The identity of the languages spoken in the different groups of the South Sea Islands was observed by Captain Cook and his fellow voyagers; and the remarkable resemblance between these languages and the Indian Archipelago was also remarked. "In the general character, particular form, and genius of the innumerable languages spoken within the limits of the Indian Islands," observes Mr. Marsden, "there is a remarkable resemblance, while all of them differ widely from those of every other portion of the world. This observation extends to every country, from the north-west extremity of Sumatra to the western shores of New Guinea, and may be even carried to Madagascar on the west, the Philippines to the east, and the remoter of Cook's discoveries to the south."* "One original language," observes Sir Stamford Raffles, "seems in a very remote period, to have pervaded the whole (Indian) Archipelago, and to have spread (perhaps with the population) towards Madagascar on one side and the islands in the South Sea on the other; but in the proportion that we find any of these tribes more highly advanced in the arts of civilised life than the other, in nearly the same proportion do we find the language enriched by a corresponding accession of Sanscrit terms, directing us at once to the source from whence civilisation flowed towards these regions."+ "At first," says the unfortunate La Perouse, "we perceived no difference between the language of the people of the Navigators' Islands and that of the people of the Society and Friendly Islands, the vocabularies of which we had with us; but a closer examination taught us that they spoke a dialect of the same tongue. A fact which may tend to prove this, and which confirms the opinion of the English respecting the origin of these people is, that a young Manilese servant, who was born in the province of Tagayan, on the north of Manila, understood and interpreted to us most of their words. Now it is known that the Tagayan, Talgal, and all the dialects of the Philippine Islands. in general, are derived from the Malay; and this language, more widely spread than those of the Greeks and Romans were, is common to the numerous tribes that inhabit the islands of the South Sea. To me it appears demonstrated, that these different nations are derived from Malay colonies who conquered these islands at very remote periods; and perhaps even the Chinese and Egyptians, whose antiquity is so much vaunted, are modern compared to these.‡ In confirmation of this idea of the great French navigator, Mr. Marsden informs us that "upon analysing the list of thirty-five Malayan words, of the simplest and most genuine character, twenty will be found to correspond with the Polynesian generally, seven with a small portion of the dialects, and seven, as far as our present knowledge extends, seems to be peculiar to the Malayan itself."§ * "Archæologia," vol. vi., page 154. † History of Java, by Sir Stamford Raffles, page 369. § Marsden's Miscellaneous Works, page 8. The following are a few instances, such as Mr. Marsden refers to, of the unmistakeable affinity of the Malayan and Polynesian language: As a specimen of the manner in which the dialectic differences of the Polynesian language are developed, let us take the New Zealand word Tangata, signifying man, which I conceive is the oldest or original form of the word; in the Tahitian dialect, however, it becomes Taa' ta, with a strong guttural sound supplying the omission of the nasal sound. But in the dialect of the Sandwich Islands, in which the letter is substituted for the t of the Southern group, the word becomes Kanaka, a word with which we are all rather familiar at present. There is therefore abundant reason to believe that the South Sea Islanders, and the various tribes of Malays inhabiting the islands of the Indian Archipelago are of kindred origin, and that the languages of all those islanders are merely dialects of the same ancient and primitive tongue. Such, at least, is the opinion of two of the most eminent Oriental scholars that have ever adorned with their talents and learning our Indian empire-I mean the late Dr. Leyden, as expressed in a most interesting essay "On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese nations" published in the tenth volume of the "Asiatic Researches," and of the late John Crawford, Esq., in his very valuable "History of the Indian Archipelago." It was also ORIGIN OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. the opinion of that eminent German scholar, the late Baron William Humboldt, whose great posthumous work in three quarto volumes in German, published under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Berlin, by his illustrious brother, Baron Alexander Humboldt, and entitled Ueberdie Kawi Sprache ininseln Java (on the Kawi language of the island of Java) is a perfect mine of wealth in all questions relating to the languages of the east and of Polynesia I may be permitted to add, that at my suggestion a copy of that valuable work has recently been procured for our Parliamentary Library. Nay, in allusion to the common origin of the South Sea Islands and Malay nations, and their original derivation from the Indo-Chinese nations of Eastern Asia, that eminent orientalist has a long dissertation in the work I have just mentioned, showing how a dissyllabic or polysyllabic language is developed out of a monosyllable, which it is well known is the general character of the languages of the Indo-Chinese nations. 16 There is one remarkable peculiarity in the habitudes of thinking among the Indo-Chinese nations, which is also observable among the Malayan and Polynesian tribes, but which, as far as my own knowledge extends, is altogether unknown among the nations-whether Asiatic or European-to the westward of the Ganges. That remarkable peculiarity consists in their having a language of ceremony or deference "In addition to these distinct from the language of common life. simple pronouns," says Dr. Leyden, in the essay referred to above, "there are various others which indicate rank and situation, as in Malayu, Chinese, and the monosyllable languages in general, which have all of them paid peculiar attention to the language of ceremony, in addressing superiors, inferiors, and equals." The distinction of an ordinary language and one of ceremony," observes Mr. Marsden, "exists, to a certain degree, among the Malays in practice, although not systematically or compulsorily as we find it to be the usage among Among the latter," observes Sir Stamford Raffles, the Javanese." in a passage quoted by Mr. Marsden, "nearly one-half of the words in the vernacular language have their corresponding term in the polite language, without a knowledge of which no one dare address a superior." "This distinction," observes Mr. Crawford, in a passage quoted by Mr. Marsden, "by no means implies a court or polished language, opposed to a vulgar or popular one; for both are equally polite and cultivated, and all depends on the relations in which the speakers stand to each other, as they happen to be inferior or superior. A servant addresses his master in the language of