244 A Brief Note on Indian Ethnology. [March, 



to co-operators ; and meanwhile I shall conclude this too long preface 

 with a few explanations of the reasons which have led me to give this 

 particular form to the vocabulary, the grand stay, as I conceive, in these 

 inquiries, for the reasons already given. It will be seen at a glance 

 that my vocabulary is not alphabetical. I think the alphabetical plan 

 liable to two extreme objections ; for we become thus entangled amid 

 synonyma that are superfluous or deceptive, and among vague words 

 that are worse than useless. But, worse than this, the alphebetical 

 plan is void of all that facilitation which is so indispensable towards the 

 accomplishment of the end in view, it being at once most difficult, and 

 most necessary to lend the vagrant minds of our primitive informants 

 some helps towards alertness and steadiness of attention in this to them 

 so new, so strange, and so tedious, a labour. The principle I have 

 proceeded upon is the association of ideas by similitude, contrast and 

 habitual connection ; and I have found this grand principle, (which is 

 to our cogitative what sympathy is to our emotive faculties) when 

 understood and applied with the requisite simplicity, to be of great 

 assistance to myself in guarding against vague words, whose name is 

 legion, and of yet more and more important assistance to my primitive- 

 minded respondents. In numberless instances the mutual doubts created 

 by the first word were removed by mere utterance of the correlative or 

 contrasted term ; whilst in each of the arts and crafts the clue furnished 

 by connexion and dependancy of parts enabled me rapidly and surely 

 to work onwards with the vocables. I purposed also at the same time 

 thus to prepare so many distinct pictures of the state of knowledge in 

 its several departments,* such as it is within the ken and use of the races 

 interrogated (an important part of my plan of absolute as well as com- 

 parative estimates) ; and, even when no such knowledge was to be had 

 in the particular case before me, I have carefully preserved the blanks, 

 deeming the negative almost as valuable as the positive evidence — not 

 to mention that, having in view application to other respondents of 

 different nations, it followed that the blanks in one paper might be well 

 filled in another. Still, the vocabulary is too large and too difficult ; 



* The table of contents at tbe end of the Volume, or the separate headings in the 

 body of the vocabulary, will show at a glance how this object has been sought to 

 be gained. Unhappily the headings or titles have been very imperfectly struck off 

 at press. 



