The Number Concept: Its Origin and DevelopmentConant, Levi L. (Levi Leonard)
History
The Number Concept: Its Origin and Development
Conant, Levi L. (Levi Leonard)
Number concept
This table might be extended still further, but the above examples show how
widely diffused throughout the Aryan languages is this resemblance. The
list certainly is an impressive one, and the student is at first thought
tempted to ask whether all these resemblances can possibly have been
accidental. But a single consideration sweeps away the entire argument as
though it were a cobweb. All the languages through which this verbal
likeness runs are derived directly or indirectly from one common stock; and
the common every-day words, "nine" and "new," have been transmitted from
that primitive tongue into all these linguistic offspring with but little
change. Not only are the two words in question akin in each individual
language, but _they are akin in all the languages_. Hence all these
resemblances reduce to a single resemblance, or perhaps identity, that
between the Aryan words for "nine" and "new." This was probably an
accidental resemblance, no more significant than any one of the scores of
other similar cases occurring in every language. If there were any further
evidence of the former existence of an Aryan octonary scale, the
coincidence would possess a certain degree of significance; but not a shred
has ever been produced which is worthy of consideration. If our remote
ancestors ever counted by eights, we are entirely ignorant of the fact, and
must remain so until much more is known of their language than scholars now
have at their command. The word resemblances noted above are hardly more
significant than those occurring in two Polynesian languages, the Fatuhivan
and the Nakuhivan,[222] where "new" is associated with the number 7. In the
former case 7 is _fitu_, and "new" is _fou_; in the latter 7 is _hitu_, and
"new" is _hou_. But no one has, because of this likeness, ever suggested
that these tribes ever counted by the senary method. Another equally
trivial resemblance occurs in the Tawgy and the Kamassin languages,[223]
thus:
TAWGY. KAMASSIN.
8. siti-data = 2 x 4. 8. sin-the'de = 2 x 4.
9. nameaitjuma = another. 9. amithun = another.
But it would be childish to argue, from this fact alone, that either 4 or 8
was the number base used.
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