286 SOME LAWS OF PHONETIC CHANGE 
triyas are one and the same. The Kshatriyas also were Asuras, and 
of the Asuras were the Pisachas. With these three names, Asura, 
Kshatriya, Pisacha, may be compared the Basque Luskara, Haitor, 
Basque and Guipuzcoa, the Caucasian Jskuria or Dioscurias, the 
Dioseurian Castor, who found his way into classical mythology, 
Abasech and Schapsuch, the Khita (of Syria) Sangara, Ashteroth and 
Khupuskia, the Huron-Iroquois Tawiscara, Ahatsistari and Jouskeha 
and the Peruvian Huascar, Ayatarco and Pasco, together with the 
Kheti Ashtar, the Dacotah Seepohskah, the Muyscan Bochica, and 
many other isolated members of the triad in other tribes and 
families. 
The original physical features of the Khitan must be found on 
this continent in regions more or less remote from European influ- 
ences, for in Spain and the Caucasus, in India, and even in Japan, 
foreign intermixture has so changed the type that little but language 
and tradition remain to point out a Khitan origin. The measure of 
Khitan culture was probably never in excess or greatly in excess of 
that which anciently prevailed in Mexico and Peru. The savage 
independence of Khitan character appears equally among the tribes 
of the Caucasus and the Koriaks of Siberia, on the one hand, and 
among the Dacotahs and Iroquois of this continent, on the other. 
It is language, however, that determines the relationship of the 
various members of this once central and historical but now widely 
scattered family. 
Of the African and Indian members of the dispersion, I prefer 
for the present to say nothing. In Europe the Basques, with their 
polysynthetic language are the most westerly of the Khitan. In 
the Caucasus, under modified grammatical forms, the same language 
survives among the Lesghians, Mizjeji, Circassians, and Georgians. 
In Central Siberia the Yeniseians are the remnant of the Katei, 
whose inscriptions are as unintelligible to them as those of the Mound 
Builders to our Indians. Of the same family are the whole of Dr. 
Latham’s Peninsular Mongolidae, namely, the Koriaks (including the 
Tchuktchis) of Siberia, the Kamchatdales, the Ainos, Coreans and 
Japanese, together with the Yukahiri within the Koriak area. 
The leading American divisions of the Khitan are: in the northern 
continent the Dacotahs, Huron-Iroquois,, Choctaws, Cherokees, 
Natchez, Adahis, Shoshonese, the Pujunis and Yumas of California, 
Pueblos Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, the Sonora tribes, the 
