From Central India to Polynesia: 



A New Linguistic Synthesis. 



By C. O. Blagden. 



In the undermentioned essay 0) that indefatigable work- 

 er, Professor W. Schmidt, of Modling, Austria, has taken an- 

 other great stride along the line of research that he has marked 

 out for himself and- made peculiarly his own. In order to 

 appreciate the nature and importance of his latest contribution, 

 it is necessary to refer to the history of the problems he has 

 been investigating. A quarter of a century ago the existence 

 and extent of the principal language-families of Southern and 

 South-Eastern Asia and the Indian Archipelago had been 

 established in broad outlines. ( 2 ) But there remained a con- 

 siderable number of forms of speech, some of them known only 

 by name in those days, others already more or less adequately 

 put on record and studied, which did not seem to fit into the 

 accepted classification and had to be left, in little groups of 

 doubtful coherence or even as isolated stragglers, outside the 

 general scheme. This was the case in particular of the 

 Kolarian (now renamed Munda) languages of Central India, of 

 Khasi, of the Mon or Talaing language which is gradually dy- 

 ing out in Lower Burma, of Khmer or Cambojan, Annamese, 

 and an endless string of dialects, some of them hardly known 

 even now, in the inland parts of Indo-China, of the dialects of 

 the Nicobar islanders, and those of the Sakai and Semang of 

 the Malay Peninsula. 



(1) Die Mon-Khmer-Volker, ein Bindegli^d zsvischen Volkern 

 Zentralasiens und Austronesiens. — Archiv fiir Anthropologic, Neue 

 Folge, Band Y, Heft 1 und 2.'— Braunschweig, 1906. 



(2)R. N. Cust's "Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East 

 Indies" may be referred to for particulars of what had been ascertain- 

 ed about that time. 



R. A. Soc„ No. 53, 1909. 



