﻿3 4 Transa ctions. — Miscellaii eous. 



100,000 years back, siicli as the alluvial deltas of great rivers, and in these 

 the remains of man have been found in strata, Avliose date can-ies us far into 

 the above period. The science of ethnograioliy may, therefore, be said to form 

 a link of connection between the records of the rock and the recoi'ds of the 

 book, or, in other woixls, between geology and history. Hence, in considering 

 the subject before us, we must cast our minds back to times anterior to history, 

 and, using the materials provided for us by the labours of ethnographists and 

 philologists, evolve a theory in accordance with their facts and teachings. 



It is now a generally accepted axiom that to understand the past we must 

 know the present, and to apjoly this rule we must enquire as to how modern 

 transmutations of humanity over the globe affect races and languages. Take 

 the Jews for instance, within the period of history a race once speaking one 

 language, now scattered over the world — black as the darkest of Indians on 

 the coast of Malabar, where they have been settled for ages, and' there speaking 

 the language of the country only — white, in many cases, as the whitest of 

 Europeans, in Europe, and there again speaking only the language of the 

 nationality amongst whom they have intruded themselves. Then a later 

 example have we in the Portuguese, who formed settlements in various parts 

 of the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Dark as the Bengalee of 

 the Sunderbunds, or as the Jawee Pakan of Malacca, and retaining only a few 

 of the roots of the language of their European ancestry, and which they 

 enunciate with the idiom of the race amongst whom they have been settled. Of 

 the descendants of the English and Dutch, whose tropical colonies were fully 

 a century later, the same remark applies in equal ratio. Then the crossing of 

 northern nations with tropical indigenes tends to the gradual disappearance of 

 the features or languages of the intruders, and the uneducated progeny more 

 and more perpetiiate the featiires and idiom of the mothers. Thiis the modern 

 incursions of the northern races in the area of the Indian Archipelago have 

 likewise had no impression on the I'oots or idioms of the languages and 

 dialects. 



To illusti'ate this important fact I have carefully analysed Marsden's 

 Malayan Dictionary, consisting of 5,624 words, and in a few cases only have 

 I been able to discover that primary words have been engrafted in it, though 

 the influence of surrounding races are abundantly apparent. Thus, the Sanscrit 

 speaking race (the Arians), whose intercourse with the Archipelago dates at 

 least 3,000 years back, have given 306 words of the above ; the Persians, 

 whose intercourse may have extended over 2,000 years, have given 110; the 

 Arabs, in probably an equal period, have given 568 ; the Portuguese, whose 

 intercourse commenced three and a half centuries ago, have given only 34 ; 

 the English, with 200 years, 9 ; the Dutch, coeval with the last, 4 ; and the 

 Spanish, 2. The above, it may be noted, are all northern nations, possessed 



