544 Ethnography and Geography of the Sub-Himalayas. [June, 



Ethnography and Geography of the Sub -Himalayas. 

 Extract of a letter from B. H. Hodgson, Esq. to Capt. Cunningham, Tibet 



Mission. 

 I have now the pleasure to send you the specimen of the Khas lan- 

 guage of the eastern Sub-Himalayas, from the Kali to the Tishta. It 

 is, you see, a strangely mongrel tongue in these parts, and I suspect 

 it is not less, but more, so in the western parts, or where you are. 

 There are nevertheless traces of a primitive speech, though the present 

 list of words, — a bad one, by the way — shows them ill. But it must be 

 confessed that (me judice) no summary vocabulary can exhibit an ade- 

 quate sample of any language whatever as to whose vocables there be 

 room for doubts looking to proximate tongues. I prefer therefore in 

 such investigations the ample style of research which my Essay on 

 the Koch, Bodo and Dhimal exhibits, and which I am preparing to send 

 you a copy of, so soon as I can get one duly corrected, for the errors 

 of the press are very many. But, though that be the true model, yet I 

 suspect it will prove too weighty for general adoption, and therefore I 

 am anxious that the more summary one sent you already, and which 

 has now been applied to some 40 tongues, should meet with favour 

 and be the means of enabling us to make a general comparison of all 

 the Aborigines from Cape Comorin to the snows. I have sent copies 

 to Newbold, Elliot of Madras, Jenkins of Assam, Ouseley, Sleeman, 

 your namesake of Bhopal, &c. &c. And I have already got a few and 

 am promised more fillings-up from the several aboriginal tongues with- 

 iu reach of my numerous correspondents. I hope you will not be 

 behind hand but send me the Garhwali and upper Kanaveri, and any 

 other dialects of your parts which are not of Sanscrit origin, whether 

 the people speaking them dwell towards the snows, like the Garhwalis, 

 or towards the plains, like the Tharus and Boksars, or midway, like the 

 Helots (Doms) of Kumaon. All and any such (which are clearly not 

 Prakrits, or of the Indo- Germanic stock) will be welcome to me. I have 

 now residing with me Doctor Hooker, an accomplished Botanist and 

 master also of all the other branches of science at all allied to, or cal- 

 culated to throw light on Botany. He will stay with me for the next 

 6 months. He is much taken with my skeleton of the physical gco- 



