Recent researches have rendered it very doubtful whether the
primitive seat of Hindoo civilization -- one of the most remarkable phases
in the progress of mankind -- was actually within the tropics. Airyana
Vaedjo, the ancient cradle of the Zend, was situated to the northwest of the
upper Indus, and after the great religious schism, that is to say, after the
separation of the Iranians from the Brahminical institution, the language
that had previously been common to them and to the Hindoos assumed among the
latter people (together with the literature, habits, and conditions of
society) an individual form in the Magodha of Madhya Desa,* a district that
is bounded by the great chain
p 36
of Himalaya and the smaller range of the Vindhya.
[footnote] *See, on the Madhjadeca, properly so called, Lassen's excellent
work, entitled 'Indische Alterthumskunde', bd. i., s. 92. The Chinese give
the name of Mo-kie-thi to the southern Bahar, situated to the south of the
Ganges (see 'Foe-Koue-Ki' by, 'Chy-Fa-Hian', 1836, p. 256). Djambu-dwipa is
the name given to the whole of India; but the words also indicate one of the
four Buddhist continents.
In less ancient times the Sanscrit language and civilization advanced toward
the southeast, penetrating further within the torrid zone, as my brother
Wilhelm von Humboldt has shown in his great work on the Kavi and other
languages of analogous structure.
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