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18 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE ASAMYA LANGUAGE long to the Mediterranean race, it is through the Kalitas of Asam as a member of the Mediterranean race, that the Asaf speech shows an afiliation to the Kentum group of the Indo-European family of speech Next to the above peculiarities is the Asamiya X pronunciation of the sibilants which also must have first been brought by the Early Aryans called Mediterraneans. On this point S. K. Chatterji notes: "I seems that in certain forms of OIA the X sound was the actually one employed for 8 as can be inferred from a medieval pronunciation of s as ke being the nearest approximation to the traditional x The change of initial, intervocal and final to the guttural spirant X in Assamese is something remarkable and is paralleled by what we see in Sinhalese and Kasmiri. This is also noticeable in Iranian, Hellenie and Celtie." (O.D.B.L.). Absence of cerebrals in Asamly as a rule marks an early Indo- European Influence. As Macdonell opines The cerebrals are mainly Indian products. They are rare in the Rig Veda where they occur medi- ally and finally only". (Vedic Granumer). When the Nordic of Vedle Aryan immigration into India took place in the second millennium B. C. the X sound as in Asamiya was prominent. Chatterjl thinks that tata X kim was the actual pronunciation at the time of the Rig Veda. It came to be pronounced as tatak im in later times owing to the loss of X sound due to non-Aryan influence predominating over the Aryan. But it remained almost intact in the Dardie or Pisaci speech which like Asamiya is a language of the outer band, Grierson's wonder on looking at the close affinity between Assa mese and Kashmiri and his exclamation how the extreme west could thas meet with the extreme east may not now be shared by those who know how the two branches of the Alplines migrated to the west and east simultaneously and carried with them new Aryan culture in advance, probably also the Naral-Bhagadatta tradition likewise on parallel lines, whence it was possible for a rock-inscription of the North Western frontier Traet in Gilgit to record of an ancestor of the Hindu Sahi dynasty of Kabula "Sri Bhagadattavam sambuta". Grierson, and following him Chatterji and others, used to call this Alpine immigration one of pre-Vedic or non-Vedie Aryans; they really meant one and the same thing. There is yet a pet theory among a circle of scholars maintaining that the Aryans never came to, but went out from India. It says that the Early Iranians or Magians who also makes (sacrifices), but never worship fire or any other gods as do the Vedie Aryana, their brethren, really went out of India by quarel Ling only on this point. As the Early Tranians too belong to the firo-