Papuan Habits. 345 the burying of a living Fiji chief, whose wives were strangled at the same time, are not unfavourably explained by this superstition; indeed the custom which is found in the Loyalty Islands of killing the mother or aunt of a loved dead child that it may not be quite forsaken in the other world, is almost pathetic.32 With this is closely connected the worship of the dead, whose skulls are set up as household gods, invoked for signs, and appealed to for assistance in difficult undertakings. This custom cannot have been borrowed from the Polynesians, as it has been observed among the Papuans of New Guinea. In the latter place are found large, high, empty buildings, erected on piles, which are used as temples or places of devotion.33 The Papuans hold dualistic opinions, for they hurl all manner of imprecations at an evil being called Manuvel, while they offer worship and sacrifice only to the good guardian spirit, under the name of Narvojé.34 There are no professional Shamans among the nations of pure race, but each individual studies to interpret the future. The innocence of persons accused is tested by ordeal, either by boiling water or by prolonged immersion. In New Guinea, and wherever Polynesian visitors have not introduced their customs and social tenets, freedom and equality prevail, and the power of the chiefs is therefore nominal. The Papuan race has attained its highest intellectual and social development in the Fiji Islands, where, owing to frequent intercourse with the Tongans, it has very readily adopted Polynesian inventions and institutions. Among these are the drinking of Yakona, or Kava, the division into guilds or castes, and, lastly, the institution of taboo, which the chiefs have carefully fostered as a means of increasing their power. It is only necessary to trail their garments over the fields in order to consecrate to their own use all the produce which they had touched. The chiefs of Mbengga, an island off the south coast of Great Fiji, bore the title of Gali-cuva-ki-lagi, or "subject to Heaven alone." The small island despots were in constant strife, and their history is in many points comparable with that of the Peloponnesian war. A kind 32 Fiji and the Fijians. 33 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi. of diplomatic corps existed at the various courts, and was familiar with political arts.35 When embassies were sent, sticks and nets were used to aid the memory. This seems a first attempt at symbolical embodiment of thought, and a proof of a need for writing. In the Pelew Islands strings with knots and loops serve for the exchange of news, or to authorize any commission entrusted to a third person. In the local dialect they are called rusl, and it is a significant fact that this word is now applied also to the letters of Europeans. 36 The Fijians are polite and polished in their conversation: according to Williams, their languages contain expressions which exactly correspond to the French Monsieur and Madame.37 Even in presence of Europeans they retain a strong feeling of national pride, which to us seems like ignorant conceit. 38 They are extraordinarily rich in mythological fictions, which are recited in rhythm as well as rhyme, and in magniloquent language. A European, who told them the stories of the Arabian Nights, gained a considerable sum of money from his auditors. As in all Papuans, belief in a future life is so powerful that it leads to suicide and human sacrifice on the graves of the deceased. As a matter of course, this is accompanied by a worship of the dead, in addition to which Ndengei, the creator of the world and of mankind, is adored under the symbol of a serpent. 39 Among their industrial inventions is a net, as a protection against mosquitoes: the neighbouring Polynesians have neither these nets nor earthen vessels, such as are made by the Fijians of red or blue clay, and are remarkable for their true and graceful outlines. Although in shipbuilding they are the pupils of the Polynesians, yet they manufacture canoes one hundred and eighteen feet long, and twenty-four feet wide, fit them with masts of sixty-eight feet in height, and decorate them profusely with carvings. For these purposes their tools are only unpierced 35 Horatio Hale, Ethnography, p. 51. stone axes, and rat's teeth for the finer sculpture; brain corals, and the skin of the sting-ray are used as files, and, lastly, pumicestone for polishing. They have advanced so far in the science of war as to fortify their villages with moats or canals, and to lay in stores of food, nominally sufficient for four years. Unluckily, they are more inclined to cunning than to heroic courage, and they are also generally accused of craft, falsehood, and inordinate distrust. It is among this undoubtedly highly gifted and active people that cannibalism did and does especially prevail. III. THE MONGOLOID NATIONS. To this race belong the Polynesian and Asiatic Malays, the people of South-eastern and Eastern Asia, the inhabitants of Thibet, some of the hill tribes of the Himalayas, as well as all Northern Asiatics with their kinsmen in northern Europe, and, lastly, the aboriginal population of America. Their common characters are long straight hair, which is cylindrical in section; almost complete absence of beard and hair on the body; a dark-coloured skin, varying from a leather-like yellow to deep brown, or sometimes tending to red; and prominent cheek-bones, generally accompanied by an oblique setting of the eyes. Their other characters occur in so many gradations that the local types pass into one another, as will be shown in each group. The linguistic characters alone afford grounds for subdivision. 