SECTION V. NATURAL GENESIS AND TYPOLOGY OF PRIMORDIAL ONOMATOPOEIA AND ABORIGINAL AFRICAN SOUNDS. (Pythagoras taught that "Number" was the wisest of all things, and next to that the "Namer.") CONCERNING the origin of language it may be briefly affirmed that very little is known, and nothing absolutely established. Also that the help to be derived from mere theorisers on the subject is chiefly negative. Hitherto the "science of language" has been founded, and its ORIGINS have been discussed, without the ideographic symbols and the gesture-signs being ever taken into account. The Aryanists have laboured to set the great pyramid of language on its apex in Asia, instead of its base in Africa, where we have now to seek for the veriest beginnings. My appeal is made to anthropologists, ethnologists, and evolutionists, not to mere philologists limited to the Aryan area, who, as non-evolutionists, have laid fast hold at the wrong end of things. The Inner African languages prove that words had earlier forms than those which have become the "roots" of the Aryanists. For example, Max Müller has said that in the word Asu (Sansk.), which denotes the vital breath, the original meaning of the root "As" has been preserved. "As, in order to give rise to such a noun as Asu, must have meant to breathe; then to live; then to exist; and it must have passed through all these stages before it could have been used as the abstract auxiliary verb which we find not only in Sanskrit, but in all the Aryan languages. Unless this one derivative, Asu, life, had been preserved in Sanskrit, it would have been impossible to guess the original material meaning of the root As, to be." Here the African languages show that Asu, to breathe, is not a primary of speech; no vowel is primary in the earliest formation of words. In Egyptian Ses is to breathe, and in Africa beyond— Zuzu, is to breathe, in Basa. Yisie Zo Zuzu, is to breathe, in Nupe. Zuzu Zuzu Zuezui Esitako. Kupa. い 1 Lectures, vol. ii. p. 349. The duplicated sound was first, because, as will be maintained, language originated in the conscious duplication and repetition of sounds. Ses (Eg.) also denotes the brood or breathing mare, a type of the gestator and mother of life, as Ses-Mut. And in Inner Africa the mare is named Sosa, in Gbese. Sosa, in Toma. Sosi, in Hwida. Soasi, in Dahome. Soasi, in Mahi. Seses, a gnostic form of Tesas (Neith or Isis) is also the Mother of Breath. This is further corroborated by Ziz (or Zi) in Assyrian, for the inherent life or soul; and by Zuza in Zulu Kaffir, applied to the breathing life of the unborn child. The Latin Esse, to be, has preserved both the s's found in Ses, to breathe. It has been asked, How did Da (Sanskrit) come to mean giving? Professor Noiré holds that primitive man accidentally said "Dā." And there we have a "root" of language! But Da is only a worn-down form of word found in Sanskrit. It is the Egyptian Ta, to give and take; also a gift. The full hieroglyphic word is Tat, and it belongs to the stage of mere duplicated sounds and gesture-signs. It is written with the hand, which is the Tat ideograph; English Daddle for the fist; the Inner African Ntata, the Hand, Meto. Long before the abstract idea of giving was conveyed by Da or Tâ, the Tat was presented in gesture-language with the offering, or in the act of offering. The hand, however, is not the only Tat, Tut, or T. Another hieroglyphic, Ta (or Tu), is the female Mamma,, the English Teat and Titty; Welsh, Did and Teth; Basque, Titia; Greek, Titthe; Malayan, Dada, and Hebrew Dad, for the teat or breast. These forms of the name retain the ideographic sound of TT. The mammæ sign is the Egyptian feminine article The; also a name of food, and to drop. "Tat-tat" is a sound that inay have originated with the child in sucking. It is still made by the nurse when offering the mamma, the primordial giver of food, to the child. Moreover the Da personified in Sanskrit is the wife, corresponding to the Egyptian Tâ. Language certainly did not originate with the "roots" of the Aryanists, which are the worn-down forms of earlier words. It did not begin with “abstract roots," nor with dictionary words at all, but with things, objects, gesture-signs, and involuntary sounds. Ntata, the Hand, Matatan, Tata, the Hand, Igu. Comparative philology, working with words in their later phase, divorced from things, is responsible for the false inference (one amongst many) that until recent times, later than those of the Veda, the