Sir William Edward Maxwell

“ It is not too much to say that any one aiming at a thorough knowledge of the language, literature, and history of the Malay people should commence his task by learning Dutch.
Malay is the language not of a nation, but of tribes and communities widely scattered in the East, and is probably spoken with greatest purity in the states of Kedah and Perak, on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is spoken in all the states of the Peninsula, in Sumatra, Sunda, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Flores, Timor, and Timor Laut, the Moluccas, and the Philippines. ”

“ The limited extent of our Malay possessions, when they are compared with the magnificent 2 islands which make up Netherlands India, excuse us, no doubt, for the secondary place which we occupy in all researches connected with the language and literature of the Malays. To the Dutch their colonies in the Eastern seas are what our Indian Empire is to us; and with them the study of Malay, Javanese, Kawi, &c., takes the place of Persian, Hindustani, Tamil, Sanskrit, &c., which occupy our civilians in India. ”

“ The language is not ennobled by having been the speech of men who have made their mark in the world’s history. The islands of Indonesia have never startled the Eastern world with an Akbar, or charmed it with a Hafiz or a Chand. Receptivity, not originality, is the characteristic of the Malay races. But the importance of Malay, when the traveller heads eastward from the Bay of Bengal, has been recognised by Europeans since the sixteenth century, when Magellan’s Malay interpreter was found to be understood from one end of the Archipelago to the other. ”

“ Malay is called a poor language, and so it is, but not so much so as is often imagined, certainly not as far as its vocabulary is concerned. That it is often unable to furnish us with words for abstract ideas is a deficiency which it has in common with all languages of the Indian Archipelago, or rather with all races who have not yet risen to the height of our civilisation and development. ”

“ The Malay speaks much better than he writes, and has at his command quantities of words which never find their way into his literature, and, therefore, but rarely into dictionaries compiled by Europeans.
The spelling of Malay words in the native character is hardly yet fixed, though the Perso-Arabic alphabet has been vii in use since the thirteenth century; and those follow but a vain shadow who seek to prescribe exact modes of spelling words regarding which even native authorities are not agreed, and of which the pronunciation may vary according to locality. ”

“ Either their synonymous native terms have been lost, or the Malays, at the period of Indian influence, had not reached that stage of civilisation when man commences to analyse and name the emotions he experiences and sees experienced by others. Good and bad qualities, in the same way and for the same reason, seem often to bear Sanskrit appellations. The following list does not profess to be complete:—
Inter-tribal warfare is usually characteristic of savage tribes, and an ample vocabulary of words connected with fighting and the art of war may be looked for in a language like Malay. ”

“ May it not be, therefore, that Malaya or Malayu46 was the name by which the earliest Sanskrit-speaking 39 adventurers from India denominated the rude tribes of Sumatra and the peninsula with whom they came in contact, just as Jawi is the name given to Malays by the Arabs, the term in either case being adopted by the people from those to whom they looked up with reverence as their conquerors or teachers? ”

“ Instruction derived from books must be supplemented by constant practice in speaking with Malays—not with Malay-speaking Asiatics of other nationalities—before idioms can be mastered. Until some facility in framing sentences according to native idioms has been attained, and it has been perceived how shades of meaning may be conveyed by emphasis, or by the position of a word in the sentence, the European will find it difficult to convey his ideas in Malay, even with a considerable vocabulary of words at his disposal. ”

“ Just as an insight into the early history of our own nation may be obtained by analysing the component parts of the English tongue, and assigning to each of the languages which have contributed to make it what it is their due proportion of influence, so, by resolving the Malay 5 language into its separate elements, of which native, Sanskrit, and Arabic are the chief, and by examining the words contributed by each, it is possible to follow with some approach to historical accuracy the successive advances which the Malay people have made on the path of civilisation. ”

“ So, the Sanskrit names of many weapons indicate a period when the rude weapons of savage Malay tribes—blowpipes, spears, &c.—were supplemented by arms of a more formidable character, for which they were indebted to India. Other groups of words show, independently of other proof, that the Hindu religion was successfully planted among the Malays and flourished for a time, and that the monarchical form of government was introduced in Malay countries by Hindu settlers and rulers. ”

“ Unfortunately for the purity of the dialect spoken at the British settlements in the Straits of Malacca, the majority of the domestic servants there are foreigners (natives of India, Chinese, Javanese, &c.) , who seldom speak Malay well, either as regards style or pronunciation. It is assumed that the student aims at something more than clothing foreign idioms with Malay words, and he should be on his guard therefore against the errors of people of this class. ”

“ We may, however, be deceived by forming our opinion from the contemplation of modern India, and should recollect that, previously to the Mohametan irruptions into the upper provinces, which first took place about the year 1000, and until the progressive subjugation of the country by Persians and Moghuls, there existed several powerful and opulent Hindu states of whose maritime relations we are entirely ignorant at present, and can only cherish the hope of future discoveries from the laudable spirit of research that pervades and does so much honour to our Indian establishments. ”

“ From this subject it is natural to proceed to another disputed etymology, namely, the origin of the word Jawi, which is often used by the Malays for the word Malayu in speaking of their language and written character, bahasa jawi meaning Malay language, and surat jawi a document written in Malay. It is not necessary to go into all the various conjectures on the subject, which will be found in the works of Marsden, Crawfurd, Favre, and others.
Jawi is a word of Arab origin, and is formed in accordance with the rules of Arabic grammar from the noun Jawa, Java. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that the Malay passive is confined to the written language; it is of common use colloquially among Malays, but, probably because it offers certain difficulties of construction, it is little understood and seldom employed by Europeans in the Straits of Malacca.
“He did not, or would not, accept it,” would be vulgarly rendered dia ta’ mahu tĕrima; but it may be more elegantly translated tiada-lah di-tĕrima-nia, “It was not accepted by him.” ”

