In these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the same; the grammatical constructions are also the same; so that no scholar, who has attended to the subject, can doubt that the seven languages are all daughters of one common mother-tongue.
Pursuing the subject still further, it has been found possible to conjecture with no little confidence what was the condition of family life in this great race of Central Asia, before its dispersion.

The original stock has received the name Aryan.

This designation occurs in Manu (II.
22), who says: "As far as the eastern and western oceans, between the two mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Ar-ya-vesta, or _inhabited by honorable men_." The people of Iran receive this same appellation in the Zend Avesta, with the same meaning of _honorable_.
Herodotus testifies that the Medes were formerly called [Greek: Arioi] (Herod.VII.

61).

Strabo mentions that, in the time of Alexander, the whole region about the Indus was called _Ariana_.