Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/676

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
*
590
*

INDO-CHINESE. 590 INDO-GERUANIC LANGUAGES. and are likewise less civilised, though in the past they liiivu cTc-atpd or hnve l)ecn the beari-r^ of several hall' rivilizalions. 'llie Caiubodiaiis, or Khiiiors, ahout whose liii-.Tiislie and soinalic rela- tionship there is slill .some dispute, authorities creditiu}; them with Arjan allinities. espoiially as to physical eliaraeters. have behind them the more or less indijienoiis culture represented by numer- ous inscriptions and bj' the remarkable temples and monuments of Angkor-Vat, etc. The culture of the Indo-Chinese peoples has l>een largely in- tluenced by both India and China, while the more primitive .Malays have also had a not insi-;- nillcant share in the physical and social coni- ple.es there existinfr. The Khmers have in ear- lier times borrowed not a little from Hindu eourccs, though this borrowing may not have been 80 great as has hitherto been assumed. The Hur- mese owe a good deal of their civilization to India, the .Siamese almost as much, though more indebted to Cliina than the liurmesc; while the social life and culture of the .Annamese is largely a reflection of Chinese. Tln' .ssamesc of the northwest, who sjieak an .ryan language closely related to Hindi, arc probably a mi-ture of some of the more primitive tribes and Hindus. The exact relationship of some of the savage tribes of the northern parts of Farther India is not yet dear, but those not distinctly Thai' are more closely connected with the prc-Sinitic inhabitants of Southern China and the Tibetan area. The Mois, by which general name a number of more or less primitive tril>es scattered over the eastern mountains ami lablelamls are known, are an aboriginal race with perhaps a Caucasian strain. 'J"he Kuis of the Shan States are probably aborig- inal like the .lois; the Kuis of Candiodia have for some time been rapidly assimilating in s[)eecli and otherwise to the Cambodians. The -Mons, or Talaing, of Burma, formerly luid a much greater extension, but have been driven back by the more civilizi^d peoples and the mixed races of modern origin. The TchiaiTi or Chiam. who are the mod- ern representatives of the pcojile who founded the ancient Kmpirc of Champa, are by somi' authori- ties thought to possess Malay linguistic allinities. The Karens of Burma, who have recently shown themselves to be so amenable to missicmary in- lluenees, arc related to the Burmese linguis- tically and physically, but are of a more primi- tive "type. The numerous Chin tribes of the Xorthwest are probably closely related to the primitive Burmese, but some of them are of very mixed type. The Lushai tribes are perhaps similarly related in general: they, together with the Xagas of the mountains of JIanipur. are now more or less mixed— some of them have been thought to have Jfalay aflinities. The Indo- Chinese peoples as a whole are probably of Jlon- golian stock, with, early and later admixtures of Aryans and non-.ryans from India, etc., Malays and possibly Negritos. Iwsides intcrminglings with the more modern peoples of the Tndo-Chi- ncse area. Like Hindustan, Farther India has had a history of primitive occupation, indig- enous culture evolutions, foreign conquests, na- tive combinations and disputes, ete. The more civilized peoples have more or less exploited for agricultural, commercial, and labor purposes the less civilized; the Burmese and Siamese the Shans, the .Annamese the Mtns. the Laos the wilder peoples of their country'; and to this general exploitation the Chinese, whose coming into this area as colonists and traders antedates the Christian Kra, have added nmeh. Back of the modem civilization of Burma, ."siani. . iiam, Cambodia, etc., lie older halfcivilizalions ol the more primitive tribes — Khmers, Shans, Laos, etc. — whose remains arc of considerable iui- portani* nnd of great anliquitj'. Back of these again are the monument.s of prehistoric man in this part of the world — the kitchen-middens of Cambodia, the stone monuments of the Khasi country, etc., and. earliest of all, the chip|H'd implements disciivered by Noctling in 1894 mar ^enangyoung, on the Irrawaddy, in Cpper Jturma, which are clainu'd to prove the existcnci- of Ter- tiary man in this region. It is probalily from some of the proto-lndoCliinese or their chisely allied predecessors that the -Malayan stock has sprung. Some of the IndoChinese, howt'ver. ex- hibit closer somatic aninilies with certain of the Mongolian natives of Xortheastern .sia. such as the Tchuktchi, etc. Consult: 'on llcllwald, Iliitterindisrhe Uindrr Und '6lkrr (l^ipzig, ISHO) ; Forbes, Comjxirnlivr drnviniar of the Lunfiuagc.i of I'lirthcr India (London, 18H1); Bastian. Vulkcrsliimme am lirnhmiiputra (Ber- lin, 1S8,3) : F.hler, Im Sallrl dunk IndoChina (ill.. 1S1I4). INDO-CHINESE StTBKEGION, In zoog- raphy, a laun:il district of the (Jriental Region, comprising all that part of China south of the high mountains which carry the Himalaya range eastward nearly (o Fu-chow. and foriri the wat<'r- shed between the south coast and the valley of the Yangtse : also all of . nani, Si:im, Yunnan. Burma, and ..ssani. and a long, narrow exten- sion westward along the .southern slopes of the Himalaya, between the levels of about •2.500 and 9000 feet. The name 'Himalayan' or 'Himalo- Chinese' is therefore sometimes given to this fauna and subregion. It is one of the richest faunas in the world, and is especially distinct in its birds, of which more than 40 genera are peculiar, among which the pheasants are con- spicuous. In the higher mountains I'alearctic forms mingle with it to some extent, but on the whole the allinities arc distinctly Oriental. See map under DisTHiniTiox OF Aximals. INDO-EUIIOPEANS. . term frequently ap- plied to the so called .ryan race (sc<> .hya.n: KriioPE), as being inhabitants of India and F.u- riijK'. The word is. however, linguistic rather than ethnological. F.ven in linguistic usage the term is abandoned by the leading authorities, except among French and Italian scholars, in favor of Indo-Germanic. See Indo-Gebmanic L.WT.UAGES. INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES, often called Inoo-Kikot'F.ax. -Vhvax, or souietimes In- DoCeltic. The name given to the great cognate group of tongues spoken by the kindred peoples of Southern and Southwestern Asia and Europe, and exteiidin'.' from India as far .as the people^ of Germanic blood have spread. (See Akvax.) This great group is quite distinct from the Semitic family of languages, from the forms of speech spoken by the Mongolian tribes, and from the va- rious other recognized groups of tongues which are distributed over the world. The question as to the situation of the primitive home of the Indo-Ger- manic peoples has been much discussed. The present tendency is to locate the original Indo- Gernianic habitat in Central or Northern Europe