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LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
source, we must never forget that, as yet, we are building hypothesis on hypothesis only, and that our pleading for the existence of common Turanian concepts of the Divine cannot count on the same willing acceptance which is readily accorded to arguments in favour of common Aryan and Semitic concepts of the Deity. On the other hand it should be borne in mind that, if we succeeded in establishing the existence of names of the Deity shared in common by some at least of the Turanian peoples, this would supply a new and very important support of the theory that the Turanian languages possess indeed a common prehistoric beginning, and a common historic continuity.
If we take the religion of China as the earliest representative of Turanian worship, the question is, whether we can find any names of the Deity in Chinese which appear again in the religions and mythologies of other Turanian tribes, such as the Mandshus, the Mongolians, the Tatars, or Finns. I confess that, considering the changing and shifting character of the Turanian languages, considering also the long interval of time that must have passed between the first linguistic and religious settlement in China, and the later gradual and imperfect consolidation of the other Turanian races, I was not very sanguine in my expectation that any such names as Dyaus pitar among the Aryans, or El and Baal among the Shemites, could have survived in the religious traditions of the vast Turanian world. Such preconceived opinions, however, ought not to keep us from further researches, and if what we find is but little, we must never forget that we have hardly a right to expect even this little. There are in researches of this kind
