1847.] Observations on the Language of the Goands. 1141 



gical speculation. So long ago as 1842, a notice in the Oriental Chris- 

 tian Spectator,* alluded to the discovery of Tamil and Canarese words 

 in the Goand language, by Mr. Loesch, a German Missionary, who 

 soon after fell a victim to the climate. The same subject was alluded 

 to by Mr. D. F. McLoed, in a letter to the Secretary of the Asiatic 

 Society, in 1844 ;f but until the present instance no vocabulary, it is 

 believed, (with the exception of a short list in No. CXLV. of the Jour- 

 nal,) has been published, from which an opinion could be formed of 

 the extent to which the admixture of the dialects of southern India, 

 prevails in the present speech of these wild tribes. 



A very superficial examination of Dr. Manger's list is sufficient to 

 show that more than one half of the terms set down by him are iden- 

 tical with, or approximate very closely, to words now in use in the 

 Telugu, Tamil and Canarese tongues. In a corresponding list which 

 accompanies this paper I have noted such words as occurred to mind, 

 and a more careful examination would doubtless elicit more. 



The investigation of the different races that constitute the Hindu 

 population of India has hitherto received less attention than the sub- 

 ject deserves. Beyond the fact that all the spoken dialects of India 

 proper, are referrible to two great divisions, which the natives them- 

 selves recognize under the titles of Pancha-Goura, and Pancha-Dravira, 

 — but little is known of the general relations and affinities of the people 

 using them. According to Colebrooke, the central seat of the former was 

 Canouj,£ the capital of the Cany a cubjas, from which point its cognate 

 dialects spread both east and west, and. then stretch far to the south 

 and southwest, over Maharashtra, extending down the Malabar coast 

 even to the vicinity of Mangalore.§ The southern dialects have 

 generally been considered to commence from the neighbourhood of 

 Beder, near which the limits of the Mahratta, Canarese and Telugu, 

 meet. Dr. Manger's Vocabulary at once carries us to the Nurbudda, 

 and it is not improbable that similar dialects may be discovered in the 

 mountainous region on its northern band, and even in Bundelcund. 



The first question that arises is, whether these two classes of lan- 

 guages indicate the contemporaneous existence of two great aboriginal 



* Vol. iii. p. 240. t Friend of India, 1844, p. 203. 



t Asiatic Researches, vol. VII. p. 220. Goand. 



§ A dialect of Concatii is spoken in all the tract north of Sadashcoghur, and Mahratta 

 is the language of the mountains immediately above it. 



