40 



ON THE ORIGIN OF 



to the very same extent, with the Turkish and several other families 

 of the Scythian group. Not one of those particulars in which the- 

 Dravidian languages differ from the Turkish or the Mongolian; 

 (and there are many such points of difference) has as yet been 

 discovered in the North -Indian idioms. For instance, those idioms 

 contain no trace of the relative participle which is used in all ih& 

 Dravidian tongues instead of a relative pronoun; they are destitute 

 of the regularly inflected negative verb of the Dravidian languages;, 

 and they contain not one of the Dravidian pronouns or numerals — 

 not even those which we find in the Scythic tablets of Behistun, 

 and which still survive even in the languages of the Ostiaks and! 

 Lapps. If the Un-Sanscrit element contained in the northern 

 vernaculars had been Dravidian we might also expect to find in 

 their vocabularies a few primary Dravidian roots— such as th© 

 words for ' head,' ; hand,' i foot,' ' eye,' e ear/ &c. ; but I have not 

 been able to discover any reliable analogy in words belonging to 

 this class. The only resemblances which have been pointed out 

 are those which Dr. Stevenson has traced in a few words remote 

 from ordinary use, and on which, in the absence of analogy in 

 primary roots, and especially in grammatical structure, it is impos- 

 sible to place any dependence. The difference between the Dra- 

 vidian vocabulary and that of the languages of Northern India 

 with respect to primary roots together with the essential agreement 

 of all the Dravidian vocabularies one with another, will appear 

 from the following comparative view of the pronouns of the first 

 and second person singular.* It sometimes happens that where one 

 form of the pronoun is used in the nominative, another survives 

 in the oblique cases, and a third in the verbal inflexions: it also 

 sometimes happens that the ancient form of the pronoun differs 

 from the modern. Where such is the case I have given all extant 

 forms a place in the list, for the purpose of facilitating comparison. 



To which I have taken the liberty to add the Sinhalese pronoun*. 



