Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 1999 Wilhelm von Humboldt's Study of The Kawi Language : The Proof of the Existence Of the Malayan-Polynesian Language Culture (,);r "" . a/ttf a:"u, ::::2,0:)/� ' '--� a��.&d� �w/' by Muriel Mirak �� We issbach f Wilhelm von Humboldt were alive today, he would be delighted with the I discovery of Maui's inscriptions, and would throw himself into studying it, with every fibreof his being. In a certain sense, the deciphering of these inscriptions, which shows that the Maori language was a com­ mon language or part of a language group in Polynesia, itself confirms Humboldt's own findings. For it was Wilhelm von Humboldt who was the first to rigorously examine the languages of this part of the world, and to establish scientifically that all the languages of the region, from Madagascar to east of Pitcairn Island, were part of one language culture. The last and greatest work by Humboldt, entitled Ober die Kawi­ How is it possible to reconcile the Sp rache (Onthe KawiLanguage ), deals with this. The work, published vast multiplicityin the world and throuahout history, ifsuc h diverse posthumously in 1836-39, is prefaced by a lengthy introduction, enti­ cultures as the Chinese and the Greek, tled "Uber die Ve rschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und showina them to be manifestations if ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des menschenge­ the same human spirit? schlechts," (in English, "On Language: The Diversity of Human Wilhelm von Humboldt. Credit: Corbis-Bettmann 29 © 1999 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Humboldt believed that the people of this region "seem Development of Mankind"). This introduction, perhaps never to have attained to the possession of writing, and thus his greatest work on the general theory of language, is fo rgo all the cultivation dependent on this, although they well-known, having gone through numerous editions, and are not lacking in pregnant sagas, penetrating eloquence, translations into other languages. But, this is only the and poetry in markedly different styles." Such literary introduction! The three volumes of the work that actually works must therefore have been recorded in writing at a apply his theory to the particular case of the Kawi lan­ later time. Humboldt saw these languages not as a degener­ guage, have remained a matter fo r specialists, available ation, but as representing the original state of the Malayan only in the reading rooms of libraries. (In one English group. What he accomplished was to subject the main lan­ translation of "On Language," it is even stated that the guages known to comparative analysis, to establish their planned three volumes never appeared-an outright lie!) membership in one language fa mily. As fo r the ethnic Humboldt's work opens with the fo llowing words: stock, Humboldt specifies that in both the broad areas identified,the people belong to the same stock. "If we enter If we consider their dwelling-place, their mode of govern­ ment, their history, and above all their language, the peo­ more accurately into color differences," he says, they consti­ ples of Ma layan stock stand in a stranger connection with tute "the more or less light-brown among whites in gener­ peoples of different culture than perhaps any other people al." In addition to this stock, he mentions a group similar to on earth. They inhabit merely islands and archipelagoes, Black Africans, particularly in New Guinea, New Britain, which are spread so fa r and wide, however, as to fu rnish New Ireland, and New Hebrides. Given that the languages irrefutable testimony of their early skills as navigators. of these people had not been recorded, Humboldt could If we take together the members of these ethnic groups not include them in his study--exceptfo r the special case of who deserve to be called Malayan in the narrower sense Madagascar, which will be treated later. we find these people, to name only points where the The manner he chose to go about this enormous task, linguist encounters adequately studied material, on the was not to take the vocabularies of all the languages Philippines, and there in the most richly developed and involved, and compare them, as if running them through individual state of language, on Java, Sumatra, Malacca, a computer. Rather, Humboldt seized upon what was an and Madagascar. But a large number of incontestable ver­ bal affinities, andeven the names of a significantnumber of egregious characteristic within the languages, a singulari­ islands, give evidence that the isles lying close to these ty, which was the very strong Indian influence. A glance points have the same population too, and that the more at the map [SEE Figure 1] explains why it would be obvi­ strictly Malayan sp eech -community extends over that whole ous fo r