18G6.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 47 



otice, their languages have been, singular to relate, almost wholly 

 neglected ; so that, we are in truth nearly ignorant of them. It is im- 

 possible to conceive any more probable key to many of the great 

 problems involved in the growth and spread of the Arian races, than 

 in the languages of the most pure of those races, secluded in their own 

 mountains for hundreds and thousands of years. One at least of these 

 tongues is not that of rude mountaineers, but the most ancient and 

 most highly cultivated written language of one of the most ancient, 

 most learned, most ingenious, and most imaginative people on the 

 face of the globe, — a people, in fact, who in intellect, as in beauty are 

 unrivalled in Asia, perhaps in the world. Yet, strange to say, of this 

 Cashmeeree language we actually know less than the little we know 

 of the tongues of Coles and Sontals and Sub-Himalayan savages. 

 In the pages of Max Miiller and Latham and Pritchard, these latter 

 tribes and tongues find a place, but of the Cashmeeree language, not 

 enough has yet been ascertained even to classify it in the roughest way 

 — neither its class, its character, nor its affinities are to be found in 

 those handbooks. The only very slight information published on the 

 subject is contained in two papers in the Journal of this Society, and 

 they are both taken from information supplied by Mahomedans of 

 Loodianah, who, both by religion and consequent Persian education, 

 and by very long expatriation, must have been very unsafe guides. 

 My friend, Babu Rajendra Lai Mitra, has promised me a note on the 

 essence of the information to be derived from these papers, but at 

 least it is so meagre that, as I have said, it has never been used to 

 classify the language. 



" I have lately been in Cashmere, and made many inquiries on the 

 subject, but neither my time nor my philological qualifications were 

 sufficient to do anything substantial. Oae thing is clear, viz. that the 

 Cashmeeree is entirely different from Hindec. It is in no respect a 

 mere dialect of Hindee, like the Punjabce and other immediately cog- 

 nate tongues, but a totally distinct language. Though clearly in the 

 main a Sanscritic tongue, it seemed to me more different from Hindee 

 than either Bengalee or Maharattee, or any other language of the North, 

 em family. Unfortunately the long predominance of Mahomedan 

 rule, and the conversion, many hundred years since, of most of the popu- 

 lation, has caused the supercession of the indigenous literature by Per- 



