the one destined to disappear, in spite of a relatively advanced development, the Kol-Aryan group; the other, the Dravidian group, vigorous and capable of holding its own among the numerous dialects of Sanscrit origin.

Separated by vocabulary, by the physical and intellectual diversity of the races which have used them or who still speak them, these four expressions of human thought are united by two features only which are common to both; they belong to the same linguistic class, and to nations which occupied the soil of Asia before the arrival of the Semites and Aryansthat is to say, of inflected languages.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MALAYO-POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES.

Ethnographic theories of the peoples between Madagascar and the Paschal Islands: Negritos, Papuans, Australians, Indonesians, Polynesians, Malays - The spread of the Malays on the IndoChinese coasts and in the Indian Archipelago Softness and simplicity of the Malay dialects (Eastern group: Tagala, with which is connected Hova, Bisaya, Formosan ; Western group, Malayo-Javanese)-Character, manners, and literature of the Malays The Polynesians: physical indolence ; effacement of consonants; poetical and mythical tendencies.

In the whole of the vast Malayo-Polynesian domain, extending from Madagascar to the Sandwich Islands. in one direction, and in another to New Zealand, passing by the Sunda Islands, a common speech reigns, of which the groups and sub-groups not only belong to the same class, but possess the elements of the same vocabulary. Only three languages or families of languages are foreign to it, and these, moreover, are too little known for philologists to pronounce upon their origins and affinities. How did the dominant idiom come to extend over so vast a space? Did it appear first at some central point? Was it imported from Asia or Polynesia? from the north or from the east? Is it the language of a conquered race which has absorbed that of the conquerors, as Anglo-Saxon imposed itself upon the Normans? Or the language of invaders, of emigrating tribes, like the languages of the Indo-Europeans?

A cursory review of the races of Malaysia and Oceania will throw light upon these questions, if it does not solve them.

Disregarding secondary distinctions, we find a central black mass, Australia, New Guinea, and the adjacent islands, Melanesia, between two wings of a lighter tint, olive and coffee-coloured to the west, copper and reddish-bronze towards the east. The black mass, which we must regard as autochthonous, is yet very far from being homogeneous. There are three types: the true Papuan, of middle height and robust frame, bearded, with long head and frizzled hair; the Negrito, little and frail, with round head and wavy or smooth hair; the Australian, of mixed race, of varying height, hair sometimes frizzled, sometimes stiff and straight, more or less dolicocephalous.

The eastern lighter wing appears to be nearly homogeneous, more or less tinged towards the left by contact with the Papuans or Australians. It presents from the Tonga Islands eastward a fine race, tall, well made, and well endowed. These are the long-headed Polynesians, who people, in small scattered groups, those islands of the Pacific which are perhaps the relics of a submerged continent. The western wing, on the other side of New Guinea, includes the Philippines, Celebes, Borneo, Ceram, Bali, Sumbava, Java, and Sumatra; here we find, substituted almost everywhere for the Negritos, a fairly tall race with slightly lengthened cranium, corresponding to the Polynesians, and who can hardly be separated from these; they have been called Indonesians. Their principal subdivisions are: the Battaks of Sumatra, who practise agriculture and keep flocks;

they are still cannibals as regards the bodies of criminals; the Redjangs and the Lampoungs of the same island; the Macassars and Boughis of Celebes; the Dayaks of Borneo, obstinate head-hunters; the Bisayas and Tagals of the Philippine Islands, of more or less mixed blood.

Lastly, around, beside, amidst the Negritos, who are reduced to a savage condition, and the stronger and better armed Indonesians, the Malays, little, round-headed, with yellowish skin, active and courageous in spite of their slight frame and small extremities, traffickers and pirates, occupy the coasts of the Malay Peninsula, of Borneo, of the Philippines; haunt the ports of Indo-China and of Southern China; and people the greater part of Sumatra and of Java, either pure or crossed in varying proportion with the Indonesians and Melanesians. Thus the Javanese proper, who fill the centre of the island to the number of thirteen millions, are of very mixed blood, while the Madurais of the east and the Sundeans of the west appear to belong to the true Malay type. We have seen that the Yamatos or Japanese aristocracy are supposed to be of Malay origin.

It seems to me that from the preceding notes, incomplete and summary as they are, we may conclude that the Malays are the latest comers in all the places in which we find them established, and that they nowhere found the land uninhabited on their arrival. Even in Sumatra, of which they occupy the centre, they are wedged between the Atchinese and the Battaks on the west and the Lampoungs on the southeast. Even in Java, of which they occupy the two ends, they have only been able to modify the central group. Elsewhere, except in small islands, they only

оссиру the coasts. Checked in Timor and Ceram, they have completely failed to establish themselves in New Guinea. Driven northwards, they left important groups in the Philippines, and thence perhaps gained Japan. We seem almost to see their invasion, their wanderings; and probability here approaches certainty, inasmuch as everywhere they have driven out or penetrated among Negritos or Indonesians, or else fallen back before immovable and dense populations, and that no invasion has followed theirs, or rather only well-known contingents of Klings or Tamils and Arab merchants, who have not sensibly modified either the distribution of races or the geography of the Malay world.

What was the cradle of this race? Was it the Philippine Islands, where the Tagal dialect preserves the purest and most developed forms of the Malay language? Or Sumatra, which the Malays themselves regard as their country, and whence, if we are to trust their chronicles, they set forth in the twelfth century to conquer the Indo - Siamese Peninsula, and to found Singapore and Malacca ? The first hypothesis, which finds few supporters, is hard to reconcile with the fact that the idiom of the Hovas of Madagascar belongs to the Tagal branch of the Malay stem. Now the Tagal people appears never to have left the Philippines, unless perhaps to visit the Marianne and Pelew Islands; moreover, they are not of Malay blood; and if they have kept the language pure, it is because they received it before it had been mixed with Indian and Arabic. This applies also to the Hovas, Indonesians crossed with Papuan and Malay blood, who were probably driven out from one of the Sunda Islands in prehistoric times. With regard to Sumatra,