Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner
-pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words.
Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the
days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of
mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest
stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had
attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand,
we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture
at this period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the
Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single
exception of --zea--, which philologically represents the Sanscrit
-yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must
indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated
plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in
the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude
the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances
of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult
in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice
among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and
Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may
all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the
other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians
only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks
they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild
in Mesopotamia,(3) not that they already cultivated grain. While,
however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light
is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most
important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly
in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification.
-Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-,