A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language : with a preliminary ...

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DISSERTATION.
insular, and, with the exception of the islands of New Zealand,
monsoons, or trade winds, prevail through every part of it. To
this, I have no doubt, is mainly to be attributed the wide dis-
semination of language now the sul)ject of inquiry, and which,
among rude nations, were impossible on a continent without
periodical winds.
The generally adopted explanation of this wide dissemination
of language amounts to this, that the many existing tongues
were originally one language, through time and dis-
adopted taucc Split iuto many dialects, and that all the people
speaking these supposed dialects are of one and the
same race. But as this hypothesis could not well be main-
tained in the face of an existing negro population, the negroes
and theii- languages are specially excepted, on the eri'oneous
supposition that no words of the common tongue exist in their
languages. This hypothesis originated with the German
naturalist, Forster, who accompanied Captain Cooke in his
second voyage, and it has been adopted by many distinguished
philologists, but especially by INIr. Marsden and Baron William
Humboldt. It was, in a modified form, my own opinion, in a
less mature state of my acquaintance with the subject ; but I
am now satisfied that it is wholly groundless.*
Some of the objections to this hypothesis, exclusive of the
palpable one of the existence of Malayan words in all the negro
languages, are obvious. It supposes, for example, that
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Refutation . ° ° . ^ ^ .\
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of the language and race are identical, taking it, oi course,
for granted, that men are born with peculiar languages
as they are with peculiar complexions; and that both are
equally unchangeable. Many well known events of authentic
* " We likewise find a very remarkable similarity between several words of the
fair tribe of islanders in the South Sea, and some of the Malays. But it would be
highly inconclusive, from the similarity of a few words, to infer that these islanders
were descended from the Malays " "I am, therefore, rather inclined to suppose
that all these dialects preserve several words of a more ancient langiiage, which
was more universal, and was gi'adually divided into many languages, now remark-
ably different. The words, therefore, of the language of the South Sea isles, which
are similar to others in the Malay tongue, prove clearly, in my opinion, that the
South Sea isles were originally peopled from the Indian, or Asiatic Northern isles
and that those lying more to the westward received their first inhabitants from
the neighbourhood of New Guinea." Ohsenatims.—Voyage round tlie World, by
John Reynold Forster; London, 1778.
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