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182
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1882
of scenery, sea80118, and temperature; the aspect vowel-element in the root, harmonies and esof animal and vegetable life; to the peculiaritypecially differences (for nations in a low stage of mental and physical activity, customs, and of culture perceive more readily the latter than habits of a people. The removal of a tribe the former) in a manner, which its most conscious from a mountainous region to a level sea shore and subtlest operations could not have devised would gradually bring into disuse the numerous more suitably. couplets, imitative of the sound of water now 8. The predominatingly imitative nature of falling in cataracts, now gathering in pools, cool many Indo-Chinese idioms in their oldest and and dim, amidst impeding boulders, now mean. their present forms, suggests that originally dering many-limbed between them, gently the formation of language in this group must flowing or ruffled, whistling, bubbling, murmur. have been a synthetic process. Roots are ing, with tribes of loquacious birds humming, chiefly used predicatively. Every action, buzzing insects lighting on ferns, and creep- motion, or condition is conceived by the mind ers along the banks ; in short of all the in a twofold aspect-first, in its inherent varied noises and voices which invest a mountain nature ; secondly, in its relation to time and vastness.
place, giving the distinction between this and (payo) a zgo | i agd, the lateral crags or ribs of that, the nearer and the remoter object of attena mountain range;
tion with reference to the ego. The subjective Ewë thozwë to having elevations and changes produced by impressions from the depressions;
external world, led to an intimate interpeneindicating the idea of treestration of a concrete idea with language-form, lo pli lo pla
or other objects pendant effecting a structure, in which existed, first, to pli to pla from rocks, or overhanging
a constant relation between the nature and mu plimú pla breaks in a hilly country;
number of articulate sounds and the nature of pgô la thu pgo kă thā, a species of mountain the idea and number of its accessories; secondly, creeper.
a mutual dependency and corresponding co-ordi. Such and similar couplets would gradually be nation of articulate sounds, exhibiting a succeseffaced from the memory of people no longer sion and external union, which symbolized mountaineers, or would disintegrate, and their that of the idea represented, and also the constituents join with other roots to form new inner sequence and dependence of its consti. couplets.
tuents. It is a reflex, in language, of the 7. In Skythian and some Dravidian lan- synthetic process of the internal perception of guages, especially in Telugu, "the law of harmonic impressions and their idealization by the mind. sequence of vowels" is purely euphonic; in the Language symbolized external phenomena in former the vowel of the root, unchangeable in the totality of their complex nature by a coritself, determines the nature of the vowel ele responding synthesis ; and the instinctive and ment in the agglutinated suffixes. In Telugu unconscious endeavour of the language-sense, " it is the vowels of the appended particles, allowed to each cognition, the aggregate of which are changed through the attraction of which forms the composite idea, one expiration the vowels of the word to which they are of breath and efforts of the organs of speech, suffixed; but in a large number of cases the constituting & syllable, thus holding the syn. suffixed particles retain their own vowels, and thesis in monosyllabic separation draw the vowels of the verb or noun to which 9. Not before the mind of a nation developed they are suffixed, as also the vowels of any and rose to the contemplation of the language particles that may be added to them, into it spoke, and exercised its retrospective and harmony with themselves." In the Indo-Chinese analytical power upon it, would single roots languages, the principle of vowel harmony and be selected and separated from a concrete vowel-antithesis has been brought into play, to synthesis, to be made the bearer of an abstract depict symbolically the accessory qualities of idea, and invested with the definiteness and actions, motions, and phenomenal conditions. vigour of separate individuality. In the Karen The creative language-sense, unconsciously and symbolic synthesis (a more appropriate appellainstinctively characterised, by means of the tion than phonetic couplet") sgi sgi ega sga,
