30

ETHNOLOGY OF THE INDO-PACIFIC ISLANDS.

language with the progress of time. In the Semitico-Libyan and Indo-European formations we meet with facts of a like kind. The same element may become singular, dual, plural, masculine, feminine, neuter, possessive, objective &c. in different dialects and even in different positions.

Definitive Postfixes.

The use of definitive postfixes belongs to the earliest stage of the inversive formation and cannot be said to be even confined to it, for some prepositional languages post place the definitive or demonstrative, as Siamese and most of the Indonesian languages. In the Africo-Semitic prepositional languages definitives are common as postfixes, and they occur in very archaic words, as in pronouns. Substantive terms are, to a great extent, composed of a root and a definitive postfix in the Scythic and North Asian, in many American and African, in the Caucasian and Indo-European languages and even in Semitico-Libyan.

The Draviro-Australian, unlike the Scythic and Caucasian formations, distinguishes the gender by some of its postfixes, in this respect possessing ar Irano-Semitic character. The Dravirian inanimate or neuter posfix am, um, mu &c is identical with the Indo-European m, am &c of the objective which in neuter words is used as the nominative. This usage is Dravirian also. In Semitico-Libyan the labial has a masc. and plural force, and in some languages it is common or neuter. The feminine i, a, of Dravirian are likewise Semitico-Libyan and Indo-European feminine terminals. The masc. (sometimes neuter) power of -n, d and the fem. power of -l are not Indo-European or Semitico-Libyan, but the roots are preserved with the same powers in Caucasian words for "father" and "mother." All the Dravirian postfixes are found in Scythic, Caucasian and Semitico-African vocabularies.

It is deserving of remark that the wide spread definitive in s which is a common Semitico-Libyan, Indo-European and Scythic postfix to substantives does not occur as a Dravirian postfix unless t, d, zh, j may be taken to represent it. In the Scythic languages s frequently becomes t and both take the sonant forms z, d which countenances this suggestion.

The vocalic prefixes common in Scythic and African languages, and in some of the Indo-European (e. g. Greek) are rare but not

entirely absent in Dravirian as has already been remarked. Their archaic use is evinced by the various forms of the 3rd pronoun and demonstratives. But it must be observed that in the vocabulary the prefixual vowel is frequently a contraction of the root or of its first syllable, and that the general structure of the words is Scythic more than Caucasian or Semitico-Libyan, the vocables of those formations being comparatively curt and elliptic and more often involving a prefix or infix.*

In the Dravirian vocabularies the definitives are common but they appear to have lost their sexual functions in most cases. As they have also plural functions they may indicate number rather than gender in many words, most words being primarily collective or plural and not singular. Al, 1, lu, ru, the feminine definitive, is common. The masculine-an, -na, -n occurs less frequently, but as the lax and flexile phonology renders the n easily transmutable into d, or lon the one side and into m on the other, and as in some dialects d is the current masc. form, postfixes that now appear to be phonetically fem. or neuter may originally have been masculine. The neuter (sometime feminine) labial occurs under varied form -va, −av, -v, -vu, -pu, -p, -ba, −b, -ma, -mu, -am, -m &c. &c. The neuter definitive -du, -da, -di, -thi is much less common. The guttural -ka, −ga, −gu &c. is comparatively rare save in Gond. As in the dialectic groups of other formations different glossaries affect different postfixes or forms of postfixes, showing that a separation into dialects preceded the concretionary stage. At the same time many roots have the same postfix in all or several of the dialects, in some cases by the direct transmission from the pre-dialectic period and in others from the dissemination of the form of one dialect amongst others.

Bopp has remarked that Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit in combining the final Vowels of the primary forms with case-suffixes beginning with a vowel interpose n euphonically, a phenomenon which is almost limited to this group of the Iranian languages, in which, also, it is most frequently employed by the neuter gender, less so by the masculine and most rarely by the feminine (Comp. Gram. I, § 133). In the highly euphonic Dravirian languages consonants are interposed, an becoming nam, ram, dam, tam &c, and it is possible that the Sanskritic languages derived this peculiarity from the influence of the languages of the Dravirian formation with which it came in contact in the basins of the Indus and Ganges. I do not here consider the question whether the agreement in these particles between Dravirian and Iranian was a consequence of the advance of the latter into the province of the former or of an earlier cause. The definitive is a common one. It occurs as a prefix in the Africo-Asonesian languages and as a postfix in the Caucasian and Ugrian, and it is evidently the common labial definitive.

Am, the inanimate or neuter definitive, is common in the Southern vocabulary, Tamil-Malayalam; lu, nu, du, tu &c., variations of lu, in Telugu, Karnataka and Tuluva. Where Tamil has pu, Vi is bu, Malayalam has often ba, Telugu va and Karnat. vu. The It sometimes becomes bi, mi, b. comparatively rare. final vowels vary greatly. Tamil affects ei, Malayalam a, Telugu and Karnataka u and i, Tuluva e, while Tudava generally dispenses with the vowel. In the purer Dravirian languages of the Vindyan group, Gond, Uraon and Male, similar postfixes occur. They are distinguished by the frequent use of k, ka, kka. Double definitives sometimes occur, and they are probably to be explained in the same way as the double prefixes of Kasia and other languages. But in a few cases one of the definitives appears to have been infixed. Thus tolu "skin" is also tovalu, and potu "sun" is also polutu.

