The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 67
Art. XLVIL—The Aryo-Semitic Maori. — [A Reply.]
Art. XLVIL— The Aryo-Semitic Maori.
[ A Reply.]
In the last volume of the "Transactions" (xix.) there appeared a paper under the title of "The Aryo-Semitic Maori," by Mr. A. S. Atkinson, of Nelson, on the subject of the origin of the Maori race, and my writings thereon. . . . I will attempt to answer, in as few sentences as possible, the main objections made by Mr. Atkinson.
First, as to the method, a method nicknamed "The Method of Insight." The writer says, in effect, that I claim that my system is a delightfully easy mode of derivation and interpretation, merely being the comparison of surface resemblances. If I stated that for the reader of my little book the result was easy to understand, it by no means followed that the work necessary to produce such results was easy in its process. It is averred by others, (who are followers of the "high and dry" school of philology, and who seem to think that all human knowledge has been digested and absorbed by themselves,) that any two languages may be compared phonetically and resemblances be found. If any one of these persons will take the 7,000 words in Williams' "New Zealand Dictionary" and compare them with, say Esquimaux, or Mexican, he will have no "delightfully easy" task. Better still, a language like the Tlatskanai (Athabascan), quoted by Canon Farrar, wherein kholsiakatatkhusin = tooth, and kholzotkhltzitzkhltsaha= tongue, when compared with Maori, would be a pursuit of no light character, although, as I said of my work, the result would be easy for the reader to follow.
Can it be proved that the phonetic method of comparison utterly fails? or that it fails at all? The more one learns, the more one reads, there comes one crushing dominating idea, the immense antiquity of the human race on the earth. Professor Sayce, who stands amongst the highest of authorities, says (in the last number of the "Journal of the Anthropological Society") that he once made a calculation as to the time since man had been a speaking animal, and he assigned forty thousand years. I must say I feel sympathy with another writer, who has said that those who are hunting for derivations in written records are but "scratching about on the surface" of human speech: words, as symbols of things, had their birth in ages compared with whose antiquity all books, all rock inscriptions, all alphabets and picture writings are but the work of yesterday. With deep reverence for the learned, devoted students of historical research, we must come to real philology at last, to the phonetic bases of the linguistic divisions into families—perhaps at last to the bases of linguistic unity. As a general rule, there can be little doubt but that languages which use the same sounds to express the same ideas are near akin, and from the same primal source. This has been the idea—and, in substance, the only idea—which has made philology possible: it was solely the likeness of sound and sense perceived between words of Hindostanee and words of European languages which wrought the discovery of the Aryan unity, although afterwards strengthened by other assistance, such as that of grammatical forms, etc. Further research has made it certain that many of these resemblances were not justifiable in comparison; nay, those persons who love paradox and exaggeration delight in stating that if two words resemble each other in sound and sense it is a proof that they are not connected. This would destroy the connection between the English "brother" and the Sanscrit bhratri, between our "stand" and the Sanscrit sthá—but such assertion really hardly needs denial. However we may track a word historically, we get to a dim twilight at last, in which we see the word being written down by an unknown scribe, in letters whose values differed according to the differing phonetic values assigned to them by this writer: briefly, this early penman, or rock-cutter, was then doing for his particular dialect yesterday what the missionary is doing in Polynesia to-day— i.e., writing by sound: and it cannot be doubted that comparison between words in such a similar stage is very fairly permissible. Mr. Atkinson states that I take Aryan words in any period of growth, and compare these with Maori: I answer that in many cases I do this intentionally; with this much of reason,—that many words have scarcely changed to any extent within the historic period, and it matters little at what stage comparison is made with these. If I do not (or, rather, did not) give the oldest form, it