1856.] Aborigines of the Nilgiris. 500 



plurals, and are often added to a true inflective plural pronoun to 

 mark that distinction ; thus, nam — we ; namella = we all, plural ; 

 nam rendalu = we two, dual. Sometimes the pronominal inflexion 

 is repeated, as in emellam, we (or we all) ; niv ellam, ye ; avar 

 ellam, they, of Toda. 



Verb. 



The verbal forms of the Nilgiri tongues clearly place them in the 

 same category with the cultivated Dravirian, that is, the prono- 

 menalized class. But, whether from non-development or from decom- 

 position, the pronomenalization is very imperfect on the whole. 

 Nor is it easy to discern in the one or other group of these southern 

 tongues those generic and temporal signs which are still so palpably 

 traceable as a distinct element of the northern tongue verbs. All 

 of the pronomenalized class, and some that can hardly be ranged in 

 that class, in the Himalaya, as in Altaia and Ugrofinuia, have the ver- 

 bal root or imperative followed by the transitive or intransitive (often 

 with many subdivisions) sign, and that, again, in the pronomenalized 

 class, by the personal ending, which too is sometimes agentive, 

 sometimes objective (equivalent to active and passive voice respec- 

 tively) and sometimes both, in which case the agentive form always 

 follows the other and makes the ending. But, even in the northern 

 tongues, the transitive or intransitive sign is constantly confounded 

 with the temporal sign, whilst the personal endings likewise some- 

 times exhibit as much irregularity and defectiveness as they do in 

 the Nilgirian verbs. Nevertheless, judging by analogy and resting 

 on the wonderful similarity of genius and character pervading all 

 the languages of the sons of Tiir, I should not hesitate to say that 

 the cultivated Dravirian and the Nilgirian tongues are framed on 

 the same model as that above described as belonging to the northern, 

 and that the samples above cited from Badaga and Kurumba are 

 palpable proofs of it, notwithstanding the silence of all Dravirian 

 grammarians touching the generic or class sign (transitive, intran- 

 sitive, &c.) of their verbs. Tor example : 

 I have no doubt whatever that 