Avesta, the Hebrew, and Homeric writings-men were deficient in the perception of colour; that there was, in fact, a condition of Miopoeia answering to their insanity of Mythopoeia. Geiger has even asserted that the language-maker must have been blue-blind. Max Müller 1 Geiger, Vorträge zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, p. 45, 1871. has affirmed that the blue heaven does not appear in the Veda, the Avesta, or the Old Testament. It is true that language did not commence by naming those mere appearances of things in which the comparative mythologists take such inordinate delight; true that colours are among those appearances and qualities, just as white is of wheat-when ground into flour. Many early languages have no word for blue as a colour, and yet blue as a thing may be found in them. The Ja-jow-er-ong dialect of Australia uses the sky itself, "woorerwoorer," for blue. That was the thing. In Maori and Mangaian there may be no name for blue as hue and tint; but this does not show that the people did not know the blue heaven from the white or red heaven when they saw it. The "Zulu" name signifies heaven, as The Blue. Hence, deep water is called Zulu. Zulura, for the blue thing, literally means skyishness. In Pazand the word Açma denotes both stone and heaven, and, as shown by the Minokhird, heaven was identical with precious stone. The Hebrew heaven is the paved work of sapphire stone beneath the feet of the eternal.1 Samu (Ass.) is both sky and blue. The Egyptian name for blue is Khesbet; that is, lapis-lazuli. The Egyptian Heaven was either the Blue Stone, the blue tempertinted steel, or the blue sea overhead. The water above is the blue heaven, and in the Ritual the blue called the "Upper Waters" is identified with the blue Woof of Heaven in the worship of Uat, Goddess of the Northern Heaven.2 If a language does not possess a word for blue as a colour, it may for a blue stone, and certainly will for water. A lesson in the primitive system of colour-naming may be learned from the Hottentot language in which the word for colour itself is īsib, signifying form, shape, likeness, and appearance. Such a word includes various qualities and properties of things under one name. Yellow (Huni) means the ground-colour, the sandy soil; Brown (Gamab) is the vley-colour, i.e. the bottom of a dried-up pond; Red (Ava) is the blood-colour; Grey (Khan) is the colour of the Bos Elaphus; Spotted (Garu) means the Leopard; White is egg-coloured; Am for green, originally meant springing up and shooting forth like the verdure.3 Hence when the rainbow is also called Am the sense is not limited to the green-colour, because it likewise springs forth spontaneously. This serves to show how the primitive thinkers thought in things when distinguishing properties, qualities, or appearances; how things first suggested the ideas that were afterwards conveyed by words; and how the more abstract forms of phenomena took names in language by means of the concrete,-the unknown being expressed in typology by means of the known. 1 Ex. xxiv. 10. 2 Ritual, Ch. 110. 3 Hahn, Tsuni Goam, p. 26. Power of perceiving qualities and distinguishing things did not depend on the possession of words to express shades of difference. Sweet could be distinguished from bitter when the one was only expressed by the mouth watering, and a smack of gustativeness; the other by spitting with the accompaniment of an interjection of repugnance. So far from "conscious perception being impossible,' without a word for each colour, the one word Uat (Eg.) for water does duty for several colours, for blue and green water, various paints, plants, and stones. Perception of different colours did not depend on divers words; one served with several determinatives in things. The early men thought in things and images where we think in words, or think we think. Plutarch says, "They that have not learned the true sense of words will mistake also in the nature of things." 