Source and Migration of the Polynesian Race. 



IN ]\IV cndea\'ors to throw some light u])oii the olden times of the Hawaiian people 

 and — to use a nautical expression — to "underrun" their historical cable, two ques- 

 tions have ever presented themselves at the very beginnino" of all inquiry, — two 

 sphinxes at the entrance — barring the way and bewildering the traveler. They are: 

 Tst. Whence came the Polynesian family of tribes in the Pacific? 2d. What relation 

 do the Polynesian tribes bear to each other, as contemporarv or successive rcjcfoiis 

 from an original source, or as descendants from the descendants? 



Purely i)hysical criteria refer the Polynesian family to the great Malaysian race, 

 but throw no light upon the question of priority between the families composing this race. 

 On the ])hilological grounds, however, advanced by Dr. Rae of Hana with special refer- 

 ence to this subject, and according to the origin and descent of language set forth by 

 Professor Max Miiller, I am led to believe that the Polynesian family is vastly older 

 in time than the Malay family, properly so called : that is to say, the Polynesian sepa- 

 rated from the mother stock long before the Malay. At what ])eriod in the world's 

 history the separation took place, it is now impossible to define. The language can here 

 be our only guide. We find then in the Polynesian dialects numerous words strongly 

 allied to the Sanskrit; not only in the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and as developed in the 

 literature of the Hindus, but to the monosyllabic and dissyllabic roots of the Sanskrit, to 

 the older, more primitive, form of speech, when the simi:)le roots served for verbs, 

 names and adjectives, a form of speech still retained throughout the Polynesian dialects. 

 I am thus led to infer that the separation of the Polynesian and Sanskrit, or rather 

 Aryan, families of speech, must have occurred before the latter took on the inflections 

 which have since become so prominent a characteristic of all their descendants. 



After reading Professor Miiller's "Lectures on the science of language" there 

 can be little doubt that the Sanskrit of the Vedas is centuries older than the time of 

 Solomon : that centuries more must be allowed for the develo]iment and formation of 

 the Sanskrit, as in the Vedas, before we reach the time when the Sanskrit or its great 

 great ancestor was spoken in that simplicity which it at one time possessed, when that 

 and the Polynesian stood together as cognate dialects of a still older s]ieech. We know 

 now that the Celtic, Latin, Greek, Teutonic, Zend, Slavonic and Sanskrit were parallels, 

 or nearly so, dialects of an older form of speech, and that they are not descended from 

 one another. But that older form of speech, from which they sprung, has already 

 assumed a system of inflections which has remained a genealogical and hereditary char- 

 acteristic of these branches ever since, and by which their relationshij) has been traced 

 back to that older form of which there is no record extant, and for which history has 

 no name. To that older form I am inclined to belic\-e that the Polynesian stood in the 

 relation of an elder brother or an uncle. 



Words mav l)e imported into another language by concjuest, commerce or inter- 



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