242 A Brief Note on Indian Ethnology. [March, 



rogative instances" of speech.* They are also, I think, much too few 

 in number to yield decisive results, even had they been quite faultlessly 

 selected. Any vocabulary that aspires to be useful, must, however 

 summary, contain a fair portion of words belonging to each and all of 

 the " parts of speech," and must also give the cardinal numbers, at 

 least down to 10. I am well aware that the prolixity of my own voca- 

 bulary may be objected to. But let it be remembered that I have a 

 high object, wholly extrinsic to the mere lingual testing of ethnic affini- 

 ties, and that is, the ascertainment of the physical and moral condition 

 of the primitive races, which are the objects of my labours, and that I 

 hold there is no medium of such ascertainment comparable with their 

 languages. But I have no hestitation in adding my conviction that 

 mere ethnological affinities cannot be satisfactorily tested by summary 

 vocabularies ; that structure as well as vocables must be attended to ; 

 and lastly, that even the sheer words of languages so wholly new to us 

 cannot be safely got at unless we seek them in more than one form, 

 and thus obtain means of comparison. 



With regard to the second object of these inquiries, or the determina- 

 tion of the moral and physical status of each aboriginal people, it is 

 to be observed that, as the Tamiilians have, none of them, any old 

 authentic legends, and are all very uninformed, save in what respects 

 their immediate wants and habitual ideas, it is exceedingly difficult to 

 learn any thing of this sort from them directly : their creed especially 

 is a subject of insuperable difficulty, through the sole medium of direct 

 questioning : their customs, again, are apt to afford but negative evi- 

 dence, because, being drawn from boon nature, they tend to identity in 

 all the several nations ; and lastly, their physical aspect is of that 

 osculant and vague stamp, which indicates rather than proves any thing ; 

 or rather, what it does prove is general, not particular. We are thus 



* For example, light, lux, is a high abstraction which none of my informants can 

 grasp, though they readily give equivalents for sunshine and candle or fire flame. 

 But further, whoever will carefully examine my essay on the affinities of the sub- 

 himalayan tribes in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for December 1847 

 (vocabularies), will find that the lingual traces of relationship between these tribes are 

 by no means correspondent with Remusat's theory. Nor differences nor resemblances 

 are in harmony with that theory, and we have thus a striking practical proof of the 

 value, and necessity indeed, of copious vocabularies as guides to, and indices of, the 

 status of each tribe. 



