1856.] Aborigines of the Eastern Ghats. 41 



if they were less complete ; whilst these continued labours have 

 more and more satisfied me that limited grammatical comparisons 

 are much more apt to give rise to error, than limited glossarial ones. 

 Perhaps the fascination of such extended enquiry may have some- 

 what biassed my judgment ; but I am still decidedly of the opinion 

 that the true relations of the most shifting and erratic, the most 

 ancient and widely dispersed branch of the human family cannot 

 be reasonably investigated upon a contracted scale, while the subject 

 is so vast, that one must needs seek for some feasible means of grasp- 

 ing it, in sufficient amplitude to comprehend its normal character 

 (a thing rather of surface than of depth), at the same time that one 

 neglects not more complete and searching investigation of certain 

 actual or supposed characteristic samples. Such is the course I 

 have been pursuing for some time past. I have examined and am 

 still examining the complete grammatical structure of several of the 

 Himalayan tongues ; and I have at the same time submitted the 

 whole of my vocabularies to the alembic of comparative analysis. 

 I hope soon to be able to present the results to the Society. Those 

 of the analysis have been fruitful beyond my hopes, owing to the 

 extraordinary analogy pervading the Tartaric tongues in regard to 

 the laws which govern the construction of all their vocables save 

 the monosyllabic ones, which are very rare. Even a superficial 

 examination of the vocabularies suffices to indicate this prevalence 

 of common constructive principles, and to such persons as have 

 neither time nor skill to trace and demonstrate those principles, the 

 mere collocation of the terms as they stand, if done on a sufficiently 

 ample scale, will afford such evidence of general relationship and 

 family union between the whole of the Indian aborigines and the 

 populations of Indo-China, Sifan, Tibet, and Himalaya, aye and of 

 China also, as philological superciliousness will seek in vain to 

 ignore ; and still more so, will the results of the analysis, empirical 

 though that analysis must to some extent be admitted to be. It 

 may be conceded at once, that these vocabularies must necessarily 

 contain a good deal of error which could only be completely avoided 

 by a perfect knowledge of each recorded tongue on the part of its 

 recorder. But, as the languages are counted by hundreds, and as 

 very few of them ever were or ever will be cultivated either by those 



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