146 MALA VAN AFFINITIES. 



ing languages most nearly allied to Malagasy should be sepa- 

 rated from Madagascar by a wide ocean more than 3000 

 miles across ; yet such is undoubtedly the fact, for Java, 

 Borneo, Celebes, and the Philippines (in the Tagala tribes), 

 are the islands whose speech is most like that of the Mala- 

 gasy. And a glance at a comparative table of the most 

 commonfy-used words in the Malay Archipelago and in Poly- 

 nesia, shows that there is hardly a dialect which does not con- 

 tain many words common to it and to the language spoken 

 in Madagascar. (Seepages 105 and 116.) 



The Malay aflfinities of the Malagasy tongue have been 

 recognised by linguists for more than 250 years past ; for 

 the second and fifth books published in Europe about ^lada- 

 gascar (only about a hundred years after its discovery) were 

 vocabularies of these two languages."" And more minute 

 investigation of this subject by subsequent writers, from the 

 learned Eeland, two centuries ago, doT>-n to Marsden, Baron 

 AV. von Humboldt, J. J. Freeman, Latham, Van der Tuuk, 

 and Marre de Marin, has confirmed the early opinion of 

 Dutch and German authors, and made it certain that very 

 close relationships exist between the sjieech of the Malagasy 

 and those of the Malayan and Polynesian regions.t 



Last, but far from least in importance in giving minute 

 information upon this point, comes one of the missionaries 

 of the London Missionary Society, the Ptev. W. E. Cousins, 

 who, in a paper read before the Philological Society {Trans. 

 1878), has shown by a careful comparison of Malayan and 

 ]\Ialagasy that not only are a large number of words (at least 

 300) common to both, but that these words are of a very 

 important cliaracter, being those which are the most simple 

 and universally-needed words in all languages. Among 

 them are the numerals, those for the parts of the body, for 

 the nearest blood relations, for times and seasons and the 

 aspects of nature, for many animals, birds, and plants, and for 



* Spraak ende woord boek in de Malcische en de Madagaskarsche talcn ; Fred, 

 de Houtman ; Amsterdam : 1603 ; and Colloquia latino -maley tea et madagas- 

 carica ; Goth. Arthusius ; Francfort : 1613. 



t See Humboldt's Kavji Sprache ; Dritt. Th. 8, 326 ; and H. N. Van der 

 Tuuk's Outlines of a Grammar of the Malagasy Language ; Roy. Asiat. Soc. 