was because I did not wish to cloud the sense of the passage by carrying the reader through strings of derivations, not always clear without long explanation. Had I taken the oldest form of the word obtainable, it would always have been to the advantage of the Aryan-Maori theory. Thus, I compared the Maori hoko, "to barter" (modern, "to buy or sell"), with the English "hawker," one who buys and sells; but the Teutonic words (German, hoken, "to higgle;" Danish, höker, "a huckster"), which have kept the old form better than the English, are also nearer the Maori. So with the English word "hook," which I compared with the Maori hake, "crooked." A Maori is perfectly able to say huka, and does use the word in a different sense, but does not mean a "hook" thereby: his word hake (✓ Hak), "bent," (compare ahaaka, "bent like a large hook," Colenso,) is akin to the word whence our modern form is derived, the Anglo-Saxon haaca, "a hook;" Dutch haak, Swedish hake, German haken. Again, I compared the Maori hau, "to chop," "to hew," with the English "hew;" but the German hauen (hau-en) is nearer to the Maori word. As to the derivations within the German itself the same cousinship appears. The German tau, "a rope," is (as I said) the Maori tau, "a rope;" but in Kluge's "Etymolo gisclies Worterbuch der Deutschen Sprache" the German tau is said to be connected with the English "tow," as a rope-making material; while the English tow, "to drag," has its Maori equivalent in the verb to, "to drag," "to haul," as a canoe, (to-anga, "towing;" toanga-waka, "a place where canoes are hauled up); the English and the Maori to be similarly spelt, if written down for the first time, to-day, by sound. I think that the accusation about "words of any period" being used to suit my convenience in comparison fails—it was to suit my convenience as to brevity that I took the familiar form.
Mr. Atkinson considers that I take too much latitude in regard to the letter sounds, instancing that I bring the Sanscrit ve, "to weave," into comparison with Maori syllables we, whe, and whi. There is great indecision in some of the Maori forms between w and wh. I could quote numberless instances where good Maori scholars (in past days) use waka for whaka (causative). I am often doubtful, in comparing Polynesian words, as to which is the oldest form, h, wh, f, v, w, etc.: in many cases the Maori appears to be wrong. Thus, ahi, "fire," should (by comparison with the Samoan afi) perhaps be written awhi; hoe, "a paddle," (in Samoan foe,) should perhaps be whoe-it being possible to distinguish the true h sounds because rendered by Samoan s: thus Maori hau, "wind" =sau: Maori hoa, "a friend "—soa; this question requires much consideration. That the Maori whenu, "the warp of cloth;" whiri, "to plait," Tongan fifi, "to plait cocoanut leaves;" Tahitian, firi, "to plait;" Hawaiian, hili, "to plait, to twist, to spin," may all be connected with a root vi or ve, "to spin, to weave," is very probable phonetically : the sound here seldom gets so far away from its radical as the European derivatives of the root ve or ri; examples given being wine, withy, osier, uitis, ferrule, willon, etc. (Skeat's "Etymological Dictionary"). As to the assertion that I represent Sanscrit d, dh, l, and r by the Maori r, that is also a fact: my plea being that the English sounds are thus represented in Maori. We translate the D of "David" by R of Rawiri; the l of "linen" by r of rinena : and both l and r in the word "glory" as kororia. What interpreters do in translating Aryan English into Maori letters is the only guide I have in thus comparing the Aryan Sanscrit with Maori sounds written in these letters.
The most amusing part of this objection appears when we consider its bearing on the Malay. Because a few words in Malay resemble Maori in sound and sense, therefore, say the "high and dry" people, this is good enough to prove connection between these peoples. There is no proof that Malay dua, "two," is the Maori rua, "two," except sound-likeness; but if the student, conceding relationship, goes further, and expresses the opinion that the Aryan dua, "two," is also a near connection there is a shriek of horror from the classical linguists. The grammarian cries "Impossible!"—quite ignoring the fact that rules of grammar mark mere stages in the progress of a language, and that modern English grammar is as tar away from Sanscrit or old Latin as the Malay grammar is from the Maori, and that is a "far cry." For every Malay word traceable in the Maori vocabulary, the student can find twenty Polynesian words in the German Dictionary.
