I62 PHILOLOGY 



Macmichael, The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofdn (1912); and C. G. Seligmann, 

 The Cult of Nyakang and the Divine Kings of the Shilluk, in 4th Kept. Wellcome Trap. Res. 

 Lab., 1911. Finally, W. S. and K. Routledge, With a Prehistoric People (1910) contains 

 much sociological and technological material concerning the Akikuyu of East Africa, 

 that has been collected with remarkable skill and method. 



Passing eastwards we come upon a mass of valuable new information relating to 

 India. Especially noteworthy in point alike of form and of contents is the series of 

 monographs issued under the authority of the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam 

 of which the latest volumes are T. C. Hodson, The Naga Tribes (1911), S. Endle, The 

 Kathdris (1911) and J. Shakespear, The Lnshei Kuki. Clans (1912). Other interesting 

 works relating to India are E. Thurston, Omens and Superstitions of Southern India 

 (1912), and L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes, Vol. II (1912), 

 the latter work throwing much light on the curious social system of the Nayara (Nairs). 

 Moving still further east we find two interesting books on Borneo, E. H. Gomes, Seven- 

 teen Years amongst the Sea-Dyaks of Borneo (1911), and C. Hose and W. McDougall, 

 Pagan Tribes of Borneo (1912), the latter a most important contribution to science. 

 From New Guinea, one of the least known parts of the anthropological world, comes 

 news of pygmy tribes in A. F. R. Wollaston, Pygmies and Papuans (1912), and R. W. 

 Williamson, The Mafulu Mountain People of British New Guinea (1912), the latter 

 work being somewhat rich in cultural particulars. C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians 

 of British NewGuinea (1910), carries out an important survey of the coast-peoples in the 

 S.E. area; whilst also about German New Guinea information is rapidly coming in (cf. 

 M. Moskowski and R. Neubass in Zeitschrift f. Ethnol., 1910, 1911). A fresh instalment 

 (Vol. IV) of the Report of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, edited and mainly 

 written by A. C. Haddon, deals with the technology of this interesting area of transition. 

 In regard to Australia there is to be noted a well-illustrated conspectus of the three 

 expeditions of B. Spencer and F. Gillen (Across Australia, 1912); but the fresh explora- 

 tions of Prof. Spencer in the North and of Mr. A. R. Brown in the West are yet to be 

 fully published. For Melanesia, again, we await the publication of the researches of 

 Dr. Rivers, which are likely to shed much light on the problem of the peopling of the 

 Pacific. (R. Rf MARETT.) 



PHILOLOGY 



In most branches of comparative philology there is little of substantial importance 

 to record, representing progress since 1910, and the various articles in the E. B. (for a 

 summary of which see xxi, 437 et seq.) already provide a sufficient account of the accepted 

 results of scientific scholarship. An exception may be made, however, for one series of 

 little-known and scattered languages, which have now been studied for a long time 

 without the results of much patient labour being made generally known, what is now 

 called the " Austric family," those namely of the Malay-Polynesian and other Oceanic 

 people connected with S.E. Asia. The following article summarizes the results of recent 

 research in this field. 



The Austric Family of Languages. 



The essential unity of the Oceanic languages, though partially recognized long ago 

 by Humboldt in his Kawisprache, was not completely demonstrated until much more 

 recent times. The connection between the Polynesian and Indonesian languages (in- 

 cluding the geographically outlying Malagasy) met with ready acceptance, but the 

 affiliation of the Melanesian was not so easy. The difficulty was partly due to 

 purely linguistic differences, the Melanesian type of speech being superficially very 

 different from the Indonesian and Polynesian, partly to the diversity of the races which 

 raised the natural, but quite unjustifiable, presumption that the languages could not be 

 of the same stock. It was, however, eventually proved that Melanesian could not be 

 kept out of the Oceanic family, 1 and it has since been shown that Micronesia, though 



1 Kern, De Fidji-taal in Indonesie en Polynesie, Verhand. Kon. Akad. v. Wet. (Amster- 

 dam, 1886), Afd. Lctterk., Deel XVI; Over de verhouding van het Mafoorsch tot de Maleisch- 

 Polynesische talen, Actes du Vie Congres International des Orientalistes. 



