22,% ON THE TftACES OF THE 



speech, though they have a wonderful accordance 

 in many essential properties, have experienced those 

 changes which separation, time, and accident produce, 

 and in respect to the purposes of intercourse, may 

 be classed into several languages, differing consider- . 

 ably from each other. The marks of cultivation by 

 which the Malayan is distinguished from his ruder 

 neighbours, are to be attributed, in my opinion, to 

 the effects of an early connexion that must have sub- 

 sisted between the inhabitants of this eastern penin- 

 sula and those of the continent of India; but what 

 the nature and circumstances of this connexion may 

 have been, it is not easy to determine. A spirit of 

 foreign conquest, and still more, a zeal for the pro- 

 pagation of their religious tenets, appear incompa- 

 tible with the genius of the Hindu system, except- 

 ing amongst the disciples of Bhood ; but I have ne- 

 ver discovered in the Malayan customs or opinions 

 any traces of the peculiar institutions of that extra- 

 ordinary sect. 



A commercial intercourse has always subsisted 

 between the manufacturing countries of India and 

 the marts for the produce of the Spice-islands, such 

 as Johor, Singapoora, and Malacca ; and when the 

 Portuguese, at the commencement of the sixteenth 

 century, first visited these places, they mention 

 with surprize the concourse of foreign vessels as- 

 sembled there. But independently of other objecti- 

 ons that might be raised to the probability of these 

 traders having polished the language of the people 

 whose ports they frequented, or having imparted 

 to them their national literature, it is to be observed 



that 



