The Malayan Po-Se — Language 473 



Florenz has correctly recognized in this series the numerals of a Malayan 

 language, though they cannot throughout be identified (and this could 

 hardly be expected) with the numerals of any known dialect. Various 

 Malayan languages must be recruited for identification, and some forms 

 even then remain obscure. The numeral 1 corresponds to Malayan sa, 

 satu; 2 to dua; 4 to ampat; 5 to lima; 6 to namu; 7 to tujoh; 9 to sembilan; 

 10 to sa-puloh. The numeral 20 is composed of toa 2 and ro 10 (Malayan 

 puloh) ; 30 aka ( = naka, 3) and ro orfuro 10. The numeral 100 is formed 

 of sasa 1 and rato = Malayan -ratus. 



Two Po-se words are cited in the Yu yah tsa tsu, 1 which, as formerly 

 pointed out by me, cannot be Persian, but betray a Malayan origin. 2 

 There it is said that the Po-se designate ivory as & m pai-han, and 

 rhinoceros-horn as M m hei-han. The former corresponds to ancient 

 *bak-am; the latter, to *hak-am or *het-am. The latter answers 

 exactly to Jarai hotam, Bisaya itom, Tagalog Itim, Javanese item, 

 Makasar etah, Cam hutam (hatam or hutum), Malayan hitam, all mean- 

 ing "black." 3 The former word is not related to the series putih, puteh, 

 as I was previously inclined to assume, but to the group: Cam bauh, 

 boh, or bhuh; Senoi biug, other forms in the Sakei and Semang lan- 

 guages of Malakka biok, biak, bieg, begitik, bekuh, bekog;* Alfur, Boloven, 

 Kon tu, Kaseng, Lave, and Niah bok, Sedeng r'dboh, Stieng bok 

 ("white ") ; Bahnar bak (Mon bu)} It almost seems, therefore, as if the 

 speech of Po-se bears some relationship to the languages of the tribes 

 of Malacca. The Po-se distinguished rhinoceros-horn and ivory as 

 "black" and "white." However meagre the linguistic material may be, 

 it reveals, at any rate, Malayan affinities, and explodes Bretschneider's 

 theory 6 that the Po-se of the Archipelago, alleged to have been on 

 Sumatra, owes its origin to the fact that "the Persians carried on a 

 great trade with Sumatra, and probably had colonies there." This is an 

 unfounded speculation, justly rejected also by G. E. Gerini: 7 these 

 Po-se were not Persians, but Malayans. 



The Po-se question has been studied to some extent by G. E. 

 Gerini, 8 who suggests its probable identity with the Vasu state located 

 by the Bhagavata Purana in Kugadvipa, and who thinks it may be 



1 Ch. 16, p. 14. 



2 Chinese Clay Figures, p. 145. 



5 Cf. Cabaton and Aymonier, Dictionnaire c"am-francais, p. 503. 



4 P. Schmidt, Bijdragen tot de Taat-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. VIII, 1901 , 

 p. 420. 



5 Ibid., p. 344. 



6 Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, p. 16. 



7 Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia, p. 471. 



8 Ibid., p. 682. 



