THE NORTHERN INDIAN NATIONS. BY JOSEPH EDKINS. The connection which may be shown to exist between the northern languages of Asia and America, very decidedly favors the theory that America was peopled from Asia. The Kuro Siwo current coming up from the Philippine Islands and passing Japan on the east, would convey derelict boats to the point where it strikes the Pacific coast in British Columbia. The marks of resemblance in language point to early Mongolian immigration into North America. Assinnee, a stone, in Cree, is chilagon in Mongol. The root is sin in Cree, and til in Mongol. The Mongol word has, also, the root lag. Tim deep in Cree, is the Chinese shim deep (root tim), and the Manchu shumo. The root of tomahawk in Cree is tom, as in utommalum, he beats it. But tang in Chinese is beat, not tam. In the Cree expression, nin kek anemah, I know him, the order of the words agrees with that of the corresponding Chinese wo kok i, I perceive him; of this the roots are ngo or gwa, kak and i. First and second personal pronouns are ultimately developed from demonstatives. Roots with guttural initials are ultimately developed from labials through the tooth series. By giving attention to the evolution of sounds from lip to throat and back again, it is to be hoped that as linguistic study proceeds all roots will be accounted for in a reasonable manner. Fortunately the order of words in Cree is subject to certain laws which assist us in comparing that language with Asiatic languages. I kill him, is ne nippahow. The root kill is nippah. He kills me, is ni nippahik. Nat, is fetch; wappam, is see. I fetch him, is ni natow. He fetch me, ni natik. I see him, is ni wappamore. He sees me, is ni wappamik. In the Mongol language the order is: he beats me, I him beat. In Chinese the order is: I kill him, he kills me. Hence, it may be concluded that the Cree had first the order. I kill him. At that time the Indian languages of North America were contemporary with Chinese speech. A change in order came while, as it may be supposed, the ancestors of the Crees were in Asia. They adopted the reverse order, as the Tartar nations did, but not in the same way.+ The Chippeway word Inini is the Chinese nin, man, and is also the Hebrew enoski (for enot), and the Greek drip. This may be regarded as certain, because no words are sporadic in origin. All roots are primeval. Thus the Chippeway 1894 See Ju ge Wickersham's Artice in THE AMERI AN ANTI AR AN, Vo' XVI, Janary, †The Cree says, " Me ki. she " De Mungol says, “He me kľa “ ujichog, spirit, is the Mongol chitgur, spirit, ghost. The Chippeway roots are tit and tog, but this race added a third root, gur. The Chinese have sui for tot, meaning a spirit which has taken possession of a person. The Chippeway and Cree word for God, munida, is, I suppose, composed of two roots, the Latin manes and muni; the Sanscrit honorific title for sages. The other root, ned, is our Deus; the Mongol, ijin, ejin, ijid, Lord; the Hebrew, adonai, and the Chinese ti. On the principle that no roots in any language are of sporadic growth, but that all are truly primæval, this identification cannot fairly be called in question. I do not see how it can be denied that dissyllabic and trissyllabic roots in Cree and Chippeway speech are formed by the apposition of two or three monosyllabic roots. The Cree nin gekanemah, I know him, is formed nin I ah hini. For knowing, we have three roots-gek, kan and nem. Kan is our root ken in the English language. Tem is the Chinese tung, (for tom) understand. Unless we make this analysis etymology becomes hopeless. By reducing the root to its primary monosyllables we are able at once to point out its derivations. It is necessary, also, to identify some of the Cree and Chippeway roots with those of the Semitic languages. What can we do with ked, thou, in Chippeway, but compare it with the Hebrew kem, ka, ken, ye, thou, thee, you? One is in Cree peyak, while in Chippeway it is pachig. The roots are pat and dig. Pat is the Bask bat, Turkish bir. Zhig or dig is the Mongol nig, one; the Kuzi (in Central India) nekor; the Tibetan chig; the Sokpa nega. All roots are indestructible because of their intrinsic significance and the great extent of the continent of Asia. The evolution of labial to guttural, and a to i and u allows of fifteen or twenty forms. These are all to be found in some language. In the Chippeway pazhig, one, we find two roots meaning one in apposition. The significance of roots prevents their total disappearance, Thus the Chinese chit or tit, one, is the Greek es, ev, or it, tin. This is no other than unus and one, both of which have really lost the initial t, but so long ago, that it is quite wanting in ancient documents-Gothic or Italian. To sit is appa, he sits; u is he. The initial in the Cree is lost. It is recoverable from the Hebrew yashab, for yatab, sit. The Taksya dialect in Nepaul has tupa, sit. The Abor Miri in Eastern Bengal has dupu, sit. The Cree word for straight is Quiuskissu. In this word the roots are kit and sak. The Chinese is dik; the Turkish, doghru. The Turkish then has two roots in apposition, dog and gar. The Japanese say ma suga, straight, and this word contains the roots mat and sug or tug. In Mong the plural is jid, gods. I have made use, in these comparisons, of Howse's Grammar of the Cree language, with which is combined an analysis of the Chippeway dialect. Both are prominent examples of Algonquin speech. They belong to Canada, and part of the United States, from Hudson's Bay to Pennsylvania, through twenty degrees of latitude. From the Atlantic to the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, the Algonquin dialects extend through sixty degrees of longitude. I have also made use of Sir William Hunter's "Comparative Dictionary of the Languages of India and High Asia." My own theory is simply this: the present diversity of roots sprang out of original unity. The number of roots is limited by changes, which take place in the mouth in the transition from lips to throat and back again. The vowels are limited by the width and narrowness of the mouth aperture The length of time during which their evolution has proceeded is not known, but probably it is not more than 20,000 years. At It is easier to compare the Algonquin languages with Mongol, Mancheu, Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese, than it is to