Sept. 28, 1882] 



NATURE 



525 



bearing on the physical and social characteristics of the 

 aborigines. But no fresh discoveries of any moment are 

 likely to be made, nor is it at all probable that anything 

 will be brought forward in the least calculated to shake 

 the general conclusions already arrived at. 



Until the appearance of Herr Rein"s large work on 

 Japan, 1 one of the most universally-accepted of these 

 conclusions was that, whatever be their affinities, the 

 Ainos must certainly be separated from the Mongolic 

 connection. No little surprise was accordingly produced 

 by Rein's attempt to affiliate them to the surrounding 

 members of the Yellow Race. But it was soon seen that 

 his arguments, apparently inspired by a love of paradox, 

 were sufficiently refuted by the very illustrations of the 

 Aino type introduced into his work. It is therefore satis- 

 factory to find that his views meet with no countenance in 

 these memoirs, the authors of which emphatically reject 

 the Mongol theory. "I cannot discover," writes Dr. 

 Scheube. "the Mongolic type in the Ainos. The great 

 development of the hair, the disposition of the eyes, the 

 nasal formation, the moderate breadth between the cheek 

 bones, the absence of prognathism, are all so many traits 

 separating them from the Mongolians " (p. 3). So also 

 Siebold : "The whole physiognomy and configuration of 

 the Ainos has little of a Mongol character. The general 

 impression they made on me was rather that of Europeans 

 living under unfavourable conditions. I had a feeling, 

 which also seemed to dawn upon them, that I was not 

 associating with an alien race ; and however strange it 

 may appear, I cannot but compare the Ainos with the 

 Russian peasantry " (p. 10). 



Topinard had already declared that " the Ainos of 

 Japan, the Miaotze, and the Lolos of the province of 

 Yunnan belong, in my opinion, to the European group " 

 (" Anthropology," p. 476). And it is extremely suggestive 

 to find this writer also comparing them with the inhabi- 

 tants of the Moscow district. " Chose absolument singu- 

 liere, ce type cdlebre des Ainos, avec ses traits aujourd' 

 hui bien connus et sa barbe inculte, serait celui de cer- 

 tains paysans russes des environs de Moscou " (Rev. 

 d'A/i/hrop., 1879, p. 637). The same resemblance with 

 the Russians has no doubt been detected in the Itelmen 

 people of Kamchatka and among some of the Ghiliak 

 tribes of the Lower Amur districts. But the presence of 

 the Aino element has long been suspected in both of 

 these regions. Most of the Kurile islands are still 

 peopled by them, while the nomenclature of the whole 

 archipelago is distinctly Aino, as shown by the term 

 Moshir = Island, reaching as far north as Para-moshir, 

 close to Cape Lopatka, at the extremity of Kamchatka. 

 In the Lower Amur valley also W. G. Aston speaks of an 

 Aino tribe called Santal or Sandan (Church Missionary 

 Intelligencer, August, 1879); Siebold (p. 12) refers the 

 Kilengs and Kachengs of the neighbouring Hingpu River 

 to the same connection, and also mentions certain Aino 

 communities about Castries Bay, over against Sakhalin. 

 The southern portion of this island is itself Aino domain, 

 although, since its annexation to Russia, a considerable 

 emigration has set in towards Yeso. In Nippon the 

 Japanese records bring the Aino at least as far south as 

 the latitude of Tokio, whence they were gradually driven 

 north or absorbed, leaving traces of their presence both 

 in the Japanese type and in the geographical terminology 

 of the northern provinces of the main island. Lastly, 

 the national traditions point to North-East Asia as the 

 region whence they migrated to their present homes. 



It is thus sufficiently evident that the Mozin (Mao-chin, 

 i.e. " Hairy Men "), as both the Chinese and Japanese 

 often call them, were formerly far more widely diffused 

 than at present. And this renders more intelligible the 

 feeling with which the Ainos, i.e. " Men," as the word 

 means in their language, at one time regarded themselves 

 as the centre of the universe, a feeling embodied in the old 



1 "Japan nach Reisen und Studien," 2 vds., Leipzig, 1881. 



national song : " Gods of the sea, open your divine eye;. 

