they considered base-born and contemptible.

In the country called Aryavarta, lying between the Himalaya and the
Vindhya Mountains, the high table-land of Central Asia, more than two
thousand years before Christ, our Hindu ancestors had their early home.
From this source there have been, historically, two great streams of Aryan
migration. One, towards the south, stagnated in the fertile valleys, where
they were walled in from all danger of invasion by the Himalaya Mountains
on the north, the Indian Ocean on the south, and the deserts of Bactria on
the west, and where the people sunk into a life of inglorious ease, or
wasted their powers in the regions of dreamy mysticism. The other
migration, at first northern, and then western, includes the great
families of nations in Northwestern Asia and in Europe. Forced by
circumstances into a more objective life, and under the stimulus of more
favorable influences, these nations have been brought into a marvelous
state of individual and social progress, and to this branch of the human
family belongs all the civilization of the present, and most of that which
distinguishes the past.

The Indo-European family of languages far surpasses the Semitic in
variety, flexibility, beauty, and strength. It is remarkable for its
vitality, and has the power of continually regenerating itself and
bringing forth new linguistic creations. It renders most faithfully the
various workings of the human mind, its wants, its aspirations, its
passion, imagination, and reasoning power, and is most in harmony with the
ever progressive spirit of man. In its varied scientific and artistic
development it forms the most perfect family of languages on the globe,
and modern civilization, by a chain reaching through thousands of years,
ascends to this primitive source.