454 On the Aborigines of Nor-E astern India, [May, 



assert the affinity of these tribes (the Bodo and Garo amongst others) 

 with the people of Tibet. This may, or may not, be so. But I appre- 

 hend that this alleged affinity demands larger and more careful investi- 

 gation than Mr. Robinson has yet had leisure to apply to it, and that in 

 thus deciding upon a most interesting and difficult point, he has ad- 

 duced maxims which are not very tenable. In the first place, he has 

 wholly neglected the physical and psychical evidence which are, each of 

 them, as important as the glottological towards the just decision of a 

 question of ethnic affinity. In the next place, whilst adducing a copi- 

 ous vocabulary which makes against, and a curt survey of the mechanism 

 of language which (we will allow) makes for, his assertion, he proceeds 

 to lay down the doctrine that the former medium of proof is worthy of 

 very little, and the latter medium of proof (thus imperfectly used and 

 applied) is worthy of very much, reliance. In the third place, whilst 

 insisting upon the indispensableness of a written and fixed standard of 

 speech, he has neglected the excellent standard that was available for 

 the Tibetan tongue, and has proceeded to rest upon two spoken standi 

 ards, termed by him Bhotia and Changlo, but neither of which agrees 

 with the written or spoken language of Lassa and Digarchi. In the 

 fourth place, he speaks of Bhot alias Tibet, and Bhutan alias Lho, as the 

 same country ; and also gives his unknown Changlo a position within 

 the known limits of Bhutan,* without the slightest reference to the lat- 

 ter well-known country ; besides, speaking of the cis-Himalayans and 

 sub-Himalayans (p. 203) as separate races ! 



These remarks are by no means captiously made. But some sifting of 

 the evidence adduced is surely indispensable when a question of delica- 

 cy and difficulty is (I must think) prejudged upon such grounds. 



Mr. Robinson is possibly not aware how much of the mechanism of 

 the whole of the Turanian group of languages is common to every 

 one language of that group, nor that the Tamulian and Tibetan lan- 

 guages are held to be integral parts of that group. Yet such are appar- 

 ently the facts, f whence it must surely result that a cursory and exclu- 

 sive view of the organization of one of these languages, such as Mr. 

 Robinson gives and rests on, cannot be adequate to settle the Tibetan 

 affinities of the Bodos and Garos (interalia), since the points of lingual 



* Viz. 92£ East longitude. — Pemberton's Report. 

 t Prichard, Vol. IV. p. — , and Bunsen's Report. 



