VII.] THE OCEANIC MONGOLS. 245 



is based on some early forms of the Devanagari, such as those 

 occurring in the rock inscriptions of the famous Buddhist king 

 As'oka (third century B.C.) 1 . From Java, which is now shown 

 beyond doubt to be the true centre of dispersion-, the parent 

 alphabet was under Hindu influences diffused in pre-Muhammadan 

 times throughout Malaysia, from Sumatra to the Philippines. 



But the thinly-spread Indo-Javanese culture, in few places 

 penetrating much below the surface, received a rude shock from 

 the Muhammadan irruption, its natural development being almost 

 everywhere arrested, or else either effaced or displaced by Islam. 

 No trace can any longer be detected of graphic signs in Borneo, 

 whose Dyak aborigines have reverted to the savage state even in 

 those southern districts where Buddhism or Brahmanism had 

 certainly been propagated long before the arrival of the Muham- 

 madan Malays. But elsewhere the Javanese stock alphabet has 

 shown extraordinary vitality, persisting under diverse forms down 

 to the present day, not only amongst the semi-civilised Mussul- 

 man peoples, such as the Sumatran Rejangs 3 , Korinchi, and 

 Lampongs, the Bugis and Mangkassaras of Celebes, and the (now 

 Christian) Tagals and Bisayans of the Philippines, but even 

 amongst the somewhat rude and pagan Palawan natives, the wild 

 Manguianes of Mindoro, and the cannibal Battas 4 of North 

 Sumatra. 



1 See Fr. Muller, Ueber den Ursprung der Schrift der Malaiischen Volker, 

 Vienna, 1865; and my Appendix to Stanford's Australasia, First Series, 1879, 

 p. 624. 



- Die Mangianenschrift von Mindoro^ heransgegebcn von A. B. Meyer 21, 

 A. Schadenberg, speciell bearbeitet von W. Foy, Dresden, 1895; see also my 

 remarks in Jour. Anthrop. Inst. 1896, p. 277 sq. 



3 The Rejang, which certainly belongs to the same Indo-Javanese system 

 as all the other Malaysian alphabets, has been regarded by Sayce and Renan 

 as "pure Phoenician," while Dr Neubauer has compared it with that current 

 in the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. The suggestion that it may have been intro- 

 duced by the Phoenician crews of Alexander's admiral, Nearchus (ArcJuzol. 

 Oxon. 189;, No. 6), could not have been made by anyone aware of its close 

 connection with the Lampong of South, and the Batta of North Sumatra (see 

 also Prof. Kern, Globus 70, p. 1 16). 



1 Sing. Batta, pi. Battak, hence the current form Battaks is a solecism, 

 and we should write either Battas or Battak. Lassen derives the word from 

 the Sanskrit b'hiita, "savage." 



