242 F. W. CHRISTIAN, B.A., ON THE EVIDENCE OF MALAY, JAVANESE, 
the King and Nobles and the language of the Aymara, the 
peasant class, or inhabitants of the upper villages, which I)r. 
Middendorf of Leipzig has laboriously, and with true German 
industry and patience, tabulated in his two great works the 
Grammar and Dictionary of (1) the Runa-Simi or Kesliua- 
Sprache, and (2) of the Aymara- Spr ache or language of the 
Aymara or peasantry, German and Peruvian key-words together 
side by side. I will not delay you very long upon the subject 
of these island languages, except to point out some few curious 
facts, which I have come upon in my studies, which it will be 
useful for us to keep clearly in mind as clues to guide our steps 
as we search carefully through the great labyrinth of half- 
forgotten traditions ; as we elbow our way through the Babel- 
clash (charivari) of unfamiliar dialects; as we follow the faint 
and dim outline which I shall endeavour to trace ; pricking out 
our way like cautious navigators in the philological chart, tracing 
these half-forgotten migrations of Asiatic Columbuses across the 
great waste of waters. 
(1) The eastern Polynesian tongues, of which the Maori, 
the Rarotongan, the Tahitian and the Manjarivan are types, 
show a certain admixture of the maritime Arab and the 
Persian, probably from Arab gharabs or trading vessels,* from 
Bassora, and of the barques of Parsee merchants from Bombay, 
who working their way southwards in their extensive pearling 
operations on the coast of Western Australia, blundered upon 
the great south passage, and forestalled by hundreds of years 
the discovery of Tasmania or Van Diemen’s Land and New 
Zealand by Abel Tasman and his stalwart Dutchmen from 
Java. Some of these vessels must have had live stock on 
board. I give as an example of this : — 
Take the Tahitian word Mamoe, a sheep. 
It is a worn-down form of the Arabic Mamawcsh, plural of 
Mawesh, a flock or herd, which has the generic meaning of 
quadrupeds, live stock in general. This is the first thread in 
the fabric. 
(2) But be it remarked : The main body of the key-words in 
these languages I find about three-fifths consists of Hindu- 
Malay roots, the result, I feel certain, of a very large body of 
emigrants from Java, the Southern Philippines and the 
Moluccas coming by way of the Carolines, the Hawaii, and 
Tahiti. Presently we shall trace this great migration of which we 
* Compare ’Arawa, the Maori name of one of the great canoes of the 
migration. 
