1856.] Aborigines of the Nilgiris. 511 



in the central Himalaya, close to the verge of the plains of India. 

 Nor need we doubt that such is the case in regard both to the 

 Mantchuric and Turkic relations of the Himalayans, though the 

 precise degree of such family connexions cau hardly become demon- 

 strable until we have (what is now alas ! wholly wanting) a just 

 definition of the Turanian family and of its several subfamilies to 

 test our Himalayan analogies by. The Mantchuric and Mongolic 

 groups of tongues were long alleged to show no sign of pronome- 

 nalization. It is now known that that was a mistake. 



Other still maintained distinctions will, I anticipate, disappear 

 before the light of fuller knowledge, when it will plainly appear that 

 not mere and recent neighbours, such as are alleged to be the Tibe- 

 tans proper of our day (Bodpas), formed the Turanian element of 

 Indian population, from the Himalaya to the Carnatic, but succes- 

 sive swarms from the one and same great northern hive — whether 

 Turkic, Mongolic, Mantchuric, or these and others — who passed 

 into Indo-China as well as India, and directly into the latter, as 

 well as through the former into the latter, by all the hundred gates 

 of the Himalaya and its southern offshoots. Simple as the Mongo- 

 lic and Mantchuric languages are wont to be called, they seem to 

 me to possess entirely the essential Turanian characteristics, that 

 SB, in like manner as they have endless noun relational marks with- 

 out any distinct declension, so they have a rich variety of sorts of 

 verb (but all reduceable into the two great classes of action, or that 

 of things and that of beings, equal neuter and transitive) and this 

 peculiar richness united with great poverty of voice, mood and 

 tense, whilst the participles partake fully of this character of the 

 noun and of the verb, that is, they are poor on one side but luxu- 

 riant on the other, and throughout the whole Turanian area perform 

 the very same function or that of continuatives, being employed to 

 supply the place of conjunctions and conjunctive (relative) pronouns. 



The central Himalayan languages, but perhaps more especially 

 those of the pronomenalized type, all present these characteristics 

 with perfect general fidelity and with some instances of minute 

 accord, besides those cited above, among which may be mentioned 

 the hyper-luxuriant participial growth of Kiranti and of Mantchu, 

 both of which have ten or rather eleven forms of the gerund, and 

 these obtained by the very same grammatical expedient ! 



