594 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



certain words or phrases as being tapu, or " prohibited," to 

 the common or vernacular speech. We find it existing in 

 modern tongues at the present day, and it takes form in two 

 different ways. One is of interest grammatically : it consists 

 of changing cases and numbers; the " tutohnent," the " thee- 

 ing and thou-ing," of French and German marking different 

 address to inferiors and intimates. In German we have the 

 ceremonious plural for singular in verbs. In English the 

 third person is more ceremonious than the first, as wheu Mr. 

 Jones writes that " Mr. Jones presents his compliments," 

 instead of "I present my compliments," &c. The plural 

 "we" for " I " of royalty and editors is also a ceremonial 

 use of grammar ; so is the use of a title instead of the second 

 person, as " I hope that your Highness will come," instead of 

 " I hope that you will come." The other line of ceremonial 

 usage is a thousand times more interesting : it is the historical 

 form of ceremonial speech. It is perhaps best illustrated by 

 a well-known example, that of the superposition of Latin 

 words, through Norman French, upon the Teutonic dialect 

 of our ancestors. We are told that in many ways this was 

 noticeable : thus, the poor Saxons who had to take care of 

 animals for the lordly new-comers kept the old Saxon words 

 cow, sheep, calf, deer, &c. ; but the name of the cooked 

 meats became Norman — beef, mutton, veal, venison, &c. — 

 because the common people did not use these delicacies. For 

 many generations Norman French was the Court language ; 

 and on the revival of classical learning at the time of the 

 Eenaissance the English tongue was still further enriched 

 and added to by words of Latin derivation. This remains at 

 the present moment the inflated and more stately form of our 

 general speech. When Dr. Johnson corrected his sentence 

 about a certain drama, "It has not wit enough to keep it 

 sweet," into " It has not sufficient vitality to preserve it from 

 putrefaction," he was merely changing from the short plain 

 words of Saxon into the fuller Latin language of ceremony. 

 This would have little scientific interest for us if we did not 

 observe that herein is preserved a historical record — a record 

 that, if all the documents in the world were burnt to-morrow, 

 would assure the linguist that the English had once been con- 

 quered by a people speaking a Latin dialect. It is in this 

 direction, and in this direction alone, that a study of a cere- 

 monial language is of living interest ; and it is in the hope of 

 being able to trace some historical points, or to prove that 

 there are no such historical points, that I venture to direct 

 your attention to the ceremonial languages to be found south- 

 east of the continent of Asia. 



In Java we have a full language of ceremonial in actual 

 use, and apparently of some antiquity ; moreover, it proves, 



