336 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



Gaura lan<,niagc, and number upwards of one hundred millions; the Chinese, who 

 are supposed to number upwards of three hundred millions; and the Japanese, who 

 are included provisionally, numbering about thirty millions. Of the systems of 

 relationship of these great branches, that of the first is the highest and most per- 

 fectly developed, and the Tamilian form of this system will be taken as the standard 

 or typical form of the Turanian family. The admission into this family of the people 

 speaking the Gaura language, the present speech of the Brahmins, will excite some 

 surprise. Their system of relationship is classificatory. Although it falls in some 

 respects below the Tamilian, the variance seems to be explainable by Sanskritic in- 

 fluence, the system itself being still Turanian in the greater part of its radical cha- 

 racteristics. The restoration of the northern branch of the great Hindu stem to a 

 connection with the southern. in the same family is in accordance with philological 

 evidence, notwithstanding the intrusion of Aryan elements in excessive measure into 

 the materials of the Gaura language. With respect to the Chinese, whose introduc- 

 tion into this family will seem still more novel and extraordinary, the reasons 

 drawn from tlieir system of relationship are equally decisive. Aside from the 

 barrier interposed by the differences between a monosyllabical and an agglutinated 

 language, such an affiliation was to have been expected on general ethnological 

 grounds, rather than assumed to be impossible. As thus constituted the Turanian 

 family numbers upwards of four hundred and fifty millions of people, and is, there- 

 fore, much the largest, numerically, of all the families of mankind. 



Dravidian Language. 1. Tamil. 2. Telugii. 3. Canarcse (and 4. Malayalam. 

 5. Tulu. 6. Tuda. 7. Kota. 8. Gond. 9. Ku ; not in the Table). 



The highest type of the Turanian system of relationship, as before remarked, is 

 found amongst the people of South India, who speak the Dravidian language.' 

 Five of its nine dialects are cultivated, namely, the Tamil, Telvigii, Canarese, Ma- 

 layalam, and Tulu. The system of relationship of the first three, fully and minutely 

 presented, will be found in the Table. The people, to a very great extent, are still 

 unmixed in blood, and in possession of their original domestic institutions. Their 

 position in the southern part of the peninsula of Hindustan, hemmed in on three 

 sides by an ocean barrier, tends to the inference that they had been forced south- 

 v/ard from a more northern location.^ Presumptively they are amongst the oldest, 



' Dr. Caldwell estimates the number of people speaking the several dialects of the Dravidian lan- 

 guage as follows : — 



1. Tamil. . . . 10,000,000 G. Tuda, 1 



2. Telugu . . . 14,000,000 1- Kota, I. . . . 500 000 



3. Canarese . . . 5,000,000 8. Gond, ( * ' ' ' 



4. Malayalam . . 2,500,000 9. Ku J 



5. Tulu . . . 150,00a 



Drdvidian Comparative Grammar, Intro., p. 9, Lond. Ed., 1856 

 » "The existence of a distinctively DrAvidian element in these aboriginal dialects of Central India 

 [the Rajmahal and Ur4on] being established, the Dr4vidian race can now be traced as far north as 

 the banks of the Ganges ; and the supposition (which was deduced from other considerations) that 

 this race was diffused at an early period throughout India is confirmed. The Brahui, the language 

 of the Beluchi mountaineers of the khanship of Kelat, enables us to trace the Dravidian race beyond 

 the Indus to the southern confines of Central Asia. The Brahui language, considered as a whole, 



