1850.] 



of Continental India, 8fc. 



115 



quently rice in particular, as the best kind of grain. The words 

 bapa, and ba for father ; and ma for mother, in the Malay, and other 

 dialects, of Sumatra, will be readily recognized by the Hindustani 

 scholar ; and ma for mother is also found in Tamil. The term 

 kapala for head is Sanscrit and also a Tamil word, having the 

 same meaning ; though not frequently used in Tamil. 



The identifications thus far pursued come down to Marsden's 9th 

 chapter ; and for the present, may suffice as a specimen. It will be 

 more convenient to take up the remaining assimilations at a later 

 period. I would now advert to some brief indications contained in 

 Dr. Leyden's paper, on the languages and literature of the Indo- 

 Chinese nations. Near the commencement he remarks concerning 

 the Indo-Chinese natives, ' it is often impossible to determine 

 ' whether their religious institutions are most connected with the 

 ' tenets of Brahma or Buddha ; and often to reduce them to any 

 ' known system. Erom the names and epithets however of some 

 ' of their deities, even as given in the vulgar, and incurious, man- 

 ' ner of common navigators it is often easy to discover their con- 

 ' nection with the grand features of Hindu superstition ; but our uo- 

 ' tices concerning them are generally too scanty, and our narra- 



* tives too erroneous, to enable us to classify them with absolute cer- 

 ' tainty. Such is the difference of oriental and European manners, 

 ' that the simplest narrator is apt to mingle conjecture with obser- 

 5 vation ; while an absurd affectation of superior sagacity, and a dis- 



* dain of vulgar superstitions, and prejudices, often prevent those 



* who have had the opportunity of observation from detailing the 

 4 most useful pieces of information, or induce them to reject as 



* anile, and useless, fables, the mythological narratives which would 

 ' enable us to determine the origin of a nation or a tribe.'* He con- 

 siders the Malay, and the nine original languages of the Eastern Isles, 

 to have been polysyllabic like Sanscrit, Pali, and the spoken langua- 

 ges of India; and thinks the modifications which those more Eastern 

 languages have received, from a foreign source, to have been effect- 

 ed rather by Sanscrit than Pali ; though the influence of the latter 

 is not to be excluded. The Ultra Gangetic continental languages, 

 on the contrary, he thinks w r ere originally purely monosyllabic, and 

 that foreign modification, in every instance, has been immediately 



* As. Res. vol. 10, Art. 3, 



