16 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



But the main point against the late arrival of the Maoris 

 from Asia is that many of their words have more direct con- 

 nection with the Aryans of Europe, and even of the West of 

 Europe, than with those of Asia. The Maori word wai, for 

 water, is close to Sanscrit car, water, but closer far to the Celtic 

 toy, water. Chambers's Ety. Die. states that Celtic wy, water, is 

 the word found in the rivers Wye, Conway, Medway, &c. The 

 Maori ana, a river, is the Celtic avon, a river, (as the Avon, &c.,) 

 and is exactly the Gothic dhwa, a river. If that most unlikely 

 thing should have taken place, that, amid a multitude of sounds 

 to be chosen, two races on opposite sides of the world selected 

 the same two syllables to represent water, is it by chance that 

 the Maori tutei, a spy, is the Greek teuthen, a spy? I can find 

 no Asiatic resemblance yet so close to the Maori ringa, the hand 

 and arm, as the Lithuanian ranka, the hand, and (Manx) clingan, 

 the arm. The Maori moana, the sea, at first seems far from the 

 Latin mare, the French mer, &c, but directly we know that the 

 Celtic mor is the sea, we recognise the sister words mu, [mo-ana) 

 mor, (Eng.) were, (Lat.) mare, &c. This is proved by the word 

 " island," motu. Tu means to stand, mo-tu is " standing in the 

 sea." (A clump of trees is motu, from resemblance to an island. ) 

 We have the word in our own Aryan tongue : a moated grange 

 is a house isolated, surrounded by water — (M.) mote, water. 

 What is the real meaning of Mo ? The wet ? The tossing ? I 

 believe it means the Immense, the Great sea, another meaning 

 to the Celtic mor or mhor, being big, huge. So if the original 

 meaning of sea was " great " (mo-ana or moa-na), it may account 

 for our huge extinct bird being called Moa, the great one. 



I had long thought that the Maori word ika, a fish, a 

 monster, also meant an island ; that Te-ika-a-Maui, the fish of 

 Maui, (the North Island of New Zealand,) really meant Maui's 

 Island, but finding that our word island was originally ig-land 

 (Anglo-Saxon ig, Scottish, inch,) I am led to believe that the 

 story of Maui pulling up the big fish has only been made to 

 accommodate a forgotten meaning of the old word. 



I said in the " Aryan Maori" that I believed the Maoris once 

 knew the pig by a name resembling " porcus," and one of the 

 graft-words used was " poka-poka, making holes.'' The Latins 

 had exactly the same word : porca means a sow, porca a 

 ploughed field; originally, rooted up. Bona, our "woman in 

 the moon" is the Latin deity Lima, the moon. 



An important item in the comparison of languages is that of 

 numerals. I shall not be able to go fully into the question of 

 the great beauty and antiquity of the Maori figures ; an evening 

 would be taken up entirely by this one subject. I will only deal 

 with a few of them. The Maori rua, two, is the (Lat.) duo, 

 (Eng.) two, &c. Toro, three, is the Aryan three. Wha, four, 

 'pronounced like " fa,") ia the Teutonic vier, the English four, 



