22 THE FORMATION OF WORDS. 
di-hudup oleh segala raja-raja dan mentrt, hulubalang serta bidu- 
anda sekalian (Isma Yatim, passim). Not once in this frequent 
phrase another of the nouns occurring in it, which are all plu- 
rals, is found in reduplication, such as mentri-mentri, hulubalang- 
hulubalang, biduanda-biduanda, while raja is always reduplicat- 
ed. The heading of this paragraph will supply the explanation 
of the difference. While the other nouns denote certain offices 
or ranks, the members of which are equals among themselves, 
all being ministers or officers of the body-guard, or pages, the 
title “raja” includes all princes of royal blood (usually below 
the rank of tengku and engku ), inclusive of that large class of 
attendants at court, who by some however distant blood rela- 
tion with the ruling prince are thereby differentiated from out- 
siders. It cannot be denied that there is the greatest variation 
in rank included under this title, and this the Malay writer and 
speaker expresses by the reduplication. We may translate the 
phrase therefore: ‘(The prince) waited upon by the various 
classes of Rajas, and the ministers, officers of the body-guard 
and the pages together.” 
If there should be yet a reluctance in giving up the long 
accepted view of seeing in these reduplications proper plurals 
in our sense of the word, I would refer the reader to those of 
the Malay classics, which, like the Bustanu’s  salatin*, the 
Taju’s salatin, and of more modern works, the Taman Permata, 
are largely made up of Arabic quotations with their Malay 
translations. It is avery easy task to compare these transla- 
tions with the Arabic originals, and it will be seen, that in every 
case where the Arabic plural is at all expressed in Malay, it is 
done by AS segala. Passages like these are of great interest 
to the student of the language, because they are the only 
*The Bustanu’s salatin is one of the most interesting of all 
Malay works, especially as it is dated. It was written in Acheh, Su- 
matra, in 1641 (1040 of the Muhammedan era) by Nuru’ddin ibn Ali 
ibn Hasanji ibn Muhammad al Hamidi (the author is very careful in 
giving so much of his pedigree) under the patronage of Sultan 
Iskandar II, Of the seven volumes the first two have been published 
by R. J. Wilkinson in 1899 and 1900. I possess a MS copy of the 
seventh volume. ‘The work deserves the careful study of all somewhat - 
advanced students of the language. 
Jour. Straits Branch 
