DATA AND NOTES. 291 



244. 



boro-aki, biro-aki, bero-aki, baro-aki, to bequeath to or order to do (by- 

 will when dying), to commission (one to do something), to give 

 orders to. 



Samoa: poloa'i, to send a message to, to command a person at a 

 distance, to leave commands, as when going a journey or dying. 

 Futuna : poloaki, to order, to command, to bid farewell. (Niue : 

 poaki, pnaki, to command. Tonga : boboaki, to send a message.) 

 Hawaii : poloai, to send orders for one to come. Maori : poroaki, 

 to leave instructions when departing, to take leave. Ma- 

 ngareva : poroaki, to command, to order. Marquesas : pooai, 

 podhaki, to command, to entreat. Tahiti: poroi, a direction 

 given, a charge, to take leave. Mangaia: poro, last words. 



Matupit : bor, to shout at, to scold harshly. 



Malay: pasan, to commission, to enjoin. Malagasy: haf aha , a will 

 or testament, order. 



Arabic: wasa', to bequeath by will, to command, to enjoin. 



The stem is polo. 



This is seen in a radical signification in Mangaia, the only case in which 

 the noun has been preserved. This sense of the last words, or, in the verb, 

 to impart dying injunctions, has as much importance to the Polynesians as 

 police attach to ante-mortem statements, a fetish in the performance of 

 their peculiar functions. He dies well in the Pacific who, upon fine mats 

 and with the members of his family seated gravely about him, can divide 

 among his kin not his possessions, for those are largely communal, but the 

 functions in life upon the successful performance of which he can look back 

 with pleased gratification. 



This is so concrete an act that I incline to the belief that it is the gravely 

 underlying sense of the word. It is found as noun in Mangaia, as verb in 

 Samoa, where, however, the particular sense is in modern usage more defi- 

 nitely expressed in fa'amavaenga or parting words. A secondary sense, as 

 the word broke down, was to cover the farewell of any parting; this in 

 Samoa, Futuna, Maori and Tahiti. Next, with the idea still persisting of 

 the inexorability of the death-bed injunction, the word weakens still further 

 into the sense of a command ; this in Futuna, Mangareva, Tahiti and the 

 Marquesas, and, disregarding now the form anomaly, in Tonga and Niue. 

 All these languages have other words meaning to command. That this 

 command differs from other orders is felt in all these tongues; it is defi- 

 nitely expressed in Samoa "to command a person at a distance" and the 

 tantamount Hawaiian. 



Except for Efate we do not find the stem in Melanesia. I have included 

 the Matupit form from New Britain because of its form resemblance; the 

 sense is so far awry as to make the identification quite doubtful. 



In Efate and Polynesia, excepting Tahiti and Mangaia, we find that the 

 word has spread in its most highly finished form. In general the Polyne- 

 sian verbs in -aki impress me as a most modern development. The diffu- 

 sion of this one shows that it must have existed in this form at the time of 

 the expulsion of the Tongafiti swarm from Samoa. The form in Niue and 



