THE ARYAN MAORI.

Colonist, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4219, 15 August 1885, Page 4

THE ARYAN MAORI.

Under this title the Government Printing Office has just issued a very Lmeatly: got up and' most interesting little book written-by ;Mr Edward Tregear, of Wellington. Mr Tregear does not profess to be a Maori scholar, ' and he 'has drawn largely on Mr .Golenso's contributions to the Transac : :tions of the New Zealand Institute, as well as on Sir George Grey's and Judge Maning's works. ;The: conclusions to which his researches have led him is—(l) That the Maori is an afyan;:(2)' that his language and traditions prove him ta be the descen--dant of a pastoral people, afterwards warlike and migratory;1 (3) that his language has preserved in'an almost inconceivable purity the speech of his aryan forefathers, and compared with which, the Greek and Latin!tongues are mere corruptions; (4) that their language has embalmed the memory of animals, implements, &c, the actual sight of, which has been lost to the Maori for centuries. These are the positive , conclusions at which ■Mr i Tregear has arrived. The probable ones are (1) that the Maori left India about four thousand years ago; (2) .that'he has been in New Zealand nearly as long as that time. The manner in which the author traces ~ihejr, supposed., migration, and the facts which he adduces in support of his theory, are highly interesting, and some of them very remarkable and striking.