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N.B.-English system of spelling used in the above, which I have not ventured to alter.

SECTION VII.

ON THE

MONGOLIAN AFFINITIES OF THE CAUCASIANS.

ALL residents in the East who take an interest in the more general topics of Ethnology must have been exceedingly struck by Dr. Latham's recent imposing exhibition of the vast ethnic domain of the Mongolidæ. From Easter Island to Archangel, from Tasmania and Madagascar to Kamtchatka and the mouths of the Lena, all is Mongolian! Caucasus itself, the Arian Ararat, is Mongolian! India, the time-honoured Aryavartta, is Mongolian Granting that this remarkable sketch* is in good part anticipatory with reference to demonstrative proofs, it is yet, I believe, one which the progress of research has already done, and is now doing much, and will do yet more, to substantiate as a whole; though I think the learned author might have facilitated the acceptance of his splendid paradoxes, if, leaving the Oseti† and the Bráhmans in unquestioned possession of their Arian honours, he had contented himself with maintaining that the mass of Caucasian and Indian population is nevertheless of Turanian, not Arian, blood and breed; and if, instead of laying so much stress upon a special Turanian type (the Seriform), he had been more sensible that the technical diagnostics, which have been set upon the several subdivisions of the Mongolidæ, are hindrances, not helps, to a ready perception of the common characteristics of the whole race.

* Natural History of Man: London, 1850.

+ It will be seen in the sequel that in the course of those investigations which gave the "Comparative Analysis" its present amplitude, I satisfied myself that the Oseti are Mongolian.

I do not propose on the present occasion to advert to what has been lately done in India demonstrative of the facts, that the great mass of the Indian population, whether now using the Tamulian or the Prakritic tongues, whether now following or not following the Hindu creed and customs, is essentially non-Arian as to origin and race, but that this mass has been acted upon and altered to an amazing extent by an Arian element, numerically small, yet of wonderful energy and of high antiquity. These are indubitable facts, the validity of which I am prepared with a large body of evidence to establish; and they are facts which, so far from being inconsistent with each other, as Latham virtually assumes, are such that their joint operation during ages and up to this hour is alone capable of explaining those physical and lingual characteristics of the Indian population, which Dr. Latham's theory leaves not merely wholly unexplained, but wholly inexplicable. I must however postpone their discussion till I come to treat of the Newár and Khas tribes of Népál. In the meanwhile, and with reference to Dr. Latham's crowning heresy that the most Caucasian of Caucasians (the Iron or Oseti) are "more Chinese than Indo-European," I have a remarkable statement to submit in confirmation of his general, though not his special, position; my agreement with him being still general, not special.

His general position quoad Caucasus is, that the Caucasian races are Mongolidan; and, availing himself with unusual alertness of the results of local Indian research, he has, at pp. 123-128, given copious extracts from Brown's IndoChinese Vocabularies, as printed in our Journal; and he has then compared these vocables with others proper to the Caucasian races. My recent paper upon the close affinity of the Indo-Chinese tongues with those of the Himalaya and of Tibet, will show how infinitely the so-called "Chinese" element of this comparison may be extended and confirmed; and my Sifanese series, now nearly ready, will yet further augment this element of the comparison, which in these its fuller dimensions certainly displays an extraordinary identity in many of the commonest and most needful words of the languages of Caucasus on the one hand, and of Tibet, Sifan,

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