66 barons and knights bachelors, which has given rise to the idea that they are the origin of King James I.'s order of baronets. Selden, indeed, points out that "the old stories" often have baronelli for bannereti, and he points out that in France the title had become hereditary; but he himself is careful to say (p. 680) that banneret "hath no relation to this later title." The title of knight banneret, with the right to display the private banner, came to be granted for distinguished service in the field. "No knight banneret," says Selden, of the English custom, can be created but in the field, and that, when either the king is present, or at least his royal standard is displayed. But the creation is almost the self-same with that in the old French ceremonies by the solemn delivery of a banner charged with the arms of him that is to be created, and the cutting of the end of the pennon or streamer to make it a square or into the shape of a banner in case that he which is to be created had in the field his arms on a streamer before the creation." The creation of bannerets is traceable, according to Selden, to the time of Edward I. "Under these bannerets," he adds, "divers knights bachelors and esquires usually served; and according to the number of them, the bannerets received wages." The last authentic instance of the creation of a knight banneret was that of John Smith, created banneret at the battle of Edgehill by Charles I. for rescuing the royal standard from the enemy. See Selden, Tilles of Honor (3rd ed., London, 1672), p. 656; Du Cange, Glossarium (Niort, 1883), s.v. Bannereti.' BANNERS, FEAST OF (Jap. Nobori-no-Sckku), a Japanese festival in honour of male children held on the 5th of May. Every householder who has sons fastens a bamboo pole over his door and hangs from it gaily-coloured paper fishes, one for each of his boys. These fishes are made to represent carp, which are in Japanese folklore symbolical of health and longevity. The day is recognized as a national holiday. For banners in general see FLAG. BANNISTER, CHARLES (1738-1804), English actor and singer, was born in Gloucestershire, and after some amateur and provincial experience made his first London appearance in 1762 as Will in The Orators at the Haymarket. Gifted with a fine bass voice, Bannister acquired a reputation as a singer at Ranelagh and elsewhere, as well as an actor, and was received with such favour that Garrick engaged him for Drury Lane. He died on the 26th of October 1804. His son JOHN BANNISTER (1760-1836), born at Deptford on the 12th of May 1760, first studied to be a painter, but soon took to the stage. His first formal appearance was at the Haymarket in 1778 as Dick in The Apprentice. The same year at Drury Lane he played in James Miller's version of Voltaire's Mahomet the part of Zaphna, which he had studied under Garrick. The Palmira of the cast was Mrs Robinson | tweeds, carpets and tartans) and leather, though at the beginning of the 19th century it was only a village. The Bore Stone, in which Bruce planted his standard before the battle in which he defeated Edward II. in 1314 (see below), is preserved by an iron grating. A mile to the west is the Gillies' Hill, now finely wooded, over which the Scots' camp - followers appeared to complete the discomfiture of the English, to which event it owes its name. Bannockburn House was Prince Charles Edward's headquarters in January 1746 before the fight at Falkirk. The famous battle of Bannockburn (24th June 1314) was fought for the relief of Stirling Castle, which was besieged by the Scottish forces under Robert Bruce. The English governor of Stirling had promised that, if he were not relieved by that date, he would surrender the castle, and Edward II. hastily collected an army in the northern and midland counties of England. Bruce made no attempt to defend the border, and selected his defensive position on the Bannock Burn, 2 m. S. of Stirling. His front was covered by the marshy bed of the stream, his left flank by its northerly bend towards the Forth, his right by a group of woods, behind which, until the English army appeared, the Scots concealed themselves. Two corps were left in the open in observation, one at St Ninian's to watch the lower course of the burn, one to guard the point at which the Falkirk-Stirling road crosses the burn. On the 23rd the van of the army of Edward, which numbered about 60,000 against the 40,000 of the Scots, appeared to the south of the burn and at once despatched two bodies of men towards Stirling, the first by the direct road, the other over the lower Bannock Burn near its junction with the Forth. The former was met by the Scottish outpost on the road, and here occurred the famous single combat in which Robert Bruce, though not fully armed for battle, killed Sir Henry Bohun. The English corps which took the other route was met and after a severe struggle defeated by the second Scottish outpost near St Ninian's. The English army assembled for battle on the following day. Early on St John's day the Scottish army took up its assigned positions. Three corps of pikemen in solid masses formed the first line, which was kept out of sight behind the crest until the enemy advanced in earnest. A line of "pottes" (military pits) had been previously dug to give additional protection to the front, which extended for about one mile from wing to wing. The reserve under Bruce consisted of a corps of