1850.] 



Language of the Gonds. 



51 



I take the following corrective extract from the letter last referred 

 to : " With respect to the analogy between the Tatar and the Ta- 

 mil (or south Indian) dialects which Drs. Riickert and Westergaard 

 mention, Mr. Weigle (who has studied the same Tatar dialects, and 

 has some books in these dialects with him here,) Mr. Weigle tells 

 me that this similarity must be very distant : he finds very little of 

 it. But I myself never expected to find a quantity of important 

 words identical in the Tamil and Tatar dialects ; but only analogy of 

 the genius and idiom of these dialects ; for in such long and distant 

 wanderings words change as much as the leaves of a tree (in Europe;) 

 after winter only the branches and the trunk (construction and some 

 parts of the inflexions) remain. This even Horace knew (in his Ars 

 Poetica) concerning the Roman and Greek languages ; how much 

 more must this be the case with such unwritten, and rude languages, 

 of wandering shepherds, and robber tribes, as the Tatars were, and 

 still are. 



" There can be no doubt that the nations which peopled the earth 

 proceeded from the cradle of mankind in central Asia; and our in- 

 quiries into, and comparing languages and traditions with each other, 

 serve only to throw some faint light on ante-historical history (if I 

 may be allowed to say so,) e. g. on the comparative time when cer- 

 tain nations have separated, and on the way which they may have 

 taken in their wanderings." 



The relation of the Tamil to the Tatar language must now be left, 

 subject to further inquiry, or information; and as Dr. Riickert's at- 

 tention had been drawn to the subject, perhaps he may supply reasons 

 for his opinion. Jn No. 33 of the Literary Journal, I adverted to the 

 singular fact of the same tale coming via Europe from Siberia, and 

 found by me in Tamil among the Mackenzie Manuscripts; which ar- 

 gued some connection between Siberia and the Carnatic. I had sup- 

 posed an emigration from a common centre somewhere in the upper 

 table lands of the Himalayas. But I would now direct the reader's 

 attention once more to Dr. Schmid's opinion, that the first Tatar emi- 

 grants, (the second being the Hindu with the Sanscrit tongue,) met 

 with a Hamite race in Southern India, with whom they intermingled. 

 Assuming this to be correct the inquiry opens whence came this peo- 

 ple ; allied to Africans, or Papuans in appearance ? I ask did they 

 come from the south of the equator ? And in connexion with that in- 



