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ETHNOLOGY OF THE INDO-PACIFIC ISLANDS.*
By J. R. LOGAN:

LANGUAGE.

PART II.

THE RACES AND LANGUAGES OF S. E. ASIA CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THOSE OF THE INDO-PACIFIC ISLANDS. CHAPTER V. (Continued).

ENQUIRIES INTO THE ETHNIC HISTORY AND RELATIONS OF THE DRAVIRIAN FORMATION,-EMBRACING NOTICES OF THE FINO-JAPANESE, CAUCASIAN, INDO-EUROPEAN, SEMITICO-AFRICAN, EUSKARIAN AND AMERICAN LANGUAGES.

Sec. 11. GLOSSARIAL INDICATIONS Of the ethnIC HISTORY AND RELATIONS OF THE DRAVIRIAN LANGUAGES.†

1. PRONOUNS AND GENERIC PARTICLES.

A comparison of roots, unless it embraces a wide field and is made with extreme caution, cannot lead to solid and satisfactory results. That great Iranian philologist Bopp has said that the chance is less than one in a million for the same combination of

* Continued from Vol. VIII.

In the present state of glossology, every comparison of words for ethnic purposes must be exceedingly Imperfect. The most distinguished philologists have not been able to avoid blunders when they have enlarged the circle of their comVOL. IX, JANUARY-FEBRUARY-MARCH, 1855.

A

RO VIMU

sounds having the same precise meaning in unconnected languages. This calculation of probabilities is evidently based on a formation of which the syllables are frequently biconsonantal and the words polysyllabic. It is totally inapplicable to monosyllabic languages, or indeed to a comparison of ultimate roots in any formation, because these roots are generally monosyllables. In the Kwanhwa Chinese, for example, the number of words is about 48,000, but the sounds to express those words only amount, even with the tone flexions, to 1,203. So that each sound, on an average, would represent 40 different words if these words were all in use. By enlarging the number of monosyllabic languages for comparison, the number of homophons increases. But this is not all. In the progress of language the tones decay, become reduced in number and are ultimately lost. When the process of emasculation goes on without interruption, the vowel sounds are contracted to a very small number. In Philipine there are only three distinct vowels, o and u, i and e being very commutable. Add to this that in parative studies in order to take in languages with which they are imperfectly acquainted. A complete investigation of the ethnic history of a single root demands a thorough knowledge of all the languages in the world and no single philologist can ever attain this knowledge. Hence it is only by combining and comparing the labours of numerous comparative linguists that the ethnology of roots will ultimately be perfected. Roots ramify through vocabularies in a very complicated manner changing not only their forms but their meanings, so that it is not possible, by merely turning over the leaves of a dictionary, to a certain whether a given root exists in a particular language or not. We must know the phonology of the language, its phonetic and glossarial relations to other languages, and the kind of analogies that prevail throughout its glossary and enable us to trace the metamorphoses of its roots. The only man who can pronounce whether a given root exists or not in a particular language, is a sound comparative linguist who has devoted himself to a thorough analysis of that language. Until complete analytic glossaries are prepared, the comparisons of ethnologists must continue to be in great measure empirical, and must be received with a considerable allowance for errors. The following comparisons require a large allowance not only from the necessity of the case but from the special disadvantages under which the collator labours. They are limited to the classes of words mentioned in the Prefatory Note to Part II. A full ethnic comparison of the Dravirian vocabularies with those of other families would be a labour not for a single life but for the ethnologists of several generations.

[Before sending this section to the press I received by the last mail steamer Chevalier Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, to which Professor Max Müller has contributed two chapters on the Scythic, Dravirian, Tibeto-Ultraindian, Thai, and Malay languages. Some of the glossarial details in this section and in the next chapter have I find been anticipated by Prof. Müller. Where he has supplied data which were not accessible to me, I have added a few notes which are distinguished by brackets. The supplement containing the comparative vocabularies having been printed some time since, I have not been able to subjoin any notes to it. I do not in this place offer any remarks on the coincidences between Prof. Müller's views on several points, and those previously published by me in the present series of papers. They will be sufficiently obvious to ethnologists who have read my 4th and preceding chapters, with the general remarks on Asonesian ethnology contained in the volume of this Journal for 1850].

