42 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 



has been done of late years similarly to demon- 

 strate the unity of the Tamulian race. But this 

 is difficult, for there is an immense number of 

 spoken tongues among the Tamulians, whereof 

 have already been ascertained not less than 

 twenty-eight in the limited sphere of Mr. Hodg- 

 son's inquiries ; and all these, though now so 

 different as to be mutually unintelligible to the 

 people who use them, require to be investigated 

 and criticised. The long and perfect dispersion 

 and insulation of the several members of the 

 Tamulian body, have led to an extremity of lingual 

 diverseness which, as contrasted with the similarity 

 of their creed and customs, is the enigma of their 

 race. In Hindu and Urdu, though the structure 

 is the same, vocables make a difference which is 

 broad and clear, owing to the evidently foreign 

 elements of the diversity. Not so, however, in 

 the Tamulian tongues, in which there is very little 

 of foreign element : all is homogeneousness in the 

 vocables, and from its sameness of kind is less 

 open to distinct separability. A summary com- 

 parative vocabulary was framed some years back 

 by the Rev. Mr. Brown, and it has been exten- 

 sively filled up with the dialects of the moun- 

 taineers round Assam. With regard to the deter- 

 mination of the moral and physical status of each 

 aboriginal people, none of the Tamulians have 



