182 Mr Crawfurd on the 



The Hindoos, in a higher state of civilization than the 

 Malays and Javanese, have wholly rejected their languages ; 

 hut, on the contrary, in the course of an intercourse of many 

 ages, have borrowed largely, — of which, if this were the pro- 

 per time, I would, through the friendship of a learned and 

 ingenious orientalist, who is an ornament of this University, 

 furnish larger and more satisfactory evidence than has ever 

 been adduced before. 



The same cause has excluded the Malay and Javanese 

 from the languages] of Arabia and Persia, notwithstanding 

 an intercourse of at least five centuries ; while those lan- 

 guages have been to a considerable extent largely adopted 

 both by the Malays and Javanese. 



Superior civilization, and probably not less, the unconge- 

 nial monosyllablic character of their languages, has excluded 

 the Malayan languages from the regions east of Hindustan. 

 The Siamese, although in immediate juxtaposition with the 

 Malay, has neither given the latter words, nor, with the ex- 

 ception of about half a dozen, received any thing from it. 



This remark is still more applicable to the Chinese lan- 

 guages, which have not only borrowed nothing from the 

 Malayan languages, but conferred little or nothing on them, 

 notwithstanding the intercourse and settlement of centuries. 



It is a striking fact, that not a word of any Malayan lan- 

 guage is to be found in any of the many languages of Aus- 

 tralia. I should have expected them, for example, in the 

 language of Raffle's Bay, which is close to the stations fre- 

 quented, probably for many ages, by the Tripang fishers of 

 Macassar ; but there is not a Avord to be found in it. This 

 is not to be accounted for by difference of race or differ- 

 ence of idiom, for the languages of the Negro races of the 

 Archipelago contain Malayan words ; and so does that of the 

 far more distant Easter Island, of which, in so far as pronun- 

 ciation is concerned, the genius is more remote from the 

 Malayan than is that of the Australian. 



The absence from the Australian languages of all trace of 

 the Malayan, can, I think, only be accounted for by the very 

 low social condition of the Australian race, which seems, as 



