ON THE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE 



about five days journey from Tratig, there are various 

 ancient inscriptions, on stone, among the ruins of a 

 very ancient temple, which are attributed to the 

 T'hay-fkai/, but which no person among tlie modern 

 T'kay is able to decypher. The T'hat/ language, or 

 Siamese, as it is written by these two races, does not 

 differ essentiall3' ; but the spoken dialect among the 

 fliay jhay^ is much more strongly accented, than 

 among the T'hay proper, or the present ruling race 

 of Siam. The T'hay jhay inhabit the country be- 

 tween the Me-nam and the Me-kon, or river of Cam- 

 bodia ; but the T7?<7j/, for the most part, inhabit on 

 tlie west of the Me-nam, or between tlia.t river and 

 the frontiers of th^ Tinnaxi\ Man, and jB^nwa nations. 

 As to the Tai-loong, of whose vocabulary Dr. Bu- 

 chanan has given a specimen, all the Siamese that 

 I have met, though they admit that a district is de- 

 nominated by this appellation, unanimously deny,, 

 that there is either a race of men, or a dialect of the 

 language, which bears this name. The words them- 

 selves, which Dr. Fr. Buchanan adduces, as spe- 

 cimens either of the Tai bong or the Tai-yay, aie pure 

 Tliay, whenever they are not auricular corruptions 

 of pronunciation, or words of different meaning, in- 

 troduced, apparently, by the interpreters misappre- 

 hension of the sense required to be expressed. Hav- 

 ing myself been frequently exposed to similar misap- 

 prehensions, and knowing, from experience, the dif- 

 ficulty of avoiding it, es})ecially in languages, in 

 which not only the signification varies, with such de- 

 licate shades of pronunciation, as are almost undis- 

 tinguishable to an European ear, but the train of 

 ideas themselves, is regulated by such a subtile, and 

 as it were hieoroglyphical set of principles, I am far 

 from insinuating any carelessness in Dr. Fr. Bucha- 

 ^j^AN, whose comparative vocabulary is the first at- 



