RIGHTHANDEDNESS. 209 



In the Kamilarai dialect of the Australians bordering on Hunter's 

 River and Lake Maquarie, mafara signifies hand, but they have the 

 terms twovn, right, on the right hand, and ngorangdn, on the left hand. 

 In the Wiraturai dialect of the Wellington Valley, the same ideas are 

 expressed by the words biimalgdl and miraga, i. e., dextrorsum and 

 sinistrorsura, ^ 



The idea which lies at the root of our own decimal notation, and has 

 long since been noted by Lepsius, Donaldson and other philologists, as 

 the source of names of Greek and Latin numerals, is no less discernible 

 in the rudest savage tongues. Among the South Australians the simple 

 names for numerals are limited to two, viz., ri/iip, one, and poUti, two; 

 the two together express three; politi-politi, four; and then five is 

 indicated by the term ryiip-Tmirnangin, i. e., one hand; ten by politi- 

 murnangin, i. e., two hands. The same idea is apparent in the use (in 

 the dialects of Hawaii, Raratonga, Viti, and New Zealand) of the com- 

 mon terms lima, rima, linga, ringa, &c., for hand and the number 

 jive. But/w/w, and its equivalents, stand for /ch, apparently from the 

 root /«, whole, altogether; while the word iaw, which in the Hawaian 

 signifies ready, in the Tahitian right, proper, and in the New Zealand 

 expert, dextrous, is the common Polynesian term for the right-hand. 

 In the Vitian language, as spoken in various dialects throughout the 

 Viti or Fidji Islands, the distinction is still more explicitly indicated. 

 There is first the common term linga, the hand, or arm ; then the cere- 

 monial term daJca, employed exclusively in speaking of that of a chief, 

 but which, it may be presumed, also expresses the right-hand : as, while 

 there is no other word for it, a distinct term sema is the left-hand. The 

 root se is found not only in the Viti, but also in the Samoa, Tonga, 

 Mangariva, and New Zealand dialects, signifying to err, to mistake, to 

 wander; semo, unstable, unfixed. But also there is the word matau, 

 right, dexter, clearly proving the recognition of the distinction. Again, 

 in the Terawan language, spoken throughout the group of islands on the 

 equator, called the Kiogsmill Archipelago, the terms atai or edai, 

 right, dexter, (entirely distinct from rapa, good, right,) and maan, 

 left, sinister, are applied to hai, or pai, the hand, to denote the difi"er- 

 ence, e. (/., Te hai maan, the left hand, i. e., the dirty hand, that 

 which is not used in eating. 



Turning to the languages of the American continent, similar evidence 

 reveals the recognition among its savage hunter-tribes of the distinction 

 between the right and left hand. In the Chippeway the word for my 

 2 