“ The aboriginal dialect, prior to the admixture of Sanskrit, must have been but the poor vocabulary of men hardly raised above savage life. The purely native element in Malay furnishes all the necessary terms to express the physical objects surrounding men leading a primitive life in the forest, and all that has to do with their food, dwellings, agriculture, fishing, hunting, and domestic affairs. ”

“ Frequently where the word “your” would be used in English Malays leave out the pronoun altogether. “Bring your gun with you,” would be correctly rendered in Malay, bawa snapang sama (lit. bring gun together) , not bawa angkau punya snapang sama angkau.
In literary composition ku and mu (abbreviated forms of aku and kamu) are affixed to the noun denoting the thing possessed; as rumah-ku, my house; bapa-mu, your father.
The affix -nia is used in the sense of his, hers, or its, as well as the other forms of the possessive pronoun; as patah kaki-nia, his leg was broken ”

“ Sanskrit terms are also used to signify the driver of an elephant and several articles used in connection with this animal. From these circumstances we may probably conclude, with Crawfurd, that the 19 art of training and domesticating elephants was first learned by the Malays from natives of India.22
The words of command used by elephant-drivers in the Malay peninsula appear, however, to be adapted mainly from the Siamese, and it is from this people that the Malays of the continent have acquired much of their modern knowledge of the art of capturing, subduing, and training the elephant. ”

“ It is impossible to treat the story of Sang Sapurba, the first Malay raja, as historical. The name, “Maha-Meru,” sufficiently shows that we are upon mythological ground. The story is as follows:— Three young men descend from the heavens of Indra (ka indra-an) upon the mountain Maha-Meru, 38 on the slopes of which they meet two women who support themselves by planting hill-padi. Supernatural incidents mark the advent of the strangers. The very corn in the ground puts forth ears of gold, while its leaves become silver and its stalks copper. ”

“ The presence of Sanskrit words in the Malay language was first remarked by Sir William Jones,16 and the subject received more attention at the hands of Marsden, who gives a short list of fifteen words, “taken, with little pains in the selection, from a Malayan dictionary.”17 Many of the Sanskrit words are, as Marsden observes, “such as the progress of civilisation must soon have rendered necessary, being frequently expressive of the feelings of the mind, or denoting those ordinary modes of thought which result from the social habits of mankind, or from the evils that tend to interrupt them.” ”

“ In the first place, it is not meant to be asserted that the Malays have obtained all the words enumerated further on direct from the people of India. All theories founded upon the presence of Sanskrit words in Malay must apply with equal force to Javanese, which contains a larger proportion of Sanskrit words than Malay. ”

“ The Roman character is used throughout, but a knowledge of the native character can hardly be dispensed with by those who aim at a thorough acquaintance with the language. As it abounds in idiomatic expressions, the study of native compositions is most important, and these are generally to be found only in the Malay character. Little attempt is made at scientific arrangement. In dealing with the various parts of speech, technical terms are as far as possible avoided, and reliance is placed rather on illustrations than abstract rules. ”

“ Inflexion is unknown in Malay, and gender has no place in the grammar of the language. Most nouns which signify animate things are of both genders, and the sexes are distinguished by the addition, in the case of persons, of the words laki-laki, male, and perampuan, female, and in other cases of the words jantan, male, and betina, female. ”

“ Ideas are conveyed in Malay in a much less concrete form than in the civilised languages of Europe, and what is lost in accuracy and distinctness is partially compensated for by brevity.
Why say kasih sama sahaya (lit. “give to me”) , in imitation of the English give me, or the French donnez-moi, or the German geben sie mir, in all of which the pronoun is expressed, when a Malay would simply say bahagi-lah, give, or bawa, bring? ”

“ The word morga, (mṛiga) and satwâ (sattva) ,23 both meaning “an animal,” are Sanskrit, and if the commoner word benâtang is derived, as seems possible, from the Sanskrit vana, forest, there is no purely native generic term to signify a beast or animal. While, therefore, 20 the early Malay tribes had names for all the animals domesticated by them, as well as those which they encountered in their forests, it was not until the period of their intercourse with more civilised races from India that they learned to generalise and to comprehend the brute creation under one term. ”

“ Siam proper has a large Malay population, descendants mainly of captives taken in war, and the language is therefore in use there in places; it is found also here and there on the coasts and rivers of Anam and Cochin-China. No other language of the Eastern Archipelago is understood over such an extensive area, and it is the common means of communication between the numerous tribes and races of the Malay family whose languages and dialects differ. ”

“ In Java, Sumatra, and other islands eastward in which Malay is spoken, the pronunciation and character of the language are much influenced by the other languages current there. Malay is only spoken in perfection in places where the natives speak no other tongue. ”

“ The future is also expressed by the auxiliaries mahu and handak; as dia mahu jual, he will sell it; tiada mahu dia datang, he would not come; kapal handak masok sungei, a ship is about to enter the river; di-panggil-nia orang-besar-besar mushawarat handak di-buat meligei, he summoned the chiefs to consult about building a palace.
Another mode of forming the future is by the word nanti (lit. wait) , placed, like the French verb aller, before the verb; as sahaya nanti chahari, je vais chercher, I am going to seek, or j’irai chercher, I shall go to seek. ”

“ In Malay, as in Burmese, Siamese, and Chinese, “there exists a set of specific and technical terms, called by the grammarians numeral affixes, some one or other of which is always used as a co-efficient to the numeral, the term being selected according to the class under which the object falls.”7 The use of these terms will be best understood by comparing it with the analogous use in English of such phrases as so many head of cattle; so many file of soldiers; so many sail of ships; so many stand of rifles. ”