rule, before the rise of Semitic power in Mesopotamia. Much yet remains to be discovered in this new field, opened by the labours of Messrs. Hincks, Norris, Oppert, Sayce, and others. It will be brought under the notice of the Section by a paper received from Mr. Isaac Taylor, whose researches into the vext question of the Etruscan language must be fresh in the minds of all; and who, in the communication in question, proposes to strengthen his relegation of the tongue of the Rasenna to a Turanian source by illustrations drawn from the grammar, affinities, mythology, etc., of the Babylonian dialects of Sumeri and Ackad. Their philological relations have likewise been investigated by Mr. Hyde Clarke, from whom two papers have been received.

The Turanian dialects of northern, are divided from the more polished languages of southern Asia, by the vast steppes and lofty mountain ranges of the centre of the continent. The natural strength of this region has enabled the hardy mountaineers of Tibet, Nepál, Bhútan, and other Alpine states, from the Paropamisus to Cathay, to preserve their independence, while its inhospitable and unhealthy fastnesses have afforded retreats to a vast number of refugees from intestine revolutions, or from the ebb and flow of successive migrations. Secluded from intercourse with more civilized neighbours, they have undergone little change, and still, by the co-existence in some instances of a dominant and a servile class, exhibit traces of social dislocations anterior to their own. Conspicuous by their alien customs and unknown speech, they stand the living monuments of a lost or almost forgotten race. For the most accurate knowledge we possess of these outlying communities, we are indebted to Mr. Brian H. Hodgson, for many years British Minister at the Court of Nepál, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (an acknowledgment by France of merits unrecognized by his own Government). He has described, in a series of essays, published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society (and of which Trübner has just announced a collected edition), some

1 A touching evidence of the extremities that drove these fugitives from death or slavery into a tract deadly to all but those inured to it for ages, is furnished by the name of Awalias, applied collectively to the "broken tribes of the Tarai, from awal= malaria. Centuries must have elapsed before the constitution became proof against a poison fatal to all others from April to November.-Journal Asiatic Society Bengal, vol. xviii. p. 709.

20 or 30 tribes, in and around Nepál, with careful analyses of their dialects. These he divides into two classes: the one with a more complicated structure, approaching the Dravidian (or Australoid ?) type, which he designates pronomenalized; and the other of simpler form, affined to the Tartar (or Mongoloid) class, he calls unpronomenalized. The farther he pushed his inquiries, the more convinced he became of the unity of all Turanian tongues, including Chinese, Polynesian, Caucasian, and other allophyllian forms of speech. But he has only crossed the threshold of a storehouse of ethnological discovery, promising important results, in which, as yet, he has had few followers. The same serial contains memoirs of a few detached tribes, without adding much information of linguistic value. Mr. Robinson, of the Bengal Education Department, has given grammars of the Assam valley dialects, and several missionaries have contributed the results of their vernacular studies, as Mr. Phillips's Santal Grammar, and Mr. Puxley's Vocabularies; Mr. Hislop's Gond Lists; Mr. Stoddart's Gáro Primers; the Uraon Grammar of Mr. Batsch, etc.; and the German Missionaries, who sacrificed their lives in Gondwana, and the Americans in the Karen country, have done good service. The first European who mastered the Kond or Kui dialect was the late Captain J. P. Frye, of the 22nd M.N.I., Assistant to the GovernorGeneral's Agent for the suppression of human sacrifices in Orissa. He prepared several elementary works, employing Telugu letters to express Kond sounds; but the series was cut short by his early death. An "Introduction to the Kond Grammar," using Uriya characters in place of Telugu, was presented to me in 1853 by Lingam Lakshmaji, an officer of the Agent's establishment,-a very creditable specimen of native scholarship. But none of these grapple with the subject as Mr. Hodgson did. A vast field still remains to be explored. Innumerable tribes, unknown even by name, are secluded in the wild tracts between Tibet and the frontiers of China proper, of which we only get occasional glimpses. Captain Lewin introduces us in Chittagong to the "Sons of the Hills" (Toungtha), and the "Sons of the River" (Kyoungtha), with some of whose many subdivisions we come in contact oftener as enemies than as friends, through the misconduct of our native frontier officials. Col. Dalton's handsome volume of the ethnology of Bengal enumerates upwards of 50 tribes, several of which had already been dealt with more critically by Mr.

Hodgson. Even within our own territories, the various hill-races, and the nomade castes wandering over the plains, present obvious subjects for investigation, without exposure to danger or much cost of labour.

An attempt has been made by Mr. W. W. Hunter, of the Bengal Civil Service, to generalize the information already collected. But the results are not commensurate with the zeal and ability of the author, as he himself was ready to admit. His materials were chiefly derived from Mr. Hodgson, who had largely utilized them already, while the period allowed for the completion of his task was far too short for the treatment of so large a subject. The plan embraced a comparison of vocables only, and did not touch on structure; and the want of a recognized phonetic scheme, as the author allows, is unfavourable to an exact estimate of the value of roots expressed in Roman characters by different writers. Nevertheless the conception is worthy of all praise, and with a wider range of comparison and more accurate appliances, it promises to yield a rich and interesting field of ethnological research. If, as seems not improbable, the Turanian occupation of Australia took place at a time when that great country still formed an integral part of Asia, it may be assumed that the people, cut off by later geological changes, have been little altered by external influences. A critical examination of their numerous dialects, compared with those we have just been considering, and those of other rude tribes, of whom we know not even the names, or if we do, but little more, as the Ainos of Japan, the Miautz' ("Sons of the Soil ") of China, the Jaddahs and Mincopis of the Andamans, the savages of the Nicobars, the Védars of Ceylon, the aborigines of the interior of Formosa and the other islands of the Archipelago, and these again with the Talains of Pegu, the Karens of Siam, the Kolarian tribes of India, and the robber hordes of Beluchistan, etc., may yield data for tracing more completely the origin and ramifications of the Turanian family.