pikemen and a squadron of 500 chosen men-at-arms under Sir Robert Keith, the marischal of Scotland. The line of the defenders was unusually dense; Edward, in forming up on an equal front with greatly superior numbers, found his army almost hopelessly cramped. The attacking army was formed in an unwieldy mass of ten " battles," each consisting of horse and foot, and the whole formed in three lines each of three "battles," with the tenth "battle" as a reserve in rear. In this order the English moved ("Perdita "). Bannister was the best low comedian of his day. down into the valley for a direct attack, the cavalry of each As manager of Drury Lane (1802) he was no less successful. He retired in 1815 and died on the 7th of November 1836. He never gave up his taste for painting, and Gainsborough, Morland and Rowlandson were among his friends. Sec Adolphus's Memoirs of John Bannister (2 vols., 1838), BANNOCK (adapted from the Gaelic, and apparently connected with Lat. panis, bread), the term used in Scotland and the north of England for a large, flattish, round sort of bun or cake, usually made of barley-meal, but also of wheat, and sometimes with currants. BANNOCK, the name of a county in the south-east of the state of Idaho, U.S.A., and of a river in the same state, which runs northward in Oneida county into the Snake or Lewis river. It is taken from that of the Bannock Indians (see BANATE), a corruption of the native Panaili. BANNOCKBURN, a town of Stirlingshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 2444. It is situated on the "burn " from which its name is derived, the Bannock (Gaelic, ban oc, "white, shining stream"), a right-hand affluent of the Forth, which was once a considerable river. The town lies 2 m. S.S.E. of Stirling by the Caledonian railway, and now has thriving manufactures of woollens (chiefly battle" in first line, the foot in second. Ignoring the lesson of Falkirk (q.v.), the mounted men rode through the morass and of the Scottish pikemen. The attack of the English failed to up the slope, which was now crowned by the three great masses make any gap in the line of defence, many knights and men-atarms were injured by falling into the pits, and the battle became a mêlée, the Scots, with better fortune than at Falkirk and Flodden, presenting always an impenetrable hedge of spears, the English, too stubborn to draw off, constantly trying in vain to break it down. So great was the press that the "battles" of the second line which followed the first were unable to reach the front and stood on the slope, powerless to take part in the battle on the crest. The advance of the third English line only made matters worse, and the sole attempt to deploy the archers was crushed with great slaughter by the charge of Keith's mounted men. Bruce threw his infantry reserve into the battle, the arrows of the English archers wounded the men-at-arms of their own side, and the remnants of the leading line were tired and disheartened when the final impetus to their rout was given by the historic charge of the "gillies," some thousands of Scottish campfollowers who suddenly emerged from the woods, blowing horns, waving such weapons as they possessed, and holding aloft improvised banners. Their cries of "slay, slay!" seemed to the | from Bannu town towards Dera Ismail Khan. The Indus, wearied English to betoken the advance of a great reserve, and which is nowhere bridged within the district, is navigable for in a few minutes the whole English army broke and fled in dis- native boats throughout its course of 76 m. The chief frontier order down the slope. Many perished in the burn, and the tribes on the border are the Waziris, Battannis and Dawaris. demoralized fugitives were hunted by the peasantry until they All these are described under their separate names. re-crossed the English border. One earl, forty-two barons and bannerets, two hundred knights, seven hundred esquires and probably 10,000 foot were killed in the battle and the pursuit. One earl, twenty-two barons and bannerets and sixty-eight knights fell into the hands of the victors, whose total loss of 4000 men included, it is said, only two knights. 66 BANSDA, a native state in the south Gujarat division of Bombay, India, belonging to the Surat agency. Area, 215 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 40,382, showing a decrease of 2% in the decade; estimated revenue £19,508. Its chief is a rajput. About half the total area of the state is cultivable, but the bulk is forested. BANSHEE (Irish bean sidhe; Gaelic ban sith, "6 woman of the fairies "), a supernatural being in Irish and general Celtic held to foretell the death of some member of the household folklore, whose mournful screaming, or "keening," at night is visited. In Ireland legends of the banshee belong more particularly to certain families in whose records periodic visits from the spirit are chronicled. A like ghostly informer figures in Brittany folklore. The Irish banshee is held to be the distinction only of families of pure Milesian descent. The Welsh have the banshee under the name gwrach y Rhibyn (witch of Rhibyn). Sir Walter Scott mentions a belief in the banshee as existing in the highlands of Scotland (Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 351). Rhibyn and banshee is the cyhyraeth, the groaning spirit. A Welsh death-portent often confused with the gwrach y See W. Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880). See J. E. Shearer, Fact and Fiction in the Story of Bannockburn (1909). BANNS OF MARRIAGE (formerly bannes, from A.S. gebann, proclamation, Fr. ban, Med. Lat. bannum), the public legal notice of an impending marriage. The church in carliest days was forewarned of marriages (Tertullian, Ad Uxorem, De Pudicitia, c. 4). The first canonical enactment on the subject in the English church is that contained in the 11th canon of the synod of Westminster in London (A.D. 1200), which orders that "no marriage shall be contracted without banns thrice published in the church, unless by special authority of the bishop." It is, however, believed that the practice was in France as old as the 9th century, and certainly Odo, bishop of Paris, ordered it in 1176. Some have thought that the custom originated in the ancient rule that all good knights and true," who elected to take part in the tournaments, should hang up their shields in the nearest church for some weeks before the opening of the lists, so that, if any "impediment "existed, they might be "warned off." By the Lateran Council of 1215 the publication of banns was made compulsory on all Christendom. In early times it was usual for the priest to betroth the pair formally in the name of the Blessed Trinity; and sometimes the banns were published at vespers, sometimes during mass. In the United Kingdom, under the canon law and by statute, banns are the normal preliminary to marriage; but a marriage may also be solemnized without the publication of banns, by obtaining a licence or a registrar's certificate. In America there is no statutory requirement; and the practice of banns (though general in the colonial period) is practically con-encies; on its decline the state passed under the Mahrattas. fined to the Roman Catholics. BANNU, a town and district of British India, in the Derajat division of the North-West Frontier Province. The town (also called Edwardesabad and Dhulipnagar) lies in the north-west corner of the district, in the valley of the Kurram river. Pop. (1901) 14,300. It forms the base for all punitive expeditions to the Tochi Valley and Waziri frontier. The district of Bannu, which only consists of the Bannu and Marwat tahsils since the constitution of the North-West Frontier Province in 1901, contains an area of 1680 sq. m. lying north of the Indus. The cis-Indus portions of Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan now comprises the new Punjab district of Mianwali. In addition to the Indus the other streams flowing through the district are the Kurram (which falls into the Indus) and its tributary the Gambila. The valley of Bannu proper, stretching to the foot of the frontier hills, forms an irregular oval, measuring 60 m. from north to south and about 40 m. from east to west. In 1901 the population was 231,485, of whom the great majority were Mahommedans. The principal tribes inhabiting the district are: (1) Waziri Pathans, recent immigrants from the hills, for the most part peaceable and good cultivators; (2) Marwats, a Pathan race, inhabiting the lower and more sandy portions of the Bannu valley; (3) Bannuchis, a mongrel Afghan tribe of bad physique and mean vices. The inhabitants of this district have always been very independent and stubbornly resisted the Afghan and Sikh predecessors of the British. After the annexation of the Punjab the valley was administered by Herbert Edwardes so thoroughly that it became a source of strength instead of weakness during the Mutiny. The inhabitants of the valley itself are now peaceful, but it is always subject to incursion from the Waziri tribes in the Tochi valley and the neighbouring hills. Salt is quarried on government account at Kalabagh and alum is largely obtained in the same neighbourhood. The chief export is wheat. A military road leads' BANSWARA (literally "the forest country "), a rajput feudatory state in Rajputana, India. It borders on Gujarat and is bounded on the N. by the native states of Dungarpur and Udaipur or Mewar; on the N.E. and E. by Partabgarh; on the S. by the dominions of Holkar and the state of Jabua; and on the W. by the state of Rewa Kantha. Banswara state is about 45 m. in length from N. to S., and 33 m. in breadth from E. to W., and has an area of 1946 sq. m. The population in 1901 was 165,350. The Mahi is the only river in the state and great scarcity of water occurs in the dry season. The Banswara chief belongs to the family of Udaipur. During the vigour of the Delhi empire Banswara formed one of its dependWearied out by their oppressions, its chief in 1812 petitioned for English protection, on the condition of his state becoming tributary on the expulsion of the Mahrattas. The treaty of 1818 gave effect to this arrangement, Britain guaranteeing the prince against external enemies and refractory chiefs; he, on his part, pledging himself to be guided by her representative in the administration of his state. The chief is assisted in the administration by a hamdar or minister. The estimated gross revenue is £17,000 and the tribute £2500. The custom of suttee, or widow-burning, has long been abolished in the state, but the people retain all their superstitions regarding witches and sorcery; and as late as 1870, a Bhil woman, about eighty years old, was swung to death at Kushalgarh on an accusation of witchcraft. The perpetrators of the crime were sentenced to five years' rigorous imprisonment, but they had the sympathy