PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 401 



2. PROVEKBS, PHRASES, AND SIMILES OF THE 

 SAMOANS. 



By Rev. Geobge Brown, D.D. 



The proverbs of any people are interesting as giving an insight 

 into their modes of thought, and also as illustrating some of their 

 manners and customs. The proverbs of those peoples who are 

 living in a far more advanced state of culture than the inhabitants 

 of the Pacific are now living in, are mostly the proverbs which have 

 been transmitted from one generation to another from very remote 

 periods, and these, when compared with those of primitive people 

 in the present day, afford many interesting points of comparison, 

 and show that the thought and experience of the more advanced 

 races have at one time been expressed in much the same forms as 

 are those of primitive people in the present day. They show, I 

 think, that the more advanced races have passed through a stage 

 of culture very similar, if not identical, with that in which the 

 less civilized races are now living. 



With regard to the peoples who now inhabit the different 

 groups in the Pacific, it -is to be remembered that at present we 

 know but little of the proverbs and folk lore of the Melanesians, 

 but as far as we are justified by our present knowledge, we may, 

 I think, assume that, as compared with the Polynesians, their 

 Imguage is singularly deficient in proverbs and proverbial phrases. 

 This may, I think, have some value in considering the vexed ques- 

 tion as to the original habitat of these Melanesian and Polynesian 

 peoples. 



I am of opinion that these peoples are all descended from one 

 common stock, which originally inhabited Indonesia and some of 

 the Pacific groups now known as Melanesia ; that the present 

 Melanesians are a mixed race formed by the admixture of immi- 

 grants from the mainland of India ; that those who remained in 

 Indonesia were much more affected by successive immigrations from 

 India than those who were settled in the island groups, and ulti- 

 mately formed what is now known as the Polynesian race. I think 

 also that these people were driven out of Indonesia by tlie Malays, 

 and that they travelled eastwards to "Samoa, and from there were 

 dispersed throughout all the eastern groups in the Pacific, and are 

 now known as the Polynesian people. 



Assuming that this theory, of which I have only given a very 

 brief outline, is at all probable, we have, I think, some explana- 

 tion of the fact that the Polynesians have a very much larger 

 number of proverbs than the Melanesians, as well as many other 

 proofs of relationship with a higher stage of civilization than the 

 Melanesian people of the present time. But, whether this be trufi 

 or not, it still remains that the proverbs of any people are interest- 

 ing, and for this reason I have compiled the following selection. 



