248 JOHN FEASBR. 



i water,' and bedu is quoted as an old Phrygio-Macedonian word 

 meaning ' water.' 



Some observers have remarked that our blacks soon master the 

 dialects spoken by other tribes, and have ascribed this to a natural 

 readiness in learning languages. But the present inquiry shows 

 that there is another cause for this. A man or woman of the 

 Sydney tribe, which said ba-du for 'water,' would easily recognize 

 ba-na in an adjacent tribe as the same word, the termination only 

 being different, just as it is not hard for an Englishman to re- 

 member that the German wasser is water, and that brennen 

 means burn. So also, a Kimilaroi black, who says mu-ga, would 

 soon know the Wiraduri mu-pai ; and elsewhere mata, 'one,' is 

 not much different from meta and matata for 'one,' or even 

 from the Tasmanian mar a. 



Results. — Ba, ma, mo, am, ap are forms of an original root 

 meaning 'water,' 'that which is liquid and flows'; derived forms 

 are mi, me, wa ; from ba comes the Sydney word ba-du, 'water'; 

 the du here is a suffix in Dravidian also, and exists in the New 

 Guinea word ba-tu, elsewhere ba-ta; the Samang Negritos say bat- 

 eao; the old language of Java has banu, 'water,' where the n has 

 the liquid sound of gn, and takes the place of d in the suffix du. 

 From all this it is clear that our Australian badu is of good and 

 ancient lineage. 



(b). In the Maitland district a 'blind ' man is called boko; in 

 Polynesia poko is 'blind,' or, more fully, mata-poko, mata-po, 

 * eyes-blind.' As there can be no suspicion of borrowing here, 

 how is so striking a resemblance to be accounted for? Do you 

 say that it is a mere coincidence? Weil, let us examine the 

 matter. In the Kamilaroi region mu-ga is 'blind '; in the Mud- 

 gee district mu-pai is 'dumb'; in Santo (New Hebrides) raog- 

 moga is 'deaf; in Erromanga,, another island of that group, bu- 

 sa is ' dumb '; in Fiji bo-bo is ' blind '; in Duke of York Island, 

 ba-ba is 'deaf; in Sanskrit, mu-ka is 'dumb'; in Greek, rau-dos, 

 mu-tis is 'dumb,' Lat. mut-us. In Keltic, bann is ' to bind, 

 tie,' balbh is 'dumb,' and bodhar is 'deaf.' Now, there can be 

 little doubt that in all these words the root is the same (mu, mo; 

 ba, bo, bu; po), and yet these words extend over a very wide 

 area indeed, from Tahiti right across through India to Greece, 

 Italy, and even to John o' Groat's. The meanings are ' blind,' 

 'deaf,' 'dumb,' and yet the root is the same. The general root- 

 meaning which suits them all is 'to close,' 'to bind'; this meaning 

 shows itself in the Greek verb mu-d (from which muclos comes) 

 — 'to close the eyes or mouth,' and in the Sanskrit mu, 'to bind'; 

 similarly the Hebrew (a) illam, 'dumb,' comes from the verb 



