284 SOME LAWS OF PHONETIC CHANGE 



descended upon China ; to the country of Saghalien they retired ; and 

 their presence farther east in Japan is marked by the straits of 

 Sangar. Sangura again or Sagura was the name of a river in the 

 country of the Khita or Hittites, according to the Assyrian inscrip- 

 tions, and its ethnical character is apparent in its use as the proper 

 name of one of the greatest Hittite monarchs, Sangara of Carchemish. 

 Several native references to the Indian Sangala, as well as that of 

 Isidorus Characenus, make it plain that its population was not 

 Aryan, but Turanian or Indo-Scythic. In the third century, A.D., 

 these Indo-Scyths were expelled or subdued, and at that point the 

 migration northwards through Tartary to Southern Siberia must 

 have commenced. It is natural to suppose, in the want of definite 

 information, that the Kathaei or Khitan reached the Punjaub from 

 the west by skirting the northern boundary of the Persian empire, 

 arriving in their Indian home at or before the fourth century, B.C., 

 when Alexander found them there. The Persian chronicles class 

 among the northern peoples of Touran the Khatai, and link them 

 with Shankul, Prince of Hindustan, another Sagala or Sangala. 

 The original cause of their movement eastward was the capture of 

 the Hittite capital Carchemish on the Euphrates by Sargon, King of 

 Assyria, in 717 B.C., and the consequent dispersion of a brave and 

 restless people unwilling to live under a foreign yoke. Many tribes, 

 as has been shown by Professor Sayce, Dr. Hyde Clarke, and others, 

 found their way into Asia Minor, where Hittite dynasties reigned 

 down into the days of Rome's supremacy. Others, long ages before, 

 when the Kheti invaded the land of the ancient Pharaohs, leaving 

 their Syrian domain, planted colonies in northern Africa, and even 

 penetrated into Eui-ope. But the great bulk of the Hittite population 

 took refuge in the Caucasus, and from thence by dint of pressure, 

 internal and external, forced its eastward way along the route that 

 has been traced in retrograde order, from the Caucasus to the 

 Punjaub, from the Punjaub to the Yenisei, from the Yenisei fco the 

 Songari, and thence to Corea, Japan, the Kurile Islands, Kamtchatka, 

 and, finally, as far as the Old World is concerned, to the Aleutian 

 chain. They carried with them their practice of mound building, 

 their peculiar hieroglyphic character, and their own geographical 

 and tribal nomenclature. The mounds begin with the Tells of 

 Syria, are followed on the west by the Lydian and other similar 

 tombs of Asia Minor, on the east by the tumuli of the Caucasus, 



