70 On the Mongolian Affinities of the Caucasians. [No. 1. 



a single tongue (sangge, of thee ; mangge, to me, in Ouigiir), and 

 also changing its form entirely in the same case (maning, of me ; 

 sangge, of thee) in that single tongue. Look again beyond the 

 Altaic group and you will see the same anomalies. Every body had 

 noticed them in this or that instance, and I have on this account my- 

 self demurred to the use of the pronouns at all as a test of ethnic 

 affinity. I am now aware that I was misled by the authority of 

 great names looking at these particles from a too grammatical point 

 of view. We first make the particles grammatical and then we 

 declare them to be utterly anomalous ; the facts being, ;that they 

 are not strictly or uniformly grammatical, generally speaking, nor 

 perhaps any where so except as the result of Arian influences 

 (Tibetan, Newarese, cultivated Tamulian, and so in Caucasus) ; and 

 that they obey their own law with perfect uniformity, and equally so 

 when they attach to pronouns as to nouns and to verbs. That they 

 are not strictly grammatical may be shown as well by their inconsis- 

 tency with any intelligible conception of grammar,* as by the har- 

 monious and simple elucidation they admit of according to their 

 own norma loquendi or mechanism of speech. 



Look, for instance, at the following explication of the Mantchu 

 plurals above cited, or Mouse, Souwe and Teset. Mou-se, we, == I 

 and Thou, thus, Mou is the Ma, Mi, Mo, root for I, obsolete as an 

 ordinary nominative in this tongue, but found as such in most of 

 the cognate series of tongues and forthcoming even in Mantchu in 

 all the oblique cases (Mi-ni ; Mi-ningge ; Mi-nde), Se, again, is the 

 sa, se, si, so, root for Thou ; still extant as si in this tongue, as se in 

 Turki, as sa in Ouigur, Finnic and Esthonian, not to cite more 

 instances from my ample store. Therefore Mouse is beyond dispute 

 a compound of two roots meaning I and Thou. In like manner pre- 



* There should be, though there is not, a higher sort of grammar capable of 

 reconciling Tartaric forms of speech with our own, that is, of showing the equiva- 

 lency of each to the other. In the meanwhile the use of our technical terms in 

 discussing the Tartar tongues is natural, almost inevitable ; and at all events I beg 

 earnestly to disclaim all purpose of censure whilst attempting to elucidate. There 

 is much grammar in these tongues, but as I think borrowed and shown to be so, as 

 well by reference to the much larger and unchanged portion of the languages as by 

 the unharmonising character which the grammatical element wears when it exists. 



