BTHNOLOaY OV THE INDO-PACIFIC ISLANDS, 217 



Ac Chmese preseires esamplea of nearly all tte Tibetn-ITltraiii- 

 difln terms, and of the aUied Dra'tirian, Seythic and Indo-EiLPopeaii. 



The result is that the Tiheto-IJltraindian roots present only 

 some slight dialectic variations of the Chinese, and that as respect 

 pronouns, definitives, and other particles the formation may be 

 considered m a Chinese dialect, or rather as forming with Dravi-. 

 rian and Chinese dialects one mother tongue, Scythic, N. E. 

 Asian and Indo-European in respect to this class of roots, are also 

 similar hut more divergent dialects, Bhotian from the absence of 

 the postfixed definitives found in the pronoiuft of some of the 

 other Tibeto-Ultraindian languages ia less Scythii- and more 

 Chinese in form than these. 



Sec, 4. NUMERALS. 



The Tibetan, Himalayan and the ailied-Ultraindian numerals 

 are very rcraarkalde in an ethnologic view. The earlier systems 

 of numerals in S. E. Asia and its Islands were hinary and ternary 

 and these are still preserved in some portions of Asonesia. To 

 these succeeded quinary and denary, radically based on binary and 

 ternary systems. The two latest and most important are the Dra- 

 viro-Ultraindian or Kol, still extant in a fragmentary state in vari- 

 ous languages from the Vindyas to Tonkin, and the Malagaso- Poly- 

 nesian. In the other Ultraindian and the connected Himalayan lan- 

 guages there are also traces of an ancient system of the same class, 

 hut the prevalent terms are of Chinese derivation. All this affords 

 a striking illustration of the formations that have foiioived each 

 other in tliis part of the world, and as improved systems of nume- 

 rals and their wide extension are connected with ihe progress of 

 particular nations is civilisation, it is reasonable to infer that the 

 numerals of S. E. Asia and Asonessia indicate the advance into 

 this region of a succession of races, each more civilised or at least 

 more influential than the preceding ones. 



Perhaps the most remarkable of all the curious phenomena of 

 Asonesian and Indian ethnology is the absence of any evidence of 

 the Chinese civilisation having, at an ancient period, exercised a 

 powerful influence on the tribes of these two provinces. The 

 reason must undoubtedly be sought in the fact of the Chinese 

 natron having been originally a norlhern and inland one, entirely 

 unconnected with the sea- board and insular tribes of the Indian 



