Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 2

266 THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.
becomes possible to ascertain Avbat names are ancient by the study of their
distribution. When we find allied names in Asia, Africa, Australia, and
the Americas, ^ye know this distribution must have taken place at a most
remote and early epoch. Thus distribution in space become a measure of
time, because ages are required to produce such results."
Mr Hyde Clarke has ascertained that the names for stone, axe, and
knife, are either identical or cognate in many African languages, which he
considers a strong linguistic testimony in support of the opinion that
Africa has passed through a stone age, although stone weapons are rare
on that continent.
In some of the languages of India, tlie name for arrow and bone are
closely allied. In four African languages — Bambarra, Mandingo,
Ashantee, and Yarriba — the names for arroAV are respectively bien, binni,
eben, owo ; and for horn the same, viz., bien, binni, eben, owo. The
first three of the names for horn would seem to be cognate with the Gaelic
heaiin (horn), and boinimch (arrow), is apparently derived from heann
(horn), and sath (to thrust).
On the relations between the names of weapons and stone in primitive
language, Mr Hyde Clarke make the succeeding highly interresting
remarks :—
" In the Mandingo dialects, the word for stone being kurn, it is
differentiated for knife, as muro.
" What is understood as Grimms' Law does not necessarily imply
vocal degeneracy, as is supposed, because the permutations of the sounds
or letters was in pre-historic times used for differentiation (see Tylor, and my
' Pre-historic Comparative Philology'). It is possible, and even probable,
that as different meanings were differentiated, so the differential words
were distributed among tribes, and have been propagated without any
reference to Grimms' Law.
" In Songo, the word for stone is bitamba, and that for axe, simpu ;
a differentiation, but the word for hoe is bitamba. The cause of this re-
lationship between the naming of stone and of tools and weapons is not
to be sought for. In our times stone has rather a relation to building,
but not so with people who lived in caves and trees. The flint and
obsidian chiefly attracted their attention for knives, axes, hatchets,
swords, spears, arrows, hoes, and other cutting purposes. Thus the name
of stone for other uses was merely secondary, while the widespread v&e of
stone weapons affected the early stage of language.
" As a comment on the use of the Avord stone for weapons and tools,
and as a contrast, the word for boat is obtained in Africa from calabash,
oa from tree. In Africa a boat is got up from two calabashes. The dug-
out being less used, tree is a less common equivalent for boat. The Indian
names, including the Sanskrit, conform to the African.
" One point of interest in connection with this relationship is its bear-
ing on the questions of a stone age, and on that age at an early epoch.
The philological evidence obtained from the infancy of language is to the
elTect that the words relate to a period in which stone, wood, bone, and
teeth, were used as tools and weapons, and in precedence of the discovery
and application of metals. Another matter of archniological bearing, as