theories, no one, I believe, doubts any longer a close relationship between Mongolic and Turkic, a wider relationship between these two and Tungusic, and a still wider one between these three and Finnic and Samoyedic. Hence the Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic languages have been comprehended under the name of Altaic, the Finnic languages are called Ugric (including Hungarian), while Samoyedic forms, according to some, a more independent nucleus. All five groups together constitute what is called the Ural-Altaic family.

Vocalic Harmony.

There is one peculiarity common to many of the Ural-Altaic languages which deserves a short notice, the law of Vocalic Harmony. According to this law the vowels of every word must be changed and modulated so as to harmonise with the key-note struck by its chief vowel. This law pervades the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic classes; and even in dialects where it is disappearing, it has often left traces of its former existence behind. The same law has been traced in the Tamulic languages also, particularly in Telugu, and in these languages it is not only the radical vowel that determines the vowels of the suffixes, but the vowel of a suffix also may react on the radical vowel1. The vowels in Turkish, for instance, are divided into two classes, sharp and flat. If a verb contains a sharp vowel in its radical portion, the vowels of the terminations are all sharp, while the same terminations, if following a root with a flat vowel, modulate their vowels into a flat key. Thus

1 Cf. Caldwell, Dravidian Grammar, second ed., p. 78.

we have sev-mek, to love, but bak-mak, to regard, mek or mak being the termination of the infinitive. Thus we say ev-ler, the houses, but at-lar, the horses, ler or lar being the termination of the plural.

No Aryan or Semitic language has preserved a similar freedom in the harmonic arrangement of its vowels, while traces of it have been found among the most distant members of the Turanian family, as in Hungarian, Mongolian, Turkish, the Yakut, spoken in the north of Siberia, in Telugu, Tulu1, and in dialects spoken on the eastern frontier of India.

''In Tulu final short u is left unchanged only after words containing labial vowels (bududu, having left); it is changed into i after all other vowels (pandüdü, having said).'—Dr. Gundert.

LECTURE XIII.

LANGUAGES, NOT ARYAN AND NOT SEMITIC.

WE

The Ural-Altaic Family.

E now proceed to examine the principal languages belonging to the Ural-Altaic family.

The Samoyedic.

The tribes speaking Samoyedic dialects are spread along the Yenisei and Ob rivers, and were pushed more and more North by their Mongolic successors. They have now dwindled down to about 16,000 souls. Five dialects, however, have been distinguished in their language by Castrén, the Yurakian, Tawgyan, Yeniseian, Ostjako-Samoyede, and Kamassinian, with several local varieties.

The vocalic harmony is most carefully preserved in the Kamassinian dialect, but seems formerly to have existed in all. The Samoyedic has no gender of nouns, but three numbers, singular, dual, and plural, and eight cases. The verb has two tenses, an Aorist (present and future) and a Preterite. Besides the indicative, there is a subjunctive and an imperative.

Altaic Languages.

This name comprehends the Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages. Some of the Tungusic and Mongolio dialects represent the lowest phase of agglutination, which in some cases is as yet no more than juxtaposition, while in Turkish agglutination has

really entered into the inflectional phase. The vocalic harmony prevails throughout.

Tungusic Class.

The Tungusic branch extends from China northward to Siberia and westward to 113°, where the river Tunguska partly marks its frontier. The Tungusic tribes in Eastern Siberia are under Russian sway. They consist of about 70,000 souls; some are called Tchapogires, some Orotongs. Other Tungusic tribes belong to the Chinese empire, and are known by the name of Mandshu, a name taken after they had conquered China in 1644, and founded the present imperial dynasty. Their country is called Mandshuria.

Mongolio Class.'

The original seats of the people who speak Mongolic dialects lie near the Lake Baikal and in the eastern parts of Siberia, where we find them as early as the ninth century after Christ. They were divided into three classes, the Mongols proper, the Buriäts, and the Ölöts or Kalmüks. Chingis- Khan (1227) united them into a nation and founded the Mongolian empire, which included, however, not only Mongolic, but likewise Tungusic and Turkic (commonly, though wrongly, called Tataric) tribes.

The name of Tatar soon became the terror of Asia and Europe, and, changed into Tartar, as if derived from Tartarus, it was applied promiscuously to all the nomadic warriors whom Asia then poured forth over Europe. Originally Tatar was a name of the Mongolic races, but through their political ascendancy in Asia after Chingis-Khan, it became usual to call all the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by

the name of Tatar. In linguistic works Tataric is now used in two several senses. Following the example of writers of the Middle Ages, Tataric, like Scythian in Greek, has been fixed upon as the general term comprising all languages spoken by the nomadic tribes of Asia. Secondly, Tataric, by a strange freak, has become the name of that class of languages of which the Turkish is the most prominent member. While the Mongolic class-that which in fact has the greatest claims to the name of Tataric-is never so called, it has become an almost universal custom to apply this name to the third or Turkic branch of the Ural-Altaic division; and the races belonging to this branch have in many instances themselves adopted the name.

The conquests of the Mongols, or the descendants of Chingis-Khan, were not confined, however, to these Turkish tribes. They conquered China in the East, where they founded the Mongolic dynasty of Yuan, and in the West, after subduing the Khalifs of Bagdad and the Sultans of Iconium, they conquered Moscow, and devastated the greater part of Russia. In 1240 they invaded Poland, in 1241 Silesia. Here they recoiled before the united armies of Germany, Poland, and Silesia. They retired into Moravia, and, having exhausted that country, occupied Hungary.

At that time they had to choose a new Khan, which could only be done at Karakorum, the old capital of their empire. Thither they withdrew to elect an emperor to govern an empire which then extended from China to Poland, from India to Siberia. But a realm of such vast proportions could not be long held together, and towards the end of the