206 THE LANGUAGES OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO, 
sufficiently accurat j and natural for our purpose, and we there¬ 
fore venture to recommend it to the attention of those of our 
readers who are disposed to co-operate with us, in the all im¬ 
portant labour of exploring the languages of the Archipelago. 
This labour, uninteresting and unfruitful as it may seem to 
those who have not engaged in it, is not only the essential basis 
of all sound and comprehensive knowledge of the races and 
tribes of the Archipelago, but, when pursued in the true direc¬ 
tion, and with some acquaintance with the principles and aims 
of comparative philology, is really one of the most fascinat¬ 
ing to which a sojourner amongst the eastern islands can ad¬ 
dict himself. Many other subjects of research of less import¬ 
ance can only be entered on with advantage alter a training 
of some severity, and to the isolated inquirer are attended with 
expense for.instruments, books and means of travelling, which 
few can afford. But the elucidation of the languages spoken by 
the natives amongst whom we live, can be undertaken by every 
one who is inclined to do so. The extremely meagre, ill-ar¬ 
ranged and careless character of most of the vocabularies which 
have hitherto been furnished arises, we must suppose, from 
an impression that the labour of making them as full and 
perfect as circumstances allow, would not be appreciated. 
To aid in removing this very erroneous idea we shall from time 
to time give extracts from recent publications in England. It 
is greatly to be desired that the Ethnological Society, British 
Association or other competent body in England would adopt, 
print and give currency to a complete vocabulary arranged un¬ 
der a natural classification, with blank columns for new lan¬ 
guages. In the hope that this will not long remain a desidera¬ 
tum we would meantime suggest to our contributors the adop¬ 
tion of our classification, or any better one that may occur to 
them, and we would most earnestly request of them that when 
they do not adopt the orthography recommended in the sequel 
of this paper, they will invariably prefix to all vocabularies or 
lists of words with which they may favour us, be they of tens 
or hundreds, a table shewing the power of each letter used by 
them. We need not insist on the necessity of adding a suffi¬ 
cient number and variety of sentences to illustrate the gram¬ 
matical character of the language.* 
* Since our vocabulary was constructed we have seen one based on similar 
principles, published at Calcutta in 1847, by Mr Hodgson, and as he appears 
to 'desire suggestions for its improvement, we venture to offer the following 
which occur to us on comparing it with our own. He thinks it is “ too large 
and too difficult.” It appears to us not to be large enough, and that the diffi¬ 
culty may be removed and the bulk diminished by a more natural classification. 
Nouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbs &c. are entirely separated, the consequence 
