Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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74 REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
ioi. In his Upper Burma Gazetteer Sir George Scott has split up the Ian-
Grouping of provincial languages, guages of Upper Burma into the following groups :—
(i) The Tai languages.
(2) The Chingpaw languages.
(3) The Zho, Shu or Chin languages.
(4) The Vii Rumai or Wa Palaung languages.
(5) The Karen languages.
(6) The half-bred languages.
(7) The ungrouped languages.
This grouping is tentative merely, for, as pointed out by the compiler, until
M. Pavie's work on the countries lying between Tongking and the Mekong comes
out, a linguistic classification can only be provisional.
Dr. Grierson has divided the
isolating polytonic languages of the Indo-Chinese family into three sub-families,
(a) the Tibeto-Burman, (b) the Siamese-Chinese, and (c) the Mon-Annam. The
only criticism he offers in connection with the language scheme adopted m the
Gazetteer is in regard to the doubt therein cast upon the alleged affinity between
Palaung and Taking. In a letter forwarding a note on the Indo-Chinese and
Malay languages he says :
*'
You will see that I include Palaung amongst the M6n-Annam languages. Mr. Scott, in
the Gazetteer of Upper Burma, denies this relationship. He is quite right in refusing to
admit any close connexion between Mon and Palaung, but that is consistent with their both
belonging to the same linguistic family, although they fall within different groups of that
family."
I imagine that Sir George Scott will be prepared to bow to the authority of the
Linguistic Survey in this one particular, on which he seems as yet to have formed
no very decided opinion.
With this modification, and with the addition of the Lower Burma languages,
which have not been specifically referred to in the Upper Burma volume, a combination
of the two systems exhibits the following provincial table :
A-Indo-Chinese
family. )
The Burmese group.
I
f (a)
f(i) Tibeto-Burman sub-family < (b) The Kachin group.
(.(c) The Kuki Chin group.
( } Siamese. Chinese sub -family \W e ai
J f °U P"
v
n
' J 1(e) The Karen group.
((f) The N. Cambodian group.
^(3) M6n-Annam sub-family < (g) The Upper Middle Mekong or
(.
Wa Palaung group.
B— Malay family ... ... ... (h) The Selung language.
This includes all the strictly indigenous tongues. The non-indigenous
forms of speech will be dealt with in a later portion of this chapter.
THE INDO-CHINESE FAMILY.
THE TIBETO-BURMAN SUB-FAMILY.
102. Burmese was the language ordinarily spoken by 7,006,495 people in the
„. „ province on the 1st March 1 Qox. A few of its charac-
,
The Burmese language. f . . . , . .
f ,
.
,
,
tenstics, its agglutinative tendencies, the tonal element
in its composition, and the like, have been touched upon above. I would here
advert to only one further point Of interest in connection with the language which
has been brought into prominence of late years. I refer to the very marked phonetic
decay it exhibits and the material that exists for gauging the extent of that
decay. Mr. Houghton has shown us that Tibetan, or Bhotia, on the one hand and
Arakanese on the other, form two excellent standards for measuring the progress of
this process of decomposition. A knowledge of Bhotia is, he considers, an absolutely
essential qualification for any one who would get to the bottom of Burmese
etymology. A very large number of Burmese words are, he has shown us, immediate
lineal descendants of the Tibetan tongue. The vocables that are shared
between the two languages give a general rough indication of the period when the
Burman stock broke off from the parent stem ; for instance, the radical identity
of various words referring to agriculture points, as he justly observes, to the fact
that before the Burmans separated from the Tibetans, the joint race of which they