Source and Migration of the Polynesian Raec. 223 



course, without therein' indicating any generic relationship, either close or distant. 

 Such words are simply adopted, and become instantly subjected to the particular form 

 and rules which govern every other word in that language. A language may thus be 

 overloaded with foreign words, yet, while its pronouns, articles and prepositions re- 

 main, they stand as living protests against the invasion of words, and point with no 

 uncertain light, through the night of ages, to the origin and parentage of the captive 

 tongue. 



When, therefore, we tind in the Polynesian dialects not only several of the Sans- 

 krit pronouns and prejjositions, but also the very roots from which these words sprung, 

 — not as dead unintelligible articulations of speech, but as living sense-bearing words, — 

 I am logically led to believe that the connection between the two languages is generic, 

 not accidental ; that the ancestor of the Sanskrit was at one time as simple and rude of 

 speech as the Polynesian has remained ever since; and that at that time the two, and 

 others besides, though with different dialectical proclivities, spoke one common tongue 

 and started in different directions from the same officina gentium. 



If I were permitted to indicate the route of the Polynesian family, after it sepa- 

 rated from its Aryan cousins in the highlands of middle Asia, I would say that it 

 descended into Hindostan ; that in course of time it was followed by the Tanuil family 

 from the northeast \\'ho drove the former out of India and were in their turn driven 

 into the lower part of the Peninsula by the now Sanskrit speaking Aryans. When 

 driven out of the Peninsula the Indian Ocean received the wanderers. Of the transit ' 

 through India, and of the length of the sojourn there, no record or trace exists, unless 

 the Polynesian goddess Hina,' or Sina, as it is pronounced in some dialects, bear some 

 relation to the land of Hind or Sind, as it was called b}' the Sanskrit and Zend speaking 

 peoples. 



The next traces of the Polynesian family, after their expulsion from Hindustan, 

 are found in two very different directions ; in the Battas, Buguis and Iduans of the 

 Malay Archipelago to the east, and in the Malgasse of Madagascar to the west. When 

 they arrived in these new habitats, and how long they remained unmolested in the 

 former, can now only be a matter of mere conjecture. It is fair to conclude, however, 

 that they continued on their eastward route while yet their language retained its origi- 

 nal, liquid purity, and before the Batta, Begui and other remnants assumed the harder, 

 consonantal terminations of words, with which the Malay dialects are strongly impreg- 

 nated, and which are entirely foreign to the primitive Polynesian dialects as found in 

 the Pacific. 



In the Malav language there are two words to designate an island, nnsa and 

 pulo. Nusa, however, seems to have been by far the older expression, and pulo only 

 obtained at a comparatively later time when the Malay brancli proper of the Polynesian 

 family became the predominant people in the Asiatic Archipelago. In none of the 

 Polynesian dialects does the word pulo occur to designate an island. I infer hence 

 that its adoption and use in the Malay Archipelago is subsequent to the departure of 



'The mother of the tii or spirits, and subsequently the mother of the first man and woman, according to a 

 Tahitian tradition. 



