504j Aborigines of the Nilgiris. [No. 6. 



the Tibetan word zhi-ka-tsen and Newari zhi-kha-chhen,* the name 

 of the capital of Tsang, has become Digarche with those who use 

 the popular and spreading Khas language, which language we hereby 

 perceive also preferring sonants to surds (g for k), whereas the 

 written Tibetan and Newari, like the Tamil and Toda, have a pre- 

 ference for surds. 



But Tibetan is spoken with all the variety of hard and soft pro- 

 nunciation noticed by Mr. Metz as characterizing spoken Toda and 

 indeed the whole of the Nilgiri dialects ; and, as there are few 

 thiugs more normally Turanian than the wide extent of legitimate, 

 habitual commutability between the consonants and vowels of the 

 languages of the family, so I consider that to lay so much stress as 

 is often done on merely phonetic peculiarities is a great mistake on 

 the part of Turanian ethnologists and one apt to lead them much 

 astray when in search of ethnic affinities. For example, the My- 

 amma is questionless one language notwithstanding that its phonetic 

 peculiarities in Ava and in Arakan are very marked ; and a parti- 

 cular friend of mine who is "genuinely Saxon, by the soul of Hengist" 

 can by no means deal fairly by r, sh, or th, but calls hash, has; 

 shoes soes or toes or thoes ; brilliant, bwilliant ; there, dere ; thought, 

 tought, &g. A Londoner is not less Saxon surely because he is 

 wont to "wow that weal, wine and winegar are wery good wittals." 



* The etymology of this word is curious and important with reference to the 

 evident identity of the term in Tibetan. And it is hardly too much to say that 

 the family identity of the two tongues (Newari and Tibetan) might be rested 

 on it. 



It means in Newari " the four-housed," zhi or zyi, being four ; kha the generic 

 sign for houses ; and chhen being house. De Coros has said nothing about that 

 most fundamental sign of the Turanian tongues, the generic or segragative signs j 

 but I have good reason to assume that this is one of the several serious defects 

 of his grammar and that Tibetan ka is = Newari kha, as zhi = zhi, and tsen — 

 chen, though khyim be now the commoner form of the word in written Tibetan. 

 Zhi-kha-chhen or zhi-ka-tsen Turanice, = Dfgarchen Arianice, is the name of the 

 capital of Tsang — why styled " the four-housed" I cannot learn. But three such 

 elements composing one word identical in form and in sense in two separate lan- 

 guages involves the family oneness of those languages. 



