cleansing the bathing tank, spreading the rice out in the sun1, banding the plates and dishes, bringing the spittoon and fetching their fans during meals2, for sweeping the yards and stables and such other duties.

Slaves in ancient India, unlike Helots, were not bound to the soil. They were for the most part like domestic slaves. and do not seem to have been very badly treated. Slavery in ancient India, so far as can be judged from the Jātakas, was certainly different from that existing in Greece, Rome and later on in plantations of American slave owners. The sort of treatment which the slaves received in these places was unknown in India in ancient times when the slaves were rather treated as members of the family than as human chattels to be disposed of by the master in any way he pleased. Thus we read in the Uraga-Jātaka, "With a female slave they composed a household of six; the Bodhisatta and his wife, the daughterin-law and the female slave." We find that slaves often enjoyed their master's confidence, were trusted by them and some times were even appointed as the guardian of his property. We read in the Nanda-Jataka that the Bodhisatta when he became old went to the forest and buried his riches at a certain spot saying to his slave, "My good Nanda, reveal this treasure to my son after I am gone and do not let the wood to be sold." Occasionally the slaves rose high in their master's favour and were employed on honourable duties. The Kaṭāhaka-Jātaka states that Kaṭāhaka the son of a female slave of a rich treasurer of Benares was employed by him as his private secretary. The slaves, however, occupied a very low position in society, so much so that we find it stated in the Bhaddasāla-Jātaka that the seat which Viḍūḍabba, the son of Vasabhakhattiyā, Mahānāma's slave girl, had used in the rest-house was washed with milkwater by a slave girl after Viḍūḍabba had departed. "Just then a slave woman washed the seat which he had used in the 8 Jat. Vol. VI. p. 73.*

1 Jat. Vol. I.

p.

300.

Jat. Vol. I. p. 276.

* References are to Cowell's edition (Cambridge University Press).

rest-house with milk-water, saying insultingly, Here's the seat where sat the son of Vasabhakhattiyā, the slave-girl." Though as a general rule slaves seem to have been well treated they could be beaten, imprisoned, branded and fed on slave's fare and be made to work in chains. There seems, however, reason to believe that they were punished only when they proved recalcitrant or disobeyed their master but that also very rarely. Thus we read in the Namasiddhi-Jātaka: "Now a slave girl had been thrown out at the door of a house, while her master and mistress beat her with heavy rope-ends because she had not brought home her wages. "" This brings us to the reference to slavery made by Mr. Richard Fick in his book. It seems, however, that the learned author has erred. He tells us "that the relation in which the slaves stood to their master is represented as a familiar one and their treatment as quite humane, but all the same the examples quoted do not justify our inferring a specially favourable position for the slaves of ancient India," and why, because occasionally, not certainly frequently, they "had to put up with thrashing, imprisonment, and bad food.” But these seem to be very insufficient reasons for saying that the position of slaves in ancient India was not specially favourable in spite of their having been humanely treated. Though we have on the one hand a few stray references that they were sometimes punished we have on the other hand irrefutable evidence that the relationship between the master and his slaves was not only very familiar and kindly but that the treatment of the latter was very humane. The slave in the Uraga Jātaka is not only represented as a member of the family but we are told that all the members, of whom there were six including the slave, "lived happily and affectionately together." And when after the death of the son of the master, the slave girl was told by Sakka that she was not weeping perhaps because she must have been beaten, abused and oppressed by him she replied "Speak not so, my lord, this does not suit his case. My young master was full of long-suffering and love and pity for me and was as a foster child to me." Does it not