compare Mexican and Peruvian languages with the speech of Asia, because in all probability the Algonquin race left Asia much more recently than the Mexicans. The Mexicans and Peruvians, with their advanced knowledge, would possibly reach America by the South Pacific. least their traditions and remarkably peculiar civilization would arrive in that way. As to the Algonquin tribes, the problems they present receive a truly wonderful light from Asiatic speech. The Algonquin languages, with the Dacota, form a separate group, like the Tartar and Japanese group, the Chinese group, the Tibetan group, the Indo-European group, and the Semitic group. The Cree and some interior dialects possess the sounds th and dh like English and Arabic. There is no language in Asia, except in the Southwest, which possesses these sounds, so far as I know. It is foreign to the genius of Tartar, Tibetan, Japanese, and Chinese speech. This habit of toothletter modification probably grew up in Western Asia, at least five thousand years ago. The Goths received it from the Arabs. It is likely, therefore, if the Crees learned it by imitation, that they were at that time on the borders of the Semitic area in Western Asia. It is surprising in how few languages this aspiration occurs, as compared with the fre quency of the use of f, the corresponding labial aspiration. In the Cree sentence sapun igun uchi, with a needle, the roots are sap (needle), dig (one), se (from). Needle is the Chines chen (from), tim (needle). Igun is the Mongol nig (one). Uchi is the Mongol eche (from), the English se in hence, and the Latin se in separate, to separate. It was originally a pronoun of the third person. In the Cree lan guage sapun igun uchi may be varied to uchi sapun igun. In Dacota, only the first order is possible. In the Tartar languages the law is as in Dacota. It may, therefore, be concluded that the Dacota is grammatically nearer to the Tartar languages than is the Cree. So, also, the order is in Finnish variable. It is agreed generally among philologists that Finnish belongs to the Ural Altaic family. The word Altaic means Turkish, Mongol, and Manchu. The word Ural means Finnish and Hungarian. It follows at once that Dacota and Cree, but especially Dacota, should be carefully compared with Mongol. The vocative is expressed in Cree by ak. ik, ok. This we learn from Howse, page 184. Our vocative is in, and this was also in use by Greeks and Italians 3,000 years ago. The Hebrew is be in ben (within). We have probably lost the initial 6, preserved in penitus, penes, and in ben in the expression a butt and a ben," made use of when the Scotch people wish to describe a small house, with only a living room and a bedroom. The Mongol vocative is dotora. The they always aspirate. The Chinese vocative suffix is li. The vocative preffix in Chinese is li or tsai. The root of li and tsai is dat, the same with the Mongol dot. The English in, if it has not lost the initial b, has, in my opinion, lost d. The Japanese for within, say uchi and naka. This last is the Cree word. Howse, a half century ago, did not venture to call the Cree vocative tk, or g, a word; he speaks of it as an affixed sign. By comparison with the Japanese naka we may learn its history. Nakaba is middle; nakadachi is a middleman; nakagai is a broker; nakarai is a marriage. This root being originally a demonstrative, is also extensively used as a negative, as a natural result of its pronominal origin. Nakari means "is not"; nakare is "do not." These meanings may all be derived from one root, nak. But naki, to weep, in Japanese should be explained as belonging to a different root; it is lacrima and tear. It is not to be expected that languages spoken to the south of the Dacota and Algonquin area possess any such close analogies with Asiatic speech, as those which have here been pointed ont. Their antiquity must be enormous, if they also, like the Algonquins, reached America by way of British Columbia or Behring Straits. Shangai, April 30, 1900. NOTES ON ASSYRIOLOGY. BY REV. J. N. FRADENBURGH. To recover a language that had been lost, written in an unknown and difficult syllabary, is a task to challenge the genius. and patience of the best scholarship: yet this, to a large extent, has been accomplished. Egyptian hieroglyphs and Assyrian cuneiform characters have found their interpreters. Extensive vocabularies are already known, and additions are being made constantly. The main points in their grammars have been satisfactorily made out. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm displayed in these studies, the mass of unworked material is almost appalling. We recall the interest with which we received Norris' contributions toward a dictionary of the Assyrian language as they appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. The small dictionary of Delitzsch was a later contribution, and is of great value to the student; and we have tried to exercise patience as the parts of his large dictionary have appeared, after too long intervals. We now look expectantly to the early completion of the "Concise Dictionary of the Assyrian Language" by Dr. W. Muss-Arnolt, the ninth part of which, recently issued, reaches the middle of the alphabet. The definitions are given in both German and English. The German Expedition under Dr. Koldewey continues its work at the mound El-Kasr. Babylon was a city of temples of which Nebuchadnezzar was the great restorer and builder. In the building inscriptions, the goddess Nin-Makh, "the great lady," is frequently mentioned. Her temple and statue in terracotta have been discovered. Application has been made for a frman to explore Warka, the biblical Frech, whose temple was looted by the Flamite conquerors about B.C. 2280 It is to be hoped that ample provision will be made for the continuance of the work of exploration in the mighty ruins of Babylon an i other cities by our allies in the recovery of lost empur ut, sent Taty of A CX The Exploring Expedition under Prot. HVHp out by the University of Pennsylvania, continues its successtul work. Its latest achievement is the discovery of 1 the ancient city of Nippur. The site of this library tensive group of hills Southwest of the ten pie 6° 1. tablets were found still lving on shrives of venerable hands had placed them more than t years ago The library has vitigno nore than 252 Many . Where Sand nd |