The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (read more books .TXT) 📕

people is an implicit veneration for truth, and
her word once given is never broken even by the giddiest Gy,
the conditions stipulated for are religiously observed. In
fact, notwithstanding all their abstract rights and powers, the
Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives
I have ever seen even in the happiest households above ground.
It is an aphorism among them, that "where a Gy loves it is her
pleasure to obey." It will be observed that in the relationship
of the sexes I have spoken only of marriage, for such is the
moral perfection to which this community has attained, that any
illicit connection is as little possible amongst them as it
would be to a couple of linnets during the time they agree to
live in pairs.


Chapter XI.


Nothing had more perplexed me in seeking to reconcile my sense
to the existence of regions extending below the surface of the
earth, and habitable by beings, if dissimilar from, still, in
all material points of organism, akin to those in the upper
world, than the contradiction thus presented to the doctrine in
which, I believe, most geologists and philosophers concur-
viz., that though with us the sun is the great source of heat,
yet the deeper we go beneath the crust of the earth, the
greater is the increasing heat, being, it is said, found in the
46ratio of a degree for every foot, commencing from fifty feet
below the surface. But though the domains of the tribe I speak
of were, on the higher ground, so comparatively near to the
surface, that I could account for a temperature, therein,
suitable to organic life, yet even the ravines and valleys of
that realm were much less hot than philosophers would deem
possible at such a depth- certainly not warmer than the south of
France, or at least of Italy. And according to all the accounts
I received, vast tracts immeasurably deeper beneath the surface,
and in which one might have thought only salamanders could
exist, were inhabited by innumerable races organised like
ourselves, I cannot pretend in any way to account for a fact
which is so at variance with the recognised laws of science, nor
could Zee much help me towards a solution of it. She did but
conjecture that sufficient allowance had not been made by our
philosophers for the extreme porousness of the interior earth-
the vastness of its cavities and irregularities, which served to
create free currents of air and frequent winds- and for the
various modes in which heat is evaporated and thrown off. She
allowed, however, that there was a depth at which the heat was
deemed to be intolerable to such organised life as was known to
the experience of the Vril-ya, though their philosophers
believed that even in such places life of some kind, life
sentient, life intellectual, would be found abundant and
thriving, could the philosophers penetrate to it. "Wherever the
All-Good builds," said she, "there, be sure, He places
inhabitants. He loves not empty dwellings." She added,
however, that many changes in temperature and climate had been
effected by the skill of the Vril-ya, and that the agency of
vril had been successfully employed in such changes. She
described a subtle and life-giving medium called Lai, which I
suspect to be identical with the ethereal oxygen of Dr. Lewins,
wherein work all the correlative forces united under the name of
vril; and contended that wherever this medium could be expanded,
as it were, sufficiently for the various agencies of vril to
47have ample play, a temperature congenial to the highest forms of
life could be secured. She said also, that it was the belief of
their naturalists that flowers and vegetation had been produced
originally (whether developed from seeds borne from the surface
of the earth in the earlier convulsions of nature, or imported
by the tribes that first sought refuge in cavernous hollows)
through the operations of the light constantly brought to bear
on them, and the gradual improvement in culture. She said also,
that since the vril light had superseded all other light-giving
bodies, the colours of flower and foliage had become more
brilliant, and vegetation had acquired larger growth.

Leaving these matters to the consideration of those better
competent to deal with them, I must now devote a few pages to
the very interesting questions connected with the language of
the Vril-ya.


Chapter XII.


The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly interesting, because
it seems to me to exhibit with great clearness the traces of
the three main transitions through which language passes in
attaining to perfection of form.

One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Muller,
in arguing for the analogy between the strata of language and
the strata of the earth, lays down this absolute dogma: "No
language can, by any possibility, be inflectional without
having passed through the agglutinative and isolating stratum.
No language can be agglutinative without clinging with its
roots to the underlying stratum of isolation."- 'On the
Stratification of Language,' p. 20.

