n - University of Newcastle

xxvi IPI-TBODUCTION.
ha~e noticed in the course of my reading, but I believe there are
many other words in these islands which are of the same origin
as our Australian word wakul." I pray you to remember that,
with the exception of Samoa and New Zealand, these words all
come from Papuan regions and afford indirect evidence that our
Australians are allied to the Papuans.
As to the Maori and Samoan congeners that I have quoted, it
is commonly alleged that these races are &Ialayo-Polynesians, on
the theory that their languages are of Malay origin -f-; but let us
look at this theory in the hght of our present inquiry. It is
said that the Polpnesims are Malays. Well, let us see. If the
Samoans are Ifalays, then the Duke of Pork Islanders are
Illalays ; for the n-ord mua, l-ihich is essential to the Samoan
language, is the same word as the Tulriok muka ; therefore the
Papuans of that island also are Malays ! But the corresponding
Malay mord is miila, 'in front,' ' foremost,' 'at first,' and it is
certain that muka can never be formed from mu1 a ; for, while
?c may become 1, the letter I, when once established in a word,
cannot revert to k. Thus the Malay language might be said to
have come from the Duke of York Island, as least so far as the
evidence of this word goes ! But I acknowledge that they may
both be taken from one conlmon source, and this, I believe, is the
true solution of the question. Where shall we find that common
source ? The root-form of mula, muka, mua, and of dl the
others, is ma, mu, and if me can find that root, it mill be easy to
understand how all these words have been formed independently
from that original root ; and it will then he unnecessary to say
that the Bamoau language is of Dlnlay origin, or that the
Papuans of the New Britain isles are usiug a lSIalay language. I
now take you to southern India, to a group of languages called
the Dravidian, occupying the mouiitains of the Dekkan, and the
coasts both to the east and the west of that. Some of these
Dravidian tribes are considered by the best authorities to be
certainly negroid, and, in England, Prof. Flower, from an examination
of their crania, has classed them as kinsmen of the
Australians. One of the most cultivated languages of the group
is the Tamil, and the Tanlilians are known to have class-marriage
. laws similar to those in Fiji and Australia. Now for ' first ' the
Tamil says mudal, and this mudal is a verbal noun meaning 'a
beginning,' ' priority ' in time or place. The root is mu, and dal
is a formative syllable. Themu is, without doubt, our Australian
* These aud all other words from the New Britain and Duke of Pork
Islands I quote from mziluscript dictionaries of these languages, prepared
by the missionaries there.
t The name and authority of K. Wilhelm von Humboldt first gave this
theory a standing; but we have now much fuller materials on wluch to
form an independent judgment.
~sraouccr~os. xxvii
root ma, mo, mu. The late Bishop Cald~ell says*-"Xudai is
connected with the Tamil postposition mnn, ' before'; mudal is
used as the root of a new .verb ' to begin.' Mu erideiltly signifies
'priority,' and may be the same as the Tamil mu, 'to be old,'
mudu, ' antiqxy: " I think there is a better derivation than
that. The San nt milla means ' origin, cause, commeucement,'
and is the same word as the Malay mula already referred to,
and both of.these I take from the Sanskrit root-word bhii, ' to
begin to be, to become, to be,' with which is connected the Latin
fore (fuere), ' to be about to be,' f ui, kc. From bhil come
such Sanskrit words as bhava, ' birth, origin,' bh &van a, ' cnusing
to be,' b huvan y n, ' a master or lord ' (r$ pira n, kc.), and
many other words in the Aryan languages. At all events,
m akul and these other Australian mords for ' one ' are assuredly
from the same root as the Dravidian mu-dal, ' first,' ' a begin-
. I, for one, cannot believe that words so much alike both in
root and meaning should have sprung up by accident over so vast
an area as India, Malaya, New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, and baclr
again to the New Bebrides and Australia. The only rational
explanation seems to me to be that these races were all at one
time part of a common stoclr, that in their dispersion they carried
with them the root-words of the parent languages, and that in
their new habitations they dressed out these root-n-ords with
prefixes and affixes by a process of development, just as circumstances
required.
Results. -The root in its simplest form is ha, 'to begin to be,'
' to begin '; other forms are 6 0, 13 u, B i ; nz a, 1780, mzc; ja, f~, vu;
wa. The nearest approach to the Australian zun kt&/, ' one,' is
the Ebcdan 6 o kol, ' one,' and the Tukiok or nkal-a, ' for the
first tinle,' but many other cognate words are foulid all over the
South Seas in the sense of 'first,' 'begin.' The Tasma~liitll
otaro-wa, 'one,' is the same as the Tukiok ~naka, ' for the first
time,' and nza?-n, 109 ; and in New South Wales, nznra-gai
means ' first ' in the Nudgee dialect.
2. The ,VunzeraZ Tzco.
AInlost the only other dustralian~lumeral is b ul a, ' tn 0.' It is
true that several tribes have a distinct mord for ' three,' and a few
have a mord for ' five ' taken from the word ' hand,' but in most
parts of Australia the number 'three ' is expressed by ' tn-o-one,'
four' by ' two-two,' 'five' by ' two-two-one' and so on. But the
wore bula is universal ; vith various changes of termination, it
exists from Tasmania in the extreme south, right on to the Gulf
*All my knowledge of the Dravidian race and language comes from Dr.
Caldwell's " Colnparative Dictionary of the Dravidian or South Indian
Family of Languages ; second eciition ; London : Trubner and Co., 1875." In
this Introduction, I quote from the notes which I made vhen I read the
book some years ago, and now I cannot always tell whether I ain cluoting
his words or only my own statement of them.