viii PREFACE. 



the governing law in the classification of dialects and stock languages, and tliis is 

 one of the accepted canons of philology,' then the " Dialects of India," as they arc 

 called in the Genealogical Table of the Aryan Family of Languages, do not, for 

 this reason, properly belong in that connection, but in the Turanian. Their 

 system of relationship, which has followed the preponderance of numbers or of the 

 blood, is also Turanian in form, although greatly modified by Sanskritic influence. 

 The Sanskritic people of India, notwithstanding their Aryan descent, and the 

 probable purity of their blood to the present day, have been, in a linguistic sense, 

 absorbed into an aboriginal stock. Having lost their native tongue, which became 

 a dead language, they have been compelled to adopt the vernacular idioms of the 

 barbarians whom they conquered, and to content themselves with furnishing, from 

 the opulent Sanskrit, the body of the vocables, whilst the remainder and the gram- 

 mar were derived from the aboriginal speech. If they are ever rescued from this 

 classification it must be affected through reasons independent of their present lan- 

 guage and system of consanguinity. 



LEWIS H. MORGAN. 

 Rochester, New York, 

 January, 1866. 



Acknowledgments. 



For the materials, out of which the Tables were formed, I am indebted upon a 

 scale which far outruns my ability to render a sufficient acknowledgment. The 

 names attached to the list of schedules will afford some impression of the extent to 

 which correspondents in foreign countries must have been taxed, as well as wearied, 

 in studying through the intricate and elaborate forms they were severally solicited 

 to investigate, and to develop in a systematic manner upon a schedule of printed 

 questions. Without their co-operation, as well as gratuitous labor, it would have 

 been impossible to present the Tables, except those relating to the American Indian 

 nations. Each schedule should be received as the separate contribution of the 

 person by whom it was made, and the credit of whatever information it contains is 

 due to him. Without intending to discriminate, in the least, amongst the number 

 of those named in the Tables, I desire to mention the fact that much the largest 

 number of the foreign schedules were furnished by American missionaries. There 

 is no class of men upon the earth, whether considered as scholars, as philanthro- 

 pists, or as gentlemen, who have earned for themselves a more distinguished repu- 

 tation. Their labors, their self-denial, and their endurance in the work to which 



' Mailer's Science of Language. Scribner's ed., p. 82. 



