250 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [May, 1910. 



Neutral vowels only few are marked in the Koda specimen. 

 The " a " in ha tin, sangin, mi ad, durari is neutral also in 

 Mundari. But apu is apu, ruar is ruar, an is an, agu is agu, 

 asu is isu, ani is ini, in Mundari. The a in jad, jan, tad (predi- 

 cate suffixes) is often pronounced neutral in Mundari. The 

 sound of that Mundari neutral a is that of the short a in Hindi 

 ^•TT, or of the vowel pronounced in the second syllable of Ger- 

 man el aber " or English <c oral," a negligently pronounced 

 short a. In some words, instead of reduplication, a becomes 

 sometimes a, e.g.,, jagar becomes jagar, kaji^kaji, kajini etc. 

 But words, generally pronounced with a neutral a, may in this or 

 that locality, by this or that person, or even in sentences spoken 

 with emotion or emphatically or jestingly, be heard pronounced 

 with a short or even long a, and to frame rules about these changes 

 is an impossible task. The same must be said about the laws 

 of harmonic sequence. Traces of it are found in words like 

 kuriku, ini', hiju\ But instead of the forms inkih, inku, 

 niku, kajiua, baiua, etc., sometimes adduced as proof of the 

 influence of those laws in Mundari, very frequently the forms 

 enkin, enko, niko, and nearly generally the forms kajioa' and 

 baioa' are heard. Besides, similar changes of e into i and o 

 into u are taking place, where no trace of the working of the 

 laws of harmonic sequence can be found, e.g., Yrio'tana, from 

 ere', banguja = banga'ia; compare Kurukh tingkan,from tengna. 

 khutkan from khottna. All the rules about vowel changes in 

 Santali, laid down under the head " Harmonic Sequence." pp. 

 37 and 38, vol. iv, L.S.I. , do not apply to Mundari. So also 

 in this respect a very considerable difference between Mun- 

 dari and Santali is to be stated. 



The so-called semi- consonants are all pretty well described in 

 the existing Mundari Grammars and have been marked there, 

 d' and b' or d n and b m (for Santali t' and p') and (') or (:) (for 

 the equivalent of Santali ,k 5 and ch') respectively. The 

 original Mundari specimens were marked in the same way but 

 the compiler states that he marked them as in Santali ; some- 

 times, however, rather wrongly, e.g. orak'tich'na Ranehirieh'na 

 where no suffix Ich' but in coalesces with te and re. He asserts, 

 " the semi-consonants are hard and not soft sounds,'' p. 84, vol. iv', 

 L.S.I. The Rev. Screfsrud in his grammar, p. 9, indeed, 

 says so about the Santali semi-consonants, but I don't think 

 this is the case with them naturally. The process of pronounc- 

 ing a consonant may be divided into two parts, (1) the putting 

 into position the organs with which it is pronounced, and 

 (2) the relaxing these organs and causing the air from the 

 lungs to strike against them. Now the difference between the 

 consonants, whether they are to be soft, hard, or aspirate, is 

 caused solely by the second part of this process and depends on 

 the more or less abrupt relaxation of the respective organs and 

 on the measure of force with which the air is made to pass 



