432 General Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Paris. [No. 125. 



opened a course of lectures on the Malayan language in the school 

 of the living languages. Not to mention that this language has its 

 own literature, it is of great importance for ethnography, as the restless 

 and trading race of the Malays is spread over an immense range of 

 coasts and islands, and the history of this idiom for the greatest part is 

 also that of the maritime population of the Eastern and Southern seas. 

 A great scholar, the late Mr. W. De Humboldt, had seized on the 

 solution of the problem which the origin of these people offers, and 

 most thoroughly investigated it in his masterly work on the Kawi 

 language ; 30 the last two volumes of which have appeared last year under 

 the auspices of the Academy of Berlin by the care of Mr. Buschmann. 

 He founds his researches on the Kawi, the antient language of Java, 

 reconstructing its grammar by analysing the text of Brata Yuddha. 

 Then proceeding to a similar analysis of the other Malayan dialects 

 from the Philippines to Madagascar, he supplies the insufficiency of his 

 resources by the strictness of his method, and by the astounding pene- 

 tration of his mind. The grammatical investigation is enriched in all 

 parts of the work by memoirs concerning the influence of India on the 

 Malays, on the antiquities of Java, on the influence of writing on 

 language, etc. memoirs which render this work a mine of new and 

 important ideas, and where the penetration and the mental power of the 

 author are equally displayed. 



Mr. Buschmann advertises, that he intends to publish the text and 

 translation of Brata Yuddha, which will form the complement to Mr. 

 De H.'s work. It is an epic poem, an imitation of the Mahabharat, of 

 which Raffles had already given a part in Latin characters. Written 

 in Kawi, it dates as the Indian Poem to a period when the influence of 

 Indian ideas in Java had not yet submitted to the Musulmans. 



After having presented to you this sketch, unavoidably incomplete, 

 of the progress that Oriental literature has made since our last meeting, 

 I would desire to add a few words concerning a subject which has 

 occupied, and is now occupying a great many learned men, and which 

 deserves the whole attention of a Society, destined for the interests 

 of Oriental literature. I allude to the variety of systems, at present 



30. Uber die Kawisprache aufder Insel Java, von W. Humboldt. Berlin, 1836, 39, 

 3. vols in 4to. 