indicate that the relationship between the master and his slave was very familiar, very loving and very sympathetic? Of course the slaves were occasionally punished. It is true that they were at times harshly, but never brutally, treated and then also when they refused to carry out the behests of their master. Legally the slaves enjoyed no right and no privilege but we have not a single reference in the Jātakas which proves that the lot of the slaves in ancient India was the same as that of their brethren in Greece or in Italy or in plantations of slave-owners of comparatively recent times. We are nowhere told that the slaves used to work in chains under cruel overseers taking a fiendish delight in exacting" a pound of flesh" ; nowhere told that they used to be made over to the beasts of prey for the delectation and amusement of the rich orders of society, as in Italy; nowhere told that a master could kill not more than two slaves daily to refresh his tired nerves in the warm blood and bowels of the victims 1; nowhere told of the fiendish cruelties practised by the slave-owner of America. In ancient India even the chattels were not treated so, knowing as we do that the God-beloved King Piyadasi established hospitals for men as well as for beasts and that so many centuries before the establishment of the first animal hospital in Europe. It is true that the position of the slaves was lowly and humble from its very nature but it was not intolerable nor very miserable. Däsiputta, Dā iputtacetaka were in fact terms of abuse, indeed they could not have been otherwise. The slave population in ancient India was very small and the slaves were generally employed on work which is done in India of the present day by household servants and occasionally they were employed on honourable duties. The inevitable conclusion is that the position of slaves in ancient India so far as can be judged from the Jātakas was specially favourable as compared with that of the Helots of Spart, Colonii of Rome, and the slaves of the planters of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

1 Carlyle-History of the French Revolution, page 19.

IX.-A Possible Ethnic Basis for the Sanskritic Element in the Munda Languages.

By Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy, M.A.

The Mundas of the Chota Nagpur plateau and the other Muṇḍa-speaking tribes-the Santāls, Khāriās, Bhumji, Māhlis, Hōs, Birhōrs, Asurs, Kōṛwas, Kurkus, Kōḍās, Juangs, Savaras, and Gadabas-have been, on anthropometrical grounds, classed as Dravidians. Their languages, however, are quite distinct in structure and vocabulary from the Dravidian languages of the south. Pater Schmidt and Sir George Grierson claim to have established a connexion between the Munda languages and the Mon-Khmer including Wa, Palaung, Nicobarese, Khasi, and the aboriginal languages of Malacca and certain dialects of the Australian tribes. And comparative philologists appear to be generally agreed that all these languages "contain a common substratum which cannot be anything else than the language of an old race which was once settled in all those countries. " 1 As to what that race was like, and what became of it we are as yet quite in the dark.

The first thing in the Muṇḍāri vocabulary, however, which impresses a Sanskrit-knowing student is the existence of a large Sanskritic element in it. And it is quite remarkable that even a number of Mundari words of primary importance denoting things and actions which even the most primitive people cannot do without look like either pure Sanskrit words or clear variations of such words. As the lists of words given in the appendiceswhich are far from exhaustive-will show, there are Sanskrit analogues for the Mundari words even for such primary actions and states of mind as eating' (jom), kissing '(chu), working Grierson's "Linguistic Survey of India" Vol. IV. page 5.

(kāmi), going (sen), crying (rā), to be happy (suku), and to be sorry (duku); for such primary relations as father (apu), mother (engā), son (hōn) and brother (bāu); for such familiar natural objects as the moon (chandu), stone (diri), dew (sisir-dā), tree (dāru), bamboo (mād), Sāl (sirjōm), mahuā (madkam), plantain (kadal); for such familiar concepts as a load (bhārōm), the country (disum), inside (bitar) and across (pārom); for such common objects as a stick (ḍāṇḍā), an arrow (sat), a tree bark (bāklāā), milk (toyā) and sacrifice (dāņṛe); for such common animals as pig (sukuri), goat (merom), frog (chōké) and bullock (dāmkōm); for such common and familiar birds as crow (kau), vulture (gidi), stork (bākā) and peacock (mārā) ; for fishes in general (hāku); for such implements and produce of primitive agriculture as the yoke (arāṛa), ploughshare (phal), block-wheel cart (saari), sickle (dātrōm), straw (busu), boiled rice (māndi), pulse (dāli), oil (sunum), juice (rasi); and for such objects relating to primitive occupations as the smithy (pasrā), the small spinningwheel (linijum), thread (sutam), buying (kiring), selling (akiring), weighing (tula) and loan (rint).

Words given in the subjoined appendices are either purely Sanskritic in form or look like variations of Sanskrit words seemingly derived mostly from some old Sanskritic dialect or a Prakrit dialect akin to that from which Bengali is derived and in a few instances to that from which Hindi is derived. And the variations which these Sanskrit or Sanskritic words and their analogues in the Munda languages show, appear to have a regular method. It would seem that certain consonants in Sanskrit have their consonantal equivalents in the Muṇḍa languages.

These variations of sound would, indeed, appear to yield regular rules of phonetic transition. Thus, as for the mute consonants, it would seem, that in general a medial aspirate in The Mute Consonants are the following