Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/72

60 It seems to me that, when the Polynesians left India, they bequeathed—as it were—their word for rice to the Telinga and other peoples they left behind. I claim for the Polynesians that they are the original owners of the name for rice, and that they cultivated it in India before the irruption of the Aryans into that country.

It will not be inferred from what has been stated above, that the Polynesians were the first to occupy Indonesia. It is clear, upon several grounds, that they were preceded there by the Papuans or Melanesians—branches of a Negritto race. It seems probable, from what is known of these people, that they also came originally from India, and it is possible that they may have introduced the rice with them, but until it is shown that they did so, and that they use the word vari for rice, it seems more reasonable to suppose it was the Polynesians—a race of a much higher standard of civilization. Judging from Earle's "Papuans"—a term he applies to all the Negritto people of Indonesia, wherever found—this people, although fond of rice, do not grow it, or only to a very limited extent; they obtain it now-a-days by trade with the Malays. The inference is that they were not a rice-growing race originally; had they been so, we should find them still cultivating it in parts of Indonesia where they have not been disturbed, such as in New Guinea, or even further afield, in the Solomon and New Hebrides islands. The Polynesians—a superior race— would find little difficulty in expelling the Negritto race, wherever they came in contact with them. No doubt they would often enslave them, and hence, probably, their references to the Manahune people, to be referred to later on. I assume that the Manahune were of the lighter-coloured Melanesians—or Papuans—not the almost black people.