40 Aborigines of the Eastern Ghdts. [No. 1. 



further fact, still demonstrable among many of these altered abori- 

 gines, of the abandonment of their creed and customs, as well as 

 tongue, for those of the Arians. We thence learn the value in all 

 ethnological researches, of physiological evidence, which in regard 

 to all these altered tribes, is sufficient to decide their non-Arian 

 lineage and to link them, past doubt, with the Himalayan and Indo- 

 Chinese conterminous tribes on the east and north. It should be 

 added, however, that, in a sheerly philological point of view, it 

 becomes much more difficult to determine who are the borrowers 

 and who the borrowed from, when both are non- Arians, than when 

 one is Arian and the other non-Arian ; aud that, for instance, and 

 in reference to the present vocabularies, we can decide at once that 

 the Kondh numerals (save the two first), are borrowed from the 

 Arian vernaculars, whereas it is by no means so certain that the 

 Gadada aud Yerukala numerals are borrowed from the Telegu and 

 Karnatic respectively, merely because they coincide ; and so also of 

 the pronouns where the same coincidence recurs. All such ques- 

 tions however, are subordinate and secondary ; and if we succeed 

 in determining with precision, by physiological, lingual, and other 

 helps, the entire Turanian element of our population, we shall then 

 be able to advance another step and show the respective special 

 affinities of the several cultivated and uncultivated Turanian tribes 

 of India to each other aud to certain of the tribes lying beyond 

 India towards Bur m ah and Tibet, with at least an approximation 

 to the relative antiquity of the successive immigrations into India. 



A word in defence of these vocabularies of which the utility has 

 been impugned, and impugned by special comparison with brief 

 grammatical outlines. 



When I commenced this series of vocabularies I expressed as 

 strongly as any one could do the opinion that their utility must be 

 circumscribed ; and that the ethnology of India would only then be 

 done complete justice to, when every branch of the subject should 

 be carefully and simultaneously studied, upon the plan exemplified 

 in my- work on the Kooch, Bodo and Dimal. Much and toilsome 

 labour has, however, since then, convinced me that enquiries confined 

 wholly to India and its immediate vicinity would yield results far 

 less satisfactory than such as should be greatly more extended even 



