222 J. HORNELL ON 



closely kindred to certain of the races of Oceania, or (much less probably) that there 

 has been such intimate and extensive trade relations between India on the one hand 

 and Polynesia on the other, that the latter region imposed its boat designs upon India. 



As regards the latter possibility, we have already seen that within the historic 

 period the flow of population has been almost entirely from India to the Further 

 East and that even so, it has been restricted entirely to Malaysia so far as the island 

 world is concerned — never to the regions further east. Even for the former res- 

 tricted area there is little or no evidence of any reciprocal influence upon India, 

 with the one probable exception of a very limited Malaysian wave of immigration 

 via Ceylon, which brought coconut cultivation, toddy tapping, and possibly betel 

 chewing, to India from the Malay Archipelago. The Shanars, Izhuvans and Tiyyans 

 of South India probably owe their presence to such immigration. The anthropologi- 

 cal facts (p. 234) in regard particularly to the Shanars, give distinct support to this 

 conclusion. 



To-day,^however, we find very few Malay words in common use on the Indian 

 coasts, whereas a very large number of words of Indian origin, the great majority being 

 traceable to Sanscrit and a less number to Dravidian languages, have gained admis- 

 sion in varying degree to the languages of Malaysia. The Indian immigrants into 

 Sumatra and Java were of infinitely higher civilization than the inhabitants they found 

 there — no record of pre-Hindu culture exists, and from all we now know, we judge 

 that the aborigines were animists with rude customs and habits. Hence the civiliza- 

 tion of the newcomers from India had no difficulty in asserting its supremacy and with 

 the spread of the new and higher religion, the tongue of the sacred Indian writings 

 rapidly influenced the language of those of the natives admitted to social intercourse 

 with the Indian immigrants, who formed in addition alliances with the influential 

 families of the land. 



In this connection it is significant that the Malay term for a large ship, kapal, 

 has been borrowed from the Dravidian (Tamil r,i'ni^)). The Malay of the Straits 

 and the Tamil of India and Ceylon alike use this word for a large or sea-going vessel. 

 Conversely the names for small boats used for fishing and inshore purposes are wholly 

 different in Malay and in Tamil. From this we infer that the first large over-seas 

 vessels seen by the Malays were Dravidian ships from South India. 



The modern boat design of the west coast of India as exemplified in the sharp or 

 round-sterned pattamar, is, I believe, as stated above, a local development of the spread 

 dugout. So, we arrive at the broad conclusion that till quite recent times all the 

 evidence available points to Polynesian influence being the only outside one that 

 affected Indian sea-craft to any appreciable and permanent extent prior to the i6th 

 century, excepting always the catamaran, whereof the primal origin is to be sought 

 in the reed-rafts of Egypt and Chaldea. 



In regard to inland boat designs we are on a wholly different footing. The 

 types seen on the great rivers of India fall into two distinct classes, the first and 

 larger group having distinctly Egyptian affinities, the other with equally well-marked 

 Babylonian relationship. The former is by far the more marked and emphatic ; no 



