2 LANGUAGES OF SOUTHERN INDO-CHINA. 



as genuine Malayan languages overlaid with foreign accretions, 

 or, on the other hand, as alien tongues containing a large num- 

 ber of old Malayan loan words, is not for the present purpose 

 very material. In order to decide this point and to determine 

 whether these mixed languages partake more of the Malayan 

 or of the Mon- Annam type, a careful study of their structure 

 and grammar would be required, but the materials for such a 

 study are at present very deficient, and in either case these 

 dialects even in their present state presuppose, as I intend to 

 show, the existence of a distinct Malayan continental group 

 established at a very remote period in the south of Indo-China. 

 The chief of these languages is Cham, the language of 

 the ancient Hindu kingdom of Champa, which in medieval times 

 occupied the country now called Annam, and in the period just 

 preceding its fall (which occurred in A. D. 1471) had its centre 

 on the East coast of Indo-China about lat. 14° N., though one 

 of its earlier capitals was as far north as lat. 17." 37' N. This 

 language is still spoken in a few inland villages of the Anna- 

 mese province of Binh Thuan, near lat. 12° N., and by the emi- 

 grant Cham community in Camboja ; the latter is now Muham- 

 maclan in its entirety, but the Chams that remain in Annam are 

 mostly pagans. Each group has its own dialect, but apart 

 from slight variations the language of both is the same. It is 

 written in a complex alphabet of Indian origin : inscriptions, 

 both in Sanskrit and in Cham, abound in Annam, and the former 

 go back to about the 3rd century after our era.* According 



* The Sanskrit inscriptions were dealt with in a paper " L'Ancien 

 lioyaume de Campa d'apres les inscriptions " by M. Abel Bergaigne 

 in the Journal Asiatique (Paris) Jan. Feb. 1888. 



The inscriptions in Cham, which have more interest for us, from 

 the Malayan point of view, than the Sanskrit ones, have been dealt 



with by M. Etienne Aymonier in a paper " Premiere Etude sur les 

 Inscriptions Tchames," in the same journal, Jan. Feb. 1891. The 

 earliest known of these Cham inscriptions dates from about the 

 beginning of the 9th century A. D. 



In an inscription dated a little later, recording the dedication of 

 two lields to pious uses, the expression used is hurna dun nan, lit. 

 " fields two those"; the word for God is Yang, the old word which 

 survives in Malay lcayangan and sembahyang. Most of the rest of 

 the inscription is full of Sanskrit words, as indeed the whole series 



Jour. Straits Branch, 



