LANGUAGES OF SOUTHERN INDO-CHINA. 3 



to Ptolemy the metropolis of this region was Balonga. This 

 place can be clearly identitied,* on other grounds besides mere 

 similarity of name, with Bal-Angoue, of which the ruins situated 

 near the coast about lat. 14° N are still in existence, and which 

 was therefore apparently the first, or at least the earliest 

 known, as it ultimately became the last, of the Cham capitals. 

 Its fall is narrated, curiously enough, in the Sejarah Mai ay u, 

 where it is called Bal, the generic Cham word for " metropolis" 

 or " capital." 



The Chams, in fact, are the remnants of what was once a 

 highly civilized nation : they were the furthest outpost of Indian 

 civilization on the Asiatic continent, and their country was a 

 borderland where for over a thousand years Indian culture 

 struggled with and was eventually vanquished by Chinese, the 

 latter being represented by the Annamese, who though non- 

 Chinese in origin had become civilized under Chinese tutelage. 



Such is the history of the Chams in outline : but legends 

 carry it back even further, for the Cambojan traditions, for 

 what they are worth, represent the Chams as having been in 

 occupation of Camboja when the Cambojans first arrived there, 

 some centuries before the Christian era : the immigrant Cam- 

 bojans are said to have intermingled at first with the Chains but 

 eventually to have got the upper hand and driven out their king. 



Physically the Chams appear to resemble the Malay and Indo- 

 Chinese types, being described as somewhat fairer than the for- 

 mer. Some of them appear to show traces of Indian and Arab 

 blood. Their language, of which a good grammar has been 

 published, is in its present condition a mixed language contain- 

 ing a relatively large number of Mon-Annam elements. Some 

 have regarded it as a Mon-Annam language saturated with 

 Malayan loan words, others maintain that it is a Malayan 

 language modified by Mon-Annam influences. As will appear 

 in the sequel, I am not sure that this may not be something 



of Cham inscriptions appear to be, the language in which they were 

 written bearing much the same relation to the spoken Cham, as Kawi 

 probably did to the contemporary spoken Javanese. 



The series extends into the 15th century, to a few years before 

 the fall of the kingdom. 



* See J. R. A! S. (1899) 665. 

 11. A. Soc, No. 38, 1902. 



