Page:A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language with a Preliminary Dissertation- Dissertation and Grammar, in Two Volumes, Vol. I (IA dli.granth.52714).pdf/24

 they had not been converted to the Mahomedan religion. Thirty generations, including the first settlers, would make about 900 years. This rough computation would fix the first and principal Malayan migration to Borneo to the reign of our Saxon king Athelstan.

It is not to be supposed, however, that all who now go under the name of Malays in Borneo are of the original stock that migrated from Sumatra. The simple adoption of the Malay language would, it is evident, be quite sufficient to make men of the same race pass for Malays; and where the Malays were dominant, this must have happened frequently. We find on the west coast of Borneo, for example, tribes of the aboriginal inhabitants gradually losing their own tongues by the admission of much Malay, and finally adopting the latter; so that nothing remained to distinguish a tribe but its name. The reverse of this would necessarily be the case where the Malays were few in number, and mere settlers. They would gradually lose their own tongue, adopting that of the dominant race; but at the same time communicating to the latter some portion of their language.

The Malay tongue is now, and was, when Europeans first visited the Archipelago, the common language of intercourse between the native nations among themselves, and between these and foreigners. It is in the Archipelago what French is in Western Europe, Italian in Eastern, Arabic in Western Asia, and Hindi in Hindustan. All nations who hold intercourse of business with strangers must understand it, and all strangers must acquire it. This is now the case, and seems for ages to have been so, in Sumatra, where other languages, besides it, are vernacular, in Java, in Celebes, in the Moluccas, in Timur, and in the Philippine group. The enterprising or roving character of the people whose native tongue it is, with its own softness of sound, simplicity of structure, and consequent facility of acquirement, have given it this preference over so many other languages.

The most striking evidence of the currency of the Malay language will be found in the account of the first voyage round the world, as it is told in the faithful narrative of Piga-