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It is interesting to note that the Amwi and Lakadong dialects of Khasi, which are spoken by the people who dwell on the southern slopes of the Jaintia Hills, seem more closely to correspond with the Mon-Khmer forms than even with Khasi.
Although not wishing to lay too much stress on what may be merely a coincidence, I think that the above similarity in death customs is well worth considering with regard to the view, based on linguistic affinity, that the Khasis and the Ho-Mundas were originally descended from a common stock, i.e. the Mon-Khmêr or Mon-Anam family, as has been postulated by Logan.
Its people are known to philological research as Austroasiatics, who formed the original stock of the Australian aborigines; they survived in India as the Munda tribes, in Indo-China as the Mon-Khmer, and also remained in pockets on the islands of Indonesia and especially Melanesia. All these peoples had migrated from southern China.
The theory of "borrowing" seems totally inadequate to explain those fundamental features of structure, hidden away in the very core of the linguistic complex, that have been pointed out as common, say, to Semitic and Hamitic, to the various Soudanese languages, to Malayo-Polynesian and Mon-Khmer and Munda, to Athabaskan and Tlingit and Haida.
Grierson, having agreed regarding the existence of this common substratum, does not finally determine whether the ancient substratum was the parent of the present Munda language, or of the Mon-Khmêr language. He says, "It cannot have been the parent of both, but it is possible that it was the parent of neither."
Grierson and Professor Kuhn that the Mon-Khmêr, Palaung, Wa, and Khasi languages are closely connected. In the section of the Monograph which deals with language some striking similarities between the languages of these tribes will be pointed out.
It will be seen from the above notes that there are some interesting points of affinity between the Khasis and some of the Malay tribes, and if we add that the Khasis are decidedly Malay in appearance, we cannot but wonder whether the Malays have any connection not only with the Mon-Khmêr family, but also with the Khasis, with the Ho-Mundas, and with the Naga tribes mentioned by Mr.
With reference to possible Malay influence in the countries inhabited by the people who speak the Mon-Khmêr group of languages in Further India, it was thought desirable to ascertain whether any of the people inhabiting the Dutch East Indies possessed anything in common with the Khasis, who also belong to the Mon-Khmêr group. There are, according to Mr.
It can well be imagined how important a matter it is also, in the light of Grierson's and Kuhn's linguistic conclusions, to ascertain whether any of the Mon-Khmêr people in Anam and Cambodia and neighbouring countries possess social customs in common with the Khasis.
He goes on to add that more important than these contacts of the mono-syllabic languages of Indo-China with mono-syllabic Khasi is their affinity with the Kol, and Nancowry poly-syllabic languages and with that of the aboriginal inhabitants of Malacca, i.e. the languages of the so-called Orang-Outang, or men of tile woods, Sakei, Semung, Orang-Benua, and others; and that although it is not, perhaps, permissible to derive at once from this connection the relation of the Khasi Mon-Khmêr mono-syllabic group with these poly-syllabic languages, it seems to be certain that a common substratum lies below a great portion of the Indo-Chinese languages as well as those of the Kol and Ho-Munda group.
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