If I were permitted to indicate the route of the Polynesian family, after it separated from its Aryan cousins in the highlands of middle Asia, I would say that it descended into Hindostan; that in course of time it was followed by the Tamul family from the northeast who drove the former out of India and were in their turn driven into the lower part of the Peninsula by the now Sanskrit speaking Aryans. When driven out of the Peninsula the Indian Ocean received the wanderers. Of the transit through India, and of the length of the sojourn there, no record or trace exists, unless the Polynesian goddess Hina,[1] or Sina, as it is pronounced in some dialects, bear some relation to the land of Hind or Sind, as it was called by the Sanskrit and Zend speaking peoples.
The next traces of the Polynesian family, after their expulsion from Hindustan, are found in two very different directions; in the Battas, Buguis and Iduans of the Malay Archipelago to the east, and in the Malgasse of Madagascar to the west. When they arrived in these new habitats, and how long they remained unmolested in the former, can now only be a matter of mere conjecture. It is fair to conclude, however, that they continued on their eastward route while yet their language retained its original, liquid purity, and before the Batta, Bugui and other remnants assumed the harder, consonantal terminations of words, with which the Malay dialects are strongly impregnated, and which are entirely foreign to the primitive Polynesian dialects as found in the Pacific.
In the Malay language there are two words to designate an island, nusa and pulo. Nusa, however, seems to have been by far the older expression, and pulo only obtained at a comparatively later time when the Malay branch proper of the Polynesian family became the predominant people in the Asiatic Archipelago. In none of the Polynesian dialects does the word pulo occur to designate an island. I infer hence that its adoption and use in the Malay Archipelago is subsequent to the departure of [[224]]the Polynesians for the Pacific. The word nusa as an appellative of an island occurs in several instances among the Pacific-Polynesian groups: among the Paumotus, Marquesas, Tokolau or Union and de Peyster’s groups, and also in the Viti Archipelago, which has received the nomenclature of a great number of its islands from Polynesian sources. It always occurs in compound words as names of islands; e.g., Nuku-hiwa (Marqu.); Nuku-Nono (Union Gr.); Nuku-fetau (de Peyster’s); Nuku-tawake and Nuku-ti-pipi (Paumotu). In the Hawaiian group no island or islet, that I am aware of, bears that appellation, but in the Hawaiian legends the land from which their ancestors came, and which they are frequently said to have visited, is called Nu’u-mehelani—the Nu’u being a contraction of the Nuku of the South Pacific dialects.
When I said above that the Polynesian family were probably driven out of Hindostan by the Tamul family, and found a refuge in the Asiatic Archipelago, some remnants of the family undoubtedly remained on the mainland; for we find in the traditionary annals of Sumatra, that the Malays proper derive themselves from Hindostan, whence they arrived at Palembang under the leadership of a son of the Rajah of Bisnagour. Such an emigration, and others like it, doubtless started the older Polynesians further eastward. And as they went, they gave their names to places, bays, headlands, and islands, many of which names have remained to this day and mark the resting places where they stopped, the route by which they traveled. One of the Moluccas is called “Morotai.” Now this is a purely Polynesian name, by which one of the Hawaiian Islands is called (Molokai-a-Hina), recalling thus not only the name of a former habitat, but also the birth-place of their ancestors. In the Histoire de la Conquête des Isles Moluques, by d’Argensola, vol. III (Amsterdam, 1706), we are told that the Moluccas were formerly called “Sindas” by Ptolomy, especially Amboyna, Celebes and Gilolo,—Molokai-a-Hina refers itself then at once to Morotoy de los Sindas according to the early Spanish navigators.
In the island of Timor there is a place and bay called Babao. The name occurs again in Vavao, one of the Tonga or Friendly Islands, and in Mature-wawao on the Acteon Islands of the Paumotu group. One of the Loyalty Islands is called Lifu. That name occurs again in “Fefuka,” one of the Hapai group in the Friendly Islands. It occurs also in “Lehua,” one of the Hawaiian Islands. On the Island of Uea, another of the Loyalty group, is a headland called to this day by the Papuan or Melanesian inhabitants the “Fa’i-a-Ue,” but this is a purely Polynesian word which rendered in the Hawaiian dialect would be “Pali-a-Ua,” or, as there may be a doubt as to the proper orthography, “Tai-a-Ue” (house or dwelling of Ua), a word readily intelligible to a Polynesian, but without sense or meaning to a Papuan. In Celebes and in Borneo are two independent states, inhabited by Buguis and Dyaks, called “Ouadjou” or “Ouahou” (according to French and English orthography), proto-names of the Hawaiian island “Oahu.” The traditions of the Tonga Islands point to a land in the northwest called “Pulatu,” as their fatherland, and whither their spirits returned after death, the residence of their gods.
The absence, however, in the Polynesian language of any name for, or of any image or memory of, the ox, the horse, the sheep, would seem indirectly to indicate that that separation took place before these animals were domesticated by the mother-stock [[225]]and its other descendants, or that they were living at the time of separation in a country where those animals were unknown.
