The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains.  This country was so cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was difficult to support life.  But the people, inured to hardship and privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.

It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists, which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their various modifications in different living languages, to see how the lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan roots.  And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,—­so imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech!  By this process, then, we learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance in civilization.  They lived in houses which were roofed, which had windows and doors.  Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold climates.  Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog.  They used yokes, axes, and ploughs.  They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords.  They had clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.  Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural affections.  Polygamy was unknown among them.  They had no established sacerdotal priesthood.  They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their dreary land.  Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others again pantheistic.

Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests, who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their influence.  Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,—­which is my own conviction,—­it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the sun and moon and planets.  I believe this to have been a corruption of original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in the religious sense of primitive man.  In all the ancient nations the sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence of fertility to the earth.  The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of Agni,—­the Latin ignis.