Work by Early Writers

Te Ao Hou, June 1965, Page 47

Work by Early Writers In the nineteenth century a good few writers explored the relationships which exist between the languages and cultures of India and South-East Asia and those of Polynesia. Many of these writers argued that the original home of the Polynesian people was India, and many of them considered that there was a clear relationship between the Polynesian language and Sanskrit, one of the ancient languages of India (as mentioned above, Sanskrit is one of the oldest branches of the Indo-European family of languages, to which most European languages—English, French, Greek, and so on—belong). Among the early writers who discussed the relationship between Polynesian and Sanskrit were the Germans Franz Bopp and Max MüUller. In 1855 Richard Taylor, in his book ‘Te Ika a Maui’, p.384 ff., discussed the question mainly with reference to the Maori language. However the most important contribution to this subject was made by Edward Tregear, who in 1891 published his ‘Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary’. This Maori dictionary quotes parallel words to be found in other Polynesian languages, and sometimes also quotes parallel words to be found in Asian languages such as Malayan and Sanskrit. Tregear believed that the Maori language was mainly derived from Sanskrit, and that Maori was therefore an Indo-European language, a distant branch of the same family to which most European languages belong. He discusses this theory in his book ‘The Aryan Maori’, published in 1885, and in an article in the ‘Transactions of the New Zealand Institute’, vol. 20, p. 400 ff. I believe that Tregears' arguments are, in the main, correct. Those who attempt to follow him in this field must be greatly indebted to his important pioneering work. Like most pioneers however, Tregear in many respects worked under difficult circumstances; in particular, he did not have access to a Sanskrit dictionary, but used instead a Hindustani one. Hindustani is a contemporary Indian language derived from Sanskrit; it is as different from Sanskrit as is modern English from Anglo-Saxon. Also, Tregear was frequently too imaginative and unsystematic in his approach, and did not adequately test the reliability of his conclusions. Because of this he was severely criticised by such contemporary writers as A. S. Atkinson, and his theories have been neglected by later writers. Tregear recognised the existence of certain ‘sound shifts’ which have occurred between Sanskrit and Maori, but he did not examine these very systematically. There are many more sound shifts than Tregear recognised, and they are of a more complex nature. Furthermore the development of the Polynesian languages involved the following additional, far-reaching changes: