The Ethnology of India. 55 



language, considered as a whole, is derived from the same source as the 

 Punjabee and Scindee" (in which no one ever suspected a Dra vidian 

 connection), but he goes on to show that the Brahui has also a Dra vi- 

 dian element in it. Now there are scarcely any two languages in 

 which here and there words of similar meaning and similar sound may 

 not be found, but so far as the vocabulary goes, Dr. Caldwell's list 

 seems to show that he must have been very hard put to it. ' KhaffJ 

 the ear, and * pid,' the belly, seem to me at least as near to the 

 Hindoostanee ( kan' and ' pet' as to the Dra vidian { Jcadu' and ' pir* 

 or ' bir.' c Kal,' a bedstead is, I think, distinctly a Hindee or Punjabee 

 word. ' ZHV,' water, seems to me as near to the Kolarian * clah' as to 

 the Dravidian ' nir* l Ae' or ' ayif a mother or nurse, and ' pussie,* 

 a cat, are words of world-wide use. 



So also the pronoun ' ni or ' nim,' thou or you, appears in some 

 shape in every dialect not purely Arian, from Australia to northern 

 Siberia and from Japan to Finland. I really cannot find above 6 or 8 

 words which Dr. Caldwell shows to be especially like Dravidian words, 

 and to make out these, he pieks and chooses from every one of the 

 different Dravidian dialects and accepts some rather distant resem- 

 blances as l pah' to go, Tamil l pogu.' This much seems to me to 

 prove nothing whatever. 



Again, take his grammatical resemblances. Some seem to be too 

 wide, applying to many other languages, and others too minute. The 

 use of postpositions and the want of comparatives and superlatives in 

 adjectives is equally a coincidence with Hindoostanee and many other 

 languages, neighbours of the Brahui on one side. The expression of 

 gender by separate words and of plurals by postfixes denoting plurality 

 is equally common to many other languages, including the neighbour 

 of the Brahui on the other side, the Persian, e. g. ' nar-gow' a ' male 

 cow,' and Aspahan ( horses.' The genitive in ' na' seems just as like to 

 the Hindoostanee and Punjabee ' ha' or ' da' as to the Tamilian ' ma. 1 

 The dative-accusative in ' e' is a familiar Hindoostanee or Punjabee 

 form, thus instead of ' Mujh-ho do' Give me, it is constantly ' Mujhe 

 do ,' and ' Use maro' beat him, especially with the Punjabees. So also 

 • ten, said by Dr. Caldwell to mean ' self in Brahui, seems very like the 

 same syllable used to give precision in Hindoostanee as " Use-ten do" 

 which I should translate ' give to him himself' At any rate l ten' is 

 found nearer at hand than the Dravidian ' tan.' 