 Wherever your eyes turn, there echoes the sound of the 

 Aino speech." 



This speech, as might be expected, shows not the 

 slightest resemblance to the Japanese, or to any of the 

 idioms current amongst the surrounding Mongoloid 

 peoples. Siebold, who points at a relationship with the 

 Itelmen, a relationship denied by the elder Siebold, has 

 collecced copious materials for its study, but, pending the 

 publication of these materials, the student must rest 

 satisfied with the somewhat meagre account contained in 

 Dr. Scheube's memoir. From this the Aino language 

 appears to be of an extremely primitive type, scarcely on 

 a higher level than was the extinct Tasmanian, and, like 

 it, supplementing its scant relational forms by means of 

 signs and gestures. Thus the ideas of affirmation and 

 negation, for which there are no distinct terms, are 

 respectively conveyed by a nod and a shake of the right 

 hand or else of the head. Winking also plays a large 

 part in supplementing grammatical concepts. 



There are, of course, no nominal or verbal inflexions 

 beyond a sort of passive restricted to some verbs, and 

 formed by combining the root with what appears to be 

 the substantive verb prefixed. Thus K.IK. = to strike ; 

 aen-kik = to be struck, from an or ana = to be (?). The 

 parts of speech seem to be restricted to the noun, adjec- 

 tive, verb, a few adverbs and pronouns, of which latter 

 the first and second only have been developed. This ab- 

 sence of a third personal pronoun places Aino at the very 

 bottom of the scale in linguistic evolution, and this low 

 position is further shown by its absolutely isolating con- 

 dition. Although polysyllabic, it has not yet reached the 

 agglutinating stage, so that each word in the sentence 

 remains isolated, as in Chinese. Thus : — ■ 

 Koandi d;lndo oman = I go to-day. 

 Koandi numan oman = I go yesterday. 

 Koandi inhdta oman = I go to-morrow. 



But it differs from the Indo-Chinese, and approaches 

 the American polysynthetic system in the extent to which 

 it has carried word-building. This important feature is 

 not noticed by Scheube, who is no philologist, but atten- 

 tion has been called to it by Dr. A. Anuchin, in an able 

 paper on the Ainos in the Memoirs of the Russian Society 

 of Natural Science, vol. xx., Supplement, Moscow, 1S77. 

 A curious instance is the word Kamui, the general term 

 for God, or any minor deity, which both Scheube and 

 Siebold seem disposed in some way to connect with the 

 Japanese Kami. In reality it is an Aino compound form 

 derived from Kam-trui = "flesh-strong," that is, rich in 

 flesh. Before their contact with the Japanese the great 

 god of the Ainos was the bear, as it still is of the Ghiliaks, 

 and some other Amur tribes. As is well known from 

 Miss Bird's " Unbeaten Tracks," and other sources, this 

 animal is not only worshipped, but also killed and eaten 

 at certain periods, and with much ceremony, by all these 

 primitive peoples. To be rich in flesh came thus to be 

 regarded as the highest attribute of the deity, and when 

 the etymology was forgotten, Kamui was easily genera- 

 lised as a name applicable 10 any god. Have the divini- 

 ties of Aryan mythology any less realistic origin ? 



It may be incidentally remarked that in these memoirs 

 Miss Bird's very graphic description of the physical 

 features, habits, and customs of the natives of Yeso, is 

 fully confirmed in nearly all their details. An important 

 exception is the texture of the hair, which according to 

 her, " never shows any tendency to curl." But the hair 

 of seven Ainos from different parts of Yeso, examined by 

 Dr. Scheube, is, with one exception, described as more 

 or less "gelockt," that is, "curled " or " ringletted." Of 

 one the hair is said to be " uberall gekrauselt," frounced 

 or frizzled all over. Except amongst the Aborigines of 

 the south-west Chinese highlands, one may travel over 

 the whole of China, Tibet, and Mongolia, without meet- 

 ing a single case of even wavy, much less curled hair. 



