152 TJie Ethnology of India. 



impress of our manners — possessed moreover of much industrial 

 energy, laboriousness, and ductibility. To make such a people tho- 

 roughly our own— to render the central and healthy plateau occupied 

 by them a completely Christian and Anglicised country, would be 

 {higher considerations apart) a very great source of strength and 

 comfort to the English in India. I think that every effort should be 

 made in this direction. 



Colonel Dalton has sent with his paper a grammar of the Oraon 

 language by the Rev. Mr. Batsch. This is a Dravidian tongue. The 

 Rev. Mr. Phillips has published a grammar and introduction to the 

 Sontal language, but he has put it in the Bengallee character, some- 

 what unfortunately, as I think — for although I have "not advocated^the 

 Romanising of the written vernacular languages, I should prefer to 

 give to the Kolarian tribes, hitherto entirely without a written cha- 

 racter, our own Roman letters, rather than those of the foreign and 

 hated Bengallee. Since then Mr. Phillips's work is not available for 

 my present purpose, I propose to re-publish, for comparison with Mr. 

 Batsch's Oraon grammar, the brief grammar of the Kolarian " Ho" 

 language, published by Major. Tickell in an old number Of the So- 

 ciety's Journal. I hope then, by placing, as appendices to the present 

 publication, vocabularies of test words both Arian and Aboriginal 

 (including in the latter both Dravidian, Kolarian and Indo-Chinese 

 dialects), and the sketches of Dravidian and Kolarian grammar, to 

 supply the rough elements for a comparison of all the dialects of 

 India. And I trust that if a beginning is thus made, we may here* 

 after obtain much information, more full, ample, and complete. 



