The Tibeto-Chinese families of Indian Languages
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THE Tibero-Chinese family
Excepting the Austric, no grMt family of speeches is spoken over 60 wide an extent Of the eastern hemisphere from central asia to southern Burma and from Baltistan to pekin at that formless ,ever moving ant horde of dialects ,the tibeto Chinese.The number of its speakers far exceeds those of the austric and even of the indo European family. So vast is the area coverd by it and so apparently infinite is the number of its members, That no single scholar can hope to master the latter in their entirety.A few of them ,such as Tibetan,Burmese,Siamese,or Chinese ,have been more or less thoroughly investigated by specialists of others we have only a few words single bricks each of which we have to Take as specimens of an entire house ,while of others again we know only the names,or not even that.
The first attempts at classifing this mass -of langua.ges were made by Brian
Houghton Hodgson, Hodgaon , clarum at venerabile woman and his
works still form the foundation of a1l similar undertakings.
Closely following Hodgson came the enthusiastic and indefatigable Logan, to whom we are indebted for much that relates to Burma and Assam. After him we find several writers, some like Mason, Cushing, Forbes, or Edkins, armed with a practical mistery of a. portion of the field, and adding new facta to our knowledge, and others. tra.il)6(l philologists like Max muller Friedrich Muller, or Terrien de Iacouperie, who examined t he material8 collected. by the fonner, and did something towards reducing cha08 into order. Since then oon.8idera.ble progress has been made, a.nd, if we confine ourselves to our immediate subject, the languages of India. and the countries of the immed.iate neighbourhood, it will be sufficient to record the work done by the late Professor Kuhn of Munich, Professor Oonrady, formerly of Leipzig, Dr. wufer and Professor Bradley in America, a nd., above all, tile brilliant b&nd of schola.n wllich adorns L':Bcole Fmn9aise d'Ext~me-Orient a.t Hanoi under the leadership of Monsieur Fiuot. - Through their labours a. framework of clasaifioation has been put together which is genemlly accepted hy schola.1'8 who are in a positil)n to judge its value. They bave even succeeded in formulating phonetic rules that bridge over the dill'ereuOO8 between what are a.pJ?&rent ly the m08t widely separated langtmgcs, and in suggesting theories to account for the origin of the tones which are so characteristic of theee form8 of 8peech. In this way the ground h808 boon prepared for the Linguistic Survey of Burma, which will, I hope, be well advanced before these words are in types.
