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languages have always been subject to changes similar in kind to those which are now going on in the world, and have been doing so throughout historical periods.

In India the Dravirian formation has ceased to be diffusive and assimilative. It has long been exposed to the influence of the Sanskrit and of the northern Indian tongues that were early assimilated in a greater or less degree to Sanskrit. In the Dravirian family we have therefore to note the mutual action of the different languages and dialects, and the action on each of the Sanskrit and of the Sanskritised or prakrit tongues of the north. The very close degree in which the Dravirian languages of Southern India are related to each other and to the least Ultraindianised languages of the Vindyas, in phonology and ideology, has appeared from the details in chap. IV. They are dialects of one tongue, and they appear to differ less from each other than the Philipine languages. The dialectic discordances are exactly the same in kind as those which prevail amongst the Philipine and other groups of Asonesian languages, or amongst the Asiatic members of the Semitico-Libyan formation. All the great families that have been recognized show much larger mutual deviations in their component languages, and we must include Australian to give the formation a comprehensiveness similar to the Scythic or the Semitico-Libyan. Even the Indo-European and the MalagasyPolynesian are much more diversified than the continental or Kol-Tamulian division. All these widely disseminated families present single languages or groups that, from long and complete separation, have become alienated from each other in the greater number of their roots, in phonology and even in many details of ideology. The transitions are seldom so abrupt as from the Dravirian to the Australian, but this arises from the former being only the last continental and the latter the last insular remnant of a once continuous and widely expanded family, that was early disjoined, and has ever since been subjected in its two divisions to the influence of formations of opposite character,—the ScythicoIranian tending in the continental division to give a more flexional development to the primary structure which it has in common with them, and the Niha-Polynesian tending to arrest the natural flexional development and concretion of the insular division, and

to maintain the archaie crudeness of the type while partially transforming it. But some of the contrasts found in other families are as great or nearly as great in degree, as, for example, that between English or Celtic and Sanskrit,-Semitic and Egyptian,-Malay and Tagala-Polynesian and Malagasy,-Manchu and Fin &c. Of such degrees of dissimilitude as that between the Kol and the proper Dravirian group most large and partially mixed families present several examples.

On the subject of the connection amongst the South Dravirian languages Mr Ellis' observations may be cited. "The Telugu, to which attention is here more specially directed, is formed from its own roots, which, in general, have no connexion with the Sanskrit, nor with those of any other language, the cognate dialects of Southern India, the Tamil, Cannadi &c. excepted, with which, allowing for the occasional variation of con-similar sounds, they generally agree: the actual difference in the three dialects here mentioned is in fact to be found only in the affixes used in the formation of words from the roots; the roots themselves are not similar merely, but the same." (Note to the Introduction to Campbell's Telugu Grammar, p. 3.)

It must at the same time be remarked that for many ideas there is more than one native or at least pre-Sanskritic root current, and that the different vocabularies even of the southern group often affect different roots. This feature does not militate against the assertion that the disparities are merely dialectic, for it is common to the Dravirian with every other ancient cluster of dialects. As in other provinces, the capacity for the currency of numerous roots was probably much greater in the earlier ages of the family, when its tribes were more barbarous and more divided. The progress of the great civilised nations and their mutual glossarial interpenetration and assimilation, must have been attended, as in other cases, with the partial obliteration of the vocabularies of subdued or absorbed tribes. In the primary Draviro-Australian era, the number of distinct vocabularies and independent synonimous roots was probably very great; and the difference between the Kol and the Gondo-Tamulian vocabularies shows that in India, even to the latest period of Dravirian predominance, the North-Eastern dialects presented a considerable con

trast to the southern. So long as dialects spoken by independent or separate tribes exist, the number of roots has a tendency to increase, each dialect being a distinct inlet for foreign words, which may or may not pass by slow degrees into circulation in some or all of the other dialects also, that depending on the nature of the relations amongst the tribes. A gradual and very great glossarial divergency is consistent with the retention of the leading characters of the formation in phonology, ideology and even in glossary. The Indo-European, the Niha-Polynesian, the TibetoUltraindian, the Scythic, the Semitico-Libyan and all other formations furnish evidence of this. On the subject of the more recent interpenetration of the South Davirian glossaries Mr Elliot remarks: "All the southern dialects become considerably intermixed as they approach each other's limits. Thus the three words for "egg" used indifferently by the people speaking Canarese, (matté, tetti, gadda) are evidently obtained, the first from the Tamulian, malta; the last, from the Telúgú, gadda. This intermixture, which is of ordinary occurrence in all cognate tongues, is here promoted specially by extensive colonization of different races, as of the Telúgús into Southern India under the Bijaynagar dynasty, where they still exist as distinct communities-and of the followers of Rámanúja Achárj into Mysore, where they still are to be seen as a separate class speaking Támil in their families, and Carnátaca in public. The Reddies also, an enterprising race of agriculturists, have migrated from their original seats near Rajahmandry, over the whole of Southern India, and even into the Maháráshtra country, where they are considered the most thriving ryots, and are met with as far north as Poona." (Journ. Asiatic Soc. vol. 18 p. 350).

