500 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



which has before been adduced in relation to its antiquity in America. Its present 

 existence among the people who speak the three principal dialects of the Dravidian 

 language (and it is presumptively in the six remaining) carries it back to the 

 primitive stock from which these nations were derived, or of which they are sub- 

 divisions. The terms of relationships in the three dialects, with unimportant 

 exceptions, are still the same words, dialectically changed, like the other vocables 

 of the language ; thus showing conclusively that it has been a transmitted system 

 from the epoch of the formation of these dialects. Next, its parallel existence 

 amongst the Gaiigetic nations gives the same inference of an antiquity coeval with 

 the formation of the dialects out of which the -Gaura speech w-as partly formed. 

 And finally, if the Chinese system is regarded as identical in its radical characteris- 

 tics with the Dravidian and Gaura forms, its great antiquity in Asia is still further 

 illustrated. The materials in the Tables are more abundant for the verification of 

 its antiquity and mode of propagation upon the American continent than upon the 

 Asiatic ; but with an equal number of schedules, in the latter case, the results of 

 the agreement would be equally convincing. The fact of its perpetuation in the 

 Ganowanian family would render probable its like perpetuation in the Turanian, 

 in which the old ideas of barbarous society are not yet overthrown. 



There would seem to be but four conceivable ways of accounting for the joint 

 possession of this system of relationship by the Turanian and Ganowanian families ; 

 and they are the following : First, by borrowing from each other ; secondly, by 

 accidental invention in disconnected areas ; thirdly, by spontaneous growth in like 

 disconnected areas, under the influence of suggestions springing from similar wants 

 in similar conditions of society ; and fourthly, by transmission with the blood from 

 a common original source. These four hypotheses are sufficiently comprehensive 

 to exhaust the subject. If then three of the four are insufficient, separately or 

 collectively, to explain the fact of their joint possession of the system, and a fourth 

 is shown to be sufficient, it ceases to be an hypothesis and becomes an established 

 proposition. 



1. By borrowing from each other. It appears from the Tables that the terms of 

 relationship in the several dialects of each of the Ganowanian stock languages, 

 changed dialectically like other vocables, have been transmitted with the system to 

 each nation, thus tending to show that each received it from the same source from 

 which each stock language was derived, and that in each case it was a transmitted 

 system. If the system had been borrowed from one stock language into another, 

 the terms themselves would reveal the fact, whereas their identity is as completely 

 lost as that of other vocables. This fact holds as well with respect to the Turanian 

 as the Ganowanian languages. The manner of its propagation, as a domestic in- 

 stitution, forbids the supposition of its spread by borrowing. This hypothesis, 

 therefore, is incapable of furnishing an explanation. Moreover, the supposition 

 that the Ganowanian family borrowed the system from the Turanian would presup- 

 pose a direct and long-continued territorial connection between them, thus admitting 

 their Asiatic origin. 



2. By accidental invention in disconnected areas. If there were a multiplicity 

 of systems, radically different, amongst the nations of the earth such a fact might 



