“rough,” “uneven.” In Yezo there are two place-names in which the word occurs, one near Sapporo, namely Garu-pet, “turbulent stream,” (a name which quite agrees with the nature of the stream here), and Garu-ush-i “the rough place,” the name of a locality not many miles from Horobetsu near Mororan. This place also is a very uneven locality having many soft sulpheric hillocks cast up about it by volcanic action with a number of hot water springs among them.
A, also, both in Welsh and Ainu are the same in some instances. Thus:—In both it is used as an interrogative adverb, and in both also as the pronoun, “who,” “which,” “that.” An too seems to be alike in some instances in both languages, for in both it is used as a partitive particle. The resemblance also of Ainu gur’, guru to welsh gwr is very curious, for in both languages this word means a “person,” a “man.” The word i too, is another instance of an interesting analogy, for in both languages it is used as the objective pronoun “me,” and also by way of emphasis and intensity. So likeness is the vowel e. In Welsh this is the pronoun “he,” “she,” “it”; while in Ainu it is the ordinary objective particle meaning “him,” “it,” “her.” In Welsh O means “from,” “out of”; So it does in Ainu also.
Speaking of the vowels, a carries one thoughts on through an “to be” to the sanscrit verb of existence as. Speaking of this word Max Müller says:—“You know, of course, that the whole language of ancient India is but a sister dialect of Greek, Latin, of German, Cetic, and Slavonic, and that if the Greek says el-Latn, “he is,” if the Roman says est, the German ist, the Slav yeste, the Hindu, three thousand year ago, said as-ti, “he is.” This asti is a compound root as, “to be,” and the pronoun ti. The root originally meant “to breathe,” and dwindled down after a time to the meaning of “to be.”[1]
This is all most interesting when viewed in the light of Ainu studies. In Ainu the verb of existence is a, an, ash, on for the singular, and for the plural. Compare also the Greek ὁν and
- ↑ Intro: to the Science of Religion page 393.
