54 OLservatiotis on the Language of the Go?ids. [No. 37, 



the winds by some fact turning up. Yet I should like to know from 

 *you, what the plural of mara in Canarese is — this will throw much 

 light on my idea. 



" (2.) The declension of nouns bears an affinity to the Tamil, 

 p. 14 of the pamphlet. In the first instance given Mardsal, a man, 

 it is obvious that something! like the &iriflentu is introduced in 

 the declension ; the ^ssreFrriBemu we may call it. Then the cases 

 and their terminations are more or less like those of the Tamil. 

 The dative particularly. 



" (3.) Adjectives are undeclined, as in Tamil. 



" (4.) Pronouns, Ana, 7", Amat, we. The old Tamil forms brings 

 £u/T6ot /and ujirih we. Though the pronoun these in the Gondi Tma 

 is unlike the Tamil / yet in the declension the forms of the Gondi 

 approach remarkably to the old Tamil. Thus the dative is Nik or 

 Nikum, the Tamil ftp® for the same is found in the S^/rtQcwt? 

 and r§<o5r&(3) or ^/esrs@ are known forms. 



" Wor or wur for he in the Gondi is like ^jsutr. But one point 

 almost is of itself sufficient to settle the question of a grammatical 

 alliance ; it is the change of ad. she or it in the singular into av 

 they: and id this, sing, into iv these, plural. The Tamil being jpjgj 

 singular <g]es><su pi. sing. @«r>aj pi. 



u (5.) The conjugation of verbs in the Gondi is far more compli- 

 cated than that in the Tamil. Yet there are one or two things ob- 

 servable, the n of the singular, and the m of the plural. The second 

 person sing, in i contracted possibly from the ^ of the Tamil, or 

 perhaps the latter was a lengthening out of the former. The 3rd 

 person sing, and pi. like the Tamil. The plural 3rd person reminds 

 one of the vulgar pronunciation Gurr^rbGstr and the use of the same 

 from, for the feminine and neuter genders, is very like what we find 

 here in these parts. 



* What is the plural of mara in Canarese ? Supposing a tree to be meant, 

 the Canarese old singular is mar am (as in Tamil) and modern one maravu ; 

 the old plural is maragal, and the modern one maragalu. The old Canarese 

 atom he makes in the plural dtamgal they, and it carries m before g through 

 all the cases in the plural. 



W. T. 



f Compare with my previous remark on the old genitive form. 



W. T. 



