ORIGIN OF THE

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1923, Page 5

ORIGIN OF THE

LINK WITH EARLY INDIA.

PACIFIC MIGRATION TRACED,

EVIDENCE FROM LANGUAGE.

By Telegraph.—Press Association.

Wellington, Last Night

At the Science Congress to-day the early Maori migrations, as evidenced and illustrated by a diagram of the ocean currents and prevailing winds of the Pacific Ocean, and by the Maori and Polynesian names of plants, birds, colors, metals, places, etc., were dealt With in an interesting paper by Mr. F. W. Christian.

The question of the origin of the Maori and his Polynesian brethren, said Mr. Christian, was bound up with a wider and deeper one—the possibility that South America was discovered by voyagers from the Indian Archipelago. From the testimony of the physical geography of the Maori and of the red men’s tradition, and by cumulative and mutually supporting evidence of the language, a strong case seemed to be made out for the claim that the early Jdonesian voyagers crossed the Pacific, following a course some fifteen degrees above the Equator and discovering Hawaiiki, or the eight islands of Hawaii. Some of them stayed there and became the ancestors of the light brown Polynesian races, ultimately reaching New Zealand by a circuitous course, via the Marquesas, Mangareva,. Tahiti and the Cook Islands. Some of them appeared to have gone on till they struck the coast of South America at Guayaquil harbor. They not only brought the kumera from Java into the wide Pacific, hut they also brought it to Peru and Equador, where the Inca, the red men of Pern and of Quito, called the white potato the kumar to this very day. • The lecturer demonstrated from a skilfully drawn map the influence exerted by the mighty parallelogram of forces formed by the ocean currents and trade winds in. carrying forward and scattering flotilla upon flotilla of .emigrants from Indonesia in their great seagoing canoes, until they occupied islands and archipelagoes up to the very shores of the great continent. Tn support of the testimony of physical geography and native tradition, the lecturer quoted many tree and bird names, together with the names of reptiles, insects. fishes, colors and metals to prove the far nor’-western 'origin of the Maori in Java and the neighboring islands of the Indian Archipelago. He then traced the great migrations outward past New puinea. and the great duel between the black man. and the brown man for possession of the archipelago and the scattered islands. The lecturer showed that many Now Zealand plant aijfl tree names, such as totara. kah’katea, karamu, maire. wharo. hineu. kptakuta, etc., were Indonesian and Indian names, some of them being even ancient Semitic, dating back to the far-off days when the southern Arab and Phoenesian sailors visited Java and the Malay Peninsula. The name of the kotare. or kingfisher, was traced back through Tahiti to the Carolines and thence to Flores and Java, and names of the friffate, or bosun bird, and other birds to the aneient sacred language of India. The ngarara. or monstrous maneating lizards of Maori tradition, were shown to be identical with the Sanscrit name of the crocodile of the Ganges. The Maori color names for white, black, red. green, yellow and blue were carefully analysed and wore shown io have ultimately belonged to India and southeastern Asia, where the forefathers of the Maori had a very fair knowledge of dyeing and of dye stuffs. The lecturer claimed that out of some thousand words in Rarotongan 60 to 65 per cent, were of Aryan origin, either quite pure or slightly modified from contact with the Malay, and that 25 per cent, represented a very early Semitic clement, acquired from some language akin to the carlv south Arabic of the Phoenesians. Only ten per cent, of the words suggested a deeply submerged and almost entirely buried substratum of the black of the Melanesian element. “The evidence now available.” he concluded,'“seems to prove Qie Maori to be about three-fourths Aryan, and to support and.'vindicate the theory of Fornender, and, at a later date, the view of Mr. E. Tregear and the late Mr. Percy Smith.”