A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language - Wallace-online.org

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DISSERTATION.
xiii
An examination of 4074. radical words of the Dictionary
shows that the Malay language is composed of the following
lingual elements :—Native Malay words, 2003 ; common
thei:uay° to tho Malay and Javanese, 1040 ; Sanskrit, 199
Talugu or Telinga, 23; Arabic, 160; Persian, 30; and
Portuguese, 19; which, in a 1000 words, give the following
proportions respectively :—Native, 491 ; Javanese, 255 ; Sanskrit,
49; Talugu, about 5^ ; Persian, about 7; and Portuguese,
about 4|. Leaving the other elements for consideration until I
come to treat of the Javanese language, I shall now describe
only the Arabic and Persian.
The Arabic element of the Malay, as stated in the grammar,
may be said to be indefinite in its proportion. It was not
introduced by conquest, but through commerce, settlement'ofthe
meut, and religious conversion. The missionaries who
converted the Malays and other islanders to the
religion of Arabia, and hence introduced the language of that
religion, were not genuine Arabians, but the mixed descendants
of Arab and Persian traders, far more competent instruments
by their intimate acquaintance with the manners and languages
of the islanders. In the course of time Arabian and Persian
traders appear to have settled at various ports of the western
parts of the Archipelago, and never being accompanied by their
famiUes, to have intermarried with the natives.
It was the mixed
race that sprang out of such unions which produced the apostles
of Islam. The earliest conversion recorded was that of the
Achinese, the nearest people of the Archipelago to the continent
of Asia. This was in 1206 of our era. The Malays of Malacca
were not converted until 1276; the inhabitants of the Moluccas
not until 1465, the Javanese not until 1478, and the people of
Celebes not until 1495, only the year before Vasco de Gama passed
the Cape of Good Hope. These dates refer only to the conversion
of the rulers of the country. Many of the people were, no doubt,
converted before, and some remained to be converted long after.
To this day there are a few mountaineers in Java still professing
a kind of Hinduism. Between the first and last conversion,
the long period of 289 years intervened. The conversion, in
fact, was slow and gradual, and bore little resemblance to the