Taking then the Chinese language as the best existing type of
the original isolating stratum, "as the faithful photograph of
man in his leading-strings trying the muscles of his mind,
groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful
48grasps that he repeats them again and again," (Max Muller, p.
13)- we have, in the language of the Vril-ya, still "clinging
with its roots to the underlying stratum," the evidences of the
original isolation. It abounds in monosyllables, which are the
foundations of the language. The transition into the
agglutinative form marks an epoch that must have gradually
extended through ages, the written literature of which has only
survived in a few fragments of symbolical mythology and certain
pithy sentences which have passed into popular proverbs. With
the extant literature of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum
commences. No doubt at that time there must have operated
concurrent causes, in the fusion of races by some dominant
people, and the rise of some great literary phenomena by which
the form of language became arrested and fixed. As the
inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is
surprising to see how much more boldly the original roots of the
language project from the surface that conceals them. In the
old fragments and proverbs of the preceding stage the
monosyllables which compose those roots vanish amidst words of
enormous length, comprehending whole sentences from which no one
part can be disentangled from the other and employed separately.
But when the inflectional form of language became so far
advanced as to have its scholars and grammarians, they seem to
have united in extirpating all such polysynthetical or
polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of the aboriginal
forms. Words beyond three syllables became proscribed as
barbarous and in proportion as the language grew thus simplified
it increased in strength, in dignity, and in sweetness. Though
now very compressed in sound, it gains in clearness by that
compression. By a single letter, according to its position,
they contrive to express all that with civilised nations in our
49upper world it takes the waste, sometimes of syllables,
sometimes of sentences, to express. Let me here cite one or two
instances: An (which I will translate man), Ana (men); the
letter 's' is with them a letter implying multitude, according
to where it is placed; Sana means mankind; Ansa, a multitude of
men. The prefix of certain letters in their alphabet invariably
denotes compound significations. For instance, Gl (which with
them is a single letter, as 'th' is a single letter with the
Greeks) at the commencement of a word infers an assemblage or
union of things, sometimes kindred, sometimes dissimilar- as
Oon, a house; Gloon, a town (i. e., an assemblage of houses).
Ata is sorrow; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is the health
or wellbeing of a man; Glauran, the wellbeing of the state, the
good of the community; and a word constantly in ther mouths is
A-glauran, which denotes their political creed- viz., that "the
first principle of a community is the good of all." Aub is
invention; Sila, a tone in music. Glaubsila, as uniting the
ideas of invention and of musical intonation, is the classical
word for poetry- abbreviated, in ordinary conversation, to
Glaubs. Na, which with them is, like Gl, but a single letter,
always, when an initial, implies something antagonistic to life
or joy or comfort, resembling in this the Aryan root Nak,
expressive of perishing or destruction. Nax is darkness; Narl,
death; Naria, sin or evil. Nas- an uttermost condition of sin
and evil- corruption. In writing, they deem it irreverent to
express the Supreme Being by any special name. He is symbolized
by what may be termed the heiroglyphic of a pyramid, /. In
prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too sacred to
confide to a stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they
generally use a periphrastic epithet, such as the All-Good. The
letter V, symbolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an
initial, nearly always denotes excellence of power; as Vril, of
which I have said so much; Veed, an immortal spirit; Veed-ya,
immortality; Koom, pronounced like the Welsh Cwm, denotes
50something of hollowness. Koom itself is a cave; Koom-in, a hole;
Zi-koom, a valley; Koom-zi, vacancy or void; Bodh-koom,
ignorance (literally, knowledge-void). Koom-posh is their name
for the government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most
ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom,
implying, as the reader will see later, contempt. The closest
rendering I can give to it is our slang term, "bosh;" and this
Koom-Posh may be loosely rendered "Hollow-Bosh." But when
Democracy or Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into
that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as
(to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French
Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic
preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state
of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife- Glek, the universal strife.
Nas, as I before said, is corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may
be construed, "the universal strife-rot." Their compounds are
very expressive; thus, Bodh being knowledge, and Too a
participle that implies the action of cautiously approaching,-
Too-bodh is their word for Philosophy; Pah is a contemptuous
exclamation analogous to our idiom, "stuff and nonsense;"
Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is their term
for futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of
metaphysical or speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue,
which consisted in making inquiries that could not be answered,
and were not worth making; such, for instance, as "Why does an
An have five toes to his feet instead of four or six? Did the
first An, created by the All-Good, have the same number of toes
as his descendants? In the form by which an An will be
recognised by his friends in the future state of being, will he
retain any toes at all, and, if so, will they be material toes
or spiritual toes?" I take these illustrations of Pahbodh, not
in irony or jest, but because the very inquiries I name formed
the subject of controversy by the latest cultivators of that
'science,'- 4000 years ago.
51
In the declension of nouns I was informed that anciently there
were eight cases (one more than in the Sanskrit Grammar); but
the effect of time has been to reduce these cases, and
multiply, instead of these varying terminations, explanatory
propositions. At present, in the Grammar submitted to my
study, there were four cases to nouns, three having varying
terminations, and the fourth a differing prefix.

SINGULAR. PLURAL.
Nom. An, Man, | Nom. Ana, Men.
Dat. Ano, to Man, | Dat. Anoi, to Men.
Ac. Anan, Man, | Ac. Ananda, Men.
Voc. Hil-an, O Man, | Voc. Hil-Ananda, O