NA TURE 



\Jau. 20, 1 88 1 



Persian; the Ugro-Finnic Bulgarians have been Slavon- 

 ised in speech since the tenth century ; the Northmen of 

 the Lower Seine valley entirely forgot their Norse tongue 

 within two generations, and many of the early English 

 settlers in Ireland rapidly became " Hiberniores ipsis 

 Hibernicis," more Irish than the " Irishry" themselves. 

 Special causes, arising from the utterly antagonistic 

 nature of toned and untoned languages, must have accele- 



King of Gorontalo. 



rated the process of assimilation in Malaysia, where 

 nevertheless its universality still remains a remarkable 

 circumstance. For it is undoubtedly surprising that not 

 a single Malay community should have succeeded in 

 retaining its original monosyllabic speech, and still more 

 surprising to find that every trace of monosyllabism had 

 already disappeared, at least from Java, Madura, and 

 Bali some two thousand years a?o. The old Kawi 



language current in those islands and reduced to writing 

 by the Buddhists at that remote period is as genuine 

 a polysyllabic tongue as its modern representatives, 

 Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Balinese. 



The eastern or Sawaiori branch differs greatly from the 



Fig. 23 — MalajinType Sumatri Chief ^ Sendege-i 1 N is Island. 



western or Malaysian, with which it has now really little 

 in common beyond the fundamental elements. But these, 

 after a separation of probably many thousand years, are 

 still numerous enough to establish beyond all doubt their 

 primeval unity. In this instance, however, as in so 



many others, ommunity of speech in no way involves 

 community of descent, for we have just seen that the 

 language now spoken by the Malay races was in all 

 probability imposed upon them by their Caucasian pre- 

 decessors in the Archipelago. On the other hand there 



is no reason to suppose that the Eastern Polynesians ever 

 spoke any other than their present language, its resern- 

 blance to the Malay being due not to their relationship 

 with the Malay people, but with the Indonesian Cauca- 

 sians, from whom the Malays borrowed their speech. 



