Excerpt from The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary

An original part of the lexicon is that treating of the gods, heroes, &c., being short abstracts of the principal events for which their worship or their histories were famous. Want of space forbade lengthy notice or full repetition of legend, but where the tradition was too long for detailed relation, copious references have been given to the small class of books bearing on the subject.

No small proportion of the labour expended upon this work was exerted in providing examples of the use of words, both in Maori and Polynesian. Many thousands of lines from old poems, traditions, and ancient proverbs have been quoted. The examples might more easily have been given by the construction of sentences showing the use of the particular words, but, rejecting made-up examples as being in practice always open to adverse criticism, preference has been given to passages by well-known authors, where the words can be verified and the context consulted. To have given a quotation in this manner for every word would have been impossible; some of the words are not to be found in any printed record, and to have devoted a still greater length of time to the collection of examples would not have produced a result commensurate with the loss of time occasioned by long delay before publication, or even, perhaps, with the chance of the work never being finished at all.

Although the dictionary relates to the classification of Polynesian dialects proper, Malay, Melanesian, and Micronesian vocabularies have also furnished comparatives. These vocabularies are mostly in a very imperfect state, and the phonography full of variations; but the words are suggestive both as to letter-changes and meanings. It does not follow that any of these words are related to Polynesian, but the coincidences are many, and until the laws by which all languages are governed are more fully explored, it would be mischievous to exclude these apparently similar forms from comparison with each other.

Farther on I have thanked those authors and those friends from whom I have received assistance. This refers to the raw material only. In collecting the vocabularies, in searching for comparisons, in making quotations for examples, in the compilation, in the whole of the philological and literary work I have been unassisted.

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