Page:A dictionary of the Sunda language of Java.djvu/18

Rh given a Romanized version of these words, they are to me, as to most other people, very learned but also very unmeaning signs.

The Javanese dictionary of P. P. Roorda van Eijsinga 1835, has also frequently been consulted, but more nicety of discrimination was often here incumbent, as from the closer affinity of the two languages of Java, it was necessary to be careful not to admit words which had no right to a place, or perhaps only varied slightly from what are used in Sunda.

One work alone I have carefully eschewed, viz; the Sunda Dictionary of A. de Wilde, published by Roorda 1841. A casual glance down its pages soon convinced me that it would rather lead me astray than afford information, and so I was forced to lay it aside, although anxious to avail of all the light which I could find. It may even yet contain some words which I have not given, but to sift them out would be a labour of considerable extent, and probably a loss of time in the end. The work of Mr. de Wilde did not see the light, till many years after he had left Java, and was thus of course without the natives at his elbow to put him to rights when in any doubt, and without other authorities for reference or help.

Even in Java living in the interior, surrounded by natives who speak the language as their mother tongue, it often requires, with many words, some judgment to select the right meaning, and words are current in different districts which are not known again in others, or which have a somewhat modified meaning, and are sneered at when used differently from what is usual with any particular set of people. The Sunda people possess no literature to which reference can be made, and it is consequently a purely oral language spoken by a little better than two millions of people, at the west end of Java, to and with the greater part of Chribon.

The influx of words from that great classical language of the East—the Sanscrit—has also been considerable into the Sunda, where they have been retained with great accuracy during a long period of years, probably not less than 1000 or 1200 years. The same early intercourse with the natives of India, as that which took place with Sumatra and Java proper, or the Eastern parts of our island, no doubt extended also to the Sunda districts, but of this neither written history nor tradition preserves any remembrance, and with few trifling exceptions the Sunda districts retain no traces of temples or stone images indicating the presence of artists from Continental India, but with which the East end of the island so plentifully abounds. The Budhists were driven out of Continental India in the Seventh Century of the Christian Era, when a great trade was carried on with the Indian Isles, for those valuable products which found a ready market in the West—and from the conflicting ascendency of one sect or the other on the Indian Continent, we may fairly conclude that the worsted party had to fly and seek a safe refuge in foreign parts, and no country would offer them a more inviting refuge than the Indian isles. The Budhists were eventually the worsted party and settling in great numbers in Java built boro bodur, and many other old monuments and temples of which we still find the ruins, introducing at the same time the Sanscrit literature and holy books which descending