of the people on their side. The chief town is Banswara, situated about 8 m. W. of the Mahi river, surrounded by an old disused rampart and adorned by various Hindu temples, with the battlements of the chief's palace overlooking it. Its population in 1901 was 7038. The petty state of Kushalgarh is feudatory to Banswara. BANTAM, the westernmost residency of the island of Java, Dutch East Indies, bounded W. by the Strait of Sunda, N. by the Java sea, E. by the residencies of Batavia and Preanger, and S. by the Indian Ocean. It also includes Princes Island and Dwars-in-den-weg ("right-in-the-way ") Island in Sunda Strait, as well as several smaller islands along the coasts. Bantam had a population in 1897 of 709,339, including 302 Europeans, 1959 Chinese and 89 Arabs and other Asiatic foreigners. The natives are Sundanese, except in the northern or Serang division, where they are Javanese. The coast is low-lying and frequently marshy. The northern portion of the residency constitutes the most fertile portion, is generally flat with a hilly group in the middle, where the two inactive volcanoes, Karang and Pulosari, are found, while the north-western corner is occupied by the isolated Gede Mountain. The southern portion is covered by the Kendang (Malay for "range") Mountains extending into the Preanger. The rivers are only navigable at their mouths. Various geysers and cold and warm sulphur springs are found in the centre of the residency, and on a ridge of the Karang Mountain is the large crater-lake Dano, a great part of which was drained by the government in 1835 for rice cultivation. Pulse (kachang), rice and coffee are the principal products of cultivation; but in the days of government culture sugar, indigo and especially pepper were also largely grown. The former considerable fishing and coasting trade was ruined by the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, a large stretch of coast line and the seaport towns of Charingin and Anjer being destroyed by the inundation. The prosperity of the residency was further affected by a cattle plague in 1879, followed by a fever epidemic which carried off 50,000 people, and except in the rice season there is a considerable emigration of natives. Bantam contains five native regencies or territorial divisions, namely, Serang, Anjer, Pandeglang, Charingin, Lebak. The principal towns are Serang, the capital of the residency, Chilegon, Pandeglang, Menes and Rangkas Betug. The chief town, Serang, is situated 24 m. from Bantam Bay on the high road from Batavia. The port of Serang is Karangantu, on Bantam Bay, and close by is the old ruined town of Bantam, once the capital of the kingdom of Bantam, and before the foundation of Batavia the principal commercial port of the Dutch East India Company. The ruins include the remains of the former pepper warehouses, the old factory, called Fort Speelwijk, belonging to the company, the fortified palace of the former sultans and a well-preserved mosque thought to have been built by the third Mahommedan ruler of Bantam about 1562-1576, and containing the tombs of various princes of Bantam. Before the Dutch conquest Bantam was a powerful Mahommedan state, whose sovereign extended his conquests in the neighbouring islands of Borneo and Sumatra. In 1595 the Dutch expelled the Portuguese and formed their first settlement. A British factory was established in 1603 and continued to exist till the staff was expelled in 1682. In 1683 the Dutch reduced the sultan to vassalage, built the fort of Speelwijk and monopolized the port, which had previously been free to all comers; and for more than a century afterwards Bantam was one of the most important seats of commerce in the East Indies. In 1811 after Batavia had surrendered to the British, Bantam soon followed; but it was restored to the Dutch in 1814. Two years later, however, they removed their chief settlement to the more elevated station of Serang, or Ceram, 7 m. inland, and in 1817 the ruin of Bantam was hastened by a fire. For "Bantam " fowls see POULTRY. BANTIN, or BANTING, the native name of the wild ox of Java, known to the Malays as sapi-utan, and in zoology as Bos (Bibos) sondaicus. The white patch on the rump distinguishes the bantin from its ally the gaur (q.v.). Bulls of the typical bantin of Java and Borneo are, when fully adult, completely black except for the white rump and legs, but the cows and young are rufous. In Burma the species is represented by the tsaine, or h'saine, in which the colour of the adult bulls is rufous fawn. Tame bantin are bred in Bali, near Java, and exported to Singapore. (See BOVIDAE.) BANTRY, a seaport, market-town and seaside resort of Co. Cork, Ireland, in the west parliamentary division, 58 m. S.W. of Cork by the Cork, Bandon & South Coast railway, on the bay of the same name. Pop. (1901) 3109. It is an important centre both for sea fisheries and for sport with the rod. It is the terminus of the railway, and a coaching station on the famous "Prince of Wales "route (named after King Edward VII.) from Cork to Glengarriff and Killarney. The bay, with excellent anchorage, is a picturesque inlet some 22 m. long by 3 to 6 broad, with 12 to 32 fathoms of water. It is one of the headquarter stations of the Channel Squadron, which uses the harbour at Castletown Bearhaven on the northern shore, behind Bear Island, near the mouth of the bay. It was the scene of attempts by the French to invade