96 Dr. Hodgkin on the Importance of Studying and 



ranted to conclude that the stream of emigration had ceased" 

 to flow from the Indian Archipelago towards the continent of 

 America long before the sera of Mahomet, or the rise and pre- 

 valence of the Saracen power. 



" Of the Sanscrit, or more ancient infusion, which has even 

 changed the aspect and character of the ancient Malayan 

 language, its Polynesian sister, or rather daughter, exhibits 

 no tincture whatever. It follows, therefore, that the stream 

 of emigration, which was destined to people the South Sea 

 Islands and the continent of America, must have been flowing 

 from the Indian Archipelago towards that distant continent 

 long before the ancient Sanscrit language was spoken in the 

 Indian isles. But that venerable language, like the Latin and 

 Greek tongues in Europe, has been a dead language in India 

 for many centuries. It must have been a living language at 

 a period when a portion of its substance was imbedded into 

 the Malayan tongue; a period, we have reason to believe, 

 long anterior to the Christian aera. But before that period 

 had arrived, the forefathers of the present Polynesians must 

 have quitted the Indian Archipelago, and individuals of their 

 number may perhaps have reached the far-distant American 

 land. 



" 2. The religion of the Polynesians and the Indo-Ameri- 

 cans indicates, in like manner, a remote antiquity. The idea 

 that God is a spirit invisible to man, is still common to both 

 of these numerous divisions of the human family. 



H 3. These indications of remote antiquity are borne out 

 and corroborated in a remarkable manner by the style and 

 character of those remains of ancient Polynesian, as well as 

 of ancient Indo- American architecture, which have hitherto 

 excited the wonder and mocked the ingenuity of the ablest 

 speculators. These remains consist chiefly of the ruins of an- 

 cient temples, pyramids, and tumuli ; the chief and the most 

 remarkable characteristics of which are, the magnitude of their 

 dimensions and the massiveness of their architecture com- 

 pared with those of the ephemeral erections of modern times, 

 and especially with those of the erections of the more recent 

 aboriginal inhabitants of America and of the South Sea 

 Islands. Now, it appears to me, that just as an architect 

 who surveys the ruin of some ancient building for the first 

 time, can at once tell the age or period to which its erection 

 is to be assigned merely from the style of its architecture, 

 and can pronounce it unhesitatingly either a Celtic, or a Saxon, 

 or a Norman erection, there is a sort of internal evidence 

 afforded by these most interesting remains of Polynesian and 

 Indo- American civilization, which can enable an attentive ob- 



