4fc THE BT UNO LOOT OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



civilisation germinated in the basins of the Nile and die Euphrates, 

 «nd that they were influenced by the mora powerful and populous 

 nations of the Nile and southern India long before the later and 

 slowly descending Iranian civilisation touched them. These races 

 included navigating tribes, otherwise they could not have spread 

 themselves over every hiibitable island of the eastern Ocean from 

 Madagascar to the Fiji group, if not throughout Polynesia also. 

 To account for this extension, it is not necessary to suppose that 

 they had larper boats than those in which in modem rimes the 

 Papuas have been accustomed to make descents on Coram, and the 

 Sakalavason Comoro and the const of Africa. But the far higher 

 maritime art of southern India appears to be one of the most 

 ancient in the world. It was certainly not derived from the 

 Bmbmanical tribes of the northwest, and it was too much in 

 advance of the Hhnyaritic to have been borrowed from them. 

 There art • undant reasons for believing that India, before the 

 prevalence of Brahmaniem, was at least as civilised as Africa, and 

 nations who had reached this stage, were as capable of perfecting a 

 navigation of their own as the Chinese, and fur more so than the 

 Aral*, u!.u wanted the nurseries which the mrge eastern ri rcrs 

 gave to India. * 



Although I have reserved the subject of language, I will add 

 here that a general view of linguistic facts also presents some 

 prominent and remarkable features, which are far from being 

 opposed to the evidence of customs and civilisations. One is, that 

 all known languages are capable of arrangement according to a 

 certain gradation of development. Another is, that over wide 

 spaces they have a common character. It cannot but be that those 

 facts have 'a valuable ethnological import and arc ran tually con- 

 nected. A third circumstance that arrests our attention is, that 

 tb$ more organic development of language does not continue to 

 connect itself with that of the civilisation of the race that speaks it. 

 The predominance of certain advanced ideas and arts, tends to 

 arrest and fix the organism of a language over a considerable space, 

 although its further gloasarial and literary expansion is intimately 

 dependent on the progress of civilisation. This operation of a 

 high civilisation is mainly owing to the extension which i! gives to 

 the tribes thai possess it, and to its influence on the minds of 

 adjacent less advanced tribes. But the fixation of language as a 

 genera] ethnic phenomenon is not dependent on civilisation, nor is 

 civilisation dependent on an advanced language. The concurrence 

 of circumstances necessary to produce a civilisation may do bo in a 

 region occupied by a people of any organic and linguistic develop- 

 ment. But the character of the civilisation and the degree of 

 fertility, advancement and reu'neraent which it can attain, compared 



• Thr BArlie&t gtimpse we h**e of the vessels of the eait enutof India U*t ■ 

 fVBpuatlTtJy recent period, 1800 years *fo, bit it U strongly in fcvor of an 



indigi-DOOj&rt. 



