SUGGESTIONS BEGAKDING A NEW MALAY 



DICTION AEY. 



By the Hon'ble C. J. Irving. 



Read at a Meeting held on the 9th December, 1878. 



As lias been announced, I am desirous this evening of 

 inviting discussion in regard to a question which must be, I 

 think, of considerable interest to many of the members : 

 whether it is desirable that this Society should undertake, 

 or promote, and if so in what manner or to what degree, the 

 publication of a Work in the nature of a Dictionary of the 

 Malay language, to take the place of, or to be supplementary 

 to, the Dictionaries which exsist at present. 



The name, Malaya, which has been adopted to denote the 

 countries to which the researches of this society are, gene- 

 rally speaking, limited, is in itself an indication of the im- 

 portance which attaches to the Malay element in the popula- 

 tion : and however great may be the interest attaching to 

 the language and habits of the foreign settlers who have 

 reached these countries, from China or from India, within 

 recent times, or to the language and habits of the scanty 

 remnants of the races who seem to have been the aboriginal 

 possessors of the soil — I think that it will generally be felt 

 that in the ethnological and philological divisions of the 

 Society's researches, it is the Malay race, the Malay language, 

 Malay history, literature, and civilization, that should hold 

 the central and dominant position. 



And as regards the language I think that Malay has not 

 merely this relative strong claim on our attention, but that 

 absolutely and intrinsically it presents a field for enquiry 

 which is very well worth the trouble of exploring. The 

 primitive element of the language, including the bulk of its 

 vocabulary and its methods of construction, is interesting as 

 the speech of a race whose remote ancestors may have lived 

 in these regions " dibawah angin," to the leeward that is of 



