Page:Ch'un Ts'ew Pt I.pdf/156

Rh :—'Our food, our drink, and our clothes are all different from those of the Flowery States; we do not exchange silks or other articles of introduction with their courts; their language and ours do not admit of intercourse between us and them:—what evil is it possible for us to have done?' If it was so with those Jung, it was the same, doubtless, with other tribes as well; and they had, probably, different languages among themselves, or at least different dialects of the same language which would render communication between them difficult. Even where the outlying chiefs or princes claimed connexion with the House of Chow, or traced their ﬁrst appointment to it, the languages spoken in their States may have been different from that of China proper. I have pointed out how the names of the lords of Woo, both in structure and sound, do not appear to be Chinese. And in the account of Tsze-wăn who had been chief minister of Ts&lsquo;oo, given in the Chuen on VII. iv., his name of Now-woo-t‘oo is explained by reference to the fact that he had been suckled by a tigress, when he was a child and cast away in a forest. The people of Ts&lsquo;oo, we are told, called suckling now, and their name for a tiger was woot&lsquo;oo; and hence when the child was grown up, he was known by the name of Now-woot&lsquo;oo, or Tiger-suckled. It would so happen that the languages of the people, who were not of a Chinese origin, and of their chiefs, would differ for a time; but in the end, the culture and the force of the superior race prevailed to bring the language and other characteristics into conformity with it.

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