Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/265

 INDO-CHINESE RACES AND LANGUAGES 253 present country from some place N. of Assam. They were the conquerors of the ancient em- pire of Kamarupa, and the founders of the dy- nasty of Ha-tsung-tsa. The Garrows live W. of the Cossyah mountains; the Changlos in- habit the upper valley of the Brahmapootra; the Miris the hilly country N. of Luckimpoor ; the Ahors the mountainous region S. of the Himalaya ; the Singphos the N. portion of the Burmese empire; and the Mikirs the district of Nowgong in central Assam. To this divi- sion also belong the numerous Naga tribes, or Kwaphis according to their own designation ; they inhabit the regions W. of the river Kopili, E. of the mountains which separate Assam from the Bor-Khamti country, and N. of the valley of Assam. The Khyeng inhabit the Youmadoung range which separates Aracan from the valley of the Irrawaddy. The Karens live in the mountains of Aracan, in Pegu, and in southern Burmah ; also in the valleys of the Irrawaddy and the Salwen. The Sabaing who dwell in the valley of Sittoung, near the city of Toungoo, also belong to this group. The aborigines of the Indo-Chinese penin- sula are probably all the tribes inhabiting principally its mountainous districts and river embouchures. They were driven back to these regions by the Anam and Thai races who immigrated and settled in the valleys. They are barbarous nations, on whom neither Buddhism nor Chinese civilization has pro- duced any impression. Among them may be mentioned the Mons, in the delta of the Irra- waddy, called Talaing by the Burmese; the Khomens or inhabitants of Cambodia, dwelling near the Mekong; the Tsiampas, S. of the Anamese, who call them Lau; the Kwantos, who are the real aborigines of Tonquin and live in the mountains on the frontier of China; and the Mois, W. of Cochin China. Several travellers have described the last as being es- sentially of a negro type. The Thai is the dominant race of the Indo-Chinese penin- sula. The Siamese are the Thais proper, and the most numerous. The Burmese, Chinese, and Anamese give them the name of Shian, whence comes the Portuguese Siao, and our Siam. The Laos inhabit the interior and the north of the peninsula; they are subdivided into white Laos (Lau-pang-kaK) and black Laos (Lau-pang-dun). Other Thai races are the Ahoms, Khamtis, and Cossyahs. The Ana- mese inhabit Tonquin and Cochin China ; they are not as closely related to their western neighbors as to the Chinese. Several un- civilized races, which differ from the Chi- nese proper in language, religion, and manners, seem to be, and are called, the aborigines of China. They adhere to the Shamanism of the people of High Asia. The most important races among them are the Sifan, the Miautze, and the Lolo. The Sifans inhabit the moun- tainous regions W. of the Chinese provinces Shensi and Szechuen on the upper course of the tributaries of the Hoang-ho and Yangtse-kiang. They are mentioned in the annals of China from A. D. 634, and are at present tributary to the Chinese. They lead a nomadic life, raise sheep, and live in tents. The Miautze are scattered over portions of several provin- ces, especially in Szechuen, Kweichow, Hunan, Hupeh, Yunnan, Kwangsi, and on the frontier land of Kwangtung. It is supposed that the inhabitants of Hainan are related to them. The Lolos are the aborigines of Yunnan in S. China; they are good miners and skilled forgers of weapons. In the ancient annals of China two barbaric races are mentioned, the Man and the Y; but it has not been deter- mined whether they were distinct races, or re- lated to those already described. The Indo- Chinese languages, if we include those spoken in Thibet and China, comprise all the mono- syllabic languages known. The language now spoken in Cochin China is to be considered, ac- cording to Max Muller, as a dialect of Chinese, at least as much as Norman French was a dia- lect of French. The Chinese was grafted on the Anamitie, the native language of Cochin China; yet few Chinese scholars would recog- nize their language in that of Cochin China. For instance, it is one of the most characteris- tic features of the literary Chinese, the dialect of Nankin, or the idiom of the mandarins, that every syllable ends in a vowel, either pure or nasal. In Cochin-Chinese, on the contrary, we find words ending in k, t, p ; thus ten is thnp, at Canton chap, instead of the Chinese tchi. In Chinese, Anamitic, Burmese, Siam- ese, and all other monosyllabic tongues, there are six or eight musical accents or modulations by which the different meanings of the same monosyllabic root are kept distinct. The Chinese has no more than about 450 distinct sounds, and with them it expresses between 40,000 and 50,000 words or meanings. Thus, in Anamitic, t>a pronounced with the grave accent means either a lady or an ancestor; pronounced with the sharp accent, the favorite of a prince ; with the semi-grave accent, what has been thrown away; with the grave cir- cumflex, what is left of a fruit after it has been squeezed ; with no accent, three ; with the as- cending or interrogative accent, a box on the ear. Thus the series J3a, bd, M, M means, if properly pronounced, " Three ladies gave a box on the ear to the favorite of the prince." The differ- ence between the speech of the Siamese and their neighbors the Burmese is very marked.' The Burmese use an excessive number of triple consonants, mlw and similar combinations ; but in nothing is the difference more noticeable than in the frequent use by the Burmese of the th sound, uttered with a strong guttural breathing, where the Siamese use. The two alphabets also are very dissimilar in form, the Burmese using a round character derived from Ceylon, while the Siamese have a compara- tively square character supposed to be derived from the ancient Cambodian letters still used for their sacred books, and generally for the