512 Aborigines of the Nilgiris. [No. 6. 



The general absence of a passive, the partial or total absence of 

 tense distinctions, and the combination of the present and future 

 when there is such partial distinction, as well as the denoting of 

 tense by annexed adverbs (to-day, yesterday and to-morrow) when 

 there is none, are Turanian traits common to the (not to go further) 

 Altaic, Himalayan and Tamulian tongues. Thus, the Toda and 

 Kota verbs are always or generally aoristic and the three tenses 

 are expressed by the above adverbs of time, used prefixually. Pre- 

 cisely such is the case with the Bontava dialect of Kirauti and with 

 the Hayu, whilst the Bailing dialect of Kiranti discriminates the 

 past tense from the other two by the use of an appropriate infix 

 which is at once the transitive and temporal sign. If such be not 

 visibly the case with the Badaga, Kurumba and Irula dialects, we 

 may yet discern the cause, partly in the carelessness of barbarians, 

 partly in that fusion of transitive and preterite signs which culti- 

 vated Dravarian also exhibits, and, not less, Ugrofinnic and Turkic. 

 But in the Tin-d-e of Badaga and Kurumba and Tid-d-e of Kota, 

 = I ate, as in the Mad-id-e of Kurumba, = I made, not to cite 

 more instances, I perceive that identical preterite sign (t, vel, d) 

 which marks it in Bailing (tib-a, he strikes ; tib-<f-a, or tip-^-a, he 

 struck), as in endless other northern and north-western tongues. 



I will add a few more words on these important points for I 

 conceive that the passive of the cultivated Dravirian tongues is 

 clearly factitious and suggested by contact with Arianism. There 

 are still extant long works in Canarese, says Mr. Metz, in which 

 hardly one instance of the use of the passive voice occurs, and the 

 fact that the ^cultivated Dravirian tongues have it not, is I think 

 decisive as to its adopted character in the cultivated. Again, there 

 can be no doubt that the negative conjugation of the cultivated 

 Dravirian tongues presents the primitive form, and that form is 

 aoristic, e. g. mad-en, I do, did, or will, not make. In Himalaya and 

 Tibet and Sifan the passive is wanting. Its absence is supplied by 

 the use of the instrumentive and objective cases of the pronouns 

 for the active and passive forms respectively. Even Klias still 

 adheres to this primitive and indigenous form, overlaid as that tongue 

 is by A Han forms and vocables, and I have myself not the least 

 doubt that the anomalous no of the preterite of Hindi and Urdu 



