specially marked barriers and lines of separation which Logan and Müller have attempted to establish the former, on physical and lingual grounds; the latter, on lingual only. My own conviction is, that we find everywhere throughout the regions now tenanted by the progeny of Tur a large range of variation, physical and lingual, but one not inconsistent with essential unity of type, though the unity is liable, nay, almost certain to be overlooked, whether our point of view be anatomical, physiological, or philological, unless we carefully eschew confined observation such as misled Captain Harkness about the appearance of the Todas, and not less Captain Tickell about the appearance of the Hó. I have adverted to Harkness' mistake above. I will now add a few words as to

my brother-in-law Tickell's. Last season Captain Ogilvie, Tickell's successor, in the charge of that very district wherein the latter studied the Hó physical and lingual characteristics, came to Darjiling. I questioned him regarding the alleged fairness and beauty of the Hó, and well knowing that, without samples before him, Captain Ogilvie must be unable to give a definite answer, produced, from among the many always here, four no doubt unusually fair, well-made, and well-featured U'ráon and Múnda men, but still all in the service of one gentleman, and I then interrogated him. Captain Ogilvie's answer was distinct, that the men before him were nearly or quite as fair and handsome as the Hó of Singhbhum, and not either in feature or in form essentially distinguishable from the Hó, whose lingual characteristics, again, we now know, are so far from being peculiar that they are completely shared by the wide-spread tribe of Sontál, and almost as completely by the Múnda, Bhúmij, U'ráon, Male, and Gónd, not to speak of other and remoter tribes of Himálaya and Indo-China having the widely diffused pronomenalised verb type of the Turánian tongues. Not that I would lay the

*

same stress upon these nicer characteristics of language, as

* Viz., the Nága, Dhimáli, Hayu, Kuswár, Bótia, Kiránti, Límbu, Chepang, Kusunda, and Bhrámu, of all which I hope soon to speak. All these tongues, of which the first is Indo-Chinese and the rest are Himalayan, belong to the pronominalised class.

seems at present to be so much the fashion in high quarters. But, on the contrary, I would choose, as a Turánian philologist, to rely rather upon extent than depth of observation, still remembering that by far the greatest number of Turánian tribes are not merely unlettered, but too many of them also, for ages past, broken and dispersed, barbarously ignorant and miserably segregated, like the Nilgirians.

The niceties of such men's languages can never be accurately reached by us, unless we would devote a whole life to the research; and, moreover, these niceties are certain to exhibit a great many anomalies, and to be now present, now absent, under circumstances which, whether the absence were originally caused by impatient rejection, by casual non-development, or by spontaneous or factitious decomposition, must detract greatly from the value and certainty of any inferences founded thereon; whilst in regard to the more civilised tribes, we often positively know and may always prudently suspect that their lingual refinements, when they differ from those of the ruder tribes, are so far from being special illustrations of the true norma loquendi of the Tartars that they are exotic and borrowed traits. From this digression (which has reference to Müller's remarks on the relative value of vocabular and grammatical evidence) I return to my subject by giving the following observation of Mr. Metz upon the affinity of the several Nilgirian tongues now before us, merely premising upon the interesting subject of the character and habits of these tribes what Sir James Colvile in his recent visit heard and observed. "They are idle, dirty, intemperate, and unchaste. Polyandry has always existed among them, and their women are now addicted to general prostitution with men of other races, so that they must soon die out; and, in fact, I think the population is scantier than it was when I was last here, though so few years back." Upon this I may remark that the traits observed in the Nilgiris are thoroughly Tartar, and as such are widely prevalent in the Himálaya and Tibet. Even the civilised tribe of the Newárs, who, by the way, have a recorded tradition uniting them with the Malabár Náirs—a name identical, they say, with Neyár or Newár (y and w

VOL. IL

I

being intercalary letters)-were once polyandrists, and are still regardless of female chastity, whilst the Tibetans were and are notoriously both.

Mr. Metz, on the subject of the dialectic differences of the Nilgirian tongues, observes:

'The differences of the several languages of the hill tribes consist, not so much in idiom as in mere pronunciation. But that is so great that the same or nearly the same word in the mouth of a Toda, with his pectoral pronunciation, can scarcely be recognised as the same in the mouth of a Kota, with his dental pronunciation. The Badaga and Kurumba dialects are midway between the former two with regard to pronunciation, only the Badaga is a little more guttural than the Kurumba. There is some difference even in the speech of the several branches, or remotely located groups, of any one tribe. For instance, those of the Badaga tribe who, like the Kangaru or Lingaits, emigrated from Targuru and came to the hills at a later period than the others, speak a purer Canarese than the common Badagas. So also the Todas among themselves have differences of pronunciation according to the different districts they inhabit; for instance, some pronounce the s quite pure, others like z, and others again like the English th. And in like manner the Kurumbas round the slopes of the hills have so many little variations in their speech according to the situation of their villages (Motta) on the south, east, or west side of the hills, that it is difficult to say what the real Kurumba tongue is. In Malli, the chief Kurumba place on the south slope, the language is much mixed with Tamil."

