oonnected, into languages in wMcli the sounds are hound together.
Indeed, nearly all the Barman words are monosyllabic; but they
have the faculty of modifying themselves in their pronunciation so
as to hitch themselves on to the other words, and hence originate a
more harmonious vocalization.
All the basin of the Irawaddy, and Aracan (that is separated from
the Burmese empire by a chain of mountains running nearly parallel
to the sea, the mounts Ycoma), are inhabited by tribes speaking
idioms of the same family as the Barman. Little by little, other
languages of the same family, such as the Laos, have been driven
back from the north-west of the trans-Gangetic peninsula by conquering
populations emanating from this Burmese race, which nowadays
opposes such an energetic resistance to the English. It is
precisely to the same race that belong the mq're savage populations
of Assam. Here, speech and their physical type leave no room for
doubt in this respect. Of this number are the Singpho and the
Manipouri.
But, that the Thibetan is itself nothing but a modification, but an
alteration, of the languages of this same monosyllabic family, is what
becomes apparent to us through the tongues of several tribes of
Assam and of Aracan,—such as that of the Nagas, and that of the
Youmas, which serve for the transit from the Barman into the Thibetan.
These more or less barbarian populations, spread out at the
north-west of the trans-Gangetic peninsula, have all the character
of the race that has been called the yellow. Evidently it is there
that one must seek for the savage type of the Chinese family.
The Thibetan is certainly that tongue which most detaches itself
from the monosyllabic family; and, by many of its traits, it approaches
the Dravidian idioms. It demarcates itself from the Barman
through its combinations of particular consonants, of which the
vocal effect is sweeter and more mollified; but the numerous aspirates
and nasals of the Chinese and the Barman are re-beheld in it.
Upon comparing the monuments of the ancient Barman tongue,
with those of the ancient Thibetan, one perceives' that formerly this
language had more of asperity,—asperity of which the Thibetan still
preserves traces; because,, notwithstanding its combinations of
softened consonants, this language is at the bottom completely
devoid of harmony. Particles placed after the word modify its sense,
and the order of these words is always the inverse of what it is in
our idioms. Hence the apparition, in these tongues, of the first
lineaments of that process of agglutination already so conspicuous in
the Barman. One may construct in it some entire sentences composed
of disjointed words, linked between each other only by the
retro-active virtue, or faculty, of a final word; and it is thus that
these languages arrive at rendering the ideas of time still more complex.
The Barman, in particular, is, in this respect, of very great
richness,— a series of proper names can be treated in it as an unity,
and may take on at the end the mark 11 do’. ’ of the plural, which
reacts then upon the whole: and even a succession of substantives is
susceptible of taking the indefinite plural umya.”
These languages cause us, therefore, to assist, so to say, at the
birth of agglutinative idioms, of which the Basque has afforded us,
in Europe, such a curious specimen. Albeit, whatever be the development
that several idioms of the trans-Gangetic peninsula may
have acquired through the effeets of their successive evolution, they
are all not the less of extreme simplicity. The Barman is the most
elaborated of the whole family; whereas the Chinese, and the speech
of the empire of Annam, are but very little. As concerns the vocal
system, on the contrary, the Thibetan and the Barman do not raise
themselves much above the Chinese; and it is in the south of the
trans-Gangetic peninsula that one must inquire for more developed
articulations, always exercising themselves, however, upon a small
number of monosyllabic sounds. On the opposite hand, the tongues
of the south-east of that peninsula approximate more to the Chinese
as. regards syntax.
One sees, then, that, maugre their unity, the monosyllabic languages
form groups so distinct that one cannot consider them as
proceeding the ones from the others, but which are respectively connected
through divers analogies; and that they must, in consequence,
be placed simply parallel with each other, at distances ever unequal
from the original monosyllabism. Although the Barman and the
Thibetan approach each other very much, — and that they find, in
certain idioms, as it were, a frontier in common,—they still remain
too far asunder with regard to the grammar, the vocabulary and the
pronunciation, for it to be admitted that one may be derived from
the other. They seem rather to be, according to the observation of
Mr. L ogan,' two debris differently altered of a more ancient tongue
that had the same hasis as the Chinese.
Thus one must believe that, from a most remote epoch, the yellow
race occupies all the south-east of Asia; because the employment of
these monosyllabic languages is a characteristical trait which never
deceives. In those defiles of Assam where so many different tribes
repelled thither hy the conquests of the Aryas, of the Chinese and
the Burmese—find themselves gathered, the races of Tartar-type all
istinguish themselves from the Dravidian tongues through then