Malai/an and Polynesian Languages and Baces. 185 



Guinea, the people of Malicolo, of Tanna, and of New Cale- 

 donia, have each their own native system, unaffected by the 

 Malayan. 



Some languages have numerals as far as " five,'' and clum- 

 sily continue the series of the digits from their native re- 

 sources, by adding " one,'" " two," &c., to the last named 

 number, so that six is expressed by " five" and " one," and 

 " seven" by " five" and " two." This is the case with the 

 New Caledonia. 



Others seem to have relics of a binal scale, and combine it 

 with the Malayan decimal one, as in the Ende of Flores. 

 In this, for " one," " two," " three," and " five," the Malayan 

 tenns have been adopted, but instead of being continued be- 

 yond this, " six" and " seven" are expressed by the Ma- 

 layan words " five and one" and " five and two." Four is ex- 

 pressed by a native word, and the Malay numeral " two" pre- 

 fixed to it expresses " eight," that is, two fours. 



Tlie native Malayan system extends only to 1000, and even 

 to this extent it is not carried by all the tribes that have 

 adopted it. It is doubtful whether the terms for ten and for 

 hundred, in the difi"erent dialects of the Polynesian, and 

 which differ among themselves, are Malayan ; the word for 

 thousand, mano, certainly is not. In the Lampung of Suma- 

 tra, a written language, the term for this last number is the 

 same which means an " iron nail or spike." 



For the numbers above 1000, the Malayan system has bor- 

 rowed from tlie Sanscrit ; and the Javanese, but it alone, goes 

 as far with the higher numerals as " ten billions." There 

 are two remarkable misapplications of the Sanscrit numbers : 

 the Laksa and Kati, the well-known lac and krove which 

 ought to express a hundred thousand and ten millions, express, 

 through all the cultivated languages of the Archipelago, 

 " ten thousand" and " a hundred thousand" only. 



From the explanation now given, I think it must be suffi- 

 ciently obvious that the Malayan numerals afford no evidence 

 ■whatever of the existence of one great original language. 

 They seem simply, and as opportunity offered, to have been 

 adopted as a matter of convenience — in some oases in their 

 entireness, but for the most part only partially. 



