Stories speak to humanity through history

In the science of linguistics, it is now accepted that most languages of Europe, Persia and North India derived from a single language and culture 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, referred to as Indo-European.

In only one example, “me” is “tu” in Spanish, Gaelic and Hindi.

There is much more to say about even this short a statement, but what I want to focus on is the fact that there is a very ancient brotherhood between cultures that have developed over the last 5,000 years from this base.

Indo-European languages and cultures have spread widely, for good or ill, through religion, trade, colonialism and wars. Americans, faced with other cultures in peace and war, really can see an ancient connection underneath historic and current animosities.

Let’s take the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule. When asked the identity of the neighbor to be loved as thyself, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In it, the only one who will stop to help a Jew who has been beaten and robbed is a traditional enemy, a Samaritan. He takes care of the man’s wounds, takes him to an inn and pays for his room and board until he recovers.

In his autobiography, “The Hard Road to Klondike,” Mickey MacGowan told this story from an Irish mining camp in the Yukon in the 1890s:

A boy was mistreated by his father and left home at a young age. He wandered the roads begging until a wealthy farmer took him in.

When the boy asked “Why?” the farmer said: “There is a Great Wheel of Life, one day you are on the top and another you are at the bottom. Help others when you are able because the wheel of life will turn and someday you will need help.”

The farmer raised the boy as his own and even put him through seminary school. The boy became a priest and lost touch with the farmer.

One day a beggar in rags came to his door. The priest took him in, fed him and let him sit by the fire.

The priest asked him how he came to be destitute. The farmer told him the story of a rich farmer who had raised a boy and sent him to college, and he told of the Great Wheel of Life, and how his fortunes had changed.

The priest then recognized the farmer who had helped him.

“I am that boy,” he said. “The wheel has turned for you, my friend. You will stay here with me now.”

This certainly has the spirit of the parable and the Golden Rule. And 4,000 years before, the same story was written down in the Rig Veda, one of the founding scriptures of Hinduism:

“That man is no friend that does not give of his own nourishment to his friend, the companion at his side. Let the companion turn away from him, this is not his friend. Let him find another who gives freely, even if it be to a stranger.

“Let the strong man give to the one whose need is greater, let him gaze upon the lengthening path of life. For riches roll like the wheels of a chariot, turning from one to another.”

Words like “rotate” and “rotary” came down to English from Indo-European roots, meaning turning like a wheel. The Irish Gaelic word for wheel is “rotha.”

In Sanskrit, the language of the Rig Veda, the word for a two-wheeled chariot is “rotha.”

This deep history allows us to consider the common dignity and brotherhood of humanity with compassion, not fear.