THE CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES.

331 Central, and Eastern Asiatics. It is Caucasian in the wide and loose sense of the term. Not that the current opinions on these points can be taken without any reserve,-the opinions that look for the chief models of female beauty and manly strength amongst the proverbially fine populations of Georgia and Circassia.

* There is some exaggeration here. As compared with their neighbours on the side of Russia-as compared with their neighbours on the side of Turkey, the populations under notice are handsome and well-formed; and, as there is a vast traffic in female slaves for the harems of the Ottoman Turks, the best samples of the two populations find their way to Europe. From these the rest are judged. Again, the Circassian warriors represent the Caucasians of the north-west; and it is upon them that our ideas of the Circassian conformation are based. But Circassia (and this must be borne in mind) is a land of castes-of high-caste nobles and of low-caste plebeians. It is a land of caste and feudalism; war being, at one and the same time, the occupation of the nobles, and the means by which the greatest number of individuals are brought in contact with the nations of Europe. The evidence of those who have formed their opinions from residence in Caucasus rather than from the slave-markets of Constantinople is by no means over-favourable. Pallas (as quoted by Prichard in his "Natural History of Man," p. 254) writes that the men, especially amongst the higher classes, are mostly of a tall stature, their form being of Herculean structure. They are very slender about the loins, have small feet, and uncommon strength in their arms. They possess, in general, a truly Roman and martial appearance. The women are not uniformly Circassian beauties; but are, for the most part, well-formed, have a white skin, dark brown hair, and regular features." He adds "I have met with a greater number of beauties among them than in any other unpolished nations."

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This is the language of fair and moderate encomium. Reineggs, however, so far denies their claim to superior beauty as to write that he knows not "what can have given occasion to the generally received prejudice in favour of the female Teherkessians. A short leg, a small foot, and glaring red hair, constitute a Tcherkessian beauty."

The main differentia, however, of their organization lie in the statements of Klaproth-viz., that they have "long faces, and thin and straight noses.”

Again, he writes that the Abassians, a tribe of the Circassians, are distinguished by narrow faces; heads compressed at the sides; by the shortness of the lower part of their faces; by prominent noses, and dark brown hair."

This narrowness and compression of face, and this prominence of feature, give us the main points in the anatomy of the Caucasian skull. The nasal bones, instead of being depressed, are elevated, and the zygomata are straight and narrow instead of curving laterally outwards.

There is no denying that these are important modifications of structure; at the same time, they are by no means so great as they appear to be when we measure them from their effects on the features. A little difference of elevation, a slight change in curvature, convert a flat and broad into a compressed and prominent physiognomy.

At the same time, the fact of the evidence of language, and the evidence of physical form, indicating a different range of affinities in the case of the Caucasian or Dioscurian populations, must be admitted, and it must be admitted as an ethnological difficulty. The principle that helps us in the explanation of it is the following:Physical and philological changes may go on at different rates.

A thousand years may pass over two nations undoubtedly of the same origin; and

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THE CIRCASSIAN LANGUAGE.

which were, at the beginning of those thousand years, of the same complexion, form, and language.

At the end of those thousand years there shall be a difference. With one the language shall have changed rapidly, the physical structure slowly.

With the other the physical conformation shall have been modified by a quick succession of external influences, whilst the language shall have stayed as it was. HenceWith an assumed or proved original identity on each side, the difference in the rate of action on the part of the different influences is the key to all discrepancies between the two tests. The language may remain in statu quo, whilst the hair, complexion, and bones change; or the hair, complexion, and osteology may remain in statu quo, whilst the language changes.

Apparently this leaves matters in an unsatisfactory condition; in a way which allows the ethnologist any amount of assumption he chooses. Apparently it does so; but it does so in appearance only. In reality we have ways and means of determining which of the two changes is the likelier.

We know what modifies form. Change of latitude, climate, sea-level, conditions of subsistence, conditions of clothing, &c., do this; all (or nearly all) such changes being physical.

We know, too (though in a less degree), what modifies language. New wants gratified by objects with new names, new ideas requiring new terms, increased intercourse between man and man, tribe and tribe, nation and nation, &c., contribute to this end.

Still there is a good deal to be accounted for,―more than our present limits allow us to enlarge upon.

