An Account of the Polynesian Race - Its Origin and Migrations and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I - Volume I

Abraham Fornander

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781528766951
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Customs & Traditions
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1877, this is volume II of "The Polynesian Race", a fascinating treatise by Abraham Fornander on the subject of the origins of the Polynesian people. By comparing the Polynesian languages, mythology, genealogies, he surmised that Polynesians first came to the Pacific in Fiji in the 1st or 2nd centuries AD; and that they were in fact Aryans who had slowly but surely migrated through India and the Malay archipelago into the Pacific islands. This fascinating volume will appeal to anyone with an interest in Polynesia and the origins of its people, their language, customs, and more. Contents include: "Resume of Conclusions Arrived At". "Names of Places Indicating Descent of Immigrants", "Names of Cardinal Points Leading to the Same Conclusion", "Legendary and Mythological Reminiscences", etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS

OF

THE POLYNESIAN RACE.

BEFORE I offer my contribution to Hawaiian history proper, I think it justice to the reader and to the cause of truth to state my view of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Family, of which the Hawaiian is only one, though at present the foremost and best known branch.

The singular spectacle of a people so widely scattered, yet so homogeneous in its physical characteristics, in its language and customs, has not failed to exercise the minds of many learned and worthy men, both of past and present time, who have written much and differed widely about the origin of the Polynesian family. North and South Americans, Malays, Papuans, Chinese, and Japanese, and even the lost tribes of Israel, have all, at different times, and by different writers, been charged with the paternity of this family, and made responsible for its origin and appearance in the Pacific Ocean. These writers formed their opinions, undoubtedly, according to the data that were before them; but those data were too few, often too incorrect and too unconnected as a whole, to warrant the conclusions at which they arrived. A more intimate acquaintance with the Polynesian family itself, with its copious folk-lore, and its reminiscences of the past still floating about with dimmer or brighter outlines through its songs and sagas; a better insight and a truer appreciation of the affinities of its language; and, lastly, a small amount of renunciation of national vanity on the part of those different writers, might have removed many of the errors and misconceptions in regard to this interesting family of mankind.

It would be presumption in me to pretend that I have fully solved so great a problem as the origin and descent of the Polynesian family. Yet I trust that the sequel will show that my conclusions are not only plausible, but extremely probable, and that, only by following the guide which the data now offered afford, can we account in a satisfactory manner for the ethnic, linguistic, and social phenomena connected with that family, for their appearance in the Pacific and their distribution within it—from New Zealand to Hawaii, from Easter Island to Rotuma.

That the reader may know at a glance the result to which my investigations in the Polynesian folk-lore, as well as its comparison with that of other peoples, have led me, it may be proper here at the outset to say that I believe that I can show that the Polynesian family can be traced directly as having occupied the Asiatic Archipelago, from Sumatra to Timor, Gilolo, and the Philippines, previous to the occupation of that archipel by the present Malay family; that traces, though faint and few, lead up through Deccan to the north-west part of India and the shores of the Persian Gulf; that, when other traces here fail, yet the language points farther north, to the Aryan stock in its earlier days, long before the Vedic irruption in India; and that for long ages the Polynesian family was the recipient of a Cushite civilisation, and to such an extent as almost entirely to obscure its own consciousness of parentage and kindred to the Aryan stock.

Were every other trace of a people’s descent obliterated by time, by neglect, by absorption in some other tribe, race, or tongue, the identity of the nomenclature of its places of abode with that of some other people would still remain an à priori evidence of the former habitats of the absorbed or forgotten people. Were every other record and tradition of the descent of the present ruling races in America, North and South, obliterated, the names which they have given to the headlands, rivers, cities, villages, and divisions of land in the country they inhabit, would primarily, and almost always infallibly, indicate their European descent—English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, &c., &c. The practice of naming new abodes in memory of old homes is a deep-rooted trait of human nature, and displays itself alike in the barbarous as in the civilised condition of a people. We find it in the wake of all great migrations, from the most ancient to the most recent. History is full of illustrations to this effect, to prove the presence of the mother race, through its migrations, in foreign lands where every other vestige, except this one, has been trodden out by time or by succeeding migrations of other peoples and races.

Following the clue which this evidence affords, I hope to be able to show that the Polynesian family formerly occupied, as their places of residence, the Asiatic Archipelago, and were at one time in the world’s history closely connected by kindred, commerce, or by conquest with lands beyond, in Hindustan, the shores of the Persian Gulf, and even in Southern Arabia.

From what I have been able to glean of the old Javanese annals, and of their ancient language, the Kawi, I am led to believe that of the two words, which in the present Malay tongue signify an island—“Nusa” and “Pulo”—the former is by far the older, and obtained exclusively before the latter was introduced by the comparatively modern Malays. In those old annals may be found such names for Jawa, or different portions of it, as “Nusa-Kindang,” “Nusa-Hara-Hara,”¹ and “Nusa-Jawa;” “Nusa-Kautchana” for Borneo; “Nusa-Antara” for Madura; “Nusa-Kambargan” for Bali, &c., and in several of the eastern parts of the archipelago, such as Ceram, Bulu, Amboyna, the ancient word “Nusa” still prevails over the modern “Pulo.”