The objection that I split up a Native word as I choose is one that I defend, if in doing so I can prove that the probable radix appears more distinctly in that form. A greater or less complexity may be allowed to roots; but the more simple the form we use, the more we surrender the meanings possible to be expressed. I do not consider that the division according to the Native mode of so dividing a word would be the best way in which to arrive at the primal significance. Thus, if we take the word patu, "to strike," I consider that it may be treated under three distinct radical forms: that is, either as the third root ✓ Pat, "to strike;" or, as the second, the more simple ✓ Pa "to touch; or perhaps its most primitive form, ✓A, "to urge," "to drive." Whatever may be the vowel of direction or modification used to close the syllable in Polynesian fashion the sound of ✓ Pat or ✓ Pak (the true dialectical interchange) carries the sense of "striking," "knocking, "pattering," "patting," "breaking," etc., in patu, pata, patoto, patiti, patōtō, pakakū, pakanga, pakaru, paketu, paki, pakini, pakunu, and pakuru The sister-words in the Islands are multitudinous, but need not be quoted. I think this argument shows that, in spite of the natural divisions of a Polynesian word into distinct syllables, each ending with a vowel, a radical sense may extend itself over words like pata, "to drip" like water; ripi, "to cut;' mano, "the heart" (mental, not physical), manawa, "the heart;" mana, "influence, authority;" maru, "bruised;" kite, "to see, perceive" which would allow them to be referred to similar roots to those given (Appendix, Skeat's "Etymological Dictionary") Aryan roots: such as ✓ Pat, "to fall," ✓ Rup, "to break ✓ Mar, "to grind," ✓ Man, "to think," ✓ Kit, "to perceive,"
Mr Atkinson scores one point against me fairly enough : that in which he shows that my comparison of kiri, "the skin," with our curry, "to dress hides," is wrong. He does this on the authority of Professor Skeat, who states that curry comes from courroyer, the old French being con-royer; thus showing [ unclear: it] to be a compound word conveying the idea of "to set in [ unclear: order.] I yield the point, pleading that, at the time I wrote the paper containing this comparison, I had no copy of Skeat's [ unclear: "Etymo]. logical English Dictionary," and that I was relying upon [ unclear: tw] other Etymological English Dictionaries as references. In [ unclear: the] first, Richardson's "New Dictionary of the English [ unclear: Language,] 1855, the derivation of curry is given as through French corroyer from the Latin corium, "a hide," with the example : i corium equi et dorsum fricare strigilli, "to rub the hide of a horse with a currycomb." The other authority was Ward and [ unclear: Lock] "Standard Etymological Dictionary," 1880, in which cornoyer is given as a derivative of corium. There can be little [ unclear: dou] that the French cuir, "leather," is connected with Latin corium "a hide," Lithuanian skura, "a hide," Sanscrit karma, "hide," Irish creat, "a hide:" all pointing to a common [ unclear: ro] ✓ Kar or ✓ Kir (KR) as their source, and thus being akin the Maori kiri, "a hide." If we also consider the word curée, given by Brachet * as a hunting term for "pieces of skin, etc., [ unclear: throw] to the hounds," I think it possible that in the vulgar or provincial idioms unknown to literary men, a word "curry," meaning something to do with hides, or the skin, did exist in English, even by the side of such base compounds as con-royer This may yet be found by English scholars to be the case, and the etymology reconsidered. From my correction by [ unclear: M] Atkinson a very useful lesson may be learnt, that is [ unclear: as] considering any Etymological Dictionary as a thing "made [ unclear: la] by the Medes and Persians." If we compare our derivation to-day with those given only thirty years ago, note the discrepancies, and then picture our present works in the light of century hence, the notion that we know all about everything—even about the impossibility of the Aryan-Maori theory—may be shaken.
[ unclear: but]
will take it for granted that Mr. Atkinson has not been mocking the Society too utterly by sending in a paper for publication without any seriousness in it at all. He first discusses the word " Maori," which he says is the same as " Mauri"[ unclear: (]
and asserts that the meaning is probably "living, not[ unclear: dead.]
He then quotes from Codrington's "Melanesian[ unclear: Languages']
in support of this. I think that most Maori student will agree with me in declining to consider that Mauri and Maori are one word, or that the meaning of Maori[ unclear: is]
* "French Ety. Diet.," 1878.
