Thomson. — Whe7ice bf the Maori. list 



in Madagascar over 3,400 yeai'S ago. Tlie date of their migration eastward must 

 rest on other grounds than history. That it was very much more remote in 

 past ages than that to Madagascar may be inferred from the incomplete 

 articulations of the Polynesians, who, as the first outpourings, bore away only 

 the first and earlier attempts of a primitive people to express their circum- 

 scribed wants in language. When, or at what time, these wonderful people — 

 the Barata — were themselves extruded and obliterated from their original 

 seat by the Thibetan and Arian incursions on Hindustan, we need not now 

 surmise. We may only so far remark that the physiognomy of the modern 

 Malagas! is more Thibetan than Arian. 



But, returning to the more immediate object of this paper, it may be truly 

 said that there is no example of a tribe or nation accepting foreign words for 

 their own primary ones. Take, for instance, our own English words for our 

 near relations, the parts of the body, such as head, eai-s, nose, mouth, etc., or 

 for common objects, such as cow, horse, pig, corn, etc. ; all these Teutonic 

 fossil words are indelibly fixed in our language, notwithstanding all its present 

 high culture and the acceptation of French, Latin, and Greek exotics. So it 

 is with the family of languages or dialects under review. The Maori, Malay, 

 and Malagas!, by their fossil-primary words, prove the common origin of their 

 races, i.e., emanation from one focus of dispersion. Again, philology supports 

 our previous ethnological reasons, not only by the above data, but by common 

 idiomatic structure and phonology ; and the Tamilian affinities of the Malagasi, 

 disclosed in this enquiry, add evidence to the theory that that focus was in 

 South Hindustan. 



Another circumstance may be mentioned, but I do not give great weight to 

 it, viz. : in races so nearly allied by name — the Malayala of South India, the 

 Malaya of Sumatra, and the Malagasi of Madagascar — having each their seats 

 in the mountains of their respective countries, similar conditions may have 

 promoted the migrations, and similar conditions preserved the remnants. 



Thus, had Madagascar not existed, or had it not been populated by its 

 present race, our search for the whence of the Maori, as we proceeded westward, 

 might have stopped at the Silong tribe of Mei-gui, on the eastern shores of the 

 Bay of Bengal ; but the above circumstances we have set forth force us to 

 proceed across the bay, and point out, as I did in my former paper, that 

 peninsula, fecund of people, viz.. South Hindustan, alone commanding all 

 possible eastern or western maritime migrations, as the only possible " ivhence" 

 of the Maori. 



Sofola. This, in a measure, indicates the influence of ancient Intlia, and proves her the 

 centre of great movements. 