comparing different formations, and even the various dialects of the same formation, consonants and vowels frequently exhibit great instability, so great indeed that it can be asserted with perfect truth that each vowel is capable of being, by successive gradations, transmuted into all the others. The same remark applies to the consonants. In Polynesian there cannot be said to be more than 10 (in Raratongan and Mangarevan 8) consonants, the sonants having generally become confounded with the surds. The dentals are transmuted into the liquids with great facility. They pass into the gutturals through the strong mutual affinity of the surds k and t, and into the labials through the liquids. Thus, to start with t. It may pass into g through k, on the one side, and through d, r, l, n into m, b, v, f, p, on the other. Its direct affinity to the sibilant and aspirate th, s, z &c. is so great that it frequently passes into them in many languages. Particles, whether separate, formative or flexional, are generally monosyllabic, and even to a large extent uniliteral in all formations. In the Burmah-Tibetan, the pre-Arian Indian, the African, the Turanian, and, it may be added, in the Iranian, words of all classes are radically monosyllables. It is evident, therefore, that the phonetic identity of a particle in two or even more languages has hardly any value at all as an isolated fact, for comparative and ethnic purposes. It happens, also, that a number of identical particles are so widely spread throughout most of the formations of the world that nothing can be learned from them per se, respecting the specific affinities of different formations. We arrive at this rule, that it is only by comparing particles in groups, and in connection with the entire phonetic and ideologic character of each language, that positive ethnic conclusions can be attained.

In the Burmah-Chinese languages there is little connection between the particles. They are in general as isolated and independent of each other as substantive words. In the Dravirian formation, on the contrary, they are intimately connected both phonetically and idiomatically, and this greatly facilitates their comparison with those of other formations. In Dravirian we find a number

of particles formed into a well marked system, presenting even flexional traits. For example the principal pronominal terms, as exhibited by the purer languages, or those of the South, are, na, "1," and ni "thou," n in the plural becoming m. Thus the three main

ETHNOLOGY OF THE INDO-PACIFIC ISLANDS.

pronominal elements may be considered as flexionally related, and this gives to the Dravirian system a marked character. In addition to this the root is reduplicated, with a change in the second vowel, or it is combined with a definitive particle.

A. Pronouns.

Before attempting to trace the range and the affinities of the Dravirian pronouns, it is necessary to determine their proper forms, and mark their variations as accurately as possible.

The root of the First Pronoun occurs under the full forms na (Tamil, Kurgi, Karnataka, Gond, in pl. Malayalam, Male), nga (Malayalam) and ne (Telugu). The vowel becomes o in some forms. The definitive -nu is postfixed in Karnataka, Telugu and Khond. The Gond agentive nu-na appears to invert the relative position of the root and the definitive. The common Gond form, nak, preserves the true vowel of the root and postfixes the prevalent definitive of that dialect. Tamil, Malayalam and Kurgi postfix the contracted form of the definitive, -n. The root, as frequently happens in Dravirian glossology, loses its initial consonant in some forms, e. g. anu, an, a. The form en may be an inversion of ne, but it is better explained as a contraction in which e is the radical element (en from nen or nenu like an, a from nanu, anu).†

On the general subject of the Dravirian pronouns I may refer the reader to the valuable papers by the Rev. Dr Stevenson in the Journal of the Bombay Asiatic Society, and in particular to his article in the number for January 1852. My own glossarial comparisons had been independently made before seeing this paper, but it is due to Dr Stevenson to remark that one of the affinities which has considerable weight in my deductions has been noted by Dr S. although only as an isolated fact, that of the 1st pronoun to the Chinese ngo. His general inference that the Dravirian pronouns are of a peculiar type more allied to the Turanian than to the Sanskrit-unless it refer to the structure and not to the roots-is open to the remark that the Sanskrit roots are Turanian or Scythic while the Dravirian are not. The 1st pronoun, Dr Stevenson remarks, "is allied to the languages of Arabia and Syria on the one hand, and on the other with the Chinese family," and also with "the Tibetan." The foreign affinities of the 2nd pronoun are not adverted to by Dr S. The main scope of his papers is to distinguish the Dravirian from the Sanskritic elements in the Guzarathi-Bengali class of languages. The honorific ap, apun, apan, &c., of these languages he identifies with the Dravirian avan. Every student of the languages of India will find much matter of the highest value and interest in Dr Stevenson's papers. His comparative vocabulary of the nonSanskrit vocables in the vernacular languages of India promises to be a work of so in eru lition, and its completion will be an important service to Indian and an hnology.

blance between the Chinese, the Tibeto-Ultraindian and the DraviroAustralian pronouns was shown in the glossarial tables in my paper on the "Traces of an ethnic connection between the basin of the Ganges and the Indian Archipelago before the advance of the Hindus into India" read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in January 1851, vide ante vol. vi, p. 654.

In chap. IV sec. 6, I have considered en, ne as seemingly the radical form, and in some cases assumed as portions of the root elements that I now refer to

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