Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/90

78 into 4 dialects, and what is more remarkable that it is in fact the same as the Malayan of Singapore. This Malayan language we learn further from other sources, extends in its various dialects not only over the Indian Archipelago to which the Continental writers have given the name of Oceania, but also into the Pacific and to the main-land of Asia, and in some degree to the island of Madagascar. Mr. Marsden and some other authorities have thought it confined to the brown coloured people commonly known as Malays, but later information collected or given us by Mr. Earl, Mr. Crawfurd and Dr. Latham, shows us that the same language is also possessed in a greater or less degree by a number of the black coloured tribes, while some of the brown tribes have equal degrees of difference among themselves. What may be the real degree of relationship of these several languages or dialects to one another is of little consequence to the course of argument I have to maintain. Mr. Crawfurd, whose long residence in those countries and means consequently of knowledge entitles him to our first consideration, begins his Paper printed in the 1st Vol. of our Journal in the year 1848 and also his valuable Grammar published in 1852 with these words, "Distinct and unequivocal traces of a Malayan language have been found from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Formosa to New Zealand over 70 degrees of latitude and 200 of longitude." Having made this broad admission he proceeds to state, that, "to account for this remarkable dissemination of a language singular for its extent among a people so rude, it has been imagined by Mr. Marsden, Sir Stamford Raffles, William Humboldt, and others, that all the tribes within its bounds with the exception of the Papuans and Negroes, constitute one and the same race and had originally one language broken down by time and dispersion into many dialects." Somewhat inconsistantly then with his first announcement he disputes this theory and carried away by physical characteristics he adds, "whether their languages be of one stock or not, the men themselves belong physically to distinct races, to be divided into three groups, men of brown complexion with lank hair, men of sooty complexion with woolly hair and men of brown complexion with frizzled hair, each again consisting of several subdivisions." Having adopted this opinion evidently on view of personal differences, he endeavours to counteract the admission he had first made by attempting to show how little of the Malay language was to be found among the several other tribes he refers to. In so doing he has shown however, in my humble judgement, notwithstanding his learned