States to the north-east of Mandalay on the
middle Salween. With the progress of research it became apparent that
the Mon-Khmer group of Indo-China thus constituted, to which the Khasis
belong, was in some way connected with the large linguistic family
in the Indian Peninsula once called Kolarian, but now more generally
known as _Munda_, who inhabit the hilly region of Chutia Nagpur
and parts of the Satpura range in the Central Provinces. Of these
tribes the principal are the Santhals, the Mundas, and the Korkus. In
physical characters they differ greatly from the Indo-Chinese Khasis,
but the points of resemblance in their languages and in some of their
institutions cannot be denied; and the exact nature of the relation
between them is as yet one of the unsolved problems of ethnology.

The work of Logan was carried further by Prof. Ernst Kuhn, of Munich,
who in 1888 and 1889 published important contributions to our knowledge
of the languages and peoples of Further India. More recently our
acquaintance with the phonology of Khasi and its relatives has been
still further advanced by the labours of Pater W. Schmidt, of Vienna,
whose latest work, _Die Mon-Khmer Voelker, ein Bindeglied zwischen
Voelkern Zentralasiens und Austronesiens_ (Braunschweig, 1906),
has established the relationship of Khasi not only to the Mon-Khmer
languages, but also to Nicobarese and several dialects spoken by wild
tribes in the Malay Peninsula.

There still remains much to be done before the speech of the Khasi
nation can be considered to have been thoroughly investigated. In
the _Linguistic Survey_ four dialects are dealt with, the standard
literary form, founded on the language of Cherrapunji, the _Pnar_ or
_Synteng_, of Jowai, the _War_, spoken in the valleys on the southern
face of the hills, and the _Lyngngam_, spoken in the tract adjacent to
the Garos on the west. Major Gurdon (p. 203) mentions a fifth, that
of Jirang or Mynnar, spoken in the extreme north, and there may be
others. A great desideratum for linguistic purposes is a more adequate
method of recording sounds, and especially differences of tone, than
that adopted for the standard speech, which though sufficient for
practical purposes, does not accurately represent either the quantity
or the quality of the vowels, and leaves something to be desired
as regards the consonants (especially those only faintly sounded or
suppressed). These things, no doubt, will come in time. The imme