Celtic Mythology and Religion

THE ARYAN NATION. 31
Aryans were organised in communities framed on
the model of the patriarchal household. They had
adopted a system of regular marriage with an
elaborate grading of kinships and marriage affinities.
In the household the father was king and priest,
for there was also a family religion ;
the wife and the
rest of the family, though subservient to the patria
fotestas, were far from being slaves ; while, outside
the household, grades and ranks of nobility or kinship
were strictly marked. Comfortable houses
and clustered villages, clearings and stations, with
paths and roads were in existence ; the precious
metals, together with copper, tin, and bronze, were
in use, but iron was probably unknown. The
domestic animals had long been tamed and named,
for cattle and flocks composed their chief wealth,
though the plough tilled the field and corn was grown
and crushed in the mills and querns. They could
count to one hundred at the very least, for the root
of ceud, " hund-red," is common to all the descendant
tongues, and they had divided the year into seasons
and months—a fact which is especially proved by
the root for month being taken from the name given
to the moon, " the measurer." They spoke a language
that was highly inflected and complex ;
that
is to say, the relation between words and the relations
of time (or tense) and mood were expressed by
changes in the terminations of words. On the
whole, the Aryans were high in the barbaric state of
culture, as opposed, on the one hand to the savage,