people from India to travel to the islands and pop­ area of the South Asiatic Ocean which runs southwards ulate them. Yet, as Humboldt saw, this is not uniform from the Philippines down to the western coasts of New throughout the region. The overwhelming Indian influ­ Guinea, and then west about the island chains adjoining ence, not only in language, but also in religion, literature, the eastern tip of Java, into the waters of Java and Sumatra, and customs, he fo und to have affected the Malayan cir­ up to the strait ofMalacca. cle "in the narrower sense," that is, the Indian archipel­ Humboldt goes on, to assert that ago per se. It is here that an alphabetic script was fo und, and of the Indian type. East of the narrower Malayan community here delineated, The questions posed by the extraordinary Indian from New Zealand to Easter Island, from there north­ influence, fo r Humboldt, were two: He asked himself wards to the Sandwich Islands, and again west to the "whether . the whole civilization of the archipelago is Philippines, there dwells an island population betraying the entirely of Indian origin? And whether, also, from a peri­ most unmistakable marks of ancient blood-relationship od preceding all literature and the latest and most refined with the Malayan races. The languages, of which we also have an exact grammatical knowledge of those spoken in development of speech, there have existed connections New Zealand, Tahiti, the Sandwich Islands, and Tonga, between Sanskrit and the Malayan languages in the prove the same thing, by a large number of similar words widest sense, that can still be demonstrated in the com­ and essential agreements in organic structure. mon elements of speech?" Humboldt's tendency was to answer the first question negatively, and to assume that He also writes that there had been "a true and indigenous civilization among the brown race of the archipelago." He saw no reason to In many places we find amongthem fragments of a sacred language now unintelligible to themselves, and the custom, think that "the Malayans should be denied a social civi­ on certain occasions, of ceremoniously reviving antiquated lization of their own creation." expressions, [which 1 is evidence, not only of the wealth, age, As to the second question, Humboldt tended to and depth of the language, but also of attention to the answer in the affirmative, that the Indian-Malayan con­ changing designation of objects over time. tact had been ancient and continuing: 30 Austric language family: lollolll olV 0 X • Non-Austric language family: V 0 VI 0 VII 0 VIII 0 IX • : MARIANA IS. MICRONESIA ::.�','\.� . .. :.;,� MARSHALL IS. ..: KIRIBATI :,' ,TUVALU MAAOUESAS " IV IS, •••• �VANUATU . ..:�MOA· I ":' POLYNESIA ::, JFIJI;"� "': . ,� � ":" TONGA : ...� .. : FIGURE 1. The vast maritime region stretching fr om Madagascar to partsof Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and Polynesia, was shown by Humboldt to comprisea single Malayan-Polynesian language culture, fo unded upon what istoday known as the Austric languagefa mily. Without yet mentioning Tagalic, which incorporates a fa ir and so try to see whether this way, together with that dis­ number of Sanskrit words for quite different classes of cussed hitherto, may lead to a more correct judgment of the objects, we also find in the language of Madagascar and in relations among peoples and languages throughout the that of the South Sea Islands, right down to the pronoun, entire mass of islands. sounds and words belonging directly to Sanskrit; and even the stages of sound-change, which can be viewed as a com­ His method, therefore, was to penetrate to the inner­ parative index of the antiquity of mingling, are themselves most the Kawi language, which represented the highest different in such languages from the narrower Malayan cir­ expression of the Indian-Sanskrit language cultural influ­ cle, in which, as in Javanese, there is also visible an influence ence, but from the standpoint of the "indigenous ele­ from Indian language and literature that was exerted at a ment," which Humboldt recognized must be the basis of much later date. Now how we are to explain this ... the identity of the language group as a whole. What he remains, of course, extremely doubtful. ...[H]ere it is asked himself was, essentially, what is the underlying, enough for me to have drawn attention to an influence of Sanskrit upon the languages of the Malayan stock, which indigenous language beneath the Sanskrit influence? diffe rs essentially from that of the mental cultivation and What relationship does it bear to the languages in the literature transplanted to them, and seems to belong to a strictly Malayan group, and, then, what is their relation­ much earlier period and to different relationships among ship to all the languages of the vast island world? the peoples concerned.