Ireland in 1689 and 1796, and troops of William of Orange were landed here in 1697. There are several islands, the principal of which are Bear Island and Whiddy, off the town. Ruins of the so-called “ fish palaces" testify to the failure of the pilchard fishery in the 18th century. BANTU LANGUAGES. The greater part of Africa south of the equator possesses but one linguistic family so far as its native inhabitants are concerned. This clearly-marked division of human speech has been entitled the Bantu, a name invented by Dr W. H. I. Bleek, and it is, on the whole, the fittest general term with which to designate the most remarkable group of African languages.1 It must not be supposed for a moment that all the people who speak Bantu languages belong necessarily to a special and definite type of negro. On the contrary, though there is a certain physical resemblance among those tribes who speak clearlymarked Bantu dialects (the Babangi of the upper Congo, the people of the Great Lakes, the Ova-herero, the Ba-tonga, ZuluKaffirs, Awemba and some of the East Coast tribes), there is nevertheless a great diversity in outward appearance, shape of head and other physical characteristics, among the negroes who inhabit Bantu Africa. Some tribes speaking Bantu languages are dwarfs or dwarfish, and belong to the group of Forest Pygmies. Others betray relationship to the Hottentots; others again cannot be distinguished from the most exaggerated types of the black West African negro. Yet others again, especially on the north, are of Gala (Galla) or Nilotic origin. But the general deduction to be drawn from a study of the Bantu languages, as they exist at the present day, is that at some period not more than 3000 years ago a powerful tribe of negroes speaking the Bantu mother-language, allied physically to the negroes of the south-western Nile and southern Lake Chad basins (yet impregnated with the Caucasian Hamite), pushed themselves forcibly from the very heart of Africa (the region between the watersheds of the Shari, Congo and western Nile) into the southern half of the continent, which at that time was probably sparsely populated except in the north-west, east and south. The Congo basin and the south-western watershed of the Nile at the time of the Bantu invasion would have been occupied on the Atlantic seaboard by West Coast negroes, and in the centre by negroes of a low type and by Forest Pygmies; the eastern coasts of Victoria Nyanza and the East African coast region down to opposite Zanzibar probably had a population partly Nilotic-negro and partly Hottentot-Bushman. From Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa south-westwards to the Cape of Good Hope the population was Forest-negro, Nilotic-negro, Hottentot and Bushman. Over nearly all this area the Bantu swept; and they assimilated or absorbed the vast majority of the preceding populations, of which, physically or linguistically, the only survivors are the scattered tribes of pygmies in the forests of south-west Nile land, Congo basin and Gabun, the central Sudanese of the N.E. Congo, a few patches of quasiHottentot, Hamitic and Nilotic peoples between Victoria Nyanza and the Zanzibar coast, and the Bushmen and Hottentots of south-west Africa. The first area of decided concentration on the part of the Bantu was very probably Uganda and the shores of Tanganyika. The main line of advance south-west trended rather to the east coast of Africa than to the west, but bifurcated at the south end of Lake Tanganyika, one great branch passing west between that lake and Nyasa, and the other southwards. Finally, when the Bantu had reached the 1 Bantu (literally Ba-ntu) is the most archaic and most widely spread term for "men," "mankind," "people," in these languages. It also indicates aptly the leading feature of this group of tongues, which is the governing of the unchangeable root by prefixes. The syllable -ntu is nowhere found now standing alone, but it originally meant" object," or possibly "person." It is also occasionally used as a relative pronoun-" that, "that which," "he who." Combined with different prefixes it has different meanings. Thus (in the purer forms of Bantu languages) muntu means a man, bantu means men," kintu means a thing," bintu " things," kantu means "a little thing." tuntu "little things," and so on. This term Bantu has been often criticized, but no one has supplied a better, simpler designation for this section of Negro languages, and the name has now been definitely consecrated by usage. south-west corner of Africa, their farther advance was checked | number of roots like "fowl," which referred to animals, plants, by two causes: first, the concentration in a healthy, cattle-implements and abstract concepts known to them in their rearing part of Africa of the Hottentots (themselves only a original home. Thus there are the root-words for ox (ñombe, superior type of Bushman, but able to offer a much sturdier -ombe, -nte), goat (-budi, -buzi, -buri), pig (-guluba), pigeon (-jiba), resistance to the big black Bantu negroes than the crafty but buffalo (nyati), dog (mbwa), hippopotamus (-bugu, gubu), elephant feeble Bushmen), and secondly, the arrival on the scene of the (-jobo, -joko), leopard (ngwi), house (-zo, do, -yumba, anda, Dutch and British, but for whose final intervention the whole of -dago, -dabo), moon (-ezi), sun, sky, or God (-juba), water (-ndi, southern Africa would have been rapidly