ON SOME KOCH WORDS IN MR. DAMANT'S ARTICLE ON THE PALIS OF DINAJPUR.
By JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S., M.R.A.S., &c.
I beg to offer the following solution of the curious phrase hudm dyao applied as stated in Mr. Damant’s ilteresting paper on the Koch tribes, to a ceremony observed by them to procure rain.
The Koches (if I may be pardoned the expression) are, as the writer justly observes, a non-Aryan tribe and belong to that section of the southern or sub-Himalayan Tibetans of which so many scattered fragments are to be found on our northern frontier. Having been for four years Collector of Purneah,* I took much interest in this tribe who, together with the Mechis and Dhimäls occupy many villages in the Kaliáganj Thănā of that district. The place in the pronunciation. It was reduced to writing in a character which is a correct reproduction of the Sanskrit character of the period, by Buddhist emissaries from India in the 7th century. They expressed in writing all the sounds then in use, but as many of these sounds have dropped out of pronunciation since them, while the traditional method of spelling has remained unchanged, it follows that the written language contains many letters which are not used in speaking. There exist however rules by which it may be easily ascertained which letters are mute and which are to be pronounced. The first thing which led me to think of the possible Tibetan origin of these words hudm dyao best account of them is to be found in Brian was the m. In Tibetan ma is the sign of the Hodgson's Aborigines of India, published by the Bengal Asiatic Society in 1847, and still procurable from the Society. Hodgson laments that he was unable to pick up many words of bona fide Koch, as that people have for some time past abandoned their original speech for Bengali, and accordingly in the long list extend ing over 102 pages, which he gives of their voca bulary, hardly a word is to be found which is not pure Bengali. It is well known however that some expressions of their ancient Tibetan dialect do still survive among them, and Mr. Damant has I think been fortunate enough to pick up feminine, and is added to verbs, participles and all other parts of speech in that monosyllabic language to denote that the thing or action is done by or refers to a female being or thing. I am disposed, if not absolutely certain, to one of these.
I was led to study Tibetan during a residence at Darjiling in 1865, when I made a tour into the heart of independent Sikhim, and again in 1867, when as Collector of Champaran, I drew up a grammar of the Magar language, another
of these semi-Tibetan dialects.f The principal peculiarity in the phonesis of Tibetan is that through the isolation into which the different tribes of its ancient race have fallen, owing to the rugged and difficult nature of the country which they inhabit, a great change has taken
- Pärniyā, from Sanskrit purána old: it was the oldest
Aryan settlement in those parts.
It has been printed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. IV., N. S., for 1870 p. 178.
f This sh, is not to be pronounced like the sh in ‘shall,' but as two distinct sounds s-hod.
refer these words to the following Tibetan origin.
The word røyug pronounced dyu means the act of running. When a final consonant in eastern
Tibetan is rejected, the preceding word is often lengthened, we thus get dyo or d/au: shod, f
pronounced in eastern Tibet hyud or hud, means first, ‘open,' then ‘dissolute,” licentious,’ ‘loose,' and ma
is
the feminine affix.
The whole
phrase then would roughly mean ‘the running of the licentious or dissolute women,” an inter
pretation which corresponds fairly enough to the state of the case. Of course in a rude and
only semi-Tibetan dialect like Koch, and after the lapse of ages, we cannot expect to find all the signs of case and tense faithfully preserved, but I think the similarity is still sufficiently
striking to carry conviction to most minds. It will be interesting if Mr. Damant can recover for us some more words of this hitherto lost dialect. § This agrees with what Mr. Damant was told by the Palis, and it is possible that with them the original meaning “open' may have been used for “naked, so that the word might be rendered “naked women.'
