Page:Comparative grammar of the languages of further India.djvu/67

Rh the class "Lohitic" a language called "Tunglhu" in Tenasserim. By this is evidently meant the "Toung-thoo," and Toung-thoo is a dialect of the Karen, which the Professor rightly does not class as Lohitic. Whether it is really necessary to preserve this long nomenclature is a question. Logan has concisely described the process of the manufacture of these multifarious dialects.

"Perpetual aggressions and frequent conquests, extirpations of villages, and migrations, mark the modern history of nearly all these Tibeto-Burman tribes, and of the different clans of the same tribe. Their normal condition and relations, while extremely favourable to the maintenance of a minute division of communities and dialects, are opposed to any long preservation of their peculiarities. We find the same tribe separating into clans and villages permanently at war with each other, Kuki fleeing from Kuki, Singpho from Singpho, Abor from Abor. We can thus understand how, in such a country, and before the Aryans filled the plains, the lapse of a few centuries would transform a colony from a barbarous Sifan clan, descending the Himalaya by a single pass, into a dozen scattered tribes, speaking as many dialects, and no longer recognizing their common descent."

"Within the mountainous parts of the limits of the modern kingdom of Nipál there are thirteen distinct and strongly marked dialects spoken. They are ex-