If ever a people must be qualified by a term such as unique, this population of the common source of Indo-European illustrated in no uncertain manner that it be by the merit and demonstration of their daring and pioneering spirit; by their achievements of having tamed the wild natural elements to domestication and civilization; by their unity in diversity; by their common cause of development and progress towards a better world; by their adventures, triumphs, and even by their failures from which they derived useful lessons for themselves and for their future generations; and by their language which they proudly spoke and held in high regard as their banner of identity, honor, and endurance; as a dazzling torch of enlightenment and success; as an everlasting hallmark of their homeland to which they had bade farewell long ago.

It is these words of their language which are so special, endearing, and important not only because they were uttered by this illustrious and valiant ancestors of the common source of the Indo-European languages, but because they were hard earned in the bygone Ages of harder times in their original land. None had come easy or out of thin air or without a cause, reason or relationship. If so, they would have blown away just as soon like dry blades of grass in the blowing wind. They had to prove their usefulness to their speakers in order to stay around, and that took a long time and a lot of competing with others like them. Some of them indeed lost their stand and bade goodbye and vanished; some of them won and for ever became permanent; and some of them compromised with others of equal strength and usefulness and both learned to live and let live. These words are like humans in so many respects. They compete and win some and loose some. They live and let live. They even grow, develop, and proliferate. Indeed, they even speak a language like humans. Each eloquently testifies for its speaker, for his original identity and endurance, for the land from where he had ensued and reached the far corners of this planet.

So, these ancient words in their original land were not born out of a show- room, but out of a boiler-room of human endeavor and experience. They must have endured somewhere, for endurance is built into them. Who utters these words now even if it be in a developed or variant form? Where are they? Where is the original stage where the most ancient and influential human drama of the world took place in such a fashion that the expressions of its players in one form or another have endured and are being chanted almost throughout the world? How did the Indo-European scholars recognize these ancient words which were not written down for a long time?

Scholars like Joseph Shipley explain that it is by a backward coursing, by comparing the different developments in the various branches of Indo-European, and by identifying family likeness, and regular shifting of sounds that the scholars have been able to determine the shape and form of these ancient words with considerable accuracy. This process has been called by the concerned scholars as reconstruction of the roots of the Indo-European words. They are called the root-words of Indo-European because it is from these earliest forms that all the millions of words in all the Indo-European languages including Sanskrit, Slavic, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Gothic have come into being. For example, ker is an Indo-European root or root-word and the scholars have noted that it is from this root that a number of Indo-European words such as khrambe, crispus, crepe, crest, crestate, crinite, crisp, curve, curvature, cult, cultivate, culture, etc., and scores more have sprung. If there was no ker in the beginning, these words could not have been born. The scholars have grouped all these Indo-European words under the root ker and the whole group is often referred to as a word-tree or a family of words under the root or Proto-Indo-European word ker. Scholars usually signify each root with an asterisk (*). Thus the reconstructed root ker is often written as *ker. Since they are singled out in bold print, the asterisk is not used in the present work. The inverted commas (" ") within which the meaning of each root is usually stated are also not used in this work.