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. (See pages 105 and 116.) 



The Malay affinities 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 Mada- 

 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, down to Marsden, Baron 

 W. von IJumboldt, 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 speech 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 Eev. W. E. Cousins, 

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

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

 Malagasy that not only are a large number of words (at least 

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

 important character, 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 



* Spraalc ende woord bock in de Malcische en de Madagaslcarsche talcn ; Fred, 

 do Houtman ; Amsterdam : 1603 ; and Colloquia latino -maleyica et madagas- 

 cavica ; Goth. Arthusius ; Francfort : 1 61 3. 



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

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



