Karen and Man families of Indian Languages
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Karen And Man
Before describing the languages belonging to the Tibeto-Chinese languages, we must refer briefly to two other groups of languages the affiliation of which is doubtful, and which, pending the completion of the Linguistic Survey of Burma have been provisionally put down as independent families. These are the Karen Family and the Man Family. Neither is described in the pages of the present Survey.
The Karen Family
Karen, is a group of dialects spoken by members of the Karen tribe scattered over South Burma and the neighbouring parts of Siam.1 According to the late Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, they are pre-Chinese, and in that case may be connected with the ` Man' languages to be presently described, with which I have myself noted more than one resemblance. It is possible also that they may be distant relations of the Kiranti languages spoken in the Himalaya, but here the case must be left for further investigation by the Linguistic Survey of Burma. Where so much doubt exists, it is hardly necessary to state that the Karens have been identified by some with the lost Ten Tribes, and it is not actually impossible that they may have gathered some of their traditions from early Jewish colonists in Northern China. From Northern China they appear to have migrated to the neighbourhood of Ava, whence, about the fifth or sixth century of our era, they came down southward and spread over the hills between the Irrawaddy, the Salwin, and the Me-nam as far as the seaboard. I must leave to the Linguistic Survey of Burma the task of describing the various forms of Karen. They are many in number. Here it must be sufficient to state that the most important forms are Karenni, or Red Karen, of the north, Pwo and Sgaw of the south, and Taungthu.
The Man Family
The languages which have been provisionally classed under the name of ` Man' are mainly spoken in China and Indo-China, although a few speakers are foundd in British Burma. The name ` Man' is Chinese and means a ` Southern. Barbarian.' It is applied by the Chinese to certain wildd tribes inhabiting the mountainous tracts of Indo-China and that part of China bordering on it. Representatives of two of these tribes, -- the Miao and the Yao have turned up in the Southern Shan Sates and their languages have been recorded in the Census of 1921. These languges hardly concern India, but will no doubt be dealt with in the Linguistic Survey of Burma. Fuller information regarding them will be found in the Introduction to the Comparative Vocabulary forming Part II of this Volume.
1.The locality in which Korean is spoken is shown in the map facing page 50.
