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

DISSERTATION. ccli
first places touched at by the adventurers ; and that, not im-
probably, from about this quarter the Malayan languages were
disseminated over all the Polynesian dialects, step by step.
At what era, then, could such an event have happened ? The
question can only be answered, generally, that it must have
happened at a remote one in the history of man. In every
dialect of the Polynesian, however remote, Malayan words are
found to exist, and generally they are the same, and with the
same meanings, even when those meanings vary from those in the
Malayan languages. The infusion of Malayan, then, presenting,
as it does, so much uniformity, must be inferred to have taken
place while the Polynesian race was in its original hive, and
before it had migrated and settled in the far-spread localities in
which we now find it. That period must have been a remote
one, for there has been time for the formation of many dialects
differing so much from each other, although all the tribes be
nearly in the same state of society, and the majority living in
the same climates and under the same circumstances, that it
requires some practice to enable the several parties to under-
stand one another.
But I have now to attempt a solution of the second question
propounded,—How it has come to pass that tribes of the same
race, speaking essentially the same language, possessinsr
Dissemina- %, , , , . ?
«on of the generally the same arts, and nearly m all respects, m the
race and sauic couditiou of society, are found inhabiting islands
language.
/• i
so remote from each other that some of them are close
to the Equator, some of them near both Tropics, some distant
from others by 70° of latitude, and some by 70° of longitude.
There is certainly nothing similar to this, on so great a scale,
among rude nations in any other part of the world. Throughout
the continent of America, a state of things the very opposite
prevails. The race is there, indeed, substantially the same ; but,
instead of one language, we find innumerable tongues, which
are rarely even dialects. From similarity of physical geography,
we might reasonably expect the same state of things in the
Malayan Archipelago as in Polynesia, but the reverse is as-
suredly the case. The leading race in the Archipelago is one and
the same, but the languages are many, although with more or