544 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



means of arriving at a solution. The eflforts of Maori scholars, 

 however ingenious, will prove as futile as those of old classical 

 scholars, who strove to elucidate the etymology of the Anglo- 

 Saxon elements in English from a comparison with Greek and 

 Latin. The study of Sanskrit gave the right key to the un- 

 locking of the philological problems of the Aryan nations. Mr. 

 Thomson's happy discovery of the linguistic and ethnological 

 relationship of the Maori races to the aboriginal Turanian 

 races of Peninsular India, or Bharata, forms the key to the 

 solution of this interesting question. Mr. Thomson's examina- 

 tion advanced it to a stage which has been termed (in reference 

 to the government of a State) " practical politics." All pre- 

 vious theories have seemed to me to lead to nowhere. Maori 

 mythology, though interesting, like all mythologies, needed a 

 key : as to the historical contests of the Maoris, the struggle of 

 the Kilkenny cats patterns the lot. Mr. Thomson's discovery 

 marks a new departure, for it concentrates the study : the rays 

 of diffusion that mark the spread of the Maori race converge to 

 a focal point, Bharata. 



With limited means for investigating so important a ques- 

 tion, and a slender knowledge of the Maori tongue : were it not 

 that the analogies, etc., between the Maori traditions and the 

 Hindu lay so near the surface, I could not have ventured on the 

 consideration ; but the results seem so marked, and final, that I 

 have ventured to bring them before you. 



Postscript. 



Since writing the above, I have come across the following 

 interesting paragraph in the " New Zealand Magazine," from 

 an article by Mr. W. H. L. Ranken, on " Mahori Migrations," 

 which bears out the deductions advanced in my paper. Mr. 

 Eanken says : — 



" Their mythology (Samoan) is that of the dawn of civiliza- 

 tion, and may contain coincidences with Asiatic or other beliefs, 

 but no more ; for instance, a legend of a deluge, which is found 

 everywhere. But they have some traces of serpent- worship, in 

 giving their Pluto a serpentine form. This is more likely im- 

 ported than indigenous ; for the snakes of their isles are few, 

 small, and harmless, most unfit to impress the savage's mind 

 with any powers he would glorify his god with ; and there are 

 unmistakable remains of stone worship, as it prevailed in the 

 East, a cultus of the generative principle — the same which 

 extended from Ceylon and India to Persia, Egypt, and Car- 

 thage, and which the Persian priest Elagabalus introduced to 

 Rome when he became emperor. There are monoliths in 

 Samoa, and in other isles, used to procure fecundity in animals, 

 to procure rain, and such purposes." 



