03-01-568

568

NORTH ASSAM GROUP.

　The mountainous region between the Assam Valley and Tibet, from Bhutan in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east, is inhabited by a series of tribes which all speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Beginning from the west, they are the Akas, the Dafls, the Abor-Miris, and the Mishmis. The last mentioned tribe comprises several sub- tribes, such as the Chulikt, the Digru, and the Mj. The dialects spoken by all these tribes will in this Survey be brought together into one group, the North Assam group.

　Most speakers of the dialects of this group live outside the settled territories of British India, and the numbers returned at the censuses of 1891 and 1901 were accord- ingly unimportant. The table which follows registers the details-

Name of language.	Census of 1891.	Census of 1901.
Aka...	20	26
Abor...	170	357
Miri...	35,510	40,472
Dafl...	990	805
Mishmi...	220	71
TOTAL.	36,910	41,731

　We have no trustworthy information about the number of speakers outside British India.

AUTHORITY-

KONOW, STEN,-Note on the Languages spoken between the Assam Valley and Tibet. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1902, pp. 127 and ff.

　The North Assam group is not a well-defined philological group with salient gram- matical features distinguishing it from other Tibeto-Burman forms of speech.

　The Abor-Miris and the Dafls speak dialects which are so closely related that they can justly be considered as one and the same form of speech. In vocabulary it often strikingly agrees with one or the other forms of Mishmi, as will be seen from the short table which follows-

Arrow...	Digru	m-p...	Dafl	-p
Blood...	Mj	ui.	"
Brother...	Digru	n-p...	"	a-b
Dark...	"	k-n-...	"	kn
Dog...	"	n-kw...	"	-k
Dream...	"	ym...	"	ymm
Drink...	"	tm...	"	t
Eat...	"	dh...	"	da
Feather...	"	am...	"	am
Flower...	"	tp...	"	opp
Hair...	"	dhong...	"	dm
Horn...	"	r...	"	a-r
Pig...	"	ba-li...	"	illy
Slave...	"	m-po	"	p
Snake...	"	tb...	"	tab