BY HERMANN B. RITZ, M.A. 



IS 



In the case of the hand or fist, a collection of five 

 fingers which could be displayed or hidden, puga-na 

 (solid, strong) would be the natural expression, while 

 " four " w^ould be a hand with the thumb invisible, that 

 is stopping short of completeness, expressed by pugan- 

 ta, fist cut short. 



Mara, " one " or '' five,'' is also " the complete 

 thing, one fist made up of five fingers," therefore palla, 

 round, strong. 



The number three would be 'expressed by the word 

 for " arm," the limb with three parts, two for the arm 

 and one for the hand ; lu-pa, li-pa, strong limb, and the 

 reduplicated a-li-ri, limb with hand, are words for 

 " arm " and for " three." 



The number two was also beyond the grasp of the 

 Aboriginals. They could see a thing' divided into two 

 or more parts which were smaller than the whole had 

 been. Now, " small " was expressed, as we have seen, 

 by pawe and by koti or kata, and we find these words, 

 in some form, in all the numbers after unity. As an 

 alternative, we find for " two " boulah or bura ; these 

 are forms of pala (big), and express the duad as an in- 

 crease in bulk, not as a cutting up into smaller parts. 



Wullyawah (four) is another form of this, with the 

 magnifying or perhaps duplicating pa as suffix. 



The diphthong in piawe, which we see again in 

 poierinna, p3'^anerbarwar, wyandirwar, may well indicate 

 a splitting up of a whole by the change from the single 

 vow'cl sound to a composite one. 



Calabawah is probably a misprint for katabawa, 

 which is simply kata + pawe ; we note the form kata- 

 bouve in confirmation of this conjecture. 



Karde, or its diminutive form kardia, is simply kate 

 (small) ; the more parts there are the smaller will be 

 their size. 



Using uniform orthography, we get, therefore, the 

 numerals in these forms : — 



ONE — pala-pa, pala, palapa, pala, pa-pala, papala, 

 pala, papala. 



