LANGUAGES OF JAVA. 15 



port its population. In addition to this, the Sultan 

 of Bankalang keeps a small standing army, and I 

 believe furnishes also a certain contingent of men 

 to the Dutch troops in Java, and his subjects emi- 

 grate to avoid this conscription. The language of 

 Madura is said to be harsh and difficult ; that of 

 Java, on the contrary, is a rather harmonious and 

 fine sounding language. I learnt now, for the first 

 time, from young Mr. Etty, having hitherto never 

 read Sir Stamford Raffles' History of Java, that the 

 Javanese is divided into two dialects, — the high 

 and the low tongue. An inferior addressing his 

 superior must always speak the " bhasa krema," or 

 polite language, using the most elegant and poetical 

 terms he can think of, while the superior answers 

 in the commonest and most vulgar method of 

 speech.* It is not, however, simply a difference of 



* Analogies may be traced in the Polynesian Archipelago. 

 See Mariner's Tonga Islands, vol. ii. p. 84. 



Crawfurd, in his History of the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii., 

 gives the following account of the languages of Java, which is 

 somewhat different from, but no doubt more correct than the 

 above. 



" Speech is, in fact, divided into two dialects, the ordinary 

 language, and one invented to express deference and respect. 

 This distinction by no means implies a court or polished lan- 

 guage, opposed to a vulgar or popular one, for both are equally 

 polite and cultivated, and all depends on the relations in which 

 the speakers stand to each other. A servant addresses his master 

 in the language of deference, a child his parent, a wife her hus- 

 band if there be much disparity in their ages, and the courtier 



