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Dec. 6, 1872.]
SOME KOCH WORDS
371
ON SOME KOCH WORDS IN.MR. DAMANT'S ARTICLE ON THE PALIS OF
DINAJPUR.
BY JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S., M.R.A.9., dó. I BEG to offer the following solution of the place in the pronunciation. It was reduced to curious phrase hudm dyao applied as stated in writing in a character which is a correct reproMr. Damant's interesting paper on the Koch duction of the Sanskrit character of the period, tribes, to a ceremony observed by them to pro- by Buddhist emissaries from India in the 7th cure rain.
century. They expressed in writing all the The Koches (if I may be pardoned the ex- sounds then in use, but as many of these sounds pression) are, as the writer justly observes, a have dropped out of pronunciation since then, non-Aryan tribe and belong to that section of while the traditional method of spelling has rethe southern or sub-Himalayan Tibetans of mained unchanged, it follows that the written which so many scattered fragments are to be language contains many letters which are not found on our northern frontier. Having been used in speaking. There exist however rules by for four years Collector of Purneah, I took which it may be easily ascertained which letters much interest in this tribe who, together with are mute and which are to be pronounced. the Mechis and Dhimals occupy many villages The first thing which led me to think of the in the Kaliaganj Thânâ of that district. The possible Tibetan origin of these words hudm dyao best account of them is to be found in Brian was the m. In Tibetan ma is the sign of the Hodgson's Aborigines of India, published by feminine, and is added to verbs, participles and the Bengal Asiatic Society in 1847, and still all other parts of speech in that monosyllabic procurable from the Society. Hodgson laments language to denote that the thing or action is that he was unable to pick up many words of done by or refers to a female being or thing. bona fide Koch, as that people have for some I am disposed, if not absolutely certain, to time past abandoned their original speech for refer these words to the following Tibetan origin. Bengali, and accordingly in the long list extend- The word rgyug pronounced dyu means the act ing over 102 pages, which he gives of their voca- | of running. When a final consonant in eastern bulary, hardly a word is to be found which is not Tibetan is rejected, the preceding word is often pure Bengali. It is well known however that lengthened, we thus get dyo or dyau : shod, 1 some expressions of their ancient Tibetan dialect pronounced in eastern Tibet hyud or hud, means do'still survive among them, and Mr. Damant first, open,' then dissolute,"licentious,''loose, has I think been fortunate enough to pick up and ma is the feminine affix. The whole one of these.
phrase then would roughly mean the running I was led to study Tibetan during a residence of the licentious or dissolute women,' an interat Darjiling in 1865, when I made a tour into pretation which corresponds fairly enough to the heart of independent Sikhim, and again in the state of the case. Of course in & rude and 1867, when as Collector of Champaran, I drew only semi-Tibetan dialect like Koch, and after up a grammar of the Magar language, another the lapse of ages, we cannot expect to find all of these semi-Tibetan dialects. The principal the signs of case and tense faithfully preserved, peculiarity in the phonesis of Tibetan is that but I think the similarity is still sufficiently through the isolation into which the different striking to carry conviction to most minds. It tribes of its ancient race have fallen, owing to will be interesting if Mr. Damant can recover the rugged and difficult nature of the country for us some more words of this hitherto lost which they inhabit, a great change has taken dialect.
* Púrpiyd, from Sanskrit purkna old: it was the oldest Aryan settlement in those parts.
f It has been printed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. IV., N. S. for 1870 p. 178.
t This sh is not to be pronounced like the sh inshall, but as two distinct sounds i-hod.
$ This agrees with what Mr. Damant was told by the Palia, and it is possible that with them the original meaning
open' may have been used for naked, so that the word might be rendered naked women.'
