45
violence. The generic meaning of 'fruit' obviates all difficulties both here and in 49. The specific sense is clearly intended in 24, 37, 69, as is indicated by its association with พลู (betel-leaf). The same word becomes a subordinate element with vanishing significance in compounds, as หมาก ม่วง, (mango), 39, หมาก ขาม (tamarind) 40, หมาก พ้ราว (cocoanut) 72, หมาก ลาง 73. Since the Prince's day loss of stress first shortened หมาก to มัก (still heard in the North), and lastly to มะ or ม, which has now become an integral part of the names of many fruit-bearing trees—as indeed it has in the case of the very ones just cited. All such require the addition of a new word meaning fruit, if fruit is distinctly intended .Thus we have ลูกมะม่วง 'a mango', but ตน มะม่วง 'a mango tree'. The last phrase exactly parallels our 'crab apple tree', as compared with the earlier and more idiomatic 'crab tree'. The history here sketched is no doubt that also of many other dissyllabic native Siamese words, whose compound nature is now entirely forgotten; as, for example, the large group of household and market utensils, and the still larger group of animal class-names beginning—according to euphonic conditions—with กระ, กะ, or ตะ.
The word 'lang' I have not succeeded in finding as the name of a fruit or a tree either south or north. A Lao friend recognizes it as a jingling pendant used with หมาก พร้าว 'cocoanut ' but not known to him separately from that. Here it would seem to be a different tree at together.
14. The second word is certainly ใด 'any', and not ดู 'look', S, nor กู 'I', P.
13—14. The phrase ตี หนัง วัง ช้าง has been the source of much perplexity to all students of this text, native as well as foreign. For what seems a very happy solution I am indebted to the kindness of Chau Suriyawong of Chieng Mai. The expression, he assured me, is a stereotyped phrase readily understood by the Lao, meaning 'to hunt wild elephants'. The apparent irrelevance of the terms used he explained as follows:—ตี is used in the same sense it still has in the phrase ตีเกลียว 'to lay up the strands of rope'. หนัง, of course, refers to the strands of rawhide used in making the riata for noosing the
