Rome on the Via Portuensis. The first act was to sacrifice two young pigs (porcilias piaculares) to purify the grove, which, it was held, was liable to be defiled in a religious sense by the felling of trees, and by the presence in it of any iron tool or instrument, such as was required by the lapidary who engraved on stone the records of the proceed ings. Then, after the sacrifice of a white cow, the magister drew up a minute of what had been done, and all retired to their tents. At midday they again met, settled and confirmed the minutes, and the public being now excluded, went into the depth of the grove to sacrifice a fat sheep. Returning to the temple, the thesauri, which seem to have been money collected from the people present, were placed on the altar, and the arvales arranged themselves in a line, with an attendant at each end. The attendant at one end received from the public the samples of grain and fruits which they had brought to be " touched," or blessed, and handed them to the brother next him, who passed them on till they reached the attendant at the other end, who restored them to the owners. The arvales now entered the temple, and with closed doors proceeded to dance and sing the song of the brotherhood, which is known to have been sung by them in its ancient form down to the 3d century A.D. This was followed by the election of officers for the next year, a banquet, and races. On the third day the sacrifice took place in Rome, and was of the same nature as that offered on the first day. Among the many minor occasions on which the arvales had to offer sacrifice were the birthday of an emperor, the beginning of a con sulate, an escape from danger, the starting for or return from a journey, or other event of importance to the imperial family, but especially on the 3d of January, on which day a particular form of prayer for the ruling emperor was recited, and sacrifice offered to a series of deities, male animals to male deities, and female to female. In the British Museum is a bust of Marcus Aurelius in the dress of a Frater Arvalis. (Henzen in the Hermes,
ii. p. 37; De Rossi, Annali d. List. Arch. Rom., 1858, p. 58.)ARVE, a river which rises in the Col de Balme, one of the Savoyan Alps, and passing through the valley of Chamouni, falls into the Rhone near Geneva, after a course of about 50 miles. (See Juurn. It. Geog. Soc., vol. xxvii.)
ARYAN, a technical term, applied to one of the great families of language, which extends from India to Europe, and which, for that reason, is called also Indo-European. Friedrich Schlegel, who first recognised the family rela tionship of these languages (Die Spraclie ^md Weisheit der Indier, 1808), assigned to them the name of Indo-Germanic, a name still used by preference by many scholars in Ger many (Pott, Benfey, &c.) Bopp (Vergleichende Gram- matik, vol. i. p. xxiv.) decided in favour of Indo-European as a more appropriate name for that large family of speech. Other scholars have used the names Japhetic, Sanskritic (W. von Humboldt), and Mediterranean (Ewald).
The objection to Indo-Germanic as the technical name of the whole family is that it is too long, and yet not sufficiently extensive. If the family is to be distinguished by the names of its two extreme members, the name ought to be Indo-Celtic, rather than Indo-Germanic; if by its most important members, then, as remarked by Bopp, the name should be Indo-Classic. Indo-European is an equally cumbersome name, and less correct even than Indo-Ger manic, considering that there are many languages spoken both in India and Europe which do not belong to that family. Sanskritic would be a misleading name, as coun tenancing the idea that all the members of this family are derived from Sanskrit. Japhetic seems to revive the Jewish conception of the three ancestors of the human race, Skein, Ham and Japhet and would, from the strictly Hebrew point of view, comprehend many tribes in tLo north of Asia and Europe who speak Turanian languages. Ewald, who suggested the name of Mediterranean, distin guishes, besides the Mediterranean, three other families of speech, the Northern, commonly called North Turanian or Altaic, the Semitic, and the Copto- African. He explains the name of Mediterranean by saying, that " the races speaking these languages inhabited the large central circle, surrounded by Semitic, South-Indian, Chinese, Turko- Tataric, and Bask languages " (Lehrbuch der Hebrdischen Spraclie, p. 17, note). The reason why this name has not been accepted, seems to be that locality has little to do with the essential character of languages, and that the central position once occupied by the people who spoke these tongues belongs to them no longer.
Aryan, as a name for a whole family of languages, has the advantage of being short, and, being a word of foreign origin, of lending itself more easily to any technical defini tion that may be assigned to it. It has been accepted by many writers in England, France, and India. In Ger many, too, it is used in this wide sense by Lassen and others, while some scholars have vised the term in the more restricted sense of Indo-Iranian, i.e., as compre hending the languages of India and Persia, which consti tute the south-eastern as distinct from the north-western (Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic) branch of the family.
Origin of the Word.—Aryan, as a technical term, has been borrowed from the Sanskrit arya or arya, the Zend air ya. In the later Sanskrit arya means, of a good family. It is vised as a complimentary address. Originally, how ever, it was used as a national name, and even as late as the time of the Laws of Manu, India is still called Jrya- dvarta, i.e., the abode of the Aryas. In the Veda, Arya is the name by which the believers in the gods of the Veda call themselves, in opposition to their enemies, who aro called Ddsas or Dasyus. The distinction appears in pas sages such as the following:—
I. 51, 8. "Distinguish, Indra, the Aryas and those who are Dasyus " (vi yanlhi a ryan ye" a ddsyava/i).
X. 86, 19. "I, Indra, distinguishing the Ddsa and the Arya" (vi/cinvan da sam a ryam).
We frequently read of the gods protecting the Arya and destroying his enemies.
IIL_ 34, 9. " Indra, having killed the Dasyus, protected the Aryan colour " (hatvi dasyun pra aryam vanmm avat). This looks like an ethnological distinction of colour between Aryas and Dasyus.
X. 49, 3. " I (Indra) who do not give over the Aryan name to the Dasyu " (na ya/i rare a ryam na ma dasyave).
In X. 11, 4, we read of Aryan clans, a rya/t visah.
I. 103, 3. "Indra, increase the Aryan power" (a ryam saha/i vardhaya).
VIII. 103, 1. "Agni, the increaser of the Arya" (aryasya vardhanam).
VII. 18, 7. "Indra, the companion of the Arya" (sadhamaVi a ryasya).
I. 130, 8. "Indra protected in battles the Aryan sacri- ficer" (I ndra/t samatsu yayamanam aryam_pra avat).
The gods, it is said, bring light for the Arya^
I. 59, 2. "Agni is made a light for the Arya" (tain tva dev&sa/i a^anayanta devam vaisvanara gj6iih it a ryaya) ; or, " Agni creates broad light for the Arya, driving the Dasyus from the house " (VII. 5, 6).
II. 11, 18. "He (Indra) uncovered the light for the Arya, the Dasyu was left on the left hand" (apa avriwoA <7yoti/t a ryaya ni savyata^ sadi dasyuA indra).
IV. 26, 2. " I gave the earth to the Arya, and rain to the liberal mortal " (Aham bhtdnim adaclam a ryaya ahain v?-ish<ini dasushe martyaya).
