1877.] Oust — Non-Aryan Languages of India. 9 



Crossing the rivers Jumna and Ganges in the mountains, and travers- 

 ing the Hindu hill tracts o£ Kumaon, we reach the upper portion of the 

 river Gogra or Surju, and find ourselves within the boundaries o£ the 

 kingdom of Nepaul, within which, in its long extension of many hundred 

 miles to the frontiers of Sikkim, we find a score of non- Aryan languages, 

 spoken by tribes, partly Hindu, partly Buddhist, and partly Pagan, dwelling 

 in the valleys of the Himalaya, where the loftiest range on the face of the 

 globe separates Buddhism from Hinduism,' the Mongol from the Aryan 

 the Tibetan language and its congeners from the great Sanskritic vernacu- 

 lars. This group may be called the ' Himalaic' : to call them Bhutiya is 

 incorrect linguistically, as that word in its general sense is synonymous with 

 Tibetan, and in its special sense with the dialect of the kingdom of Bhutan : 

 to call them sub-Himalaic is geographically incorrect, and some of the 

 tribes inhabit the highest valleys : to call them Gangetic is to mislead, as 

 they are spoken hundreds of miles from the Ganges, although the drainage 

 of the southern watershed finds its way to that river. Here the most 

 eastern wave of Aryan civilization rolls up against as impassable a barrier, 

 as the Kelts on the western wing of the Aryan army found in the Atlantic 

 Ocean. Had not the mountains presented a physical obstacle, the elder 

 culture, which Tibet had imported from China, would have given way to 

 the fresher culture established at Kanouj and Benaras : in spite of the 

 mountain barrier, Tibet received from her Aryan neighbours her religion, 

 her literature, and her written character, but she has conserved to this day 

 her own language, and her own type of civilization, by en,forcing with 

 success a system of absolute isolation, which it must be the work of the 

 next quarter of a century to break down. 



All the languages of this group are more or less connected with 

 Tibetan. Analogies with other groups are asserted : the great ethnological 

 question lies before us, whether all these tribes crossed the Himalaya from 

 Tibet at a period antecedent to the introduction of the Buddhist religion, or 

 whether some migrated from Central India, or supplied colonies to Central 

 India, from which they are now separated, and have been for centuries 

 separated, by the great wave of Aryan immigration down the valley of the 

 Ganges. It is maintained that their numerals, pronouns, and postpositions, 

 are frequently identical. The Himalayan range is intersected by four 

 great feeders of the Ganges, the Surju or Gogra, the Gandak, the Kosi, 

 and the Tista : there is also a transverse section of lofty hills, of mountain- 

 ous region of moderate height, and submontane tracts. In the lofty sites 

 are found the Tibarshad and Hundesi languages. In the submontane 

 tracts are found the Chepang, Vayu Hayu, Kusunda. In the western 

 portion of the middle region we come across the Sumwar and Surpa ; in the 

 central portion is the important Newar, the Magar, Bramhu, Darahi, 



