, wandering without name or route, given up to the worship of stones and of the heavenly bodies, fluctuates between Nedjed and the Euphrates; for two thousand years it is lost to history. At most, we may attribute to some attack on the part of the nomads the fall of the first Egyptian empire and the retreat of the Pharaohs to Thebes.

When history first takes cognisance of the Semites, the practically unchanging unity of their linguistic organism was constituted, and much more strongly than the Indo-European unity. The dialectic differences do not affect either the formation of the words or the vocabulary, but only a few details of grammar and pronunciation. But ethnical unity exists no longer. If the Arab with his high, long head, his slender, nervous body, his profile at once strongly marked and refined, may be considered as the faithful guardian of the racial type, the thick-set build of the Chaldean, the tendency to fat and the massive face of the Assyrian, point to various mixtures with more ancient peoples.

We have already mentioned the very probable existence of non-Semitic races and languages, Shumirians and Elamites, round about the Persian Gulf, in Babylonia and Susiana. There, in these regions of ancient civilisation, several Semitic groups obtained their industrial and religious education. At the time when the Shumir Likbagas (3000) reigned in Chaldea,

« ÎnapoiContinuă »