| English | now. |
| Ahom | tinai. |
| Khamti | tsang. |
| Lau | leng. |
| W. Tibetan | deng-tse. |
| S. Tibetan | thanda. |
| English | to-morrow. |
| Ahom | sang-manai. |
| Tibetan | sang. |
| English | drink. |
| Siamese | deum. |
| W. Tibetan | pthung. |
| S. Tibetan | thung. |
| English | sleep. |
| Ahom (2) | non. |
| W. Tibetan | nyan. |
| S. Tibetan | nyé. |
| English | laugh. |
| Ahom | khru. |
| Khamti | khó. |
| Lau | khóa. |
| Siamese | hoaro. |
| W. Tibetan | bgad. |
| S. Tibetan | fgá. |
[30] S. means the spoken, W. the written Tibetan. The collation has been made from a table of Mr. Hodgson’s in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The Ahom is a Tʻhay dialect.
The Bʻhot itself is spoken over a large area with but little variation. We anticipate the inference. It is an intrusive tongue, of comparatively recent diffusion. What has been its direction? From east to west rather than from west to east; at least such is the deduction from its similarity to the Tʻhay, and from the multiplicity of dialects—representatives of a receding population—in the Himalayas of Nepâl and Sikkim. This, however, is a point on which I speak with hesitation.
Dialects of the Bʻhot class are spoken as far westward as the parts about Cashmír and the watershed of the Indus and Oxus. This gives us the greatest extent eastwards of any unequivocally monosyllabic tongue.
The Chinese seem to have effected displacements as remarkable for both breadth and length as the Tʻhay were for length. We get at their original locality by the exhaustive process. On the northern and western frontier they keep encroaching at the present moment—at the expense of the Mantshús and Mongolians. For the provinces of Chansi, Pe-tche-li, Chantung, Honan, &c., indeed, for four-fifths of the whole empire, the uniformity of speech indicates a recent diffusion. In Setshuen and Yunnan the type changes probably from that of the true Chinese to the Tibetan, Tʻhay and Burmese. In Tonkin and Cochin the language is like but different—like enough to be the only monosyllabic language which is placed by any one in the same section with the Chinese, but different enough to make this position of it a matter of doubt with many. Putting all this together, the south and south-eastern provinces of China appear to be the oldest portions of the present area.
In fixing upon these as the parent provinces, the evidence of ethnology on the one side, and that of the mass of tradition and inference which passes under the honourable title of Chinese history on the other, disagree. This latter is as follows:—