SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN 31 T though naturally within fairly wide limits, about the origin of these movements, and about their chronology. The distribu- tion of the IE languages suggests that their origin is to be sought in Central and Eastern Europe. The special relations of Indo- Iranian with the s«tew-group of languages, and with Balto- Slavonic in particular, together with evidence of contact be- tween it and Finno-Ugrian in the Primitive Indo-Iranian period, point to its original location in Central Russia. From there the movement was eastward and southward, with the result that Central Asia became for a time the home of the Aryans. There is evidence that the division into the two branches, Indo-Aryan and Iranian, had already commenced at this early period. The Indo-Aryan group was the first to move south, first into eastern Iran, and then into India on the one hand, and into western Iran on the other. The second wave of migratiqn was that of the Iranians, who established themselves first in eastern Iran, thereby cutting off the Indo- Aryans to the east from the Proto- Indoaryans to the west. Eater the advance of the Iranians west- wards resulted in the submergence of the latter, but their original presence there is attested by these documents from the Near East. Chronologically there is not much direct information to rely on. The earliest and most important data are those relating to the presence of Aryans in the Near East from 1500 b.c. on- wards. This is an important pointer to the period of the migra- tions, which to judge by historical analogies are likely to have taken place during a limited period of time. The first half of the second millennium b.c. which would seem to be indicated by this evidence as the general period of the migrations is one which agrees comfortably with all the general considerations which can be adduced. The next direct information about the Aryans refers to the Iranians. The presence of Medes and Persians in Iran proper is attested in the Assyrian annals from the ninth century b.c. onwards, and it is unlikely that they had occupied this area in any force for very long before this period. For the Indo-Aryan invasion of India no direct evidence is available. Nevertheless the very great similarity between the Vedic language and the earliest Iranian precludes any long period of separation between the two, and makes it impossible that the age of the Vedic hymns can be pushed back to the third or fourth millennium b.c. The average rough guess which places