The Circassians.-The division of the Caucasian (in the limited sense of the term) populations, which it is convenient to begin with, is the Circassian, or, as the Russians call them, the Tsherkess. As far as the few researches, hitherto made upon the subject, go, it is the Circassian dialects that are the most evidently Monosyllabic in character. It is also the Circassian in which the greatest amount of relationship to the languages of Tibet, and the western parts of the Monosyllabic area, have been found; as may be seen by the important paper of Mr. Hodgson's, already alluded to. The elementary sounds of the Circassian are harsh; consonants are accumulated; hiatus are frequent. The declension is poor. There is not even a sign for the possessive case. Thus, in the Absné dialect, ab father, ácĕ = horse; ab ácě father's horse; (verbally, father horse). In expressions like these, position does the work of an inflection.

Judging from Rosen's example, the use of prepositions is as limited as that of inflections, sara s-ab ácě ist'ap = I my-father horse give, or giving am; abna amus'w izbit = wood bear sce-did — I saw a bear in the wood; awině wi asʻ-wkě = (in) house two doors; áce sis lit = (on) horse mount-I-did.

Hence declension begins with the formation of the plural number. This consists in the addition of the syllable k'wa.

In the pronouns there is as little inflection as in the substantives and adjectives, i.e. there are no forms corresponding to mihi, nobis, &c.

THE CIRCASSIAN LANGUAGE.

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1. When the pronoun signifies possession, it takes an inseparable form, is incorporated with the substantive that agrees with it, and is s- for the first, w- for the second, and i- for the third person singular. Then for the plural it is h- for the first person, s'- for the second, r- for the third: ab father;

2. When the pronoun is governed by a verb, it is inseparable also, and similarly incorporated.

3. Hence the only inseparable form of the personal pronoun is, when it governs the verb. In this case the forms are:

The verbs are not quite so simple. Thus the root for the verb ride is c'wisl. From this we have c'wis'l-ap, I ride; c'wisʻl-oit, I am riding; c'wisʻl-an, I was riding; c'wis'lit, I have ridden; c'wis'l-chén, I had ridden; c'wis'l-ast, I shall ride. The persons arc

It is in Circassia where the feudal structure of society is the most strongly marked, and where the relation between the workh, or noble, and the pshi, or retainer, is the closest, The Circassians, too, are most in the habit of selling their daughters to the harem-masters of Constantinople and Egypt; a habit by no means laudable, but still very different from ordinary slave-dealing. If a Circassian maiden stays at home, she is sold in marriage to one of her own countrymen, of whom she, probably (but by no means necessarily), knows something beforehand. If shipped to Constantinople, she is sold to a foreigner, necessarily unknown. On the other hand, the stranger Turk is almost certain to be a wealthier man than the Circassian fellow-countryman.

The divisions of the Circassians are pretty distinctly marked by their dialects; e.g. there is the form of speech spoken on the northern slope of the mountains, and along the river Kuban. This is that of the proper Circassians, Tsherkess, or, as they call themselves, Adighé. Then there are the allied tribes of the southern slope, and the sea side. These are the Abassians. Thirdly come the eastern Circassians, whose occupancies are on the water-system of the Terek rather than the Kuban, and who inhabit the Great and Little Kabardah. But beyond these there are several more obscure and isolated populations, resident in the more impracticable parts of their forest-cinctured mountainrange. Nevertheless, the three chief divisions are those of-a, the Abassians; b, the Kabardinians; c, the Adighés.

But it is only the upper part of the Terck that belongs to the Circassian arca. The

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THE IRON AND THE GEORGIAN POPULATIONS.

head-waters of its middle feeders-almost all of which come from the southern side-lie in the country of

The Mizhdzhedzhi, or Tshetshentsh, whose dialects separate them from the tribes around them, but of whom little is known besides.

Equally central with the Mizhdzhedzhi, equally removed from contact with either the Caspian or the Black Sea, equally on the head-waters of the Caucasian rivers, areThe Iron. So central are these, that they occupy the watershed between the Terek and Kuban on the north, and the Kur on the south, overlooking the wide valleys of Georgia, as well as touching the mountain defiles of the Tshetshentsh. Their language falls in two (probably more) well-marked dialects. Their creed is an imperfect Christianity of recent origin; their allegiance (like that of the Georgians rather than the Mizhdzhedzhi, and the Circassians) Russian.

The Russians call them Ossete, and by this name they are best known. Irôn, however, is the native one. Much has been written about them and their language, which is certainly more like the languages of the so-called Indo-European class than the others of the Caucasus. Indeed it is the Irôn form of speech, upon which so much of what has formed the preliminaries to the class under notice turns.

