ON THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF INDIA. 173 
changed their physiognomy from that of their ancestors, so as to render it 
doubtful whether or not they are derived from that branch of the human 
family, though in their habits and institutions they certainly bear a strong 
affinity to the Tartar branch. 
It remains now to say something of their language. It is not disputed 
that when the Hindis came to India from the westward, they brought with 
them that language now recognised as Indo-Germanic, and which pervades 
almost all the spoken languages of Europe, extending from the banks of the 
Ganges westward to the shores of the Atlantic. 
There is the strongest reason to believe that the Hindus occupied the con- 
tinent of India, north of 22 degrees of north latitude, for twenty centuries in 
succession before they invaded the south. Hence our ablest Oriental phi- 
lologists have divided the various dialects in India into two classes called 
the Northern and the Southern groups, viz. the Hindi, Bhirji, Guzeratti, 
Mharatti, Bengali and Oria, constitute the northern group, which consists of 
six languages; and the Gondi, Telugu or Telingi, Canari and Tamili, con- 
stitute the southern group, which consists of four languages. 
Each of these may be subdivided into local dialects, differing from each 
other as much, and even more so than those of portions of the same countries 
in Europe ; but it is not my intention to enter here upon an examination of 
these dialects. 
In the languages of the northern group (especially the Hindi), Sir William 
Jones and Mr. T. H. Colebrooke after much pains found that nearly nine- 
tenths of the words have a Sanscrit origin. This great abundance of Sanscrit 
diminishes as we proceed southwards ; and the language at the extreme point 
of the Peninsula, and that spoken on the Nilgherry hills, scarcely contains any 
Sanscrit words at all but those of science and abstract metaphysical terms. 
The Rey. Dr. Stevenson of Bombay, one of the closest investigators of the 
Hindu institutions and languages, and who is well-versed both in the San- 
scrit and in the vernacular tongues of the South, has discovered in the 
Mharatti (which is apparently a Sanscrit dialect) numerous words belonging 
to the southern group. For the purpose of these inquiries he consulted the 
following dictionaries compiled by Europeans, viz.— 
1. Dr. Hunter’s Hindu.......... published in 1808 
2. Campbell’s Telugu or Teliugi. . 9 1821 
3. Marshman’s Bengali ..... ah iS 1828 
4, Cloughs’s Cingali (of Ceylon)... » 1880 
5. Molesworth’s Mhratti ........ "Ἢ 1831 
6. Reeves’s Canari ..........04 ᾿ 1892 
7. Rolter’s Tamili...... 1 AS. δι » 1834 
8. Guzeratti Vocabulary ........ 
Dr. Stevenson carefully compared all these dictionaries one with another ; 
and he made out tables placing words of similar sound and meaning in juxta- 
position, by which he traced several hundred vocables to be identical, though 
the nations using them are at the present day unknown to each other, and 
living hundreds of miles apart; but not one of these identical words was of 
Sanscrit origin. 
To Dr. Reinhold Rost of Berlin I am deeply indebted for the aid which 
he has afforded me in my philological investigations, from his accurate know- 
ledge of the Sanscrit and some of the languages of Southern India. He ad- 
mits the propriety of classing the languages of India into the northern and 
southern groups, and allows that the former contain a very large proportion 
of Sanscrit words with a certain admixture of words of the southern group. 
He remarks that the palatial sounds of the letters 7, d,7, ¢ are confined to 
