JOURNAL 
OP THE 
ASIATIC SOCIETY. 
Part I.— HISTOEY, LITERATURE, &c. 
No. II.—1871. 
Names of Birds , 8fc., in four of the aboriginal languages of Western 
Bengal.—By V. Ball, Esq., B. A., Geological Survey of India. 
Any one who has attempted to obtain vocabularies from wild or 
semi-savage races is aware of the great caution and care which it 
is necessary to practise, in order to ensure trustworthy results. 
The stupidity of interpreters, and the state of nervousness into 
which some of the wild people work themselves when undergoing 
examinations in their own languages, are occasionally causes 
sufficient to vitiate the correctness of any vocabularies, which are 
not over and over again checked by enquiries from different 
individuals of the same race. 
The most reliable vocabularies are those taken from individuals 
after a certain amount of intimacy has been established. But 
with one obliged to travel rapidly through a district, opportunities 
for establishing such intimacy do not often occur. 
Struck with this difficulty it occurred to me that by asking 
names for tangible and familiar objects, such as animals and 
plants, about the identity of which there could be no mistake, 
some valuable results might be obtained. And being in the habit 
of making collections of plants and birds, I was enabled to carry 
out this idea to some extent. 
The result, it must be confessed, has been somewhat disappoint¬ 
ing as, instead of affording additional proof of the original identity 
of cognate races having similar languages, it shews that names 
for these natural objects must be in a great measure local and 
not of equally wide extension with the ordinary words of the lan¬ 
guages or even the names of domesticated animals. 
The cases I have chosen for illustration are two Munda and two 
Oraon lists of birds, and it will be observed that in the following 
list, little harmony exists between either of the pairs. Where there 
is agreement, it is generally as often due to the fact that many of the 
names of birds are mere phonetic representations of their particular 
notes, as to any primary affinity existing between the languages. 
The names, Latin and English, are as given by Dr. Jerdon in 
his ‘ Birds of India.’ 
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