JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. II.— 1853. 



Sifdn and Horsok Vocabularies, with another special exposition in the 

 wide range of Mongolidan affinities and remarks on the lingual and 

 physical characteristics of the family. — By B. H. Hodgson, HJsgr. 



I now submit to the Society my promised Sifan and Horsok voca- 

 bularies with such geographic illustrations as may tend to render 

 them more easily and fully appreciable. I intended to have retained 

 these vocabularies till I had completed my pending investigation of 

 the grammar of the Gyarung and Horpa tongues. But the high 

 interest attaching to the discovery of another surprising instance of 

 the wide-spreading relations of these tongues, made in the course of 

 that investigation, and which discovery is sufficiently verifiable even 

 by the vocabularies, though by no means limited to their evidence, 

 together with the bearings of these vocabularies upon my two last 

 communications to the Society, induces me not to postpone the 

 sending of them. I can follow them up, by and bye, by the proposed 

 grammatical elucidations. In the meanwhile there is abundant mat- 

 ter for the present communication in such a statement as I now 

 propose giving of the present discovery, in some general remarks on 

 the characteristics of the vast group of tongues to which the vocabu- 

 laries now and priorly submitted belong, and in some descriptions of 

 the physical attributes of the almost unknown races more immedi- 

 ately now in question. Nor do I apprehend that the want of the 

 grammatical details adverted to will materially impair the interest of 

 the present communication, since I have anticipated so much on that 



No. LIX.— New Series. Vol, XXII. r 



