1877.] Peninsula and the Indian ArcJiipelago. 221 



speaking distinct languages ; that there several races of Negritos also, and 

 that the Polynesian languages, properly so called, were quite distinct from 

 Malayan. There rests the controversy, involving the deepest questions of 

 the sciences of Ethnology, Language, and Geology. It is scarcely necessary 

 to add that Bopp's theory as to the Indo-European connexion of the Mala- 

 yan sub -family has been condemned by Max Mliller, Breal, and all scholars 

 of weight, in spite of their reverence to their great master in Comparative 

 Philology. One great fact stands out, that, while the Malayan languages 

 have had no effect whatever on the higher civilization of the Asiatic con- 

 tinent, on the other hand, wherever Malay and Java;nese have been received 

 by other islands of the archipelago, there will be found a higher stage of 

 civilization. 



" The Malays proper had their ancestral home in the interior of Suma- 

 tra, the region of Menangkaba : thence they colonized the coasts of Suma- 

 tra, the Peninsula of Malacca, the coasts of Borneo, and made their influence 

 felt far beyond, as adventurous pirates and merchants. Their language 

 being simple, and easily learnt, has readily adopted loan-words from the 

 Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, English, Portuguese, Dutch, Javanese, Telinga? 

 and Chinese languages, avoiding allusion to the disputed main ingredients 

 of primitive Malayan, and the great Polynesian. In the lower classes the 

 primitive Malay would preponderate ; in classical works the learned exotics. 

 It is asserted that the Malay of Singapore and the State of Queddah in 

 Malacca, is the most classical. There are several dialects, and among them 

 the Achinese, which had certain characteristics connecting it with the Indo- 

 Chinese, and Batta languages. If there ever was a written character, it has 

 not survived the introduction of the well-known Arabic, with additional 

 characters. A considerable literature exists, chiefly prose, but nothing of 

 an original nature. Van dei* Tuuk pronounces, in the Journal of the Eoyal 

 Asiatic Society, all existing dictionaries, whether English or Dutch, to be 

 insufiicient, and not up to the mark. Of the dialects the purest are the 

 simplest. The Malay spoken at Batavia differs very much from that 

 spoken in the original country. Of all languages the low or common 

 Malay is the most readily acquired. It contains no hard gutturals, or 

 difiicult consonants : it is soft and musical, and has a nice blending of 

 vowels and consonants. It has become the lingua franca in the Dutch 

 colonies ; all servants are addressed in it, and European children speak it 

 before they know their own language. The Samsans of the Queddah 

 State in the peninsula of Malacca are Siamese by race, and Muhammadans 

 by religion, and speak a mixed language of Siamese and Malay. 



" The written language is called Jawi, a Javanese word correlative of 

 Kawi ; it means ' common,' and is antithetical to the other, which is the 

 ■ abstruse' language. As the Malays have no learned language of their 



