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124
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1892.
village is frequently foreign country to its neigh- bours, and raid and counter-raid are carried on with little intermission and in the most bloodthirsty manner. This state of things could not, of course, be permitted to continue in the presence of a civilised power, and as nothing short of annexation was shown to have the slightest effect on these wild bill-men, their country has been received into the British Empire, and measures have been taken to establish in the hill country the Pax Britannica, which already prevails in the neighbouring plains. This bas, of course, necessitated the presence amongst the wild Chins of British officers, who, in accordance with the wise foresight of the Government, have been encour. aged to make themselves familiar with the language of the people whose destinies they control. The present manuai, which is designed for the use of military and other officers in Haka and its vicinity, is the work of Mr. Macnabb, the Political Officer stationed at that place, and is one of the first results of the new régime. The language is that known as the Baungshe or Haka Chin, which language we are told in the Preface is spoken over a considerable tract of country. Slight dialectic variations, it is true, occur in different parts, but these do not appear to be so important as one might be lead à priori to suppose.
One direct result, indeed, of the internecine warfare referred to is the creation of many petty dialects, which, in the case of the Manipuris, have caused travellers to state that the language spoken in certain villages is unintelligible to their neighbours twenty or thirty miles away. Whilst, however, admitting that the conditions of life in the wild forest.covered mountains of the Arakan Yomà are favourable to the propagation of petty dialectic changes, it may reasonably be doubted whether there is much real divergence in the language spoken by different villages of the same tribe. Slight variations in the pronunciation of certain vowels, or in the retention or elision of final consonants, will frequently make alterations in words, which, though sufficiently small in a written language, will often render sentences unintelligi. ble to obtuse savages, and even to educated Europeans, who are not well versed in the language. Of course, also, the absence hitherto of books or writings amongst these savages is eminently con.
acive to the growth of different dialects, but again there is a strong counteracting tendency in
the pertinacity with which the Mongoloid races retain intact the root words of their languages.'
In the present case it may be taken that we bave before us the language spoken by a large and important body of these bill-men, and the information concerning it, now for the first time brought to the public eye, cannot fail to throw an interesting light on the ethnic relations generally of the Chine and their cognate races. Before however examining the philological aspects of the Baungshê or Haka Chin Language it may be well to point out a few apparent errors in the book before us. I shall do so in no cavilling spirit, being well aware of the difficulties and pitfalls which await him who for the first time reduces a foreign language to writing; but without laying claim to any knowledge of the language itself, a comparison of the sentences and vocabulary in this book with those already published of Lushai and its cognato dialects will show, that there are a few mistakes, which may with advantage be corrected in a second edition.
Mr. Macnabb has, in writing Chin, wisely chosen the Roman character in preference to the Burmese one, and has selected with slight alteration the Government system of vowel transliteration. This is a most fortunate circumstance, as it both facilitates comparison of the language with others, and enables the learner to grasp at once the vari. ous sounds used in speaking. It is to be hoped that the same course will be followed by pioneers in the other hill languages and dialects, and that the error of the American Missionaries in using a garbled version of the Burmese alphabet (itself drawn from Aryan sources), in writing Karen, will not be repeated.
Objection may be taken to two divergences from the Government system, namely the transliteration of short o as in ' upon' by 6, and of short a, as u in fall,' by . In the former case it would obviously be preferable to write the o without any mark at all, since the sound in 'upon' is simply that of the ordinary short o, (not found in Burmese.)
The transliteration of the undefined vowel by is unquestionably wrong and misleading. This vowel is etymologically a, as is shown, for instance, by the words for "rupee' (túnkä), 'reward' (lúk-saung), and 'path' (lúmb), which are the deriva. tives respectively of the Hindustani word tanka, the Burmese lak-s'aung (let-s'aung), and the
? (e. g., the Hindt bantnd is the Panjabt vann, words instantly recognizable as the same on paper, but not so in speech. -ED.)
"[The experience of British officers in the Chin Hills is clearly that of those who have to deal with savage Janguages generally. E. 9., the remarks of the late
Bishop Pattison on the languages of the Pacific Islands, and the experience of Mr. Man in the Andamans.-ED.)
. [The representation of o in upon' by 8 is, of course, clearly misleading, but I think it requires & diacritical mark nevertheless. "Ordinary short o" is usually understood to have the sound of o in opaque,' found
