2G 



ETHNOLOGY OF THE INDO-PACIFIC iStANDB* 



combined with that of the Scytljie and Iranian being ibe latest of 

 die great migratorj race?;, establish a high antiquity for the move- 

 irtents wliicli dispersed the Dravirian pronouns on atli aides from 

 their probabltj centre in S, W. Asia. 



The Chinese is probably the moat ancient integral formation to 

 which they can be referred. They appear to have been diffna^jd 

 over a large portion of Asia and Africa as well as over America 

 prior to the rise of the dominant historical race?^ and their spread 

 over India, Ultraindia and Asonesia in the era of Draviro-Auatra- 

 lian civilization, now represented by the AustMlians, throws light 

 on the ethnic condition of W. Asia at the period when a ctviii- 

 s£atioa of this character was connected with the most inflnential 

 and dilfasive formation. The roots only ai'e Chinese. The Dra- 

 vtriau and Asonesian forms of the pronouns shew that the lan- 

 guages of this formation had already acquired a harmonic and 

 postfixual character. The preservation of the same roots in Ame- 

 rican, N. E, Afiaiie, Scythie and African languages and the gene- 

 rally Scylhic structure of Dravirian, lead to the inference that 

 they were associated in Upper Asia with an ideology of the licy- 

 tbic kind before they spread to India and the fartlier east. 

 . The general conclusion is that the Draviro- Australian pronomi- 

 nal system is not an offshoot from Scythie proper or from any of 

 the other Aso- African systems, but ia a remnant of the proto-Scy- 

 thic era of the harmonic development, and a link between the 

 Scythie and American ideologies and betvTcen Chinese and Amo- 

 rican. In Ameiican the crude and pleonastic ideology of the 

 early monosyllabic stage is preserved under a harmonic and agglo- 

 roerative phonology. In the Australian condition of Draviro- 

 Australian the pronoun system retains the same combination to a 

 large extent. Traces of a similar crude and elaborate system are 

 found in the other Aso- African formations, and they all present 

 evidences in flexions, contractions and irregularities ofdifferojit 

 kinds, of having fallen away from a condition more elaborate and 

 consistent in terms and forms. Although Scythie Is amongst the 

 most decayed and simple of these systems, some of its membei-s 

 which retain other American trails also, arc possessed of vestiges 

 of such a condition, while its affinities to Indo-European and 

 other systems which preserve similar and more numerous vestiges. 



