Scythian is surely a negative rather than a
positive term, much like our Indian, or the Turanian of modern
ethnologists, used to comprehend nomads and barbarians of all sorts
and races north and east of the Black and Caspian seas. It is unsafe
to connect their name with anything as yet; it is quite as likely
that it refers to the bow and arrow as to the shield, and is
connected with our word to shoot, sceotan, skiutan, Lithuanian szau-
ti. Some of the Scythian peoples may have been Anarian, Allophylic,
Mongolian; some were demonstrably Aryan, and not only that, but
Iranian as well, as is best shown in a memoir read before the Berlin
Academy this last year; the evidence having been first indicated in
the rough by Schaffarik the Slavonic antiquary. Coins, glosses,
proper names, and inscriptions prove it. Targitaos (not -tavus) and
the rest is guess-work or wrong. Herodotus's [Greek] for the goddess
Vesta is not connected with the root div whence Devas, Deus, &c., but
the root tap, in Latin tep (of tepere, tepefacere), Slavonic tepl,
topl (for tep or top), in modern Persian tab. Thymele refers to the
hearth as the place of smoke ([Greek], thus, fumus), but familia
denotes household from famulus for fagmulus, the root fag being
equated with the Sansk. bhaj, servira. Lucan's Hesus or Esus may
fairly be compared with the Welsh Hu Gadarn by legitimate process,
but no letter-change can justify his connection with Gaisos, the
spear, not the sword, Virgil's gaesum, A.
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