210 
ns THE MALAYAN AND POLYNESIAN 
the proportion of the facilities ; and small as they diminish, until, by 
an accumulation of difficulties, they cease altogether. 
Malay and Javanese words have not been traced to the languages 
of the continents of Africa and America. Madagascar seems to in¬ 
tercept them from the first, and the want of stepping-stones or stages 
between Easter Island and the west coast of America, with adverse 
winds and currents, from the last. 
Wherever they have been received, the Malays and Javanese will 
be found in a higher state of civilization than the nations into whose 
languages theirs have been adopted. Wherever, on the contrary, the 
nations with whom they have held intercourse have been in a higher 
state of civilization than themselves, their languages have been re¬ 
jected, and the languages of those nations even adopted into their 
own. 
The Hindoos, in a higher state of civilization than the Malays and 
Javanese, have wholly rejected their languages ; but, on the contra¬ 
ry, in the course of an intercourse of many ages, the latter have bor¬ 
rowed largely,—of which, if this were the proper time, I could, 
through the friendship of the learned and ingenious orientalist now 
presiding over this section, furnish larger and more satisfactory evi¬ 
dence than has ever been adduced before.* 
The same cause has excluded the Malay and Javanese from the 
languages of Arabia and Persia, notwithstanding an intercourse of 
at least five centuries; while, on the other hand, those languages 
have been, to a considerable extent, largely adopted both by the 
Malays and Javanese. 
Superior civilization, and probably not less, the uncongenial mo- 
nosyllablic character of their languages, has excluded the Malayan 
languages from the regions east of Hindustan. The Siamese, al¬ 
though in immediate juxtaposition with the Malay, has neither given 
the latter words, nor, with the exception of about half a dozen, re¬ 
ceived any from it. 
This remark is still more applicable to the Chinese languages, 
* Horace Hayman Wilson, Professor of Sanskrit in the University of 
Oxford. 
