MODIFICATIONS IN THE DIFFERENT LINGUISTIC GROUPS. 265
Brahma, Rama, Siva, Vishnu, and their associates, are frequently met with in various dialectical modifications. The same names being also used as personal names of the Hindus, every distinction consequently disappears, even though in isolated cases geographical names are referred in the first instance to persons belonging to modern history. Occasionally Sanskrit names have passed far beyond the limits within which the Hindostani language is spoken, the geographical position of many places most sacred to Brahmanical worship having materially contributed to this irregularity. Mountains, lakes, and sacred springs are objects beyond all others with which names of former periods have remained connected; the highest peaks of the Alps often present cases of perfect analogy. I may be allowed to allude here to the interpretation of Monte Rosa in our "Untersuchungen über die Alpen." 1 Amongst the words compounded with elements of no mythological character, those containing nau, new, are very numerous all over India; the application of upper and lower, frequent in Europe, is less often used ; even in the hilly districts of India and along the shores of its rivers, where distinctions of level are so easily perceptible, such designations are very rare ; 2 B u l a n d s h â h a r, high town, is one of the few instances.
Numerals, as two, three, and ten, are very frequently used in compound geographical names, as D â s g a ü, ten villages; Tipp e r a, three towns; the term evidently meaning that a locality in its present form is composed of several original settlements more or less numerous. Arabic and Persian personal names introduced into composition have been spread by the Mussâlmans in a vast proportion throughout India; and we meet them again in the north, in Turkistan, the names remaining in most instances almost without alteration. As they are generally taken from the Koran, it is very difficult in most instances to decide to which special person, king, governor, &c., such a name might be referred, even in cases where circumstances make such an origin very probable. Here, as everywhere where we meet Mussâlman names, the linguistic elegance and energy of the meaning is a welcome appearance.
The Tibetan terminology is particularly descriptive: great, small, high, low; the various colours, as white, black, red, and allusions to the physical condition in general, are very often met with; as component parts particularly frequent I may mention: tha ng, pang, plain, grassy place; khar, fort; la, pass; ri, mountain; tso, lake; kar, white;
I Neue Untersuchungen (Vol. II.) p. 60.
2 In High Asia too they are chiefly limited to the districts with Tibetan population.
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