* Mr. Atkinson's example of mauri meaning "living" is the "God save you" expression, used when one sneezes : Tihe, mauri ora! ("Sneeze, living soul!") Only, unfortunately for Mr. Atkinson, the word for "living" in this sentence is ora, so that as an example of mauri meaning "living" it is very weak.
[ unclear: i]
Polynesian scholars will accept any such theory. There[ unclear: i]
great persistence and no great difference in most vital Polynesian words : rakau, "a tree," for instance, is lakau, [ unclear: ra] laau in almost all the islands. But if we are to study Polynesian through Melanesian; if we are to find the word [ unclear: rak] (honestly) in hayu, ai, ei, kayu, diwal, pasil, ie, etc., as Mr. Codrington says, we shall require "more light" than a single book can afford us. There can be little reason for studying; Maori through such corrupt and degraded channels as the Melanesian speech; it would be about as reasonable as[ unclear: t]
study the English language through the "slave-blobber" o the American Negro. It seems to me that Mr. Codrington's efforts are used to make those among whom he labours be considered equal to any of the other islanders. He says (p. 12): "The Melanesian people have the misfortune to be black, to be much darker, at least, than either Malays or Polynesians;" (at p. 13) "there is no doubt a certain reluctance on the brown side to acknowledge the kindred of the black. The Melanesians are the poor relations, at the best,[ unclear: o]
their more civilized and stronger neighbours;" (at p. 35)[ unclear: "t]
the Polynesian, who is shocked at being claimed as a relation by a much blacker man than himself, it is answered that be speaks a language very like the Melanesian, but not so complete and full." The gist of these remarks seems to be, "My black-fellow is as good as (if not better than) your brown-[ unclear: fellow.]
I can only say that there is no moro reluctance among the Polynesians to acknowledge kinship with the Melanesians[ unclear: tha]
there is among Europeans to acknowledge kinship with the light races of the South Seas. By the accounts of the early explorers, they again and again mistook Polynesians[ unclear: f]
Europeans. Ethnologically, I should think that the distance between the straight-haired, light-brown, Polynesian and the blue-black, woolly-haired Melanesian was very great,[ unclear: i]
type, although there may be many intermediate links in the islands, made by persistent "crossings" of the[ unclear: strains]
blood.The Malagasy speech-family is a very difficult subject [ unclear: t] treat of: as to many words being kindred (if the sound and [ unclear: so] resemblance is acknowledged as proof of unity) with the Malay, the fact is indisputable, although I believe many of the [ unclear: coincidenes] are fallacious. But the Polynesian words to be found are [ unclear: fe] indeed : the words used in Madagascar have been but too [ unclear: ofter] compared with the corrupt and abraded forms of Eastern Polynesia, wherein, by the dropping of important letters, all [ unclear: origins] form of the word has been lost, and become worthless for purposes of comparison. And the grammar! He must [ unclear: be] "grammarian with a theory," indeed, who finds Malagasy, Papuan, Malay, and Maori grammars identical. The Malagasy is so full of words adopted from English, French, Portuguese, Arabs, and the neighbouring African tribes (as well as Malays), that comparison is infinitely dangerous and difficult.
"My chief object in publishing, more than twenty years ago, my letter to Bunsen 'On the Turanian Languages,' in which these views were first put forward, was to counteract the dangerous dogmatic scepticism which at that time threatened to stop all freedom of research, and all progress in the Science of Language. No method was then considered legitimate for a comparative analysis of languages except that which was, no doubt, the only legitimate method in treating, for instance, the Romance languages, but was not, therefore, the only possible method for a scientific treatment of all other languages. No proofs of relationship were then admitted even for languages outside the pale of the Aryan and Semitic families, except those which had been found applicable for establishing the relationship between the various members of these two great families of speech. My object was to show that, during an earlier phase in the development of language, no such proofs ought ever to be demanded, because, from the nature of the case, they could not exist, while yet their absence would in no way justify us in denying the possibility of a more distant relationship."
