CHAPTER VIII.

MON-ANAM FAMILY.

I ACCEPT the provisional arrangement of a Mon-Anam Family out of deference to the expression of opinion of Logan, and with a view of exhausting the subject. It has by no means received universal assent, yet no antagonistic scheme has been started, for in fact very little is known of the Language of this quarter. The Group is composed of twenty Languages-1. The Mon or Peguan. 2. The Kambojan. 3. The Annamite. 4. The Paloung. 5-20. The Languages of the sixteen Wild Tribes inhabiting the upper basin of the River Mekong. The group belongs to the Monosyllabic Order, but it has not the coherency of other Groups. It has been less studied, and it seems quite possible, that it may be necessary to disconnect Annamite altogether. The Language-Map shows, that the Language-Field is broken up into three enclaves, which have ceased to have connection with each other, owing to the intrusion of a Tibeto-Burman and Tai flow of linguistic lava. Another marked feature is, that the influence of Indian culture, Indian religion, Indian nomenclature, and Indian Characters cease with Kambojan, and that the Annamite-speaking population borrow everything from the Chinese. At any rate, we walk upon very uncertain ground here. The chief authorities are Logan, Bastian, Garnier, Aymonier, and Des Michels.

The coast of the delta of the River Irawaddy has, from prehistoric times, been occupied by a race separate in Language from the Burmese; the race is known as Talain, the Language as Mon, and the Province as Pegu. They

had their day of greatness, but within the last century have been overpowered by the Burmese, who occupy the middle regions of the River Irawaddy, and during their time of power tried to exterminate this Language, which has, however, revived since, in 1853, Pegu became a British Province, and Rangoon the capital of British Burmah.

Mason and Phayre have stated their opinion in favour of a connection linguistically between the Mon and the Language of the Hos or Koles, on the other side of the Bay of Bengal, in the Kolarian Family. We have a Grammar by Haswell, who does not agree in this theory. Phayre states that it is uncertain from what quarter the Mons came; they were joined by a Dravidian emigration from the Indian Peninsula, and the word Talain survives as a record of the Telinga connection.

The Mon Character is of an Indian source through the Dravidian, but there is little trace in the Language of that connection. Bastian says that the Mons adopted for their sole Character (religious and secular) the Pali Character, which is used everywhere else for the sacred books only. There is no Dictionary, but a Peguan Vocabulary is attached to the Grammar. The people are Buddhists. Their sacred books are translated into Mon, abundantly interspersed with Pali. There are many loan Pali and Burmese words brought in by religious and secular domination. The construction is quite different from the Burmese, the location of words being almost always the reverse. This is one of the Languages, whose days are numbered; it may survive in villages, or among the emigrants settled in Siam, but Burmese will supplant it in the towns. We have a translation of the New Testament in the peculiar Character.

Adjacent to the prosperous realm and the well-known Language of the Siamese is the fallen and sadly-reduced kingdom of Kambodia, on the River Mekong. All the surrounding nations admit, that the Kambodians were their teachers in religion and science; but for the inter

ference of the French, who have now taken the remnant of the kingdom under their protection, in all probability it would have been totally absorbed in its two powerful neighbours, Annam and Siam. It is calculated, that about one million and a half still speak the modern form of the ancient Language of the Khmer or Khomer, though the kingdom of Kambodia comprises only one million; the remainder are subjects either of Siam or of French Cochin-China. The magnificent ruins of Angeour or Nakhon Wat have drawn attention to the subject, and among these ruins are inscriptions, in an Archaic form of the peculiar Character of Kambojan, the most easterly derivative of the Indian, and in an Archaic form of Language, imperfectly understood, if at all, by the modern Buddhist priesthood; at least, these inscriptions have not been satisfactorily translated.

