TW% ITUKOIOOY OF THE INDIAN AUCTJIPELAOo 



into Aiianesia, to archaic eras which must be considered recent 

 but whether both were in operation before the Iiaumn family came 

 into existence ; whetlKT the oh) influence* continued to operate long 

 ftfrr r new one*, destined to supplant them, had begun to be fell"; 

 -whether, as is probable, more ancient, ruder and feebler tribrt 

 preceded the Iudo- Africans fa any part of Asinnena, or cms tit mod 

 t» paw into it after Indo-Afi scans had begun to oecitpy "it i what 

 was the degree of linguistic development and of civilisation, to 

 which the earliest African and Asiatic immigrants had attained, or 

 what was the general ethnic condition of the human race when mm 

 first appeared in the islands; what tribes, in tin? successive emer- 

 gence of new and submergence of older ones dnring ihe continuous 

 ethnic flow of the Continents, eoirtemnerancously nflecfed the his- 

 tory of the Archipelago, by the same or different channf K and what 

 tribes remained Ignorant of its existence; whether, fOrift-iaMJe, 

 African* S. »• Asian, Indian and Ultrnimhan influences were 

 ever felt togrdier, during the same archaic eras, or whether, while 

 all or some of these lasted, the Iranian race continued, for a long 

 period, to have no knowledge of it; what periods intervened be- 

 tween the time when eacn continental race first unconsciously 

 pave settlers to Asiauesia, and the time when it became aware of 

 the existence of the islands, and began to have occasional intercourse 

 with them : — these are questions to which I cannot at present offer 

 any positive answer, hut some of which will, I think, flml solu- 

 tions as we proceed in our investigation, although others will never 



be answered. _ • . 



Such is the impression made by a first connected view of the 

 subject. I shall present ihe more matured conclusions which I 

 mnv form, from a closer comparison of the languages, in an early 

 number. Meantime a brief glance at the physical and moral 

 evidence taken by itielf, will shew the reader that it does not 

 weaken the first impression made by a rapid and general survey of 

 the tankages. 



Conm ctioX with Afiucan It Art's ; A number of facts 

 physical, moral and linguistic, in the ethnology of the Asiane im 

 tribes, have a marked and uninistukciible resemblance to others 

 njimd' in A ricon ethnology. "We th dl mention a lew ort' esc as 

 iiiiiienliiiyr a decided ethnic alliance to a certain extent, whatever 

 opinions may be formed respecting its gouree. Some ima' inathe 

 readers may, with Ptohmyv throw a correcting continent a ross 

 the Indian Oceun, or, with a host of modern writers, view its isfaids 

 as the fragments of a ^reat south' land that once prolonged the 

 Tian*indian peninsula into the Purine. Others, who have been 

 accustomed to think that the fracturing and submerging of con- 

 tinents, is a work of more than a few thousands or tens ol thousand* 

 of years, may be content to suppose that all its shores were once 

 occupied by the same race, or r»st with the belief that the Pe- 

 ninsula of Itodia was peopled by men of the African family before 