The Georgians.-The Kuban was the chief river of the Circassians; the Cirçassians the chief population of the Kuban. The Georgians are the same in respect to the Kur. The valley of the Kur is the favoured part of Georgia—the province of Kartulinia, of which Tiflis is the capital. But there is a good deal of Georgia which is no fruitful valley, but (on the contrary) a rude and rugged mountain range. These are the countries of (a) the Mingrelians, (b) the Imeritians, (c) the Swani. Finally, the descendants of the ancient Colchians, who extend along the southern shores of the Black Sea as far as Trebizond, who are subject to the Ottoman empire rather than to Russia, who are Mahometans rather than Christians, and who use the Arabic alphabet rather than the Kartulinian, are Georgian, as is shown by their language.

At one time the Georgian language probably extended far over the northern portion of Asia Minor. It has, however, been encroached upon by the Turkish.

The Georgians are the most civilized of the Caucasians; the Mizhdzhedzhi possibly the rudest. The Georgians, who received their Christianity from Armenia, have retained it. Their alphabet, too, is of Armenian origin, though (from the fact of its letters being changed from a square and angular to rounded and oval contour), considerably modified and disguised.

The religious and civilizational history of the other tribes is, roughly and generally speaking, as follows:

a. There was first the original paganism, which, at present, in its original and unmodified form is, perhaps, extinct. At the same time, there can be but little doubt that, when the country becomes better known, we shall find it showing itself transparently through the creeds that have displaced it.

b. Then there was an imperfect Christianity diffused from Syria and Armenia. Except in Georgia this has given way to

c. An irregular Mahometanism, which

d. In the Irôn country is being attacked by the Russian missionaries. Speaking generally, however, we may predicate of the Caucasus that the Russian parts are Christian; the independent, Mahometan.

The Lesgians belong to the latter class, and are the most important members of it; more so than even the Circassians. They are the most eastern of the Caucasians,

stretching from the shores of the Caspian to the Tshetshentsh and Irôn frontiers. Their area seems to have been encroached upon on the south and east; inasmuch as a wild population of the province of Ghilan, on the south side of the Caspian, called Talish, is considered to be Lesgian in blood, though, at present, Persian in language.

Daghestan is the country of the Lesgians; and the Avar, the Anzukh, the Tshari, the Andi, &c., are the chief Lesgian dialects. The prophet warrior, Shamyl, is no Circassian, as is currently supposed, but a Lesgian.

The Armenians, lying south of Caucasus, rather than in Caucasus itself, were the first of the group to be civilized, to use an alphabet, and to be converted to the Christian religion. Their contiguity to Syria did this. Unlike the other members of their class, the Armenians are spread widely over the world-in Turkey, in India, in Russia-as merchants and bankers.

The Armenian is in geographical contact with Kurdistan, or the country of the Kurds, a population which belongs to

GROUP IV.—THE PERSIAN STOCK.—Physiognomy: Caucasian rather than Mongol.— Language: in its present state with but few inflections.-Area: Kurdistan, Persia, Afghanistan, Biluchistan, parts of Bokhara, the Kohistan of Cabul, Kafiristan.Divisions: Kurds, Persians, Biluchi, Afghans (Pushtu), Paropamisans (populations of Kafiristan and the Kohistan of Cabul).

The greater prominence of feature, and the comparative narrowness of the zygomatic space, which contrasted the Caucasian with the Turanian and Monosyllabic groups, are found throughout Persia. Meanwhile, the colour of the skin darkens, but not to such an extent as to create difficulties. Almost all the Caucasian area is wood and mountain; the greater part of the Persian, a table-land-with an extreme temperature.

The language creates the chief difficulties in the classification. There are but few inflections in the Caucasian tongues. There are also but few in the Persian. So far the two classes agree. But what if this want of inflection arise from a different cause in each? In such a case the similarity is unreal. Nay, it becomes converted into a difference. Now such may be the case. The Persians may have had inflections and lost them the Caucasians may be without them, because they have never been developed.

So far from this being a mere hypothetical complication, it is one which the majority of scholars believe to be a real fact. It will, however, be better investigated when we have gone over the whole of the groups. It is noticed at present, in order that it may be compared with the questions indicated in the consideration of the last group. There is doubt amongst philologues. There is doubt as to the way in which the Caucasian and Persian groups are allied. That they are allied is admitted. But the question is, whether the Caucasians are Persian, or the Persians Caucasian. It has already been stated that this is no mere verbal question, and the further we proceed, the more we shall see of its reality and importance.

Like the Turk and Arab, the Persian is one of the three great Mahometan families of the world the original creed, for a great part at least of its area, having been that of the Zoroastrian fire-worshippers,-a creed still existent amongst the Parsecs. Nor has Christianity always been foreign to the stock. It is reasonably believed that the missionaries, who preached the gospel of the so-called St. Thomas's Christians in India,