Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/72

 Ixii INTEODUCTION.

Island in the extreme east — all these aclvnowledged by Polyne- sians to be the work of a previous race, which tradition, in various parts, declares to have been black — points out one of the routes by which the black race spread itself abroad into the eastern isles ; while the presence of Negrillo tribes in detached portions nearer to India — like islands left uncovered by the floods of stronger races pouring in — the Miiicopies in the Andaman Islands, the Samangs in the Malay Peninsula, and the Aetas in the interior of Borneo, with the wild remnants of a black race in the heart of many of the larger islands of the Malay Archi- pelago — all this seems to me to show that the primitive Dasyus, driven from India, passed into Purther India'and thence — being still impelled by race movements — into our own continent and. into the islands to the north and east of it. But this question must be left for separate investigation.

Thus, in my view, our island first received its native population, in two different streams, the one from the north, and the other from the north-west. Many known facts favour this view : —

(1.) Ethnologists recognise two pre- Aryan races in India. The earlier had not attained to the use of metals and used only polished flint axes and implements of stone ; the later had no written records, and made grave mounds over their dead. The Vedas call them ' noseless,' ' gross feeders on flesh,' ' raw eaters,' ' not sacrificing,' ' without gods,' ' without rites ' ; they adorned the bodies of the dead with gifts and raiment and ornaments. All this suits our aboriginals ; they are noseless, for they have very flat and depressed noses, as contrasted with the straight and prominent noses of the Vedic Aryans ; they have no gods and no religious rites such as the Vedas demand.

(2.) The Kolarian and Dravidian languages have inclusive and exclusive forms for the plural of the first person. So also have many of the languages of Melanesia and Polynesia.

(3.) The native boomerang of Australia is used on the south- east of India, and can be traced to Egypt — both of them Hamite regions.

(4.) In the Ivamalarai dialect, the four class-names form their feminines in -tlia ; as, Kubbi (viasc), Kubbi-tha (fern.) ; and that is a Shemitic formative. ISo also in the Hamitic Babylo- nian, Mul (masc.) gives Muli-tta (fern.), and Enu (masc), Enu-ta {fern?). Although this formative is not common in the Austra- lian languages, yet its unmistakable presence in Ivamalarai may mean that our native population has in it the same mixed elements as existed in the old Babylonian empire. To the same eftect is the fact that some tribes practise circumcision, while contiguous tribes do not ; in many places the natives, in considerable num- bers, have distinctly fShemite features ; some have as regular Caucasian features as any of us ; others, again, arc purely negroid.

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