80 O N T H E D I S T R I B U T I O N A N D
taken, from the Ganges to the Pillars of Hercules, the Malays musi
he pronounced as a homely race,”—whose beau-ideal of cuticular
charms (as C r a w f u r d says in his larger History) is summed up in the
phrase “ skin of virgin-gold color.” In their physique, the Malays
are neither Chinese nor Dravidians, neither Polynesians nor Mala-
gasi, neither Oriental nor Occidental Negroes ; hut as Dryden the
poet sung (p. xvi): —
“ Flat faces, such as would disgrace a screen,
Such as in Bantam’s embassy were seen: —”
in short, nothing else than Malays. For the specification of their
language and its dialects, the “ Grammar and Dictionary” is. the
source to which we must refer; hut, what singularly commends
Mr. C r a w f u r d ’s analytical investigations to the ethnographer is, the
careful method through which, by well-chosen and varied compara-
tive vocabularies, he has succeeded in showing, how Malayan blood,
language, and influence, decrease in the exact ratio that, from their
continental peninsula of Malacca, as a starting point, their colonizing
propensities have since widened the diameter between their
own primitive cradle, and their present commercial factories, or
piratical nuclei. Nor must it be forgotten that, upon many of the
islands themselves, both large and small, there exist distinct types
of men, independently of Malayan or other colonists on the seaboard,
speaking distinct languages. Thus, in Sumatra, there are 4
written, and 4 unwritten tongues, besides other barbarous idioms
spoken in its vicinity: at Borneo, so far as is yet known of its unexplored
interior, there are at least 9; at Celebes, several. At the
same time that, according to M r . L o g a n , each newly-discovered
savage tribe, like the Orang Mintird, the Or any Benua, the Orang
Muka Kuning, &c., amid the jungle-hidden creeks around Singapore,
presents a new vocabulary.
Being one of the few Englishmen, morally brave enough to avow,
as well as sufficiently learned to sustain, by severely-scientific argument
(pp. ii-vii, and elsewhere), polygenistic doctrines on the origin
of mankind, M r . C r a w f u r d ’s ethnological opinions are entitled to
the more respect from his fellow-philologues, inasmuch as—without
dispute about a vague appellative, “ Malayo-Polynesian,”—his philosophic
deductions must logically tally with those continental views,
to which a Franco-Germanic utterance is given at the close of
our section Hid.
Upon the various systems of linguistic classification, through
which each unprejudiced philologist — i. e., to the exclusion always
of preconceived dogmas fabricated, as Koranic Arabs would say, fi ayd-
mena ed-djahilieh, “ during our days of ignorance”—defines his more
or less scientific, but ever-individual, impressions, differences of
opinion must inevitably ensue; some scholars reasoning from one
stand-point, others from another: nor would we, when closing this
parenthesis about the term “Malayo-Polynesian,” overlook the
physiological fact indicated by Prof. A g a s s i z ,30 viz: that identities
among types of men linguistically similar, whilst historically- and
ethnically different, do sometimes arise only from similarity in the
internal “ structure of the throat”—anatomical niceties imperceptible
to the eye perhaps, but not the less distinctly impressive on an acute
and experienced ear.]
Of all the families of languages at present recognized on the surface
of our globe, there only remains for us to examine the American
tongues. Endeavor has been made to attach them to the Polynesian
family; but from these they essentially distinguish themselves, and
we shall see presently that certain traits assimilate them, on the contrary,
to African languages.
Let us signalize a primary fact. It is that, whilst the populations
of the two Americas are far from offering a great homogeneity
of physical characters, their languages, on the contrary, constitute
a group which, as relates to grammar, affords an unity yery
remarkable.
That which distinguishes all these -tongues is a tendency, more
apparent than that among any other linguistic family, to agglutination.
The words are agglomerated through contraction,—by suppressing
one or several syllables of the combined radicals—and the words
thus formed become treated as if they were simple words, susceptible
of being again employed and modified like these. This property has
induced the giving to the languages of the New World the name of
polysynthetical,—which M. F. L i e b e r has proposed to alter into that
of olophrastic.
Besides this characteristic, there are several others that, without
being so absolute, seem nevertheless to be very significant. Thus,
these idioms do not in general know our distinction of gender; in
ieu of recognizing a masculine and a feminine, they have an animate
and an inanimate gender. I have said above, that there is one trait
which is common to them and to divers idioms of Polynesia, as well
as to the Hottentot tongues. It is the existence of two plurals (and
sometimes of two duals), exclusive and inclusive, otherwise termed,
* Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 185o( p. 31: — Types of Mankind, p. 282.