TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
RESEARCH into the history of the Indo-European race -- a missing link between the latest Sanskrit and the earliest Babylonian records -- has always had a great fascination for me, and, I think, for most students and lovers of history.
When, therefore, a few years ago a copy of von Ihering's Vorgeschichte der Indo-Europaer was put into my hands, I hastened to read it, although I rather feared that it might be another of the numerous attempts which have been made to establish the descent of the Aryan by linguistical methods. To my surprise and delight, I found that von Ihering had based his hypotheses far more often upon facts and upon customs than on mere words and expressions. For whatever philology may have, and has, done for our knowledge of hitherto unknown phases in the existence of nations, sometimes, unless strongly corroborated by extraneous evidence, it cannot be denied that errors have been made.
Some savants tell us now that the entire theory of the descent of the European of to-day from the Aryan is an absolute error. This is not the place for me to discuss the probabilities of the correctness of an attempt to demolish the work of many decades of laborious study. All I can say is, that even to those who do not believe in the Aryan descent, von Ihering's practical method and lawyer-like way of arguing must appeal. Von Ihering was a wonderfully versatile man. A Professor of Roman Law -- one of the greatest authorities on the subject that ever lived -- he devoted much of his spare time to the study of ancient history, principally of those customs pertaining to law which seemed to him incongruous with the state of civilization which the Romans of that period had reached; and this work is the outcome of his researches.
The translation of a scientific work is at all times difficult. In this case it was particularly so, owing to the large number of technical expressions, and also the fact that, unfortunately , von Ihering died before he could revise the MS. or proofs.
Still, I hope that the perusal of these pages may be as interesting to the reader as the work of translation has been to me.
A. DRUCKER
Rudolph von Ihering 1818-1892
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