History is almost equally mute as to the place where this separation took place. Some faint traces alone remain, in the names of headlands and islands, of the routes by which they entered the Pacific, and some of the Polynesian traditions point to a land in the northwest, called “Pulo-to” as their fatherland and whither their spirits returned after death. Mr. Domeny de Rienzi, in his Océanie, affords many plausible reasons for assuming that Borneo is the father-land and starting point of the Polynesian family, and that it springs from the Daya or Dyak root. If so, the separation took place before the Daya language took on the consonantal endings to so many of its words.
How the separation took place there can be little doubt about. Wars and famine have in the past as in the present even impelled mankind to seek in distant climes that security and abundance which were denied them at home.
Assuming therefore—and there are but small grounds for doubting the correctness of the general proposition—that the ancestors of the Polynesian family were driven out from their original home in the Asiatic Archipelago by their cousins german or, rather, nephews, the present Malay tribes, properly so called, there were two passages by which they might escape into the unknown (if they were unknown) wastes of the Pacific: either by the Gilolo Passage or by Torres Straits. I am inclined to believe that the greater stream came by Torres Straits, though others might have come and undoubtedly did come by the Gilolo Passage, and that they dwelt some time on the Loyalty Islands before they were driven further on by the Papuan race which now occupies them. My reason for so thinking is that the names of these islands and some of their prominent headlands, even in the mouth of its present inhabitants, are purely Polynesian names, and thus indicate the prolonged if not previous presence of the race that named them. From the Loyalty isles they undoubtedly touched at and occupied portions of the Viti Archipelago, which have ever since remained a debatable ground between the Papuan and the Polynesian races. Hence to the Samoan group in the northeast, and to the Tonga group in the southeast, the transition was easy; and these I believe to have been the first permanent habitats of the Polynesian family in the Pacific. Whether these two groups were settled simultaneously or successively, or the one from the other, would require more special knowledge of their respective traditions, legends, songs and language to decide, than I possess. And from one or the other of these groups the other Polynesian islands have been peopled surely. I am inclined to believe, however, that the Samoan, or Navigator’s Islands were the first permanent footholds which the Polynesians obtained in the Pacific. My reason for so thinking is this: In the Daya dialects—among the Battas, Idaans, Buguis, and Soulas, or rather Houlas, the s is a component part of the language. The only Polynesian dialect which has preserved the s in the same words and in the same places of a word is the Samoan. All other dialects have substituted an aspirate for the sibilant,—h, k or t. In the same manner the ng is a consonant sound in the Daya, Bugui and Batta dialects. It is the same in the Samoan; and although still retained in the Tonga, Hervey and New Zealand groups, it is but sparsely used and decreasing in frequency in the Tahiti, Paumotu and Marquesan groups, and disused entirely in the Hawaiian group; p and k being its general substitutes. [[226]]
Other indications of the relationship of the Polynesian and Aryan races are not wanting to those who are more competent than I am to pursue the comparison. The Greek “Ouranos” is evidently a congener or descendant of the Polynesian Rangi or Lani (Heaven). I am inclined to think that the name of “Siwa,” one of the Hindu Trimurti, owes its origin or finds its explanation in the Polynesian word “hiwa,” primarily “dark-colored, black or blue,” secondly “sacred” as a sacrificial offering—though I am unable to say why the dark-colored, black or blue should have been considered sacred, unless we take the Anglo-Saxon “Hefen” or “Heofen,” the elevated firmament, the heaven, the dark-blue sky, as an explanation offered by a cognate dialect. In the Samoan, “Siwa,” in the Tahitian, “Heiwa,” signify dancing; but in all the Polynesian dialects the idea of sacredness underlies and characterizes the derivative meanings. Thus Nuku-Hiwa (one of the Marquesas Isls.), undoubtedly meant originally “the dark, or sacred island,” Fatu-Hiwa, “the sacred rock or stone;” and in Hawaiian we find the same expression in Puaa Hiwa, “the sacred hog” offered in sacrifices. In the Hindu Trimurti the figure of Vishnu is represented in a black or blue color, and thus we find that the same idea of sacredness was by the Sanskrit speaking Hindus attached to that color, as by the Polynesian tribes. The Hindu gods “Varuna” and “Vhani” find their etymological solution and origin in the Polynesian (Tah.) “Varua” and in the Haw. “Uhane,” both signifying “spirit,” a ghost. In the Sanskrit “Saka” was a distinctive appellation of kings, chiefs and lords. I am not aware that any such single word in the Polynesian dialects expresses that meaning, but we find it in a compound form in the Marquesas dialect as “Haka’iki,” Haka-a-iki, a chief. The Polynesian word “ariki” (chief) itself, undoubtedly springs from the same root as the Latin “rego,” to rule,—the Gothic “reiki,” dominion,—the Saxon “rie,” noble, (see comparative catalogue of words in the Polynesian and Aryan families of speech).