I will now conclude with a few remarks on the grammatical traits exhibited by the subjoined papers.

PHONOLOGY.

As much as is forthcoming on this head has been expressed in the vocabular part of this paper and the remarks appended to it. It may be advisable, however, to repeat here that the presence of the English th, and its frequent substitution for s and z, and the equivalence of the two latter, are so far from

being exclusively Toda, as Schmid supposed, that they are common in Indo-China, Himálaya, and Tibet. Tibetan abounds in sibilants, having, besides the s, ch series, an equivalent z, zy, dz series. The former is possibly borrowed. At all

events, z, zy, dz, and ts, tch are very much commoner in use than the Arian s, ch, series. The second z, represented by me by zy, and equal to the French j in jeu, is the same with the Tamil zh of Ellis and Elliot. It is a very prevalent sound, and equally prevalent is the French u, or eu in jeu aforesaid. Neither is ever heard from an Arian mouth; but the Himálayans most infected with Arian ways and habits are now gradually substituting Arian j for their own z, and Arian u for their own eu. D is also taking the place of their hard and aspirated z (dz and zh), and thus the Tibetan word zhí-ká-tsén and Newári Zhí-khá-chhén,* the name of the capital of Tsáng, has become Dígarché with those who use the popular and spreading Khas language, which language we hereby perceive also preferring sonants to surds (g for k), whereas the written. Tibetan and Newári, like the Tamil and Toda, having a preference for surds.

But Tibetan is spoken with all the variety of hard and soft pronunciation noticed by Mr. Metz as characterising spoken Toda and indeed the whole of the Nilgiri dialects; and as there are few things more normally Turánian than the wide. extent of legitimate, habitual commutability between the consonants and between the vowels also of the languages of the family, so I consider that to lay so much stress as is often

The etymology of this word is curious and important with reference to the evident identity of the term Tibetan. And it is hardly too much to say that the family identity of the two tongues (Newári and Tibetan) might be rested on it.

It means in Newári "the four-housed," zhi or zyi being four, khá the generic sign for houses, and chhén being house. De Körös has said nothing about that most fundamental sign of the Turánian tongues, the generic or segregative signs; but I have good reason to assume that this is one of the several serious defects of his grammar, and that Tibetan ká is = Newári khá, as zhi = zhi, and tsén = chén, though khyim be now the commoner form of the word in written Tibetan. Zhi-khá-chhén or Zhi-ká-tsén Turanice Digarchén Arianice, is the name of the capital of Tsáng-why styled "the four-housed" I cannot learn. But three such elements, composing one word identical in form and in sense in two separate languages, involve the family oneness of these languages.

=

done on merely phonetic peculiarities is a great mistake on the part of Turánian ethnologists, and one apt to lead them much astray when in search of ethnic affinities. For example, the Myamma is questionless one language, notwithstanding that its phonetic peculiarities in Ava and in Arrakan are very marked; and a particular friend of mine, who is "genuinely Saxon, by the soul of Hengist," can by no means deal fairly by r, sh, or th, but calls hash has; shoes, soes or toes or thoes; brilliant, bwilliant; there, dere; thought, tought, &c.* A Londoner is not less Saxon, surely, because he is wont to "wow that weal, wine, and winegar are wery good wittals."

ARTICLE.

Mr. Metz says there is none whatever, but I feel pretty sure that the usual equivalents are recognised, viz., the numeral one, or the indefinite pronoun some, any, in lieu of the indefinite article; and the demonstratives in lieu of the definite, as also the segregatives van, val, and du, or an, al, and ad, for the three genders, or ál and pé for the major of gender, used as suffixes, and widely applicable to nouns (qualitives)-less widely and uniformly to verbs. We should always remember that the so-called segregatives or generic signs are essentially articles, definite or indefinite according to the context.

ADJECTIVES.

All qualitives which seem to embrace, as usual, the nominal (genitive), pronominal, participial, numeral, and adjectival, appear to be used both substantivally and adjectivally, and, when employed in the former way, to add to their crude, as a suffix, the appropriate generic sign, which, in the case of the participle, gives it a relative sense or an agentive, just as in English, the or a striker, or the or a striking person (or thing), and the or a hard thing, are equivalent respectively to the person who strikes and the thing which is hard. But the latter form of speech is quite Anti-Turánian,

"Three fresh fishes in the dishes" is, in the mouth of the same friend, "Tree fes fises in the dises."