friend had not put them in mind of these lines of Ho race: Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam I remain, Sir, Your most obedient Servant, Bombay, 2d January, 1825. SATYAWADI. Observations on the Language of Tibet: H THE extension of our political is necessarily ac companied by that of our philological relations, and the acquisition of new languages, naturally follows an intercourse with new countries: amongst those, which such circumstances have introduced to our nearer notice, the dialect of Tibet is one of the most interesting; as being current through a wide tract of country, yet imperfectly known ; as influencing apparently, the family of languages spoken between China and India, and as embodying the tenets of a religion which counts as numerous votaries as perhaps any existing form of faith, the religion of Buddha. A considerable interval, however, has elapsed, and yet nothing has been effected by our countrymen, whose situation in the vicinity of the Himalaya, should afford them ample facilities for the investigation: that there is no want of ability or zeal, we are well assured, but it is possible they may not be aware of the interest attached to the enquiry, or the imperfect manner in which it has been prosecuted, and to put them in possession of this preparatory information, is the chief object of the following observations on the language of Tibet, derived from its most recent cultivators, Klaproth and Remusat. The language of Tibet is considered by both these eminent philologists as distinct from the other dialects of central Asia, or those of the Manchu, Mongol or Tata, and Turkish tribes, constituting the fourth division of the leading forms of speech in these regions the extent through which it prevails, they can but partially appreciate, but there is, great reason to believe, it is spoken with local variations throughout the Himalaya from the frontiers of China, to the mountains bordering on Afghanistan: its limits in the directions, north and south, are yet undefined. There have been some pretenders to a knowledge of the language of Tibet in Europe, but it should seem that their pretensions have been very ill founded. Fourmont, who was employed to translate a fragment referred by Peter the Great to the French Academy, gave a translation of it, which the President de Brosses justly pronounced was as unintelligible as the original; the translation was in Latin, which as Remusat observes, was of marvellous assistance to the translator, as he never would have dared to put together such unmeaning and uncoherent jargon in French, as the whole of the work exhibits. Giorgi upon information gathered from the Mis. sionaries Cassiano and Horace de Pennabilla published in 1762, an enormous quarto entitled Alphabetum Tibetanum, in which besides the languages and literature, he professed to give a view of the history and mytho logy of Tibet: there is perhaps some useful matter on these latter subjects, but it is mixed with a vast quantity of idle and irrelevant speculation whilst as a guide to the acquirement of the language it is wholly unavailing. The alphabet of Tibet is composed of thirty consonants arranged in eight classes, four vowel marks, and two letters of permutation. Each consonant separately considered, comprises the simple breathing or short vowel-like the consonants of the Sanscrit alphabet: consonants have attached to them the letters ya and rain a similar manner as those of the Sanscrit, but they involve some curious permutations unknown to the latter, thus pya is pronounced cha, and kra is pronounced tra, &c. the ya changing the labials of the fourth class into the palatals of the second, and the ra converting the gutturals of the first into the corresponding dentals of the third series. Tibet orthoepy comprehends also quiescent consonants, or consonants which precede, surmount or follow the principal consonant, but are not sounded: in fact very often, they are incapable of being articulated with the letter to which they are attached: when so capable they may be sounded, and in either case seem to express the primitive form of the word, of which imaginary refinement has softened the pronunciation. The following examples of the quiescent or supernumerary consonants are given by Remusat; Gyal phran, pronounced Gial phren, a Prince. a Vang, b Lon po, d Mag d Pon, r Tser dze, Rig byed mkhan, Wang, Lon po, Dze Dze, Meg pon, King. A man of Letters. In writing Sanscrit words the usual rules of orthoepy are neglected, and to express the cerebral letters, which do not occur in the Tibet alphabet, the corresponding dentals are reverted or written backwards. The square form of the Tibet letters and their general character evince at once their derivation from the Devanagari : there are in use, indeed, two alphabets the Dvu-jan and Dvu-min, but there is no real difference between them: the latter or running hand as it may be termed, is rounder and less erect than the former; the conformity of the character with the Devanagari is not the only testimony of this origin, and various traditions current in the country, or recorded by the Chinese historians, refer the origin of the alphabet of Tibet to Bauddha missionaries who visited that country from India. N The language of Tibet has been placed in the Mithridates amongst the Monosyllabic tongues, but this is no means correct, the vocabularies presenting very many polysilabic terms: in fact there is reason to think that this classification in any case has been rather hastily admitted, and that although there are languages the genius of which leads them to prefer a concise construction, yet there is no one, not even the Chinese, that can be correctly called monosyllabic. Mons. Remusat has shown (Mines de l'orient 3. 219) that the Chinese language is far from unacquainted with dissyllabic and trisyllabic vocables. The grammatical construction of the language of Tibet has not yet been satisfactorily developed by any writer on the subject, and in fact the materials for such an attempt are wholly wanting in Europe: a few peculiarities have been noticed by Mons. Remusat and with great labour and ingenuity extracted from the imperfect sources within his reach. Substantives are usually monosyllabic as nam, heaven; pha father; ma mother; or dissyllabic as ni ma the Sun. They not unfrequently terminate in pa and ma. The Genitive is indicated by the adddition of i; as Sá the earth Sa-í of the Earth. The dative by la; Sku the body, Sku-la, to or in the body. The ablative by nes or les; yel-nes from the mouth. adjectives terminate commonly in pa or po; as yag po, good; sden pa bad-the comparative is formed by cho; as chen po, great, chhe cho, greater; the superlative by Ches, prefixed, as med po much, ches med-po very much, The following are the personal and possessive pronouns ; Nga, nge, nged, I, gey yin, our Kyed ran-gis, thine, Kho rang-gi, his, Nge-rang we. The verbs in many cases are not distinguished from the substantives; but they are frequently compounds, with three words of a definitely verbal character, or djed to make, giab to construct or impel, and yin to be; as yag chung djed to make a noise, to call out: So-giab; to render extinct to extinguish: Ned-pa-yin to be sick. It is doubtful whether the verb has any terminations expressive of persons, the same forms occurring with various nominatives as yod nga, I am, Pon po yod the Lord is. The past tense is designated by particles as in Chinese; the future by what appears to be the participle with the auxiliary verb as pheb pa yin will come. The participle seems to be expressed by the addition pa and the conjunctive and superlative mood by par or gyur. Sangs rgyas par rgyur, let it be consecrated; the imperative by dsod, do, skrol bang dsod, Liberate, let loose; and the prohibitive by prefixing ma; ma djed, do not. These scanty indications are all that the industry of Europe has been able to effect towards a system of Tibetan grammar. We cannot help feeling some compassion for the talent so laboriously exercised to such little purpose, especially as the means of obtaining the fullest information are now accessible, and we do hope that our countrymen in the north will relieve the scholars of the west of such unprofitable exercises, by giving a reasonably copious Tibetan grammar: they need not go far for this purpose we suspect, and any Bhotea of Nepal or Kemaon may be converted probably into a competent teacher of the language of Tibet. The labour of European writers has been more successfully directed to the investigation of the relations and affinities of the Tibet language and from various vocabularies both Klaproth and Remusat deduce conclusions to which we readily subscribe: it is not extraordinary that a considerable number of Chinese words should be mixed with the language of Lassa, nor is it wonderful that Sanscrit should generally prevail: the lat |