* See Fornander, "Polynesian Race," vol. iii. p. 12.
Concerning those Semitic languages which Mr. Atkinson brings forward as evidence how my method can be applied to them, he at once frankly confesses that his knowledge of Arabic is of such a quality that he has not even taken the trouble to acquire the ability to read the written character. I have a greater charge to bring against him even than indolence: he does not seem to have understood the A, B, C of modern philology, which separates the root-formation of the Aryan and Semitic branches of language into two distinct systems : "The root of Aryan verbs is all but invariably monosyllabic, consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel, as in
da, 'give,' or
sta, 'stand:' but the root of the Semitic verb is always trilateral, or rather triconsonantic, and therefore necessarily dissyllabic—
i.e., instead of being, as in Aryan, an open syllable, it is always close (as in
qtl, 'to kill;'
dbr, 'to speak;'
ktb, 'to write.') . . . Thus, in Greek, γράμμα is 'a writing,' γραφϵúς 'a writer,' and ϵγραψϵ, 'he wrote;' whereas in Hebrew
SeePheR is 'a book,'
SoPHeeR is 'a writer,' and
SâPHaR, 'he wrote.' Again, in Greek, βασιλϵρς is 'a king,' and
'he reigned;' but in Hebrew
MeLeK is 'a king,' and the same word with other vowels,
MâLaK, 'he reigned.' Thus it is as if in Hebrew the trilateral consonants—which were the only things which appeared in writing at all, the vowels being left absolutely unrepresented—were things too sacred to touch."
*
* Canon Farrar, "Language and Languages," pp. 354-56.
The " nay a" theory I shall not defend at any length, but I decline to accept Mr. Atkinson's play upon nga as conclusive in any way. The Maori, who knows not the snake in New Zealand, uses for "snail, slug," etc., the word ngata, which in Polynesia means the "snake," and is in Hawaiian naka. Whether the Hawaiian form is nearest of kindred to the naga serpent of Sanscrit, the naga, Malay, "a dragon," snaca, Anglo- Saxon, and the Icelandic snakr, I do not know; but Hawaiian forms are nearer to European in many words than Maori forms are—perhaps because, as I said in "The Aryan Maori," the Hawaiian may be a later migation. It is curious, too, to notice that "snail" (Maori ngata,) is ( snægl) from the same root as "snake," whilst "adder" (properly a "nadder") is the German natter. I had spoken in "The Aryan Maori" of the "footed serpent," the lizard, being regarded with awe; it is certain that nya in Polynesia was used for the "lizard." The Marquesans call the large house-lizard nga-nga, a curious word if it is merely the duplicated article. Constantly, in Marquesan, ng changes with k, (as it does in Maori—and in Latin,) * the representative of this word in New Zealand being kakariki, the green lizard, for nganga, ngaka, or ngata-riki. † Thus it seems highly probable that the important part of the word ngata, "a snake," is nga. If it was really the case that the Maoris, like other Polynesians, knew the snake as ngata, nata, or naka, then the missionaries in giving them the word naka for "snake" were unintentionally (even pathetically) giving them back their own word lost for centuries, as I feel certain they unsuspectingly did in a hundred other cases, where words supposed to be pakeha-maori, or corrupted English, may be found in songs and incantations ages old. Be that as it may, anyone who considers that where nga is used in composition as a prefix it is but the plural article "the," can scarcely have examined the subject at all. Setting aside the direct words nga, "to breathe," nganga, "a stone," etc., there are many words prefixed with nga, in which nga evidently has some direct bearing on the sense of the word that no conception of it as merely a prefixed article agglutinated will explain. Whether nga has ever meant naga or not, it seems possible, from the genius of the Polynesian language making a vowel follow a simple consonant, that this double consonant sound ng may once have had a vowel between n and g = na-ga.
* Marquesan, ikoa, for ingoa; hoki, for hongi, etc. Latin, pingo and pictum, tango and tactum.
† See "Aryan Maori," p. 26.