priests and rulers have gone forth from the intelligent classes, carrying with them their superior skill and learning, and have joined Nomadic tribes, becoming their leaders, and seeking other homes. There is evidence of several such great migrations from the districts above referred to, the discussion of which it is impossible to enter upon here. It will be sufficient to notice a few only of the opinions which writers on the subject have arrived at.
Sir W. Jones, in a series of discourses before the Asiatic Society of Calcutta in 1792, after a general survey of Asiatic nations, arrived at the conclusion that the Persians, the Indians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Goths, and the old Egyptians, all originally spoke the language and professed the same popular faith, and this he conceived to be capable of incontestible proof.
Since that time, the theory thus propounded has gained strength. Many Oriental scholars have been engaged in a comparison of the languages, religions, customs, occupations, and the Mythologies of different nations of the earth, and their investigation has led them to the knowledge of a great body of facts, the explanation of which has become of great importance in the right interpretation of history. To all who have been thus engaged in the enquiry, it has brought the conviction that the Sanscrit, the Zend, and all European languages, are related to each other, and that the differences observed between them have arisen from the admixture of races, caused by great migrations from Central Asia.
Sir W. Jones considered it probable that the settlers in China and Japan had also a common origin with the Hindus and Persians, and he remarks that, however they may at present be dispersed and intermixed, they must have migrated from a central country, to find which was the problem proposed for solution. He suggests Irania as the central country, but he contends for the approximate locality rather than for its name.
Dr. O. Shrader, in his "Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples," has described the very various opinions, expressed by