The great Khmer people differed essentially from their neighbours of Annam and Siam; they are an elder race, having descended the River Mekong at a period anterior to the Tai, and before the powerful race of Annam crossed the dividing range. The present Kambodians are Buddhists, with marked Pagan customs. Their Language differs materially from any other Monosyllabic Language. It has no tones, being spoken recto tono: the numeration is quinary. Garnier remarks, that modern Kambojan is a transition Language betwixt the Polysyllabic Language of the Malayan and the Monosyllabic Language of the Tai. It is full of Siamese words, and Bastian remarks, that it is so full, that for a long time it was mistaken for Siamese. Many loan-words are found contracted in the manner required by the tendency of the Kambojan Language, which is certainly towards Monosyllabism. It has also loan-words from Malay, Pali, Annamite, and Mon. The written annals go back to A.D. 1346, but there is evidence of a much higher antiquity to the power and civilisation of the nation. We have Vocabularies, a Dictionary of French and Kambojan, and a Grammar in French. We

clearly may expect, that our knowledge of this important Language, so accessible, and so abundant in Archaic monuments, and spoken to this day by a civilised people, should be speedily brought up to a proper level.

There are two modern Characters. I. The sacred, which is used also in Siam; and, 2. The vulgar. Fundamentally they are identical, but differ in detail. It is proposed by French scholars to use the sacred Character for printing purposes, to the exclusion of the vulgar form, which will not make a good printing medium. Three Dialects are indicated of this Language: I. Xong, 2. Samre, and 3. Khamen-Boran, which are duly shown in the LanguageMap, and represented by Vocabularies; but there are sixteen Wild Tribes inhabiting the upper basin of the River Mekong, the connection of whose Language with the polished Kambojan is a subject of perplexity, which will be discussed further on. The remaining great question of the relation of the Kambojan to the Annamite must be disposed of at once. It has been assumed, on the authority of Logan, whose experience is anterior to the occupation of Saigon by the French, that there is a linguistic connection betwixt these neighbour Languages, as unquestionably exists betwixt Mon and Kambojan. I referred the question to Professor Des Michels of the Ecole des Etudes Orientales at Paris, and am assured by him, that not only the two Languages are completely distinct (which was not doubted), but that contact between the races, both as regards physical and moral organisation, was actually non-existent. No linguistic work has as yet been published on this important subject, and attention is invited to the necessity of setting forth the true state of the case, which must cause the breaking up of, or the firm establishment of, the Mon-Anam Family.

I now pass on to the Language called Annamite, alias Annamese, or Cochin-Chinese. Descending the river Mekong to the sea, we find ourselves in French Cochin-China, and the nucleus of a new civilisation. Whether this

settlement will pay commercially is a question; at any rate, linguistically, it is a great step in advance, and we find sweetness and light thrown round the hard questions of Grammar. The French have more than a century meddled in the affairs of Cochin-China, and such meddling generally ends in annexation. The kingdom of Annam consists of two Provinces, Tonquin and Cochin-China, and occupies the whole length of the Eastern face of the IndoChinese Peninsula, extending from latitude 8° to 23°. The central portion comprises the old Malay kingdom of Champa, of which the Language, religion, and nationality have perished. Yule gives the history of this forgotten State, and Crawfurd, in his Malay Grammar, analyses the vocables, and considers that it was fundamentally a local Language, mixed up with much Malayan. Of the three capitals, Huet, Hanoy, and Saigon, the latter has passed by conquest into the hands of the French. The people are Buddhists, but of the Chinese type. The lower classes use many words of uncertain origin, because they have been altered to suit the euphonic laws of a Monosyllabic Language, in which the use of tones presents a great difficulty to the student. There are abundance of particles, which have no independent existence as words, and yet they do not coalesce, so as to form one word with the word which they are employed to qualify. The sounds are easy enough to acquire, and the Roman Catholic Mission, which has existed more than a century, has by ingenious additions adapted the Roman Character to these sounds, which makes the study of the Language independent of the acquisition of the peculiar Character, which is composed of a selection of Chinese Ideographs, used phonetically as a Syllabary, with upwards of nine hundred varieties. So clumsy is this arrangement, that the highest literati set it aside and use the Chinese ideographic signs. In such a Language the meaning has to be gathered from the position of the words and the context. The idea of past, present, and future is expressed by particles, or