Hinduism / by Monier Williams.

  • Monier Monier-Williams
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hinduism / by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/254 page 9
    millions in Mysore, in the southern portion of the Bombay Presidency, in Kanara, and part of the Malabar coast. There are two semi-cultivated Dravidian dialects, viz. the Tulu, spoken in a small district of Kanara, and the Koorg or Kodagu, spoken by only 150,000 persons in the hill district to the west of Mysore, which scarcely merit enumeration as languages. Then comes the chief uncultivated Dravidian lan- guage, viz.— 13. GoJid, spoken by nearly two million abori- gines,1 divided into clans, some of whom are almost savages ; while others are comparatively civilized, inhabiting Gondwana in the central provinces. The language of the Gond race has been lately system- atized and expressed in Devanagari characters. The other uncultivated Dravidian dialects, viz.— Oraon, Rajmahal, Khond, Toda and Kota, belong to insignificant tribes rather than to races. Lastly come the wholly uncultivated and barbarous non-Aryan and non-Dravidian dialects, called,— 14. Kolaricin, belonging to the Kols, inhabiting the plateau of Chota Nagpur, and numbering more than three millions. They speak about seven rude dialects, of which the best known are those of the Kols, the Juangs (the most primitive tribe in all India), the Santals, the Mundas, and the Hos. In the above enumeration are not reckoned the 1 It does not follow that the Gonds are Dravidian because their language is so, any more than that the Cornish people are of the English race because they have adopted our language. Dr. Caldwell is my authority for most of these numbers.
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image