NO. 29.—- 1884.] THRESHING-FLOOR. 



243 



And in Tamil — 



Objects in 

 nature. 



p vatarayan 

 | oddakkaran 

 { sulhduvan 



chunam (lit., the inflamer 



the wind (lit., wind-king) 

 chaff (lit., the runner) 



smarter) 



Fruits, fyc. 



{karukkuvan =» 

 pukaichchadkaran 



' kollan = 



camphor (lit., the shiner) 



tobacco (lit., the burner) 

 benzoin (lit., the smoker) 



sickle (lit., blacksmith). So 

 with the words for mamoty, 



axe 



Tools, SfC. 



] sarasarappan = mat (lit., the rustler) 



f velaikaran, velaiyal stick for separating the straw 



I from the grain (lit., servant) 



This would at first sight appear as if the cultivators in 

 their euphemistic language were accustomed to adopt a sort 

 of personification of the more familiar, natural, and other 

 objects. A similar peculiarity has been noticed by Profes- 

 sor Max Miiller as characteristic of a primitive state of 

 language. As a rational and probable explanation of it, 

 I cannot do better than quote his words. Referring to 

 language in its most primitive state, he says : " Here, in the 

 lowest depths of language, lie the true germs of what we 

 afterwards call figarism, animism, anthropopathism, an- 

 thropomorphism ; here we recognise them as necessities — 

 necessities of language and thought— and not as what they 

 appear to be afterwards, free poetical conceptions. At a time 

 when even the stone which he had himself sharpened was 

 still looked upon by man as his deputy, and called a cutter, 

 not a something to cut with ; when his measuring rod was 

 a measurer, his plough a tearer, his ship a flier, or a bird ; 

 how could it be otherwise than that the river should be a 

 shouter, the mountain a defender, the moon a measurer? 



These are the simplest, the most inevitable steps of 



language. If we want to know..., what the ancients 



thought when they spoke of a river, the answer is they 

 thought it exactly what they called it, and they called it, as 

 we know, in different ways, either the runner [sarit] or the 



