Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/44

 XXXIV IXTRODrCTIOX.

I liavo no doubt that this is the same Dravidian termination -illi which -we shall tind in ta-killi-ko and in many other Awa- bakal words, but here added on to the same root which we find in the Sanskrit di(p), 'to shine.'

The Ebudan of Baki has sembi to mean 'fire'; now sembu in Dravidian means 'red.' In Australia, a very genei'al word for 'fire' is wi, win ; in the north-west of Tasmania it is win-alia ; these I take to be from the same root as our mil, 'the eye,' and the Dravidian min. In Tasmania also, tintya means 'red'; to which cognates are the Sanskrit damh, dah, ' to burn,' dams, dame, 'to bite,' 'to see'; in Tamil tind-u, is 'to kindle,' tittu, 'to whet'; cf. Anglo-Saxon tendan, 'to kindle,' English tinder.

Besides mata, the Maoris have another word for 'eye,' kanohi, which much resembles the Dravidian kan, 'the eye,' k an, 'to see '; and the root of kan may be the same syllable as in Sanskrit ak-shi, 'eye,' the ak being by metathesis changed into ka. At all events, the root kan is abundantly prevalent in the sporadic languages; for the Maori itself has kana, 'to stare wildly,' that is, ' to look keenly'; ka, 'to burn'; ka-ka, 'red-hot'; kana-pa, 'bright,' 'shining'; kana-ku, 'fire'; and cognate Polynesian dialects have kano-i-mata, 'the pupil (i.e., 'the sheen") of the eye'; 'a'ano, certain ' red berries,' ' the flesh of animals,' from its redness; ka-napa-napa, 'to glitter'; ka-n a pa, 'lightning.' The simple root ka gives la, ra, 'the sun,' and all the Polynesian words connected with these forms.

Nor is this root-word ka, kan confined to Polynesian dialects ; in Ebudan, ' fire ' is in-caj), kapi, kapu, gapu, av, avi; and the Papuan dialects have for 'fire,' kova, kai-wa ; for ' burn,' ogabu, igabi. xVnd kai-o in Greek is ' I burn.'

It is interesting to know, also, that in the states which form the Himalayan boimdary of India the woi-ds for ' eye ' are m i, mik, mighi, mak, mo, mak, mo; and, farther east, in Cochin- China and Tonkin, mot, mok, mu. It thus appears that, on the wliole our common word mil, 'the eye,' is more akin to the non- Aryan races of India — the representatives of its earlier population.

In closing this section of my subject, I presume I need scarcely say that the evidence before us drawn from the words for ' water,' ' blind,' and ' eye,' fully justifies the opinion that the Australian languages are not isolated, but that, in their essential root-words, they have a close relation to the languages of the Southern Seas and to similar root-words in the languages of the great peninsula of India. I cannot conceive it to be possible that our blackfellows should have, by chance, invented words which, when analysed, show the underlying ideas ex])ressed by them to be the same as those root-words spread overso vast an area elsewhere.

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