SOME REMARKS ON THE AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES. 239 



is ' a lord.' Dravidian scholars them selves acknowledge that 

 piran comes from the Sanskrit preposition pra, 'before'; this 

 corroborates my derivation of the Australian word piriwul and 

 the Maori ariki. The Aroma dialect of New Guinea says pira- 

 na, 'face'; and, in my opinion this piran a bears the same rela- 

 tion to the Dravidian pira that the Latin frons has to the pre- 

 position pro, the Samoan mua-ulu to mua, and the English fore- 

 head, to be-fore. The Motu dialect says vaira for 'face, front'; 

 1 take this to be a corruption of pira, for the Motu also says 

 vaira-nai 'before'; another dialect says vari ; with this cf. pro, 

 para and frons. I may add here, in passing, that on the Upper 

 Nile, west of Khartoum, the negroes say ber, bera, for 'one.' 



The Australian postposition bir-ung, 'away from,' seems to be 

 connected with this root in the same way as the Greek para. The 

 dictionary meanings of the Sanskrit preposition pra are 'before,' 

 'away,' 'beginning'; if these three meanings were carried to Aus- 

 tralia through the Dravidian form pira, they abundantly justify 

 my arguments as to the origin of the Australian wdrds pir, 'one,' 

 and birung, 'away from.' In New Britain, pirai means 'odd,' 

 'not a " round" number' (cf. the game of ' odds and evens'), and 

 this sense must have come from a numeral meaning 'one.' 



Results in this Section are: — Preposition forms to mean 'before' 

 are, in the primitive languages, pra, pri, pro, prae, pru ; other 

 forms are par-a, par-os, pur-as ; modes of all these are, fra, fru, 

 vor, fore, and, without the initial letter, ro, ru, air ; the Lithu- 

 anian has pir-, and with this correspond the Dravidian pir-a, 

 'before,' the Australian pir, 'one,' and the Turkic, bir, 'one.' In 

 Sanskrit, the old ablative form purd means 'formerly,' 'first'; 

 cognates are the Gr. paros, 'before,' and the Zend para, 'before. 5 



(b). But the most common word for 'one' in New South Wales 

 is wakul. In fact, it is our Sydney word for 'one,' and there can 

 be no doubt of its genuineness, for it is noted by Lieut. -Colonel 

 Collins as a Port Jackson word in his book on the Colony, published 

 1802 ; he spells it wogul. At Newcastle it was wakol; in the 

 Williams River district wakul-bo, and on the Manning wakul. 

 From my manuscript notes I write down the various forms which 

 this word assumes, beginning with Tasmania and passing north- 

 wards to the Timor Sea : — Tasmania, mara-i, mara-wa ; in Vic- 

 toria, bur; on the Murray River, near Wentworth and Euston, 

 mo, mata, marda, meta-ta; on the middle course of the Darling, 

 waichola; on the Upper Murray, mala; on Monero Plains, 

 yalla; at Moruya, med-endal; in the Murrumbidgee district, 

 mit-ong; at Jervis Bay, met-ann; on Goulburn Plains, met-ong; 

 in the Illawarra district, mit-ung ; at Appin, wogul ; at Sydney, 

 and northwards to the Manning River and the Hastings, wakul; 



