10 Cast — Non- Aryan Languages of India. [Jan. 



Denwar, Paliri, Kaswar, Pukhja, Thaksya. In the eastern portion are the 

 Limbu, Kiranti, Murmi, and Grurung. In the adjoining kingdom of Sikkim 

 is the Lepcha language, and in the kingdom of Bhutan, or Bhutant (the 

 end of Bhut), is the Bhutija proper. We have it on the highest authority 

 that none of these languages are intelligible to others than the speakers, 

 and that, with the exception of the Newar and Lepcha, they are absolutely 

 devoid of literature and of a written character. The Newar has a few 

 translations, but no dictionary or grammar. Mr. Hodgson has supplied a 

 comparative treatise of Newar and Tibetan.* The Newar has no less than 

 three alphabets, but all derived from the Nagari. 



The sanitarium of Darjiling is situated in Sikkim, and this has led to 

 the Lepcha language being utilized by Protestant missionaries. Portions 

 of the Bible have been translated into it, and other books of an elementary 

 character : this language is closely allied to Tibetan, but according to Csoma 

 di Koros it had a non-Tibetan alphabet. A dictionary of this language had 

 long been in preparation by Colonel Mainwaring, a resident at Darjiling, 

 and a manuscript grammar by the same hand is in existence. The Lepchas 

 and their neighbours, the Bhutiyas, are both Buddhists ; so far they resem- 

 ble each other, but the latter burn their dead like Hindus, have no form of 

 marriage at all, and practise polyandry ; the former bury their dead, and are 

 monogamists. This is a fair instance of the extraordinary diversities of 

 customs, cutting to the root of family life, under the same religious 

 externals. With regard to the Kiranti language, it is asserted, that the 

 complex pronominalization of the verb points to a special connexion with 

 the Mundari, or Kolarian, language of Central India : analogies of formation 

 of the same language with the Dravidian are also indicated. The tribe is 

 also Pagan in the midst of Buddhists. 



With the above exceptions we know little or nothing of any of these 

 twenty-two languages or dialects of the same language (for we cannot say 

 which), beyond the vocabularies carefully collected by Mr. Bryan Hodgson, 

 late Resident of Nepal, a man who has done by patient research, and the 

 devotion of a life, more for the advance of linguistic knowledge than any 

 of his contemporaries. All subsequent vocabularies seem to be but repeti- 

 tions of his labours. One of the dialects of Bhutiya ^^roj^er ajDpears to be 

 called Changlo : the people who speak it are in the middle region of altitude, 

 of a dark colour, which is indicated by their name, which means ' black'. 

 This language introduces the name of another meritorious labourer in this 

 great and unexplored field. Mr. William Robinson, Inspector of Schools 

 of Asam, in 1849 compiled a short but serviceable grammar, or rather 



* There are Grammars and Vocabularies of Tibarshad in the Journal of the 

 Bengal Asiatic Society ; and a Grammar of the Magar, published by Mr. Beamcs, 1869. 