The languages spoken in the division of the Turanian province to the south of the mountainous region form four well-defined groups. 1. The so-called monosyllabic tongues of China and Japan on the east. 2. The Dravidian languages of India on the west. 3. Between these, the dialects of Arakan, Siam, Burma, etc., with a monosyllabic structure, and an Indian phonetic system, to which the

name of the T'hai family has been given, from the principal or Siamese member of the group. 4. The language of the Malays, vernacular in the Golden Chersonese, and the coasts and islands of the Archipelago.

Of these I will first notice the Dravidian, with which I am the best acquainted. It is represented in its most perfect form by the Tamil spoken in the Carnatic, the Dravida-désam of the natives, whence the generic name. The influence of Aryan supremacy has there been felt the least. The more northerly dialects of Telugu and Canarese, as also Malayalim, have adopted the phonetic system of Sanskrit. Tamil alone retains its normal rugged alphabet. It wants altogether the aspirated letters, and has some two or three sounds and characters peculiar to itself. It has been cultivated and refined by native poets and grammarians, and under the princes of the Pándyan dynasty the College of Madura was celebrated for its learning and for the refinement and polish it imparted to Tamil literature. Not less important has been the influence of western scholarship. The Jesuit missionaries, in particular, have left their impress on the language. Roberto de Nobili, an Italian Father (1607), composed many works in the latter half of the seventeenth century; the most celebrated of which, the Iniyána-upadésam, is written in Shen or High Tamil. He was also the author of the so-called fifth Veda, foretelling the advent of a superior race of Brahmans from the west, which passed current till its spurious character was exposed by the late Mr. Ellis. But Father Constantine Jos. Beschi, who arrived in 1700, has established the highest reputation. His grammars still form the best introduction to the language, and his Sadar-agarádi, a dictionary of the Shen or High Tamil, is the standard lexicon of that dialect to this day. Among his voluminous writings a metrical history of our Saviourthe Tembávani, composed about 1726-is considered one of the most elegant and classical works in the language. The original autograph MS. of the poem was purchased by the late F. A. Ellis from the son of Beschi's disciple in the beginning of the century, but was lost for a time after that able student's premature and unexpected death in 1818. It was my good fortune to recover it, and it is now deposited in the Library of the India Office, from whence it has been sent for exhibition to the Section this evening.

1 He died at St. Thomé, 16th January, 1656.-Asiatic Researches, vol. xiv. p. 58.

The language continued to be cultivated by the missionaries of the Christian Knowledge Society, and in 1728 the Scriptures, translated by Ziegenbalg, were printed in Tamil type at Tranquebar. A copy of this edition, now of extreme rarity, is also before us. The names of Rottler, Rhenius, and other Danish scholars in the same mission, are conspicuous for useful works. Still later, Dr. Caldwell, by his Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages, of which a second and improved edition is about to appear, has thrown a flood of light on this class of tongues; and more recently Dr. G. Pope has appended a grammar of the Toda dialect to Col. Marshall's account of that tribe [1873], in which he traces analogies between the Tamilian and Celtic tongues. Mr. Burnell, of the Civil Service, besides making catalogues of the Sanscrit libraries of Tanjore and other places, has also paid considerable attention to the vernacular literature. Nor must I omit to mention the German scholars connected with the Basle mission. Dr. Moegling has edited lithographed editions of the most remarkable Canarese classics under the title of Bibliotheca Carnatica, and his fellow-labourer, Dr. Gundert, has produced a Malayalim Dictionary, published in 1872, admirable for its fullness and arrangement—a model of lexicography. Mr. Brigel has contributed a grammar of Tulu; and Mr. Metz, who has long laboured among the inhabitants of the Nilagiri mountains, has collected ample vocabularies of the aboriginal castes found there.

I may add that within the last few months Mr. H. W. Bellew, C.S.I., of the Bengal Medical Service, has published a grammar and vocabulary of the Brahoe language, in a Narrative of a Journey from the Indus to the Tigris (1873). No papers have been sent to this division of the Section; but Baron Textor de Ravisi, lately Governor of the French Settlement of Karical in the Carnatic, will address the Section in commendation of the study of Tamil literature, and the importance of its more critical cultivation in this country.

The languages of China and Japan, especially the latter, were largely discussed at the first Congress. In this department the French Sinologists, from the time of Abel Remusat and Stanislas Julien, have held a foremost place. Nor have our own countrymen been behindhand. We can boast of worthy successors to the veteran Morrison, two of whom, Mr. Beal, translator of the travels of the earliest Chinese pilgrims, and Mr. Edkins, who has done much to