The definitives which are used as plurals have been already considered. The Chinese and Tibeto-Ultraindian affinities of the labial are shown in the Table. The more remote were adverted to in discussing the pronouns.

The common plurals in kal, gal, kulu, ngal, nar, kan, la, al, r, ir, lu, ru, &c. and k are Scythic, East Tibetan, Ultraindian and Gangetic.*

The Scythic, East Tibetan, Ultraindian and Gangetic plurals in ni, in, i (flexional in several languages) although radically identical with the Dravirian ir, la, &c. distinguishes the systems in which it occurs both from West Tibetan (Bhotian) and Dravirian.*

The postfixed definitives belong to the foundation of the formation, and their forms and variations carry it back to an era in which Dravirian like Scythic and the other harmonic Aso-African formations had only partially concreted these particles with the substantial roots. In many instances where the roots are common to Dravirian with some of these formations, the definitives vary. (See the remarks on the Caucasian definitives, ante, vol. viii. p. 34.) In the comparative paucity of prefixed definitives Dravirian is Scythic more than N. E. Asian, Caucasian, Semitico-Libyan, Tibeto-Ultraindian or Asonesian.

See Table of Plural Particles.

The most marked feature of the Dravirian system of pronouns and particles is its combination of Chinese and Tibetan roots with a Scythic phonology and structure and with some Scythic roots that are not Chinese. In its cruder and less agglutinative archaic form, of which Australian is partially a representative, its true place appears to be between Chinese and Scythic. The radical affinities of the system with Tibeto-Ultraindian are close and unequivocal. In roots the two are the same, and both are Scythico-Chinese, and much more Chinese than Scythic. The Dravirian and Australian forms do not appear to have been directly derived from Tibeto-Ultraindian. They have several marks of independent derivation from an E. Asiatic source, Chinese and Scythic. The historical connection with Chinese must be of extreme antiquity and altogether pre-Indian, for the general character of Draviro-Australian is inconsistent with the supposition that the Chinese formation itself was the first to spread into India and become the basis of the Dravirian. This would involve the assumption that before the barbarous Draviro-Australians spread to Asonesia an original Chinese formation had been modified by an intrusive Scythic one in India. The connection is mainly with the Kwan-hwa or proper N. E. Chinese and not with the western. The supposition that Dravirian preceded Tibetan in Tibet and is simply the product of the oldest Scythico-Chinese current from Tibet into India, Ultraindia and Asonesia, would make the close connection with Tibeto-Ultraindian a direct historical one, for the latter would thus be in great measure a form of the archaic pre-Indian Dravirian in which, after the separation of Dravirian, the Chinese element had increased from contact with Kwan-hwa and the Scythic proportionally diminished. But the Tibeto-Ultraindian languages themselves oppose strong facts in phonology, glossary and ideology to such a hypothesis, and Dravirian has direct western affinities-CaucasoAfrican, Iranian and Ugrian-which would of themselves render it more probable that the formation was transmitted to India round the Tibetan region to the westward, and not across it. The affinities between the Draviro-Australian and the TibetoUltraindian systems are the necessary result of their both being Scythico-Chinese, but Scythic and Chinese are cach of vast

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antiquity and appear to have all along been in contact, so that mixed formations must always have existed and been in the course of production. The individuality both of Draviro-Australian and of Tibeto-Ultraindian not only when compared with each other, but with Chinese and the existing forms of Scythic, is so strongly marked, as to claim for each an independent existence from the most remote periods of Scythic and even of protoScythic history.

At the same time the Tibetan languages have been from era to era receiving new impressions both from Chinese and from more than one branch of Scythic; and the eastern and northern dialects have been more exposed to these influences than the western and southern. The Tibetan languages, thus perenially modified, have, in turn, been carried into the Dravirian province from era to era, supplanting and modifying the Dravirian languages, so thatleaving the Arian and the direct Chino-Ultraindian elements out of view-India and Ultraindia now present 1st Dravirian languages, little if at all Tibetanised, but in which some TibetoUltraindian elements probably exist although difficult to discriminate (South Dravirian), 2nd Dravirian modified by Tibetan (Kol and, much more slightly, Male, Uraon, Gond), 3rd Tibetan in different forms (Bhotian or western, Si-fan or eastern) and of different eras and varieties in each form, with much blending amongst themselves, as well as with Mon-Anam and Chinese, and with a variable but comparatively weak Dravirian element, difficult to discriminate in most cases from that archaic community of roots to which we have adverted and from Tibetan having a Scythic harmonic tendency. In the Gangetic languages for example, an agglutinative and harmonic character may be either Scythic through East Tibetan or Scythic though Dravirian. The facts and general probabilities of every case must give the decision, where decision is possible.

The three existing branches of the Draviro-Asonesian familythe Dravirian proper, the Kol and the Australian-have each had an independent development, and been exposed to widely different influences, internal and external, from a very remote period. The Australian pronominal system is the most crude, redundant and agglomerative, and the least flexional. The systems, both of