• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Oa^i«^/Vii^j. ( .(fc GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY MALAY LANGUAGE. : GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY MALAY LANGUAG?:, A PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION, JOHN CEAWFUED, F.R.S. Author of "The History of the Indian Archipelago." IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. DISSERTATION AND GRAMMAR. LONDON SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 1852. : LONDON nRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITBFTtlAR». THE BARON ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT Sib, I dedicate this "Work to you, on account of the high respect which, in common with tlie rest of the world, I entertain for yourself; and in testimony of my veneration for your distinguished brother, whose correspondence on the subject of my labours I hold in grateful recoUectiou. I am, with great esteem, Your faithful Servant, J. CRAWFURD. PREFACE. The Work which I now submit to the Public is the result of much labour, spread, with various interruptions, over a period of more than forty years, twelve of which were passed in countries of which the Malay is the vernacular or the popular language, and ten in the compilation of materials. It remains for me only to acknowledge my obligations to those who assisted me in the compilation of my book. ]My first and greatest are to my friend and predecessor in the same field of labour, the late William INIarsden, the judicious and learned author of the History of Sumatra, and of the Malay Grammar and Dictionary. A few months before his death, Mr. Marsden delivered to me a copy of his Dictionary, corrected with his own hand, and two valuable lists of words, with which he had been furnished by the Rev. j\Ir. Hutchins, of Penang, and by the Rev. Mr. Robinson, of Batavia and Bencoolen. These, aided by Javanese dictionaries compiled during a six years' sojourn in Java, and by recent reading, constitute, in fact, the chief materials from which the present work has l)een prepared. Without the previous labours of viii TREPACE. Mr. Marsdeiij my book certainly never would have been written, or even attempted. Next to Mr. Marsden, I am indebted to my friend Professor Horace Haymau Wilson, of Oxford, for it is to his unrivalled oriental learning, that I owe the Sanskrit etymologies of the dictionary, and whatever may be found of value, connected with the great recondite language of India, in the preliminaiy Dissertation. During the progress of my work, I have had the good fortune to enjoy the correspondence of my friend J. Robert Logan, of Singapore, the editor of the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, a work abounding in original and authentic communications. Our present rapid intercourse with India has enabled me, when at a loss, to refer to Mr. Logan ; and I have received from him elucidations of grammar, and additional words, accompanied by definitions. In passing the sheets of ray book through the press, I have been assisted by the supervision and correctioiis of an acute orientalist, who has made the Malayan and Polynesian language an object of special study, my friend Captain Thomas Bramber Gascoign. In the nomenclature of plants, my own imperfect know- ledge has been more than compensated by the science of my friends Robert Brown, George Bentham, and Nathaniel Wallich. In the department of zoology, ray chief obligations are to a highly esteemed friend, whose acquaintance I liad the happiness first to make in Java, more than forty years ago, Dr. Thomas Horsficld, one whose knowledge of every branch of the natural history of the Archipelago is well known to the public. The work which I have now brought to a close, with many imperfections, is more copious than any of its pre- decessors; and may, perhaps, be the foundation of a more complete superstructm-e, to be raised by those who come after me. Februwy, 1852. A DISSERTATION AFFINITIES OF THE MALAYAN LANGUAGES, &c. <fcc. A CERTAIN connexion, of more or less extent, is well ascertained to exist between most of the languages which prevail from Pacific, widedif- Madagascar to Easter Island in the and from to Zealand. It M^a^ayan'' Formosa, on the coast of China, New tougue. exists, then, over two hundred degrees of longitude and seventy of latitude, or over a fifth part of the surface of the earth. I propose inquiring into the nature and origin of this singular connexion—the most wide-spread in the history of rude languages; and in the course of the investigation hope to be enabled, to some extent, to trace the progress of society among nations and tribes substantially without records, and of whose history and social advancement nothing valuable can be known beyond what such evidence will yield. The vast region of which I have given the outline may be geographically described as consisting of the innumerable islands of the Indian Archipelago, from Sumatra to New Guinea —of the great group of the Philippines— of the islands