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THE HERITAGE OF ARYAN PEOPLES 145 of the last century, that this language should be a scion of the same stem whose branches overshadowed the civilized world of Europe, no one would have ventured to affirm before the rise of comparative philology. It was the generally received opinion that if Greek, Latin and German came from the East --they must be derived from the Hebrew ... an opinion for which, at the present day, not a single advocate could be found. ... There is not an English jury nowadays which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would repel the claims of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek and Teuton. ... Though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Sclavs, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together beneath the same roof.”
The original Aryan stock, in its migrations from the high valleys of Central Asia, eventually separated into two branches of the Irano-Aryans and the Indo-Aryans, the former establishing themselves in Bactria, Parthia, and Media, and advancing towards the Persian Gulf; the latter crossing the Hindu Kush range and occupying Kabul and the Indus country towards the Ganges,
