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 Mongolida. 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 Osetit 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,

the Himalaya, Indo-China, and China on the other. There is no escaping, as I conceive, from the conclusion that the Caucasian region, as a whole, is decidedly Mongolian, what I have now to add in the shape of grammatical or structural correspondences affording so striking a confirmation of that heterodox belief, whilst Bopp's somewhat strained exposition of the Arian characteristics of the Irôn (as of the MalayoPolynesian) provokes a doubt even as to them, despite the "Edinburgh Review." It is the fashion of the age to stickle, somewhat overmuch perhaps, for structural or grammatical correspondences, as the only or best evidence of ethnic affinity. I am by no means insensible of the value of such evidence; and, though I may conceive it to be less important in reference to the extremely inartificial class of languages now in question than in reference to the Indo-European class, I proceed to submit with great pleasure a telling sample of structural identity between the Gyárúng tongue, which is spoken on the extreme east or Chinese frontier of Tibet, equidistant from Khokhonúr and Yúnán, and the Circassian language, which is spoken in the west of Caucasus.

The Gyárúng sample is the fruit of my own research into a group of tongues heretofore unknown, even by name: the Caucasian sample is derived from Rosen apud Latham, pp.

120-122.

Rosen, who was the first to penetrate the mysteries of Caucasian Glossology, states, 1st, that the Circassian pronouns have two forms, a complete and separable one, and an incomplete and inseparable one. 2d, That in their incomplete or contracted and concreted form, the pronouns blend themselves alike with the nouns and with the verbs. 3d, That these pronouns, like

No. 192, article Bopp's Comp. Grammar-a work that cannot be too highly rated, though its style of demonstration is not equally applicable beyond the Indo-Germanic pale. Its spirit may pass that pale, but not its letter, as when the Georgian sami is identified with the Sanscrit tri, Greek rpia, and Latin trea. My doubt respects the Oseti, not the Malayo-Polynesians, for I am satisfied that they are Mongolian, and would now add a striking and novel statement in support of that opinion, but that I must by so doing go too far ahead of my yet unpro. duced Sifan vocabularies. The true and endless. Mongolian equivalents for the Georgian numeral may be seen in the Appendix to this Essay.