1877.] Cust — Non- Aryan Languages of India. 19 



vivacious dialect of each group, marking the dialectal variations, and then 

 drawing up a comparative grammar of each family. Pliny mentions that 

 there were one hundred and thirty languages spoken in the Colchian market- 

 place ; the dialects of India outside the lordly Sanskritic vernaculars can be 

 counted by scores. The savage Nagas are said to have thirty varieties of 

 their own, as every stream or mountain ravine causes a corresponding 

 dialectic fissure. 



Vocabularies are not wanting, but we are getting beyond that stage 

 of the inquiry. Dr. Hunter, in 1868, published one of a large number of 

 non-Aryan languages : Col. Dalton has done the same in his Ethnology of 

 Bengal : within the last year Dr. J. M. Coates has published a vocabular}^ of 

 the dialects of Chota-Nagpore : Sir George Campbell, during the period of 

 his being Lieut. -Governor of Bengal, collected and published specimens of 

 the languages of India, with sentences of sufficient length to indicate struc- 

 ture of words and syntax : local vocabularies have been collected by other 

 public servants, and notably by that illustrious linguist, Bryan Hodgson, 

 the Resident of Nepal. In England, Latham in his Elements of Compara- 

 tive Philology gives very brief sketches, and Max Miiller, in his letter to 

 Chevalier Bunsen, an appendix to Philosophy of History, treats the whole 

 subject scientifically, and attempts classification ; but his work is a quarter 

 of a century behind date, and the author had no local knowledge. Numer- 

 ous ethnical and political reports have been made on these tribes, which 

 have been nearly a century in connexion with British India, but the chief 

 feature of the annals of the border have been raids, and villages burnt in 

 retaliation : our non- Aryan administration has been an unbroken failure. 

 Within the last year Sir George Campbell collected and passed under 

 personal review specimens of every tribe, and Col. Dalton has published 

 photographs of nearly all. 



Dr. Hunter, eight years ago, promised a comparative grammar, but 

 the material collected is far from sufficient in quality and quantity for the 

 construction of any sound principle of classification : many of the words 

 entei>ed in the vocabularies clearly are, and many more may prove to be, 

 loan-words : the master mind is also still wanting, like the prince in the 

 fable, to separate and group the confused heap of feathers. 



And behind the linguistic question, which is the sole object of these 

 remarks, lies the much greater one of race and religion ; for the two hundred 

 tribes, some of which we have noted, with perhaps six millions of population, 

 are but the ethnical residuum in situ of the far larger portion, which has 

 flowed down into the great crucible, and become fused into the lower strata 

 of Hindu society all over India. There are two great fallacies which have 

 to be dissipated — the first, that conquerors annihilate and destroy the races 

 whom they invade and conquer : the second, that the Hindu religion is, and 



