FROM CENTRAL INDIA TO. POLYNESIA. 171 



with one another is as good as certain : there are too many 

 similar cases in these languages to admit of our attributing 

 such resemblances to mere accidental coincidence. But how 

 they are connected is a problem that still awaits a solution 

 and until that question is satisfactorily answered Professor 

 Schmidt's derivation is at any rate premature : it is no use 

 accounting for but and leaving its three poor relations out in 

 the cold. 



There are one or two other minor points, not essential to 

 the main argument of the paper, on which I feel compelled to 

 differ from the author. While agreeing with him that Besisi 

 has a closer relation to the Mon-Khmer languages than Senoi 

 or Tembe' have, I cannot admit that the same proposition holds 

 good of the Jakun dialects. Whatever may be their origin, it 

 seems to me that the Jakun dialects are very remote from the 

 Mon-Khmer family. Further I think his suggestion that Senoi 

 represents a mixture between Semang and Besisi is quite un- 

 arguable . what these three have in common is the element 

 allied to Mon-Khmer and this is very often more archaic in 

 Senoi than in the other two groups. Again I think that his 

 view that the words jung, "foot," selak, "leaf," and dak, 

 "water" are Aryan loanwords imported into the Further In- 

 dian languages ' (including the aboriginal dialects of the Penin- 

 sula) at a remote date when the, linguistic ancestry of the 

 tribes that use them were in contact with Aryan races, is an 

 arbitrary assumption. It is based on a resemblance with cer- 

 tain Sanskrit words, which resemblance may after all be pure- 

 ly fortuitous in these three cases. One of the arguments by 

 which Professor Schmidt supports his contention is that these 

 words do not appear in Semang. As a matter of fact there is 

 conclusive evidence that the word for " leaf " does occur in the 

 Semang dialects. But anyhow it seems highly improbable 

 that the native terms for such ordinary everyday objects as 

 "foot," "leaf," and "water" should in such a very large 

 number of allied languages have been replaced by Aryan 

 equivalents. 



In another part of his paper Professor Schmidt seeks to 

 show that the great linguistic synthesis which he propounds 



R. A. Soc, No. 53, 1909 