deference, a child his parent, a wife her husband (if there be much disparity in their ages), and the courtier his prince. The superior replies in the ordinary dialect." But this remarkable peculiarity is equally observable in those of the South Sea Islands, in which there is anything like a regular government or a distinction of ranks. I have already alluded to it in enumerating the various castes into which society is divided in the Friendly Islands; it was also prevalent in Tahiti, and it doubtless † Miscellaneous Works, page 23. * Miscellaneous Works, page 21. C affords a strong presumptive evidence of an ancient affinity between the Polynesian and Chinese, or Indo-Chinese nations. The farthest east of Captain Cook's discoveries in the Pacific was Easter Island, situated in latitude 27·6 S., and in longitude 109-17 W. In that remote island he found the same Polynesian race, speaking the same primitive language, and practising the same singular customs and institutions as he had witnessed elsewhere in the more westerly groups. They had thus reached in their wonderful easterly migrations a point upwards of a hundred and twenty degrees of longitude, or 7200 nautical miles from their original point of departure in the Indian Archipelago. One is almost overpowered at the vastness of such an idea; but here it stands out incontestably in actual fact. In Easter Island, as is known to be the case also in certain other of the Polynesian Isles, the great navigator found incontestable evidences of an extinct civilisation, in certain colossal architectural remains, which the present natives, unable to conceive of their being the work of mere men, ascribe to the Atuas or gods. It is thus evident, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the races of men who had traversed successively so vast an extent of ocean, and settled such an infinity of isles, were at one time in a much higher state of civilisation, and much better acquainted with the arts of life, than their present representatives and descendants. They had evidently brought along with them from their original point of departure in the far west a far higher state of civilisation than has existed anywhere in the South Sea Islands for ages past. In the isolated state of the different groups of islands, and especially in the normal state of incessant warfare that has prevailed in all of them, it was not to be wondered at that the light of a higher civilisation which had characterised the earlier ages of their existence should have been gradually obscured, and at length extinguished. In the island of Tongataboo, in the Friendly Islands group, there is an ancient monument known as the tomb of Toobo Tooi, some famous chief of the olden time, constructed of immense blocks of stone that must have been brought from some other island in the group, and rafted across the sea, as the island of Tongataboo, or Tonga the holy, is entirely of coral formation, has no stone of any kind on its perfectly level surface. The construction of such a monument implies a high degree of mechanical skill on the part of the ancient Polynesians, and is altogether incomprehensible as a work of man by their semi-barbarous descendants. In the island of Ascension also, an island situated in the Northern Pacific, in latitude 7 degrees N., I have been informed by a gentleman of this city who once visited the island as the surgeon of a vessel, there are colossal architectural remains, in the form of a wall of thirty feet in height, constructed of immense blocks, and apparently intended for the protection and defence of a commodious harbour.* Although it were impossible to fix the exact time when the fathers of the Polynesian nation, issuing forth from the Indian Archipelago, * Were not remains of the same kind recently found in Easter Island,—ED. ORIGIN OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. launched out, or rather were driven out by some violent westerly gale, into the boundless Pacific, there are two distinct notes of time that may serve to guide us in our inquiries on the subject. The language of the Malays, which I have shewn is of cognate origin with the Polynesian, bas had two different infusions into it from foreign tongues, at periods very far distant from each other. The latest of these, which I shall dispose of first, is an Arabic infusion, coeval, as I conceive, with the Saracen invasion of the East, and the conversion of the Malays to the religion of Mahomet. There are hundreds of Arabic words, generally of a rough consonantal character, imbedded, so to speak, in the Malay language, which, like those of Polynesia, is peculiarly soft and vocalic; these foreign words resembling a number of rough detached pebbles frozen into a sheet of ice. Unacquainted with this historical fact, Mr. Ellis, the author of the work entitled "Polynesian Researches," adduces in support of his own unfounded theory, and that of the Spaniard, De Zuniga, whom he follows, that the South Sea Islanders could not have come from the west, the Malay word shems, the sun, as altogether unlike the corresponding Polynesian word ra or la. But shems is a pure Arabic word, the cognate of the Hebrew word shemesh, as in the Scripture name Bethshemesh, the house of the sun, and is doubtless coeval as a Malay word with the Mahometan irruption, perhaps a thousand years since. It is evident, therefore, that the Polynesian migration from the Indian Archipelago is of a much more ancient date than that of the Mahometan irruption; for there are no Arabic words in the language But in a passage I have already quoted, of the South Sea Islands. Sir Stamford Raffles speaks of a much more ancient and foreign infusion, which had introduced into the Malayan branch of the one original language of the Indian Archipelago and Polynesia, thousands of words of Sanscrit origin, indicating, in his opinion, the source from whence civilisation had flowed into these regions. But the Polynesian migration from the Archipelago had taken place before this very ancient Sanscrit infusion into the Malay language had commenced; for there is no evidence of such an infusion in the Polynesian languages. That migration, therefore, must have been effected in a period of the remotest antiquity,-in all likelihood long ages before the Argonautic Expedition had gone forth in search of the Golden Fleece, or Agamemnon, and the Greeks had sat down under the walls of Troy. It is matter of history that, in the ages immediately after the deluge, civilisation had advanced simultaneously into Egypt on the one hand, and to Eastern Asia on the other. The learned Jesuit, Du Halde, author of a famous "History of China," informs us, on the authority of the Chinese annals, that the foundations of that vast empire were laid about two hundred years after the flood; and there is reason to believe that at so early a period in the history of man the comparative civilisation of the age had reached the south-eastern coasts of Asia, and that that one primitive language, of which Sir Stamford Raffles speaks as the common parent of the Malayan and Polynesian tongues, was then spoken in the Indian Archipelago. C 2 |