differ wholly from each other in all these linguistic families, it is reasonable to infer that the Aryans, before their dispersion, went only in boats, with oars, on the rivers of their land, the Oxus and Jaxartes, and did not sail anywhere on the sea.
Pursuing this method, we see that we can ask almost any question concerning the condition of the Aryans, and obtain an answer by means of Comparative Philology.
Were they a pastoral people?
The very word _pastoral_ gives us the answer.
For _Pa_ in Sanskrit means to watch, to guard, as men guard cattle,--from which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages.
The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are these.

Some 3000 years B.C.,[33] the Aryans, as yet undivided into Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was the centre.

Here they must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language, the mother-tongue of those which we know.

They were essentially a pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes.

They had oxen, horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls.