Page:On the Non-Aryan Languages of India.djvu/23

Rh Class VIII. I will call the Dhimal alone. Here we meet with, apparently the first step towards the complex structure. We have the pronoun coming after the verb; lekhi ká 'come I'; lekhi ná 'comest thou'; lekhi wá 'comes he,' lekhi kyel 'come we,' etc. Here khi is the sign of the present tense. The first and second personal pronouns, generally, but not always, come before as well as after the verb, as ká lekhi ká, ná lekhi ná, etc. Here, therefore, the last is a sort of person ending of the verb. The pronoun of the third person may come either before or after, but not both. Dhimal is further characterized by a sort of inflexion in the declension of the pronouns; thus ká 'I' has for dat. and acc. kéng, gen. káng, nom. plur. kyel. Another characteristic of Dhimal is that the demonstrative pronouns have different forms according as they refer to an animate or inanimate object; idong 'this' and udong 'that,' referring to animate, iti and uti to inanimate objects. Class IX, Kanáwari and Bunan. Here we have the person endings with little resemblance to any existing form of the pronoun; thus, in the Milchan dialect of Kanáwari, the present tense of bi 'go' is sing. 1. bítu-k, 2. bíto-n, 3. bit-o; plur. 1. bit-e, 2. bit-en, 3, bit-e, pronominal endings which bear little resemblance to the pronouns gos 'I,' kás 'thou,' nos 'he,' kishang 'we,' kína 'ye,' nogonda 'they.' Bunan is spoken in part of Lahaul, and is the same language as the Tibarskad, one of the Kanáwari dialects. The same language thus exists in two provinces separated from each other by a considerable extent of country, in part of which pure Tibetan, and in the other part Hindi, is spoken. This is another of several instances we have in India of languages which do not alter, or alter very slightly, though spoken in different and distant parts of the country. This class has a very large per-centage of Tibetan words, and yet, as we have seen, an entirely different structure of the verb. The original pronunciation of many Tibetan words, which has been lost in Tibet proper, is often preserved more completely in Kanáwari; thus Milchan skara, Tibetan skarma pronounced karma, 'a star.' Milchan kra, Tibetan skra pronounced sha, 'hair.' Milchan pya, Tibetan bya pronounced cha, 'a bird.' Or in