1877.] Peninsula and the Indian Archipelago. 217 



cost the life of the Viceroy of India. They are densely covered with jungle 

 which contains nothing but wild pigs and wild berries. The Andamanese, 

 or Mincopies, are a dwarfed, woolly-haired, dark-skinned, Negrito race, 

 pagans, in a state of absence of civilization below the practice of agricul- 

 ture. They are divided into tribes, and have several languages very differ- 

 ent, but having a few words in common, without written characters. They 

 are as low in civilization as any tribe on earth, though on the pathway of 

 the world's civilization for centuries ; they have no numerals. We have 

 scanty vocabularies by De Roepstorff, an official of the Indian Government, 

 1875 ; and Professor Owen, in his discourse at th© Oriental Congress of 

 London, 1874, hazards the opinion of their poor unsettled language show- 

 ing more relationship to the Mon than to the Burmese. 



" The neighbouring Nicobars are peopled in the interior by an equally 

 degraded race, the Shoboengs, but the majority of the inhabitants are of a 

 very superior order, of uncertain origin, and with no admitted relationship 

 to Malays or Burmese. They are brown, pagans, and civilized to a certain 

 extent. Owing to intercourse with foreign shi23s, they speak several 

 foreign languages. Mr. de Roepstorff, who is the officer in charge of these 

 islands, supplied in 1875 a vocabulary of great extent of the dialects o£ 

 four of the islands — Nankowry, Great Nicobar, Theressa, and Car Nicobar, 

 as well as a limited list of words used by the shy and savage Shoboengs. 

 They have no written character, and no education. Vocabularies are also 

 given by Colebrooke, Man, and Fonteaux in the pages of the J. A. S. B. 

 In the new edition of the Encycloj)8edia Britannica there is an exhaustive 

 article by Colonel Yule. We may fairly hope that the linguistic question 

 as regards these two groups will be satisfactorily answered in the next 

 quarter of a century. 



" Along the Tenasserim coast, at its southern extremity, is a small 

 archipelago of islands opposite to Mergui : in some of these reside a peace- 

 ful people, who are pagans, of uncertain race, in low civilization ; they are 

 called Silang, and we have a vocabulary by Logan in the pages of the Jour- 

 nal of the Indian Archipelago. 



" On the other side of the Peninsula of India we come upon the two 

 groups of Atolls, the Maldives, and Laccadives. The former are said to 

 contain a population of twenty thousand ; they have reached a limited 

 degree of civilization, and were made Muhammadans by the Arabs, with a 

 certain amount of severity, the memory of which lives to this day. Their 

 modern written character is derived principally from the so-called Arabic, 

 but really Indian, numerals, written from right to left. The Royal Asiatic 

 Society possess several manuscripts. With regard to the ancient character 

 there is obscurity. Lieut. Christopher, who, in the pages of the Journal 

 Royal Asiatic Society, describes the language and character, and supplies a 