of the North and South Pacific — and of Madagascar. It is in- habited by many different and distinct races of men,—as the Malayan, the brown Polynesian, the insular Negro of several varieties, and the African of Madagascar. Of these, the state of civilisation is so various, that some are abject savages, while others have made a respectable progress in the useful arts, and even attained some knowledge of letters. The whole region is — ; ii DISSERTATION. insular, and, with the exception of the islands of New Zealand, monsoons, or trade winds, prevail through every part of it. To this, I have no doubt, is mainly to be attributed the wide dis- semination of language now the sul)ject of inquiry, and which, among rude nations, were impossible on a continent without periodical winds. The generally adopted explanation of this wide dissemination of language amounts to this, that the many existing tongues were originally one language, through time and dis- adopted taucc Split iuto many dialects, and that all the people speaking these supposed dialects are of one and the same race. But as this hypothesis could not well be main- tained in the face of an existing negro population, the negroes and theii- languages are specially excepted, on the eri'oneous supposition that no words of the common tongue exist in their languages. This hypothesis originated with the German naturalist, Forster, who accompanied Captain Cooke in his second voyage, and it has been adopted by many distinguished philologists, but especially by INIr. Marsden and Baron William Humboldt. It was, in a modified form, my own opinion, in a less mature state of my acquaintance with the subject ; but I am now satisfied that it is wholly groundless.* Some of the objections to this hypothesis, exclusive of the palpable one of the existence of Malayan words in all the negro languages, are obvious. It supposes,' for example, that Refutation . ° ° ' ^ . ^ .\ . ^ of the language and race are identical, taking it, oi course, for granted, that men are born with peculiar languages as they are with peculiar complexions; and that both are equally unchangeable. Many well known events of authentic * " We likewise find a very remarkable similarity between several words of the fair tribe of islanders in the South Sea, and some of the Malays. But it would be highly inconclusive, from the similarity of a few words, to infer that these islanders were descended from the Malays " "I am, therefore, rather inclined to suppose that all these dialects preserve several words of a more ancient langiiage, which was more universal, and was gi'adually divided into many languages, now remark- ably different. The words, therefore, of the language of the South Sea isles, which are similar to others in the Malay tongue, prove clearly, in my opinion, that the South Sea isles were originally peopled from the Indian, or Asiatic Northern isles and that those lying more to the westward received their first inhabitants from the neighbourhood of New Guinea." Ohsenatims.—Voyage round tlie World, by John Reynold Forster; London, 1778. DISSERTATION. iii history refute this notion. Thus, the half-dozen languages spoken in ancient Italy were all, in time, absorbed by one of them. The languages spoken in Britain twenty centuries ago have been nearly supplanted by a German tongue. Several millions of negroes in the New World, whose parent tongues were African, have exchanged them for English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. For the languages spoken in ancient France and Spain, a language of Italian origin has been almost wholly substituted. Although language often affords valuable historical e^idence, it would only lead to error to consider it as invariably identical with race. It is quite certain, that within the proper Indian Archipelago, or islands extending from Sumatra to the western shores of New Guinea, and respecting which our information is most complete, no languages exist derived from a common stock, and standing to each other in the relation of sisterhood, as Italian, Spanish, and French, do to each other ; or as Gaelic does to Irish ; or Armorican to Welsh, or Scotch to English. The only dialects that exist are of the Malay and Javanese languages, but they consist of little more than differences in pronunciation, or the more or less frequent use of a few words. In the Polynesian islands alone, real dialects of a common tongue do exist; but here, as will be afterwards shown, the number of Avords common to such dialects, and to the languages of the Archipelago, is so trifling, that it refutes at once the notion of a common origin. Another insuperable argument against the theory of one original tongue is found in the nature of many of the words of the imagined derivative dialects. These abound in terms very widely diffused, indicating an advanced state of society ; as for example, an useful system of numeration, terms connected with agriculture, navigation, the useful arts, and even with letters.

Load more

  394

Copy Link