1882.] C H. Lepper — The S'uigplio and Kampti Country. 09 



true I can iind words quite similar and of the same meaning in several of 

 the other frontier languages, but these few are so very rare out of a good 

 number, that they can only be called coincidences, and they tend to make 

 the differences all the more marked. There is one conincidence, however, 

 of sufficient interest to mention, viz., the word for the numeral j^y^; this 

 in Singpho is mungar, in Munipuri is munga, in Kuki Lushai is punga, 

 in Angami Naga is pengu. 



Both the Kamptis and Singphos belong to the Thibeto-Burmah non- 

 Aryan division. 



There has possibly been too great a tendency to mark down new lan- 

 guages on this frontier amongst philologists, and from a letter I have just 

 received from Mr. Sam. Peal I find he is of the same opinion as myself. 

 I cannot do better than quote his letter which explains the case admirably 

 in a few words ; he says " I may tell you at once, however, that there is 

 no hard and fast boundary for the Naga dialects this side any more than 

 for the Irish brogue at home ; contiguous tribes (of Nagas) generally con- 

 verse easily and it becomes more difficult with distance. The Philologists 

 at home make this mistake. It is, however, not so much a dialectic varia- 

 tion as that actual words do change radically with the distance, the per- 

 centage increasing with it." 



Of course here we only speak of languages belonging to individual 

 races, which languages are subject to much change in themselves, sufficient 

 to give rise to the error of classing them as distinct patois or languages 

 instead of as blended patois. 



The Singpho language is perfectly distinct from the Kampti or as we 

 might call it that Siamese patois spoken by the Kamptis. 



This Singpho language is not purely monosyllabic though nearly so 

 and has no tones a la Ghinoise so far as I have gone into it at present. 

 The Kampti patois is on the other hand apparently monosyllabic and has 

 got tones a la Chinoise. 



The Singphos were originally all one people, but some time back split 

 up into two great divisions, say the Eastern and the Western, called Kakus 

 and Ts'Sans. This localisation, viz. Eastern and Western, is only fit for 

 general application, as families and villages of either may be, and are fre- 

 quently, found situated amongst families and villages of the other. Both 

 have representative villages within our frontier. 



These divisions are subdivided into clans, and the clans into families, 

 and the families again into villages, till the whole appears indeed a difficult 

 problem to work out when an attempt is made to localize and distinguish 

 them all. What adds to the confusion is that in Assamese they only use 

 the word khel to describe both the clan and the family. Perhaps the 

 most important clan of the Ts'San Division is the Ga Kieng (called by 