Bantuized, as far as -ndiba, mandiba), lake or river (-anza), drum (ngoma), name the imposition of language was concerned. (-ina orjina), wizard (nganga), belly, bowel (-vu, -vumo), buttocks (-lako); adjectives like -bi (bad), -eru (white); the numerals, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and 100; verbs like fwa (to die), ta (to strike, kill), la (da) or lia (di, dia) (to eat). The root-words cited are not a hundredth part of the total number of root words which are practically common to all the spoken dialects of Bantu Africa. Therefore the possession amongst its root-words of a common name for "fowl" seems to the present writer to show conclusively that (1) the original Bantu tribe must have possessed the domestic fowl before its dispersal through the southern half of Africa began, and that (2) as it is historically certain that the fowl as a domestic bird did not reach Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 B.C., and probably would not have been transmitted to the heart of Africa for another couple of hundred years, the Bantu exodus (at any rate to the south of the equatorial region) may safely be placed at a date not much anterior to 2100 years ago. rate. The theory thus set forth of the origin and progress of the Bantu and the approximate date at which their great southern exodus commenced, is to some extent attributable to the present writer only, and has been traversed at different times by other writers on the same subject. In the nearly total absence of any historical records, the only means of building up Bantu history lies in linguistic research, in the study of existing dialects, of their relative degree of purity, of their connexion one with the other and of the most widely-spread roots common to the majority of the Bantu languages. The present writer, relying on linguistic evidence, fixed the approximate date at which the Bantu negroes left their primal home in the very heart of Africa at not much more than 2000 years ago; and the reason adduced was worth some consideration. It lay in the root common to a large proportion of the Bantu languages expressing the domestic fowl-kuku (nkuku, ngoko, nsusu, nguku, nku). Now the domestic fowl reached Africa first through Egypt, at The creation of the Bantu type of language (pronominalthe time of the Persian occupation-not before 500 to 400 B.C. prefix) was certainly a much more ancient event than the exodus It would take at that time at least a couple of hundred years from the Bantu mother-land. Some form of speech like Fula, before from people to people and tribe to tribe up the Nile Kiama (Tem), or Kposo of northern Togoland, or one of the valley-the fowl, as a domestic bird, reached the equatorial languages of the lower Niger or Benue, may have been taken up regions of Africa. The Muscovy duck, introduced by the by ancient Libyan, Hamite or Nilotic conquerors and cast into Portuguese from Brazil at the beginning of the 17th century, the type which we now know as Bantu,-a division of sexless is spreading itself over Negro Africa at just about the same Negro speech, however, that shows no obvious traces of Hamitic Yet the Bantu people must have had the domestic fowl (Caucasian) influence. We have no clue at present to the exact well established amongst themselves before they left their birth-place of the Bantu nor to the particular group of dialects original home, because throughout Bantu Africa (with rare or languages from which it sprang. Its origin and near relationexceptions and those not among the purest Bantu tribes) the ships are as much a puzzle as is the case with the Aryan speech. root expressing the domestic fowl recurs to the one vocable of Perhaps in grammatical construction (suffixes taking the place kuku. Curiously enough this root kuku resembles to a marked of prefixes) Fula shows some resemblance; and Fula possesses degree several of the Persian words for "fowl," and is no doubt the concord in a form considerably like that of the Bantu, as well remotely derived from the cry of the bird. Among those Negro as offering affinities in the numerals 3 and 4, and in a few nominal, races which do not speak Bantu languages, though they may be pronominal and verbal roots. The Timne and cognate languages living in the closest proximity to the Bantu, the name for fowl of Sierra Leone and the north Guinea coast use pronominal is quite different. The fowl was only introduced into Mada-prefixes and a system of concord, the employment of the latter gascar, as far as researches go, by the Arabs during the historical being precisely similar to the same practice in the Bantu lanperiod, and is not known by any name similar to the root kuku. guages; but in word-roots (substantives, numerals, pronouns, Moreover, even if the fowl had been (and there is no record of verbs) there is absolutely no resemblance with this north Guinea this fact) introduced from Madagascar on to the east coast of group of prefix-using languages. In the numerals 2, 3, 4, and Africa, it would be indeed strange if it carried with it to Cameroon, sometimes 5, and in a few verbal roots, there is a distinct to the White Nile and to Lake Ngami one and the same name. affinity between Bantu and the languages of N. Togoland, the It may, however, be argued that such a thing is possible, that Benue river, lower Niger, Calabar and Gold Coast. The same the introduction of the fowl south of the equator need not be in