78 THE EVOLUTION OF MALAY SPELLING. 



undoubtedly have been that in different parts of the Archipelago 

 there would have been different modifications of the Arabic spell- 

 ing-, and a variety of Malay spellings would have been unavoid- 

 able. The uniformity in the spelling of the earliest manuscripts 

 would therefore lead us to expect that the system of orthogra- 

 phy according to which the Arabs originally I egan to write the 

 Malay language and which they subsequently taught to the 

 Malays, w T as precisely the same as they themselves used in 

 writing their own language. Whether this w^as so or not is the 

 first point which we will examine. 



It should first be stated, that Arabic can be written either 

 with or without vowel points, and books are printed at the pre- 

 sent time in both styles. The plain or unvowelled style is the 

 more common, but as the entire omission of vowel points would 

 frequentl} r cause ambiguity, the Arabs find it necessary in cer- 

 tain words to use one or more vowel points. This description of 

 the way in which modern Arabic is printed applies exactly to the 

 way in which Malay was written 300 years ago. Several vowel - 

 led Malay MSB. are extant. One of the old Cambridge MSS. con- 

 tains twelve pages of Malay fully vo welled, and in the other 

 MSS. mentioned above, vowels are used in isolated words. In com- 

 mitting an unknown language to writing, it is pretty certain 

 that the Arabs would at first use all the vowel points, if only for 

 the purpose of recording for their own use the sounds of the new 

 language, and in all probability Malay would continue to be 

 written with vowels for many years, until the scribes had become 

 thoroughly familiar with the forms of all the common words, after 

 which they would begin to drop the vow r els from such w T ords, 

 retaining them only in the case of unusual words or peculiar 

 derivatives. This is precisely the way in wmich we find that 

 Malay was actually written at the beginning- of the 17th century. 



We will now proceed to show (I) that at the time when 

 our MSS. were written the spelling as a general rule conform- 

 ed exactly to the rules of Arabic orthography ; after which it 

 will be shown (II) that words which at that time w r ere some- 

 times written otherwise than in strict accordance with Arabic 

 orthography were being gradually introduced with the deliberate 

 intention of doing away with the necessity for the use of vowel 

 points and orthographical signs, and for the purpose of making 



