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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1928
impression of a people living in a temporate climate theory, apparently because the evidence available where enow and ice were at times to be known, and must clearly be literary and so too late. But leBurrounded by the animals which are still found in gends-though necessarily now literary-refer back such a zone of the earth. Also the few trees which to the very earliest times, as they always relate are proved by etymology to have existed in those fundamentally what the ancesters thought. I cansurroundings-viz., the birch, the willow and the not but help thinking that, if one could go back far fir tree-are such that are usually met with in enough, they might help in solving the difficulty of countries with a rather severe climate." Keeping such & question as that of Indo-European origins. in mind that the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic
Let me give an illustration. For years I have been people probably roaming over very large areas,"
investigating the widely spread belief that it is posProfessor Charpentier states that their home has to
sible to attain immortality for the body by drinking be looked for (p. 160) either in Asia or in Europe :
of the well, pool, fountain or river of life. I can no other continent could in earnest be taken into trace it to the earliest known Semitio and Babyloconsideration, nor has this, to my knowledge at nian tiines, but of course only after the pooples had least, ever been done." Then, after considering become considerably civilised. I find it spread all the various parts of the Europeo Asiatic continent, over Europe and Asia as far as Central Asia and India, which have been held to be the original home of the and also wherever the Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Indo-Europeans, Professor Charpentier arrives at Hindu Religions have had influence. But it does the conclusion that the only region containing the not appear, from such evidence as I have so far, in necessary qualifications lies in the Central Asian China or in the countries dependent on Chinese plains. "No part of Asia (p. 164) answers quite religion, as distinguished from the forms of Buddhism to this description, except the regions to the East there current and acquired from Central Asia and of the Caspean Sea, which are generally called India. Now, if it be true, as has been asserted, that Central Asia, with the neighbouring plains of Tur- the Chinese came originally from Central Asia, then kestan, where formerly conditions of living were far the above fact-assuming it to be correct and easier than now-a-days... They were pro. unassailable-would go to show that the original bably near neighbours of the Mongolians, Hung, Indo-Europeans and the original Chinese were once etc., tribes who led the same mode of life."
-A9 Professor Charpentier infers-neighbouring Professor Charpentier then considers the migra
nomads and racially separate tribes. It must be tions of the people West, South-west and South,
here remembered also that there is a fundamental and also to the Eastwards. Here he has a ro
difference in religious instinct, between the Indomarkable passage worth quoting (p. 165): "Finally
European and the Chinese. The Semitic and the at the end of the third pre-Christian century, a
Indo-European races are imbued with the idea of a Chinese Emperor had to begin the building of the
universal God, but the Chinese have no such instinct. famous wall, which was to protect his subjects from
This fundamental instinct exists in spite of the the inroads of the northern and western barbarians,
ancestor.worship and the worship of Heaven, which It has been said, with a certain amount of truth,
is characteristic of both. It may be useful to investhat the erection of this protective wall did strongly
tigate this point, which has struck the present writer
forcibly whenever he has investigated the beliefs of influence the later fates of the Roman Empire. For now the turbulent elements of the interior of Asia
tribes traceable to a common origin with the Chinese. were driven to resort to the southern and western
I observe that Professor Charpentier remarks areas of expansion, and the result of their furious
į (p. 158) that "it seems to be a legitimate concluonslaughts were soon felt both in Iran, India and
sion that the Indo-Europeans had a cult of the throughout the western world." The Professor
spirits of their ancestors, though they did not, as a then considers later migrations from the 2nd con
rule, consider the dead as malignant and blood tury. B.C. onwards " a migration (p. 166) which
thirsty beings, as is, e.g., the case of the non-Aryan spread like the ripplings of a wave over great parts
tribes of India." And again he says (p. 159) that the of the Asiatic, and, at times, even the European
Indo-Europeans "worshipped the spirits of their Continent." Lastly he goes into the question of
dead ancestors, who were, at times, undoubtedly con
sidered to be rather dangerous customers, but who various other early migrations.
were, on the other hand, never looked upon in the Personally, I am glad of these lectures, for I have
same way as that crowd of malignant and bloodalways felt that the only safe assumption for the
loving ghosts that are haunting jungle and village Aryan migrations into India and Europe was that over the greater part of India." In these remarks they must have started from Central Asia, East of I heartily agree. Degrading practices, often put the Caspean. With that assumption as a base the down by the uno beervant to Hinduism ag & religion, argument is straightforward and comparatively easy. are in truth but superstitious grafts acquired from With the assumption that the original moving tribes the primitive or surrounding non-Aryans or from came from somewhere in Europe-even from non-Aryan converts to Hinduism-the eclectic South Russia-the argument is obscured and difficult.
nature of that religion rendering it peculiarly liable Professor Charpentier has apparently ruled Lo
to such acquisitions. gend out of his purview as a possible support of his
R. C. TEMPLE.
