THE POLYNESIANS AND THEIR PLANT-NAMES. 173 



solution of this lingaisfcic and ethnic problem will be got bj 

 regarding the black races as the first occupants of India, spreading 

 thence into Farther India, Indonesia, Australia and the whole of 

 Oceania ; then a light-coloured race came into Indonesia, and, 

 uniting with the blacks there, became the ancestors of the brown 

 Polynesians of the eastern isles ; and, lastly, a race of Mongolian 

 origin, the Malays, invaded the Archipelago and adopted much of 

 the Polynesian language which they found there. Thus I see in 

 the Archipelago an amalgam of black, brown, and yellow elements 

 which, however, show themselves to us, independent and yet 

 cognate, in Melanesia, Polynesia and Malaysia. Mr. Guppy's view 

 of the matter is much like this, as I judge from the sixth para- 

 graph of his paper. 



These views are also supported by the plant-names which our 

 author has collected fi'om so wide an area. All over the Oceanic 

 area, the name for "banana" is formed from the same root 

 syllable, hu, pn, " white," represented in the Indian languages by 

 bha, ba, ma, "to shine," "to be bright in colour," as in the Pali 

 pandu, pandaro, " white," " light-yellow," of which the Indonesian 

 forms are pfdih, ma-pilti, ma-bida, " white." Hence come the 

 varying forms of the name for " banana " in the black, the yellow, 

 and the brown areas. And this name is sufficiently descriptive to 

 prove its own antiquity. The Fijian viindi is so near the Pali 

 pandti, as to make it unnecessary for anyone to say that the Fijians 

 borrowed it from the Malays, And since New Britain has vudu, 

 wundu and the Solomon islanders have vudi — black regions to 

 which the Malays never penetrated — it seems almost certain that 

 the Melanesians, when they were in sole possession of the Archi- 

 pelago, had that word for " banana," and that they gave it to the 

 Polynesians. The Malayo-Polynesian theory asserts the kinship 

 of the brown Polynesians to the Malays on the ground of similarity 

 of some word in their languages, but, on the same principle, I 

 might declare that the Microsians came from the New Hebrides ; 

 for their word ush, us "banana" is the same as no-bos in Tanna 

 and ves in Malekula — corruptions of fusi, fudi. 



Another of Mr. Guppy's examples — kolco, kuha, kakau — is also a 

 descriptive word. It must have a general meaning in its origin, 

 for it is applied, as he tells us, to taro, yavi, ferns, sweet potato. The 

 original root is ka " to eat," as in Sanskrit khad, ad, Latin edo, 

 English eat. Mare Island (Loyalty Islands) says kaka, " to eat," 



