again, drank, and was intoxicated. The prince
rose and danced. The Bandahara took a cup
from the attendants, filled it, danced, and presented
it to the prince. The prince took the cup,
saying, ? My relation, alas, I am already drunk.5
“ And the chiefs became one and all intoxicated.
Some were just able to reach their own
houses—some dropped down and fell asleep on the
way—some were carried home by their slaves—
and more slept scattered here and there in the
stalls of the market-place.55
Malayan romances, whatever be their origin,
are singularly destitute of spirit. To point a moral
is never attempted; and the gratification of a
puerile and credulous fancy seems the sole object.
All prose composition is remarkably monotonous.
This arises, perhaps, in a good measure, from the
singularly inartificial grammatical form of the language,
which admits of no order but the natural
order of ideas, and renders it almost impossible to
extend a sentence beyond a single clause. This
quality of the language, assisted, probably, by that
unskilfulness in composition which is natural to
the rude period of written language, unaided by
metre, gives rise to the practice of marking the beginning
of each sentence by a particle or particles,
almost exclusively appropriated to this use, such
as now, and, then, moreover, &c. The perpetual
recurrence of these adds greatly to the monotony
complained of.
The Malay language, as now described, had its
origin in the interior kingdom of Menangkabao, on
Sumatra; from thence it spread to the Malayan
peninsula, and-here, in all probability, received the
cultivation which reduced it to its present form.
From the Malayan peninsula, it spread by colonisation
to the coasts of Borneo, and back to Sumatra
; and some straggling adventurers carried the
partial use of it to the coasts of Java, Celebes, and
the countries farther east.
The great defect of this language for composition,
its simplicity of structure, is the very quality
to which it chiefly owes its currency among foreigners.
It is the lingua franca of the Archipelago,
the medium of intercourse between the natives
of those countries themselves, as well as between
the latter and every description of strangers.
It is farther fitted for ready acquirement, by the
frequency of liquid and vocalic sounds, and by the
absence of consonants of harsh or difficult enunciation.
In speaking and in writing, it has the same
sort of currency, but a greater degree of it, that
the Persian language has in Hindustan.* Those
* “ The language (Malay) in these parts is no less epidemick
than are the Latine, Arabick, and Sclavonian elsewhere,”—
Herbert’s Travels, p. 366.