thing may be said with less emphasis about the Madi and possibly any way coincident with the Bantu invasion, as its name in the Nyam-Nyam (Makarka) group of languages in Central Africa North Central Africa may have followed it everywhere among though in none of these forms of speech is there any trace of the the Bantu peoples. But all other cases of introduced plants or concord. Prefixes of a simple kind are used in the tongues of animals do not support this idea in the least. The Muscovy Ashanti, N. Togoland, lower Niger and eastern Niger delta, duck, for instance, is pretty well distributed throughout Bantu Cross River and Benue, to express differences between singular Africa, but it has no common widely-spread name. Even tobacco and plural, and also the quality of the noun; but they do not (though the root "taba" turns up unexpectedly in remote correspond to those of the Bantu type, though they sometimes parts of Africa) assumes totally different designations in different fall into " classes." In the north-west of the Bantu field, in the Bantu tribes. The Bantu, moreover, remained faithful to a great region between Cameroon and the north-western basin of the In Luganda and other languages of Uganda and the Victoria Congo, the Cross river and the Benue, there is an area of great Nyanza, and also in Runyoro on the Victoria Nile, the word for extent occupied by languages of a semi-Bantu character, fowl" is enkoko. In Ki-Swahili of Zanzibar it is kuku. In Zulu such as Nki, Mbudikum, Akpa, Mbe, Bayoñ, Manyañ, Bafut and it is inkuku. In some of the Cameroon languages it is lokoko, ngoko, Banshō, and the Munshi, Jaráwa, Kororofa, Kamuku and Gbari #gok, and on the Congo it is nkogo, nsusu. On the Zambezi it is, of the central and western Benue basin. The resemblances to kuku; so also throughout the tribes of Lakes Nyasa and Tangan- the Bantu in certain word-roots are of an obvious nature; and yika, and most dialects of South Africa. prefixes in a very simple form are generally used for singular and plural, but the rest of the concord is very doubtful. Here, however, we have the nearest relations of the Bantu, so far as From this statement are excepted those tongues classified as "semi-Bantu." In some languages of the Lower Niger and of the Gold Coast the word for "fowl is generally traceable to a root kuba. This form kuba also enters the Cameroon region, where it exists alongside of -koko. Kuba may have arisen independently, or have been derived from the Bantu kuku. Whence the many nyansa, nyanja, nyasa, mwanza, of African geography. etymology of word-roots is concerned. Further evidence of slight etymological and even grammatical relationships may be traced as far west as the lower Niger and northern and western Gold Coast languages (and, in some word-roots, the Mandingo group). The Fula language would offer some grammatical resemblance if its suffixes were turned into prefixes (a change which has actually taken place in the reverse direction in the English language between its former Teutonic and its modern Romanized conditions; cf. "offset" and "set-off," " upstanding" and "standing-up"). The legends and traditions of the Bantu peoples themselves invariably point to a northern origin, and a period, not wholly removed from their racial remembrance, when they were strangers in their present lands. Seemingly the Bantu, somewhat early in their migration down the east coast, took to the sea, and not merely occupied the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, but travelled as far afield as the Comoro archipelago and even the west coast of Madagascar. Their invasion of Madagascar must have been fairly considerable in numbers, and they doubtless gave rise to the race of black people known traditionally to the Hovas as the Va-zimba. The accompanying map will show pretty accurately the distribution of the Bantu-speaking Negroes at the present day. It will be seen by a glance at this map that the areas in which are spoken Bantu languages of typical structure and archaic form are somewhat widely spread. Perhaps on the whole the most archaic dialects at the present day are those of Mount Elgon, Ruwenzori, Unyoro, Uganda, the north coast of Tanganyika and of the Bemba country to the south-west of Tanganyika; also those in the vicinity of Lake Bangweulu, and the Nkonde and Kese dialects of the north and north-east coasts of Lake Nyasa; also (markedly) the Subiya speech of the western Zambezi. Another language containing a good many original Bantu roots and typical features is the well-known Oci-herero of Damaraland (though this S.W. African group also presents marked peculiarities and some strange divergencies). Kimakonde, on the east coast of Africa, is a primitive Bantu tongue; so in its roots, but not in its prefixes, is the celebrated Ki-swahili of Zanzibar. Ci-bodzo of the Zambezi delta is also an archaic type of great interest. The Zulu-Kaffir language, though it exhibits marked changes and deviations in vocabulary and phonetics (both probably of recent date), preserves a few characteristics of the hypothetical mothertongue: so much so that, until the languages of the Great Lakes came to be known, Zulu-Kaffir was regarded as the most archaic type of Bantu speech, a position from which it is now completely deposed. It is in some features unusually divergent from the typical Bantu. Classification. With our present knowledge of the existing Bantu tongues and their