1. THE MALAY RACE. The Malay languages are distinguishable by a community of roots but not of words. This indicates that the members of this family of nations separated before the structure of the language had assumed fixed principles. The primitive language itself developed independently and stood alone in the world. Its defining roots are sometimes placed before and sometimes after the main word. The Polynesian dialects are poorer in sounds and have remained more archaic; the Western or Asiatic dialects are richer, and in them the morphological and material elements of the groups of roots are at the same time more closely united by transformations of sound.1 The home in which this primitive language was developed was situated in South-eastern Asia, either on the great islands of the Sunda or on the projection of the continent. From this centre a portion of the family, now become maritime, swarmed out towards the east, peopling the islands of the South Seas as far as the Hawai group on the north, and Easter Island on the extreme east. This branch of the Malays came into frequent contact with the Papuans, thus giving rise to the hybrids which are called Micronesians. The time at which the Polynesian Malays separated from their Asiatic kinsfolk cannot as yet be even approximately determined. An able botanist, Berthold Seemann, who was taken from us prematurely, has indeed remarked that the palm wine, which is obtained from the sheath of the cocoa-nut tree blossom, is called toddy, or taddy, by the Malays of the Sunda Islands. As this word is derived from Sanscrit, it would appear to have been the Brahminical Hindoos who first introduced the important art of preparing palm wine into the islands of Southern Asia. Now, as the cocoa-nut palm probably spread from east to west, and occurs in all tropical islands of the South Seas, as its nuts are the daily food of the inhabitants of the atolls, or coral groups, and its milk is often the only means of appeasing thirst, it is hardly credible that if the Polynesians before their migration knew the secret of preparing palm wine, they should ever have disused it. But as this beverage was entirely unknown to them at the time of the first visits of Europeans, their emigration must have taken place before the arrival in Java of Sanscrit-speaking Indians, hence certainly before the beginning of the era of the Saka or Salivana, which was introduced about the year 78 B.C.3 But this argument points to a period too recent. The evolution of the varieties of the language required a far greater lapse of time. We may also add that the 1 Fr. Müller, Reise der Fregatte Novara ; Anthropologie. Polynesian Malays. 349 art of manufacturing earthen vessels was not yet known to the Polynesians in their original home at the time of their migration, for they all cook their food by means of heated stones. On the other hand, the custom of consecrating persons or things so that they must not be touched was already established in this original abode, for traces of the institution of taboo are still preserved in the form of interdicts in the island of Timor and among the Dyaks of Borneo.+ The prevalent eastern monsoons and westward currents offered no insurmountable obstacles to the eastward diffusion of the Polynesians from the west, for there are plenty of contrary winds and counter currents. That these obstacles were formerly much over-estimated is proved by the map of Tupaia,5 a Polynesian who was familiar with all the island groups between the Marquesas to the east, and the Fiji archipelago in the west, so that in Captain Cook's time intercourse from Tahiti must have extended throughout forty degrees of longitude. Comparison of Polynesian dialects and the traditions of the natives afford further means of ascertaining the order in which the various colonizations succeeded each other. The inhabitants of Rapa-nui, or Easter Island, maintain that they come from Oparo or Rapaiti (27° 35' s. lat., 144° 20' w. long.), and therefore, on their voyage to their own country, must have touched at Pitcairn's Island and abandoned it again, for remains of old stone structures are still standing there. According to the native traditions they landed, four hundred in number, under a leader or king Tu-ku-i-u, or Tocuyo, who is also called Hotu, or Hotu Motua. From the time of their arrival to the present day twentytwo chiefs have succeeded to the government, so that if the average duration of each reign is reckoned at twenty years, the colonization of the island does not date further back than the • Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie. Spenser St. John, Life in the Far East, vol. i. p. 175. 5 United States Exploring Expedition, 1846, where this map is for the first time correctly explained by Horatio Hales. Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. v. 7 Palmer, Visit to Easter Island, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xl. 1870. |