36 THE LTBNOLOGT OF THE TNDlAX ARCHIPELAGO. 



base of the historic time is level. It is everywhere the present 

 Its summit, the base of the archaic time, is more full of inequali- 

 ties than the surface of the globe itself. In most parts of the 

 Indian Archipelago it descends close to the present. In Boine 

 countries it is several thousands of years in height, and is being 

 slowly lifted still higher by modern research. It is obvious that 

 before there is a considerable development of civilisation, there can 

 be no remains capable of assuming a historical character after the 

 lapse of some thousands of years. Every extension backward of 

 the historical era is therefore accompanied by a corresponding 

 ascent of the dim ethnic era beyond. Now if we can prove the 

 continuity or identity of the Egyptian race up to a higher historic 

 time than any other people reaches, and establish a Btrong pro- 

 bability of no revolution ltavLng happened in its language, it carries 

 back with it all other races wlube languages can be directly con- 

 nected with »t; and if it be true, as it becomes yearly more proba- 

 ble, that all existing languages are related by a principle of pro- 

 gressive development, it follows that when we can carry any race 

 back unbroken into a new and more remote era in the past, all the 

 others that are distinct tod equally or less developed arc lifted with 

 it.* But without at present dwelling on this more antique period, let 

 us confine oursdves to the position, that a comparison of languages 

 enables us to conclude with certainty, that every other existing 

 language whose form fats the same degree of distinctness and in- 

 dependence as the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Arabic or the San- 

 skrit, was also the language of a distinct family of mankind at the 

 dawn of the earliest historic time, for no one of the latter was 

 generated by another in that time. The cases therefore in which 

 we can tracs back a distinct family of tribes and languages to its 

 origin must be very few, if any. The members of the European 

 siems are merely recent admixtures or modiBcations, in which 

 the different elements remain little changed,— so with Bengali, 

 Kewi, &c. We have nothing in historic times like the format Jon 

 of a new language with a strong individuality, such as that 

 possessed by the Egyptian when compared even with the ailjacent 

 Arabic on the one side and the African on the other, or bv the 

 Chinese when compared with the neighbouring Mongol or ancient 

 Jndian. The same remark applies to the older forms of the 

 Indonesian languages. They carry us back to a time anterior to 

 the development of tho great families of languages, and this must 

 long have preceded the' historic age. There is therefore great 

 danger of error in attempting to explain the whole ethnic history 

 of the Archipelago, ami the changes und affinities of its languages, 

 with reference to the feet* of the historic time only, to nations now 

 in contact or connection with it, or which have influenced it during 



* The internet fti much more eji*miiv« nr thai} &»d, but It mum. htt\tu?i 

 wits the proof. 



