126 Notes on the Dophlas and their Language. [No. 2. 



I add a synoptical table of the tri-consonantal roots of the Arabic 

 language which will be found convenient for comparing them among 

 themselves and with those of other idioms. The first horizontal column 

 contains the first consonant of a root and the first vertical column to 

 the left the second, and where the fingers meet if you carry one finger 

 down from the first horizontal column and the other to the right 

 from the first vertical you find the third consonant of the root. 



Notes on the Dophlas and the peculiarities of their Language. By 

 Wm. Robinson, M. A. Inspector of Government Schools in 

 Assam. Forwarded by the Government of Bengal. 



That portion of the southern face of the sub-Himalayas, which, 

 extending from 92° 50' to about 94° north latitude, — and forming the 

 northern boundary of the valley of Assam, from the Kuriapara Duwar, 

 to where the Subonshiri debouches into the plains, — is occupied by a 

 tribe of mountaineers, usually known to the people of the valley, under 

 the appellation of the Dophla's. This term, whatever may be its 

 origin, is not recognized by the people to whom it is applied, except 

 in their intercourse with the inhabitants of the plains. Ba'ngni, the 

 term in their language to signify a man, is the only designation they 

 give themselves. 



During the latter days of the Ahom Suzerainty, when internal dis- 

 sensions, and the growing imbecility of the government furnished 

 opportunities for the bordering tribes to indulge in acts of rapine and 

 lawless aggression on their low-land neighbours, the Dophlas were not 

 slow in exacting their share of the general spoil. Several attempts 

 were made to check their atrocities ; and on one occasion, Raja Gouri- 

 nath Sing, is said to have marched an army into their hills for the 

 express purpose of chastising them ; when, as native historians tell us, 

 several thousand Dophlas were taken prisoners and brought down to 

 the plains. The Raja, unwilling that they should pine in indolence, 

 obliged them to dig a canal with the view of draining off the large 

 and unwholesome morasses that still exist in Muhal Kollongpur. But, 

 owing to the bad treatment to which the prisoners were subjected, 

 and the unhealthiness of the season, the greater portion of them are 



