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

DISSERTATION. clix
Polynesia. The proportion of Teutonic words in Italian or
French, or of Norman French in English, very far exceeds that
of the Malayan in the language of Madagascar ; but we do not,
therefore, jump to the conclusion that the German and Italian
races and languages are one and the same, or that the English
people and their language are of Gallic origin.
But, independent of the argument to be drawn from the
paucity of Malayan words, it should be added, that many of
them, as I have shown to be the case in the other languages
containing Malay and Javanese, are mere synonymes of native
terms. Thus, for " stone/^ there are, besides the Malayan, two
native words ; for ''wave," or "billow," two ; for "hand," three
for " fire," four ; for " the eye," five ; for the verb " to die,"
four ; for " to change," five ; for the adjective " raw," or
" unripe," three ; for " cheap," two ; for " male," one.
Independent of men of brown or copper complexion, and
lank hair, who are the principal inhabitants of the Malayan
Negro' "'
Archipelago, the Philippines, and the islands of the
Pacific, thcrc is another race, or races, widely diff'ering
from them, yet inhabiting the same countries. These,
from their resemblance to the Africans, have been called
Negroes. The Malays apply to those best known to them, the
people of New Guinea, the epithet of Puwa-puwa, or Papuwa,
which, however, is only the adjective " frizzly," or " crisping,"
and is equally applied by them to any object partaking of this
quality.
Of the physical form and manners of the various tribes of
these insular Negroes very little is known, and of their
languages, we possess only the scraps picked up by voyagers
unacquainted with them, and ignorant of any language that
might be the medium of forming an acquaintance with them.
We first encounter a Negro people to the west, at the Andaman
islands, in the Bay of Bengal, of which it forms the sole but
scanty population. The Negroes of the Andaman islands are
of a sooty-black complexion, have short woolly hair, flat noses,
thick lips,—are slender-limbed and pot-bellied, and their sta-
ture is under five feet. They are so described in the Asiatic
Researches, and by Colonel Syme, in his Mission to Ava ; and
two individuals of the male sex, whom I saw at Prince of Wales
;