OF THE INDO-CHINESE NATIONS. 205 



by the Moslems of the east, whether Hindostani, 

 Arab-Tamul ov Mapilla. The Achinese resemble the 

 Mapillas of Malabar more than any other tribe of 

 Malays : they have long been connected with them 

 as a people, and use many Mapilla terms currently in 

 their language. The dialects of Neas and the Poggy 

 islands, the inhabitants of the latter of which are 

 termed Mantazvay^ by the Malays, have perhaps 

 greater pretensions to originality than any of the 

 dialects of Sumatra, but resemble the Batta more 

 than any other dialect. Hence it may be suspected, 

 that if we were actjuainted with the books of the 

 Battas, and knew the full extent of their language, 

 in all its variety of expression, elliptic phrases, and 

 obsolete words, the coincidence would be still more 

 striking. There is probably, too, some diversity of 

 expression in these dialects, even in their present 

 state, for in forming a short radical vocabulary of the 

 Neas language, I found it differed considerably, in 

 some instances, from the specimen published by 

 Marsden, in the sixth volume of the Arch^cologia. . 

 The Batta language has been cultivated by writ- 

 ing, from the earliest times, and numerous books are 

 said to exist in it. I have only been able, however, 

 to procure the names of the following — • 



1. Siva Marangaja, 3. Raja Isiri, 



'X. ..Siva-Jarang-Miindopa, 4. Malamdeva. 



The Batta alphabet is peculiar, both in the form of 

 its characters, and in the order of their arrangement. 

 It consists of nineteen letters, each of which is va- 

 riable by sixvocalic sounds like the Bugis. In the 

 power of the letters, it nearly corresponds with the 

 Bugis and Javanese 'ei\^\\^hetSy the difference between 

 all these being extremely trifling, consisting solely in 



