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Show 80 ON TilE DISTRIBUTION AND taken, from the Ganges to tho Pillars of IIercules, the Malays must be pronounced as a homely race,"-whose beau-ideal of cuticular charms (as CI\AWFURD says in his larger History) is summed up in the phrase "skin of virgin-gold color." In their physique, the Malays are neither Chinese nor Dravidians, neither Polynesians nor Malagasi, neither Oriental nor Occidental Negroes; but as Dryden the poet sung (p. xvi):- "Flat fllCos, such as would disgrace a screen, Such as in Bantam's embassy woro seen:-" in short, nothing else than Malays. For the specification of their language and. its dialects, the " Grammar and Dictionary" is the source to which we must refer; but, what singularly commends Mr. CnAWFURD's analyticn,l investigations to the ethnographer is, the c.arcfnl mctho~ through which, by well-chosen and varied comparative vocabularL~s, he has succced~d in showing, how Malayan blood, language, anclmfluonce, decrease m the exact 1·atio that from th · . . l . ' eu c?ntmcnta p~1~msula of Malacca, as a starting point, their coloni-zmg pl:op~l~Sltlcs have since widened the diameter between their o;vn. pr1mtt1v~ cradle, and their present commercial factories, or puat10al nuclei. Nor must it be forgotten that, upon many of the 1slands t~cmsolves, both large and small, there exist distinct types of men, mclepcndently of Malayan ot· other colonists on th b d 1 . a· . . e sea-oar , spca <1 ng 1stmct languages. Thus in Sumatra there . 4 "tt d . ' ' me Wl'l en, an 4 unwnttcn tongues, besides other barbarou ·a· spo Ic en 1·1 1 1" ts V·l C· im· ty: at Borneo, so far as is yet kno Sf 1· ts1 0ms 1 d . . wn o 1 un-exp ore. mtenor, there are at least 9; at Celebes, several. At the same t1m.e tha. t., according to Mn · LoGAN ' each newl y-a·I SCOVCre d Msa.v age tr1bo., hke the 0.1 ·an"n M. intird ' the Oran..r,r B enua', th e 0 rang uka I(unzng, &c., am1d the Jungle-hidden creeks around s· Po ·o · t mga- 1 '.p1cson sa new vocabulary. Bomg one of the few Englishmen, morally brave enouo·h to as well as .~uf~?icntly learned to sustain, by scverely-scie~tific ::~:~ mont (PP: n-vu, and elsewhere), polygonistic doctrines on the ori~in of mankmd, Mn. CRAWFURD's ethnological opinions are cntitlcdo t t~c more respect from his follow-philologues, inasmuch as-withou~ disp~te about .a vague appol!ative, "Malayo-Polynesian,"-his hilo-sophiO dcdnctwns must logiCally tally with those co t• t l ~ to h" h F n men a vwws w lc. a 'ranco-Gcrmanic utterance is given at the I f' our sect10n ffid. c ose o ~r;:n t~e vari?us. systems of linguistic classification through w IC eac unpreJUdiCed philologist-i.e., to the exclusi~n always CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 81 ofprcconcoivcd dogmas fabricat d, as Koranic Arabs wouldsay,.fi aydmena ed-djalt~lielt, "during our clays of ignorance"-dc.fincs hi!:! more or less scientific, but ovor-indi vidual, impressions, eli ffcrcnccs of opinion must inevitably ensue; some scholars reasoning from one stand-point, others from another: nor would we, when closing this parenthesis about the term "Malayo-Polyncsian," overlook the pl1ysiological fact indicated by Prof: AoASSlz,30 viz: that identities among types of men linguistically similar, whil st ltistorically and ethuical.ly different, do sometimes arise only from similarity in the internal " structure of the throat"-anatomical niceties imperceptible to the eye perhaps, but not tho less distinctly impressive ou an acute and experienced ear.] Of all tho families of languages at present recognized on tho surface of our globe, there only remains for us to examine tho American to11guos. Endeavor has been made to attach them to tho Polynesian family; but from these they cssouLially di stingui sh themselves, and we shall see presently that certain traits assimilate them, on tho contrary, to African languages. Let us signalize a primary fact. It is that, whilst the populations of the two Americas arc fat· from oflcring a great homogeneity of physical chal'actcrs, their languages, on the contrary, constitute a group which, as relates to grammar, af!'orcls an unity vet·y remarkable. 'rhat which distinguishes all those tongues is a tendency, more apparent than that among any other linguistic family, to agglutination. The words are agglomerated through contraction,-by supprc!:!sing one or several syllables of tho combined radicals-and the words thus formed become treated as if they were simple words, susceptible of being again employed and modified like these. This property has induced tho giving to the languages of tho Now World tho uamo of polysyntlietical,-which M. F. LmnEn has proposed to alter into that of olopltrastic. Besides this characteristic, there are several others that, without being so absolute, seem nevertheless to be very significant. 'l'huf!, these idioms do not in general know our di stinction of gcncl~r; in lieu of recognizing a masculine and a feminine, th ey have ~n antma~ and an inanimate gender. I have said above, that there 1s one tratt which is common to them and to divers idioms of Polynesia, as well as to the IIottentot tongues. It is tho existence of two plurals (and sometimes of two duals), exclusive and inclusive, otl10rwiso termed, IW Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 1860, p. 81:- Type3 of Mankind, P· 282. 6 |
