HISTORY EMBODIED IN WORDS. 155 



this, it is the custom in some parts of the country to reckon 

 the days of the month, which are all lunar, not by sevens, 

 but to give them separate names from the first to the twenty- 

 eighth. Many of these Mr. Dahle discovered to be the Arabic 

 names, slightly altered, of some of the principal stars in the 

 different constellations of the Zodiac. 



But it need only be further added here that some terms 

 of salutation, many words for dress, woven fabrics, and bed- 

 ding, the words for money and trading, terms referring to 

 books and writing, and some sixty miscellaneous words, have 

 also been identified as most probably of Arabic introduction. 

 So that to the Arabs the Malagasy owe a considerable 

 element in their language connected with civilisation, and by 

 which they have been raised much above the semi-barbarous 

 condition of many other branches of the Malayo-Polynesian 

 race ; while they have also received from the Arabs certain 

 superstitions which they have engrafted upon their original 

 charm-worship. 



Bat besides the history now being embodied in the lan- 

 guage generally by contact with Europeans, and that powerful 

 influence exerted upon it many centuries ago by the Arabs, 

 there are numerous separate words, in most cases of purely 

 Malagasy origin, in which old customs and states of society 

 are, as it were, fossilised and preserved unaltered up to the 

 present time. A few examples of these may not be uninter- 

 esting. 



The word for " gateway " is vdvahddy, a compound of vdva, 

 mouth, and liddy, fosse ; it is now applied to any gateway, 

 whether there is an enclosing ditch or not, but the word is 

 a memorial of a period, happily now passed away, when every 

 considerable village in Imerina was an independent state, 

 and when every Malagasy house was its owner's castle, 

 enclosed in a deep fosse dug in the hard red clay, and with 

 a rampart of earth inside that, through which a narrow open- 

 ing or mouth, closed in time of war by a huge circular stone, 

 alone gave access to the courtyard. 



Another common word is also a memorial of the unsettled 

 state of society before there was one central government, the 

 word for " mountain," tendronibdhitra. This means literally 



