ON THE LANGUAGES OF OCEANIA. 353 
clusively Malayan. Again, the Pali for ‘full’ is pwro, puwnno, while 
the Malay for ‘full’ is pwnnuh. Are not all these words the same? 
Then as to the Pali puro, ‘full,’ Curtius says that the Vedic palus 
is for purus from the root pil, ‘to collect,’ and that the Sanskrit 
pi-par-mi, ‘I fill,’ the Zend par, ‘fill up,’ perena, ‘full,’ the Latin 
plenus, ‘full,’ Hing. ‘full,’ come all from the same original root.* 
It now seems to me more likely that the Pali word puro is the 
source of both bulu and fulu than that the Polynesians took their 
word se-fulu from ‘hair.’ And in this view I am confirmed by the 
prefixes sanga and nga in the words for ‘ten’; for nga is the 
plural article ‘the,’ in Maori; so nga-fulu will mean ‘the whole,’ 
sc., fingers. Here it is curious to observe that the Samoans do 
not use nga as a prefix to ‘two’ but only to ‘three’ and higher 
numbers, as if from a consciousness that nga must go only with 
plurals. They say e lua fua, ‘two bread-fruits,’ but e tolu ga-fua, 
‘three bread-fruits’; ¢ lua lau, ‘two fishes,’ e tolu ga-lau, ‘ three 
fishes.’ Then, sanga-fulu is to my eye made up of sa (‘one’), nga, 
and fulu, and means ‘ once-the-whole,’ just as the Samoan for 20 
is e lua fulu, ‘twice-the-whole, but for 30 e tolw ga-fulu, where 
the peculiarity in the use of the prefix nga comes in again. The 
Malay for 10 is sa-puluh, and for 20 dua-puluh, for 50, lima puluh. 
There the article has no place, and yet it has a distinct place in 
the ‘tens’ of Eastern Polynesia. Have the Polynesians, then, 
borrowed from the Malays? Is it not better to say that these 
languages have come from the same source, but under different 
circumstances ? 
Another simple and yet prominent word in Samoan is ao, it 
means (1) a cloud; (2) daylight; (3) a chief's head; (4) supreme 
(ao-ao),; (5) a title of dignity ; (6) to collect. A longer form of 
it in the sense of ‘day’ is aso, and a still longer form is a‘asa, 
* A little incident known to me shows that the native mind considers 
tenasa ‘complete’ number. Many years agoin Samoa, a midwife rushed 
out of a house where she had been ministering, and exclaimed to a 
missionary who was passing, “Now the family is complete (‘atoa).” 
There were now ten children. 
W—Dec. 7, 1892. 
