286 BTEKOLO0T OP THE IN3>0-PACIPIC iSLAVm. 



mm (Chinefle> Mongolian, Turkish) down to the present time, 

 but we must in the actual state of ethnology be content to refer all 

 theso remote affinities to one nebulous archaic period which we maj 

 term the TJgro-Kurilian or simply the Ugrian. Further reaearch 

 will probably distinguish the Samoietle, the Yeniseian &c from more 

 ancient affinities. A considerable portion of these archaic affini- 

 ties embrace also Iranian, Caucasian^ {Semitic and African langiia* 

 ges. From their forming so high a percentage, and being the 

 most important of all the ingredients of the Tibetan vocabularieB^, 

 they clearly connect the history of the Tibetans with that of the 

 ancient Ugrian race, whicli prior to the predominance of the Tatar 

 branch appears to ha?e spread not only orer the whole breadth of 

 Asia and Europe from Kamschatka and Korea to Lapland, but to 

 India, Irania, the Caucaso-Semitic province and N. Africa, for 

 their vocables are abundantly dispersed over this wide region in 

 languages belonging to various formations. So great must be the 

 antiquity of this cardinal ethnic moFement that the origin of the 

 Iranian formation itself in its Scythic basis, may be referred with 

 probability to it. The Mid- Asian affinities of Iranian are Ugrian 

 much more than Tatar. 



The large Scythic ingredient in the Tibetan vocabularies whofl 

 taken in connection with the Scythic cbai-acter of the ideology, re- 

 duces the enquiry into the more archaic history of the formation to 

 this, — were the Tibetan languages originally Scythic or were they 

 crude monofiyllahic tongues akin to Chinese? To answer this ques- 

 tion we must take the position and character of the Burman branch 

 of the alliance into account, and it leads us to the conclusion ihat 

 the archaic or pre-Ugrian languages of the Tibeto-Chinese province 

 were closely allied to the Chinese and the crude proto-Scythic; 

 and that they were partially transformed by Scythic nomades 

 advancing into the province and blending with the nalive tribes, 

 after Scythic had acquired its harmonic and inversive character. 

 At the same time many of the common roots must he considered 

 as of equal antiquity in Tibeto-Burman and Scythic. The Mon- 

 Anam race was probably identical with the ancient Tibeto-Burman, 

 for there was hardly room for another between them, and the 

 languages have some non-Chinese traits in common, as the posi- 

 tion of the qualitivo after the substantive^ the use of prefixed or 



