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Art. VII.—The Languages of the Caucasus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

There are two or three corners in the world's surface, in which a strange collection of diverse languages is found, the survivals of extinct races, once great and strong. The Central Provinces of India, the refuge of the Kolarian aboriginal tribes; the hills and valleys of Abyssinia, in which remnants of Hamitic, or even Pre-Hamitic, races, pushed aside by the advent of the powerful Semites, are still found: the plateau of Tibet, and the Eastern slopes of that plateau: all these three are instances of the phenomena, which I describe: but none is so noticeable as the Range of the Caucasus, one of the dividing lines of Europe and Asia. As after a great hunt animals of all descriptions and sizes take refuge in some secure copse, or some unapproachable mountain, so, when the great Procession of the Indo-European or Aryan, races from their primeval home on the Hindu Kúsh commenced, all the Pre-Aryan races, which were not destroyed, were pushed aside. In the West of Europe there is one solitary survival, the Basque in the Pyrenees: on the extreme East of Europe we find a cluster of languages in the Caucasus, which are neither Aryan, nor Semitic, nor Altaic.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1885

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References

1 See J.R.A.S. (o.s.) Vol. XI. p. 176, and Williams's Sanskrit Dictionary, p. 985. S. “sáns,” G. “sagen,” E. “say.” We have no proof whether the word is “Tati,” as written by the Russians, or “Thati.”