So far as the testimony of the 100 words which I have compared can be relied on, the South Indian or purest Dravirian vocabularies would appear to have 30 to 40 per cent of their words in common with Gond, Male and Uraon; and less than 15 per cent with the Kol dialects. The specific affinities with the Middle Gangetic, the Himalayan and the Ultraindian languages, though considerable as a whole, are so slight for any particular language or group, that it would be unsafe to state then at even a very low number, without a comparison of much larger vocabularies. A few Dra

virian words are found in Dhimal, some of the Manipuri dialects and Burman.

The Gangetic vocabularies of the Tibeto-Ultraindian and Tibetanised class have many words that appear to be archaic Indian or Draviro-Australian, although not now extant in the South Dravirian languages. The most western, as Tiberkad and Milchanang, present affinities with Eastern Medo-Persian vocabularies. Some of their non-Tibetan terms are clearly ancient Gangetic, for they are found in Asonesia.

The affinities with any single Asonesian language are few, but with the Asonesian vocabularies as a whole they are perhaps more numerous than with those of any other province save the Scythic in its widest range (Caucaso-Koriak). The Australian affinities are far from being the most numerous.. Dravirian vocables are found in all the Malayu-Polynesian languages, and as several Dravirian synonyms and varieties of the same root are extant in different vocabularies although not found in Australian, it appears that the Dravirian glossarial current not only set to the eastward in the first Australian era, but continued to do so while changes were taking place in the Indian languages themselves, or in the distribution and predominance of the tribes who spoke them. In the earlier ages of this current it must have chiefly flowed from Bengal along the western seaboard of Ultraindia, and it is to be presumed that the dominant tribes and vocabularies of the Lower Ganges were more or less changed from era to era by the intrusion of other Dravirian tribes from the interior, and by foreign influences transmitted from Irania. In later periods they were affected not only by the ethnic current from Irania down the Gangetic basin, but by the Chino-Tibetan movement from the eastward. As soon as navigation was sufficiently improved to allow of a maritime intercourse along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, the population and languages of the Lower Ganges would be affected by the powerful South Indian nations and by foreign visitors from the west, while the continental and Singhalese South Dravirians themselves would then, for the first time, be enabled to carry on a direct intercourse with Ultraindia and Indonesia. It is probable, from glossarial evidence, that the Dravirians were civilised and maritime before the Arians predominated

in N. India. The influence of a Gangetic sub-formation akin to the Kol is still distinctly traceable in Indonesia, as will appear in a subsequent place.

The remnants of the Dravirian formation in the other existing languages of Northern India, and especially of the Gangetic basin, are of great importance for Asonesian ethnology. It is obvious that from the first era of the Draviro-Australian movement towards the further east, when rude tribes like the Simangs and Australians roamed in the Sunderbunds and crept along the creeks on rafts or skins, to the period when civilised Dravirians and Ultraindo-Dravirians navigated the coasts in paravus and spread their maritime art to the remotest islands of the South Sea, the Gangetic population must have been the principal, and, in general, the sole, disseminators of Indian vocables in that direction. Hence a knowledge of the Gangetic tongues in every age, and under each of the great changes they have undergone from the influence of intrusive formations or languages, is essential to a thorough investigation of Asonesian history, and whatever vestiges are recognized of their pre-Sanskritic condition and possessions have an immediate value for that purpose. It has already been remarked in an earlier page, that not only the Vindyan dialects but the Marathi-Bengali or Sanskritised languages of Northern India, present, in their non-Arian element, proportionately more numerous and direct affinities with the Indonesian languages than the South Dravirian. The glossarial and other affinities between the Asonesian formations and the Dravirian will be separately examined. It is sufficient here to indicate their existence and extent in proof of the great antiquity of the latter in India, and of its having exercised a predominant influence in the eastern archipelago not only prior to the Papuan era but subsequent to it, for the Malayu-Polynesian civilisation was not purely Ultraindian or Chino-Tibetan but Gangetic or Draviro-Ultraindian.*

Several examples of this class of affinities will be found in the annexed vocabulary. I take a few words at random from other classes. Straight.

The Dravirian sarta, sariada, sariga &c. is Arian. Tinnaga Telug. is spread over Asonesia from Nias to Polynesia, (e. g, atula, atilu, tian, tatonu, betul &c.) It is connected with the Tibeto-Himalayan thang, tong, tondo, thunea, Naga ating, Anam thang. The Dravirian nere, nerana is probably also the original of the Indonesian no-lor, lur-us, maruru, &c., Poly. porore.

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