ABSTRACT
In the range of hills which separates the valley of Assam from the district of Sylhet, and the basin of the Brahmaputra from that of the Surmá sac, betwixt the Garo tribe on the West, and the Naga tribes on the East, is the country of the Khasi-Jyntia tribes, in which is situated Shillong, the seat of government of the Province of Assam. Their government is described as that of little republics, but their Language is quite peculiar, and they occupy a linguistic oasis in the midst of the Tibeto-Burman Eamily; nor can they be classed with any other Monosyllabic Eamily, though they belong to that Morphological Order. There is an excellent Grammar by Pryse, a Missionary, and a Dictionary; and the New Testament has been translated into this Language in the Eoman Character; therefore we have sufficient knowledge to form a judgment, as it has attracted the attention of scholars like Von der Gabelentz and Schott, who have written about it. There are six Dialects; I. Synteng, 2. Battoa, 3. Amwee, and 4. Lakadong, and 5,6. two other varieties without names. The Dialects of the Jyntia Hills are almost unintelligible to the Khasi. All grammatical relations are denoted by prefixes; the genitive relation of a noun is frequently denoted by position, and after the noun on which it depends. There is a complete grammatical gender, like that of the Aryan Languages, but no neuter. The construction of the sentence is direct. There is a relative pronoun. Vowels are sometimes elided under a phonetic law to prevent a hiatus. The population amounts to about two hundred thousand, who are Pagan and civilised. There is no Character or Literature. The orthography is still unsettled, and words are pronounced differently in different villages. So strictly Monosyllabic is it, that the prefixes still have a meaning and usage of their own, when used alone, and are not meaningless particles.
