76 THE EVOLUTION OF MALAY SPELLING. 



Journal I have already described some of the most interesting 

 of these MSS., and particular care was taken to reproduce as 

 exactly as possible the spelling of the originals. On page 107 of 

 the paper above referred to, will be found a reference to certain 

 MSS. belonging to the ( Cambridge University Library and described 

 by Dr. van Ronkel in Part 2 of Series 6 of Bijdragen tot de Taal- 

 L an d- en Volhenkunde ran Xcderlan dsch -In die. This paper by Dr. van 

 Ronkel provides valuable material for the present investigation, 

 the spelling of his extracts having also been reproduced with consid- 

 erable accuracy. The Cambridge MSS. were taken to Europe 

 from the East in the first decade of the 17th century, and one of 

 them bears the date 1G04. The earliest of the Oxford MSS. 

 bears a Mohammedan date (A. H. 1011) equivalent to the year 

 1602 of our era, another is almost certainly of the same date, a 

 third is dated 1612, and a copy of the Hikayat Sri Rama was 

 probably also obtained at that time, as it belonged to the same 

 collection, and came into the Bodleian library in 1633. For in- 

 formation in regard to the two Leiden MSS. and the Harleian MS., 

 which I have also made use of though they are of a somewhat 

 later date, the reader is referred to my paper in Journal No. 31. 

 I have also in my possession careful copies of four other manu- 

 script letters belonging to the Leiden University, but for the pur- 

 poses of this paper I will confine myself to the manuscripts men- 

 tioned above, which have already been fully described by Dr. 

 van Ronkel and myself and are available to the reader in the 

 Journals referred to. 



As compared with the changes which have taken place in 

 the spelling of the English language since the days of Queen 

 Elizabeth (to whom the oldest of the Oxford MSS. was addressed) 

 it must be said that the differences between the Malay spelling of 

 to-day and that of three hundred years ago are very few and very 

 insignificant indeed — an exemplification of the well-known fact 

 that the Oriental is slow to change. Manuscripts and even 

 printed documents of the date of Queen Elizabeth are so entire- 

 ly different from modern English writings and books that they 

 can only be read by those who have made them a special study. 

 Our oldest Malay manuscripts, however, could be read to-day 

 by any school boy with the greatest ease, with the exception of 

 perhaps an unusual word or an obsolete spelling here and there. 



