从雅利安人到欧亚游牧民族:探索印欧语系的起源

From Aryan to Nomads in Europe and Asia:The Exploration of the Origin of Indo-European Languages

印欧语系语言学研究在其早期发展阶段,曾经纠缠于人类起源问题,最终导致宗教史观与科学史观的对立。英国殖民者语言与印度被殖民者语言之间存在相似性的发现将印欧语言研究引向人种学。但是,对于印欧语言发源地的研究也促进了对生活在广袤的欧亚草原上的游牧民族的研究,并且证明游牧民族在人类历史的发展中扮演着重要角色。从这个角度看,印欧语言学研究也存在局限性,因为生活在草原上的游牧民族以及历朝历代入侵、占领农业地区的民族并非只有印欧民族。该领域学者在研究游牧民族历史时,往往忽视了那些与印欧语言民族没有任何关系的游牧民族在世界历史发展中的作用。尽管如此,我们还是可以通过了解印欧语系形成发展的历史,进一步探讨草原游牧社会与农耕帝国在历史上的相互依赖与无止境的冲突。

In its early stage,research on Indo-European languages was immeshed in the issue of human origins.This eventually resulted in the opposition of the religious and the scientific view of history.The discovery that there were similarities between the language of the British colonizers and that of the colonized Indians led research on Indo-European languages to ethnography,whence further research on the origins of the Indo-European languages promoted the study of life of nomadic peoples in the vast Eurasian steppe and showed that nomadic peoples played an important role in human history.From this point of view,the research on Indo-European languages showed its limitations,because it was not only Indo-Europeans nomads who once lived in the steppe and made incursions into and occupied agricultural areas from dynasty to dynasty and from generation to generation.When doing research on the history of nomadic peoples,scholars in this field often overlook the role played by nomadic peoples who have no relationship with Indo-European languages in world history.Nevertheless,by understanding their formation and development,we can further explore the interdependence and endless conflicts between the nomadic societies and agricultural empires in history.