2O2 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Hindu educators, this radical mother-tongue comprises about 

 1860 distinct words or rather sounds, which have been reduced 

 by phonetic decay to so many monosyllables, each uttered with 

 five tones, the natural tone, two higher tones, and two lower 1 . 

 Each term thus acquires five distinct meanings, and in fact 

 represents five different words, which were phonetically distinct 

 dissyllables, or even polysyllables in the primitive language. 



The same process of disintegration has been at work through- 

 out the whole of the Indo-Chinese linguistic area, where all the 

 leading tongues Chinese, Annamese, Tai-Shan, Burmese be- 

 long to the same isolating form of speech, which, as explained in 

 Ethnology, Chap, ix., is not a primitive condition, but a later 

 development, the outcome of profound phonetic corruption. 



The remarkable uniformity of the Tai-Shan member of this 

 Shan and order of speech may be in part due to the con- 

 other indo- servative effects of the literary standard. Probably 



Chinese J 



writing over 2ooo years ago most of the Shan groups were 



brought under Hindu influences by the Brahman, 

 and later by the Buddhist missionaries, who reduced their rude 

 speech to written form, while introducing a large number of 

 Sanskrit terms inseparable from the new religious ideas. The 

 writing systems, all based on the square Pali form of the De- 

 vanagari syllabic characters, were adapted to the phonetic 

 requirements of the various dialects, with the result that the 

 Tai-Shan linguistic family is encumbered with four different 

 scripts. "The Western Shans use one very like the Burmese; 

 the Siamese have a character of their own, which is very like 

 Pali ; the Shans called Lii have another character of their own ; 

 and to the north of Siam the Lao Shans have another 2 ." 



These Shan alphabets of Hindu origin are supposed by 

 de Lacouperie to be connected with the writing-systems which 

 have been credited to the Mossos, Lolos, and some other hill 

 peoples about the Chinese and Indo-Chinese borderlands. At 

 Lan-Chu in the Lolo country Prince Henri found that MSS. 

 were very numerous, and he was shown some very fine specimens 



1 Low's Siamese Grammar, p. 14. 



- Col. R. G. Woodthorpe, The Shans and Hill Tribes of the Mekong, in 

 Journ. Anthrop., lust. 1897, p. 16. 



