TRANSACTIONS OF THE NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 1885. I. MISCELLANEO U S. ART. I.-The Maori in Asia. [Read before the Philosophical Society, Wellington, 12th August, 1885.] ONE who is an authority on Philology (Dr. Latham), when commenting on the Polynesian language, says "The first thing which commands attention is its thorough insular or oceanic character." It is this mistake, made by all the other European scientists also, which it is my endeavour to correct; so far from being insular, its every word is kindred to the speech of the mainland, and, far from being oceanic, it stretches from Iceland and the Isle of Man across the continents of Europe and Asia. In reading this paper, I must consider the argument used in "The Aryan Maori" as being in the possession of my hearers. I have arrived at the conclusion, mainly by the evidence of language, that the Maori is a branch of that great race which conquered and occupied the major part of Europe, Persia, and India. Of the three divisions of language, the monosyllabic, the agglutinated, and the inflected, the Aryans have been supposed to possess the characteristic of an inflected grammar, while the Maori has been set down among the agglutinated group. But, however true it may be that the Aryan languages are Now inflected, I think it can hardly be pretended that they were always thus; grammar is a mere matter of development, and the primitive tribes from whom we are all descended troubled themselves little with the intricacies of scholasticism; the "bare-limbed men with stone axes on their shoulders" who conquered Europe had not conquered the Greek grammar, nor had the victors over the Nagas of India evolved the "rules of external and internal Sandhi" to vex the soul of the student of Sanscrit. The Maori has crystallized his speech in that mode which the primitive Aryans used, perhaps 4,000, perhaps 6,000 years ago. It may be said, perhaps, that I throw too much importance into the resemblances of words, and that the community of language is not the only conclusive proof of unity of race. But, each to his own department, it will be for the geologist, the anthropologist, and the general historian to deal with the question more fully-where I go outside the province of language I do so only in the briefest manner. But it is to language that the scientist looks for his most conclusive evidence of common descent. The measurement of skulls, the comparisons of religions, the groupings by shades of colour, would never have led to the certainty that the dusky Hindoo was brother to the fair Prussian, had not the testimony of language been decisive. A change of locality induces alteration in the lower animals far greater than any variety in the races of men; the pig, transported to South America, becomes in some cases red, in some black; it gets a thick fur, underneath which is wool, some even have solid hoofs; the number of the vertebræ differs in different species, and the wild hog has six incisor teeth in the upper jaw, and six in the lower, while the tame animal has only three. According to M. de Quatrefages there is a race of cattle in Piacentino which have fourteen pairs of ribs instead of thirteen. Dr. Draper affirms that darkness or fairness of skin depends on the manner in which the liver performs its duties, and that colour has no reference to race. The ravages made by even half a century of degradation, are well shown by Brace in his manual of Ethnology: "Malacca," says Dr. Yvan, has about 30,000 inhabitants. This population is composed of Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Chinese. Among the inhabitants of European origin, the Portuguese are the most numerous. They are, for the most part, descendants of the ancient conquerors of Malaisia. Their fathers were the companions of Vasco di Gama and Albuquerque, but like the monuments that their ancestors raised, and which cover the soil of their ruins, they also have been injured by degradation and age." After mentioning that they are lower in every way than the Malay, that even their features have put on an Ethiopian type, he resumes: "The majority bear illustrious names, and they are ignorant who were their fathers, and what ray of the past pierces their obscurity. In the space of half a century, perhaps, religion, morals, traditions, written transmission of thought, are effaced from their remembrance." The Maoris have had no such fall; in their religion, their language, their customs, they seem simply not to have advanced, but among them we stand as we should have stood among our own ancestors in the age of polished stone weapons, the Neolithic period. I will, then, revert to the chief line of scientific comparison, that of language, and will compare Maori with tongues now spoken. First, the Aryan of Persia and Hindustan. Hindustani is scarcely to be called a language; it is a compound of three great languages-Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic. Of the Maori agreement with older Sanscrit I gave many examples in the" Aryan Maori "-when a dictionary (which I have ordered from England) arrives, I shall be able to show the older forms at a greater length. The words I shall call Sanscrit are those written in the Hindu dictionary in Sanscrit characters, the Persian being written in Persian. The Arabic is a Semitic tongue, and I do not understand it. Let it be remembered that probably the Hindu and the Maori languages have been flowing apart in two distinct streams for over 4,000 years, and I think the following examples will be thought to be very strange coincidences indeed. In showing these comparisons I must remind my listeners that ny and k are interchangeable, that r and I are interchangeable, r and d, p and b, and that the Maori language insists on a vowel following a consonant, thus plu would be poru or puru. English instances of the interchange of r and I are-Prince Harry into Prince Hal, Sarum into Salisbury, &c. The ng into the sound is finely shown in the Latin-tango becoming tactus; pingo, pictus, &c., so that all these changes have Aryan features. A good example of r to d is the Maori ra, a day, changes to the Danish dag, the German tag, the English day-the German and Danish interchange of d to t being equal to that of Sanscrit to Maori, as will be shown by examples. HINDUSTANI. MAORI. Hauhake, to root up crop wa, a division of time ako, to teach or learn ai, to procreate akuaku, firm, strong |