Forlong - Rivers of Life

xxiv
Preface.
Shemitik, or other tongues, but not more so than to get at the base of faiths and
legends. We must begin by ransacking all such historical or quasi-historical reminiscences
as can be gleaned regarding those vastly old races, which for lack of a better name
may be termed Turona-Aithiopes, Cushites, Meru-opes, &c. These, upon leaving the
High-Asian cradle become known to us from many sources as Eruthræ, Akads, Āds,
Khems, Hamatha, Chams or Hamites, Kheta or Kutus, Kuths or Cushites, &c.; and
for one hundred years back, divers archeologists, historians and philologists, have told
us to look mid-Asian-ways for sach races, if we would know the sources of language,
art and civilization, as well as of worship and its symbolisms in those early Religions
spoken of by some of us too arrogantly as “ Folk-lore,” “Theories,” or “Systems.” To
the development of these questions much of this work is necessarily devoted, and at
page 548 Vol. II. will be found, roughly but typographically tabulated the races,
tribes or communities which have to be more especially considered.
It is not in historic times nor near to the days of Vedas or any Bibles that
spinning, weaving, building and mining, nay, nor writing, sprang up, and especially
engraving of consonantal words, 1 for old as this last art is, it is clearly prior to the
times when religion, especially symbolic faiths, arose, and when men chanted hymns
and prayers to well defined deities—hymns which had been handed down from parent
to child, or priest to neophyte for doubtless thousands of years before being
crystalized on stone or papyri.
We are too prone like ancient Aryans—Greeks and Sankritists—to adopt their
egotism with their literature, ever thinking that what we know most of, reveals or
at least dwarfs all things else, whereas we are still only at the threshold of real knowledge
in regard to very ancient languages, and Europe has to unlearn much in regard
to faiths. We have too often divorced that which the Gods have joined togther,
and like the old Aryan, resented the fact that the fair Gbngb whom he married in
Vedik days had long been the wife of him he opprobriously termed a Daitya, thus
ignoring the great Cusha-Dwipa civilization 2 which he had stepped into as the
Shemites had done in the case of the Cush or Kuthite Akad, and the Greek in that of
Ionians and Dorians.
In all these matters we want more elbow room, and greater elasticity in our rules
1 Vowels or breathing sounds the Eastern did not trouble himself with in early days, but he
looked apon a broad ā and u, &c. as consonants, and noticed these.
2 The Arts, especially building, long preceded Aryans alike in India and the West. See Vol. II.
p. 467, &c., and an able article in the Edinburgh Review of October 1882.