This word “Nusa,” the old ante-Malay designation of an island, reappears under a Polynesian form in various quarters of the Pacific. We have “Nuka-tea,” one of Wallis’ group; also “Nuka-tapu,” “Nuka-lofa,” the principal town on Tonga-tabu; “Nuka-Hiwa” (in some dialects contracted to “Nuuhiwa”), one of the Marquesas group; “Nuku-nono”² of the Union group; “Nuku-fetau “of the De-Peyster’s group; “Nuku-ta-wake” and “Nuku-te-pipi” of the Paumotu Archipel; and some others in the Eastern portion of the Viti group, which has received so large a portion of its vocables from Polynesian sources. But in none of the Polynesian dialects does the Malay word for island, “Pulo,” obtain, nor has it left any marks of ever having been adopted.

In regard to this word “Nusa,” as signifying an island, among the old ante-Malay inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago, and having been brought by them into various parts of the Pacific, it may be interesting to remark that we meet with the same word, signifying the same thing, in the Mediterranean, at a time anterior to the Hellenic predominancy, as far back as the Phoenician supremacy over that sea, and probably older. We thus find that “Ich-nusa” was one of the oldest names of Sardinia; “Oe-nusæ,” some islands in the Ægean Sea, off Messene; “Sire-nusæ,” islands off Cape Surrentum, Campania, Italy; “Argi-nusa,” below Lesbos, off the Æolian coast, and others. Of this word I have found no etymon in the Greek language, and it is no kin to Nasos or Naesos, the Doric and Ionian names for island. It is justifiable, therefore, to trace it back to the Cushite Arabs, who traded, colonised, and conquered up to and beyond the pillars of Hercules in the West, as well as to the confines of the Pacific in the East.¹

I will now give the names of a number of places within the Polynesian area, which I think may be identified with others situated in the Indian Archipelago and beyond. Were my acquaintance with the older pre-Malay names of the latter greater than it is, I have no doubt the number could have been greatly increased.²

I. The first island whose name I will thus trace back will be the island of Hawaii, the principal one of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands.

That name in the principal Polynesian dialects is thus pronounced:—

In Hawaiian,	Hawa-ii.
In Society group,	Ditto.^1
. . . . In Somoan (Navigator’s),	Sawa-ii.
In South Marquesan and New Zealand,	Hawa-iki.
In Rarotonga,	Awa-iki.
In Tonga (Friendly Island),	Habai.

This word is manifestly a compound word: Hawa and ii or iki. Whether the ii or iki is accepted as meaning “small, little,” the apparent sense of the New Zealand, Rarotongan, and South Marquesan form of the word, or “raging, furious with heat,” the sense of the word in the North Marquesan, and which has its analogy in the Tahitian and Hawaiian, it is evidently an epithet, a distinguishing mark of that particular “Hawa” from any other. I am led to prefer the North Marquesan sense of the word, in as much as in a chant of that people, referring to the wanderings of their forefathers, and giving a description of that special Hawaii on which they once dwelt, it is mentioned as:

Tai mamao, uta oa tu te Ii; “a distant sea (or far off region), away inland stands the volcano” (the furious, the raging).

This “Hawa,” referred to by the Polynesians of all the principal groups as an ancient place of residence, corresponds to Jawa, the second of the Sunda islands, which name, however, seems to have been applied principally to the eastern part of that island, the western portion being known from ancient times as “Sonda.”

In the second century A.D., Ptolomy called the Sunda Isles by the general name of Jaba-dios insulæ, or Jaba-din.

In the ninth century A.D., two Muslim travellers, reported by Renandot, spoke of the island and its grandeur as the empire of Zaba-ya or Zapa-ge, evidently an Arabic pronunciation of Jaba or Jawa.

In the fourteenth century A.D., Marco Polo mentions the island under the name of Ciawa, and refers to both Sumatra and Java under that name.¹

Javanese historians indicate that the name of “Java” was given to the island by emigrants from Kling, Kalinga, or Telinga, on the north-east coast of Deccan, who in the first century A.D. invaded and settled on the island, under one Aji Saka, or Tritestra; but it is understood that Java, which in Sanskrit means barley, does not grow on the island. Evidently those emigrants found the name already existing; and with national vanity found a meaning for it in their own language, and in process of time believed the fiction. The name occurs, however, in other parts of the Archipelago, as

Djawa, a river on the east coast of Borneo, near Coti; as

Sawa-it, a place in south-west Borneo; as

Sawa-i, a place on the north coast of Ceram; and as

Awaiya, a village on the south coast of Ceram.

For the origin of the name, and its expansion in the Asiatic Archipelago, and thence into Polynesia, we must look beyond the Kalinga invasion, beyond India, to that nation and race whose colonies and commerce pervaded the ancient world in pre-historic times—the Cushite Arabians; and among them we find as a proto-nom the celebrated Saba, or Zaba, in Southern Arabia, a seat of Cushite empire and commercial emporium “from the earliest times,” according to Diodorus Siculus and Agatharcides. We shall see in the sequel how Polynesian legends confirm the opinion of an early intercourse between the Polynesians and the Cushites, and the close adoption by the former of the culture, and many of the beliefs and legends, of the latter. That the influence of this Cushite “Saba,” as a name-giver, extended to the nations of the West as well as in the East, may be inferred from the epithet of Dionysius “Sabazius,” and probably also from the names of the town “Saba-te,” in Etruria, and of the “Sabini,” one of the most ancient indigenous peoples of Italy, and of their god “Sabus,” from whom Cato derived their ...