affinities, it is possible to divide them approximately into the following numbered groups and subdivisions, commencing at the north-eastern extremity of the Bantu domain, where, on the whole, the languages approximate nearest to the hypothetical parent speech. between the Victoria Nile and Busoga on the east and north, the (1) The Uganda-Unyoro group. This includes all the dialects east coast of Lake Albert, the range of Ruwenzori and the Congo Forest on the west; on the south-east and south, the south coast of the Victoria Nyanza, and a line from near Emin Pasha Gulf to the Malagarazi river and the east coast of Tanganyika. On the south-west this district is bounded more or less by the Rusizi river down to Tanganyika. It includes the district of Busoga on the north-east and all the archipelagoes and inhabited islands of the Victoria Nyanza even as far east as Bukerebe, except those islands near the north-east coast. The dialects of Busoga, the Sese Islands and the west coast of Lake Victoria are closely related to the language of the kingdom of Uganda. Allied to, yet quite distinct from the Uganda sub-section, is that which is usually classified as Unyoro. This includes the dialects spoken by the Hima (Hamitic aristocracy of these equatorial lands-Uru-hima, Ru-hinda, &c.), Ru-songora, Ru-iro, Ru-toro, Ru-tusi, and all the kindred dialects of Karagwe, Busiba, Ruanda, Businja and Bukerebe. Ki-rundi, of the Burundi country at the north end of Tanganyika, and the other languages of eastern Tanganyika down to Ufipa are closely allied to the Unyoro sub-section of group 1, but perhaps adhere more closely to group the language which is spoken on the southern flanks of the Ruwen12. The third independent sub-section of this group is Lu-konjo. zori Range and thence southwards to Lake Kivu and the eastern limits of the Congo Forest. (2) The second group on the geographical list is Lihuku-Kuamba, the separate and somewhat peculiar Bantu dialects lingering in the lands to the south and south-west of Albert Nyanza (Mboga country). Lihuku (or Libvanuma) is a very isolated type of Bantu, quite apart from the Uganda-Unyoro groups, with which it shows no special affinity at all, though in close juxtaposition. Its alliance with Kuamba of western Ruwenzori is not very close. Other affinities are with the degraded Bantu dialects (Ki-bira, &c.) of the IturiAruwimi forests. Kuamba is spoken on the west and north slopes of Ruwenzori. Both Kuamba and Lihuku show a marked relationship with the languages on the northern Congo and Aruwimi, less in grammar than in vocabulary. (3) The Kavirondo-Masaba section. This group, which includes the Lu-nyara, Luwanga, Lukonde and Igizii of the north-east and eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza and the northern Kavirondo and Mount Elgon territories, is related to the Luganda section more than to any group of the Bantu tongues, but it is a very distinct division, in its prefixes the most archaic. It includes the languages spoken along the western flanks of Mount Elgon, those of Bantu Kavirondo, and of the eastern coast-lands of the Victoria Nyanza (Igizii). (4) The Kikuyu-Kamba group of British East Africa, cast of the Rift valley. It includes, besides the special dialects of Kikuyu and Ukambani, all the scattered fragments of Bantu speech on Mount Kenya and the upper Tana river (Dhaicho). (5) The Kilimanjaro (Chaga-Siha) group, embracing the rather peculiar dialects of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru and Ugweno. (6) The Pokomo-Nyika-Giriama-Taveita group represents the Bantu dialects of the coast province of British East Africa, between (and including) the Tana river on the north and the frontier of German East Africa on the south. (7) Swahili, the language of Zanzibar and of the opposite coast, Eastern and Central Africa. Swahili is a somewhat archaic Bantu a form of speech now widely spread as a commercial language over dialect, indigenous probably to the East African coast south of the Ruvu (Pangani) river, which by intermixture with Arabic has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa between the White Nile and the the original local dialects of Zanzibar and Pemba, which may have Zambezi. It was almost certainly of mainland origin, distinct from belonged to group No. 6. There are colonies of Swahili-speaking people at Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, and even as far north as the Shebeli river in Somaliland, also along the coast of German and between the Ruvu or Pangani river on the north and the Kilwa Portuguese East Africa as far south as Angoche. In the coast-lands settlements on the south, the local languages and dialects are more or less related to Swahili, though they are independent languages. Amongst these may be mentioned Bondei, Shambala (north of the Ruvu), Nguru, Zeguha, Ki-mrima and Ki-zaramo. (8) This group might be described as Kaguru-Sagala-Kami. It is one which occupies the inland territories of German East Africa. between the Swahili coast dialects on the east and the domain of the Nyamwezi (No. 11) on the west. On the north this group is bounded by the non-Bantu languages of the Masai, Mbugu and Taturu, and on the south by the Ruaha river. This group includes Kigogo and Irangi. In using the forms Uganda, Unyoro, the writer accepts the popular mis-spelling. These countries should be called Buganda and Bunyoro, and their languages Luganda and Runyoro |