1 So we may say that those who have not learned the true nature of things will mistake the sense of words. Professor Sayce holds that there is " no reason in the nature of things why the word Book should represent the volume which might just as well be denoted by Biblion." But the "nature of things," tells us the Book was the tablet of beech-bark in Britain and the ¡ palm (Buka) of Taht in Egypt. The Biblion from Bib (Eg.) to roll or be round, had been the roll of papyrus before it was the book. Indeed the oldest words can only tell the most important part of their history when re-related to things. Mere philology can never reach the origins for lack of determinatives. The Egyptian "Kam" may be quoted to indicate the relationship of words to things. Kam signifies black; and Plutarch tells us the Egyptians applied the word to the dark of the eye, the Mirror. The dark was the Mother as reproducer of light. The pupil of the eye reproduces the image. To reproduce is to beget, hence "Kam," also meant to form, to create. Here the word branches out in the region of things and modes of action; there being various means of forming and creating. Egypt was literally created by the Nile, and named. Kam, not merely as the Black land! The sculptor forms and creates the image by carving; and "Kam" also signifies to carve. That which is carved may become the "Kam-hu" (Eg.) a joint of meat, or the "Cameo," a carven image, the root for which word has never been found.2 The Word at first was but a wavering, wandering shadow of things which are the determinatives of its meanings that only become finally definite in the ideographical phase which the Aryanists have entirely ignored. There is no way of attaining the early standpoint and getting back to an origin for words except by learning once more to think in things, images, ideographs, hieroglyphics, and gesture-signs. The 1 Of Isis and Osiris. 2 Cf. Kamut (Eg.) to carve, or a carving. Lepsius, Denkmäler, &c., 48, A. Kam also interchanges with Kan, for carving in ivory. primary modes of expression have now to be sought in their birthplace. In Africa only shall we find the most rudimentary articulation of human sounds, which accompanied gesture-signs and preceded verbal speech. The clicks, the formation of words by the duplication of sounds, the original types of expression, must be allowed to have been evolved in Africa until it can be shown how they came there otherwise. The African dialects, spread over vast spaces of country, point to an original unity in a language which may not be extant for the grammarian, and certainly will not now be discovered intact by the traveller. The earliest forms can only be found in the primary stratum of language, that is, in gesture-signs, the primitive modes of articulation, and in aboriginal sounds, although further connecting links of construction may be established, There is of course a kind of grammatical sequence in the order of gesture-signs. From the present stand-point it would be idle to discuss whether the roots of language were at first verbal or nominal. Where should we begin? With which, or what language? In Maori, the same word at different times assumes the functions of several parts of speech. We also find that in languages like the old Egyptian and Chinese, the same word did duty as noun and verb or other parts of speech; and one word or sound had to serve at first for various uses, whether these are called the names of things and actions in one aspect, or "parts of speech" in another. Gesture-language shows that verbs as words were the least wanted, and therefore the last named. Verbs would be first enacted before they were uttered in what we could recognise as speech. A Cross is the hieroglyphic sign of verbs in general, and the hands were crossed in reckoning; the sexes crossed; the sun, moon and stars were observed to cross before there was a verb signifying to Cross. A pair of feet Going is the sign of the transitive verb to Go, and Going pourtrayed in several forms preceded any abstract word for to Go. So far as gesture-language was primary, the verbs may have been first, but their signification was chiefly conveyed by the action. A Na-wa-gi-jig's story, in Ojibwa, told orally and with gesture-signs shows that Gestures only were used to indicate the " old man," "many," "happening," "quickly," " hatchet" (to cut), "going," "starting," "wind blowing," "ice moving off," " to a distance," "cutting the ice," "it is so thick," "number two," "tired," "by turns," "together," "twisted three cords," "tied three together," "threw it out," "no go," "repeatedly," "drifted out," "we two," "nearly sundown." The analysis shows that the speaker who had words for his Verbs and Numbers naturally preferred to indicate these by gesture-signs, which were like the actions of an orator only they took the place of the words and made them unnecessary, because they had existed prior to such an application of words. Also the reduction of the noun to 1 Mallery, Sign Language, pp. 519-520. |