Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/887

Rh S I A M 855 writers) ; Pallcgoix, Royaume Thai ou Siam, Paris, 1S.J4 ; Crawford, Embassy to Stem ; Bowling. The Kingdom and ]'cnj,le of Siam, London, 1S-7 ; Bastian, Die I'dlkt'r des ostlichen Asiens, vols. i., iii., Leipsic, 18u7; Gamier, Voyaged'!. - tion en Indo-Chine, Paris, 1873 ; Mouhot, Trarels in Indo-China, &c. ; Joum. <>f Iinl. An-hij>., vols. i., v. ; Grehan, I.e Jlniinume de Slum, Paris, 1870 ; Reclus, Xuurelle Geographic Unin'i'flle, vol. viii. ; Bagge, Report on the Settlement of the J :<>u Hilary between $in ami Ilritith liurmah, 1S6S ; Satow, Notes of the Intercourse Japan ami Slam in the 17th Century Aymonnier, in Excursions et Recon- naissances, Nos. 20-22 (Saigon); Consitha Reports, 1SS4-S5. (C. T.) Language and Literature. The Siamese language is spoken over the whole of Siam proper. In the Malay peninsula the boundary-line comes down on the west coast nearly as far as Quedah and Perlis, and includes also Junk Ceylon, while on the east coast the population is mainly Siamese as far as Ligor inclusive, and also in Singora Siainese appears to be the ruling language. Its boundary towards Burmah, the Shan and Laos states, and Anam and Cambodia cannot be denned so precisely. There are also in the north-east a number of wild tribes who speak languages of their own. The name by which the Siamese themselves call their language is phasCi thai, or "language of the freemen " ; and it probably dates from the period when the Siamese made themselves independent of Cambodian rule in the 12th century. The Shan tribes, whose language (with those of the Ahom, Khainf i, and Laos) is closely akin to Siamese, also use the term tai (only with the unaspirated f) for their race and language. Both in Shan and Siamese the system of tones, which is one of the main features of all the languages of Indo-China, has attained its greatest development. But, while in Shan the tones are not marked in the written language, in Siamese there are distinct signs to denote at least four of the five simple tones (the even tone not being marked) ; and there is further a classification of the con- sonants into three groups, in each of which certain tones pre- dominate. It is always the initial consonant of a word that indi- cates, either by its phonetic power or by the tonic accent super- added or by a combination of the two, the tone in which the word is to be uttered, so that, e.g., a word beginning with a letter of the second class in which the even tone is inherent, and which has the mark of the ascending tone over it, is to be pronounced with the descending tone. 1 The difficulties caused to a European student of the spoken language by the tones are increased by the greatly expanded vowel - system. In addition to the short and long, there are shortest vowels, sets of open and closed vowels, &c., and a large number of vowel combinations. Owing to the introduction of the Indian consonantal system and the incorpora- tion in it of many letters to express certain sounds peculiar to Siamese, the number of consonants has been swelled to forty-three ; but, while many of these are only used in words adopted from the Sanskrit and Pali, Siamese utterance knows no more than twenty ; kh, g, gh are all pronounced as kh ; similarly j)h, b, bh as ph, &c., the language having a predilection for hard letters, especially aspirates. The only compound letters at the beginning of words are combinations of hard letters with I, r, w, y, while the finals are confined in pronunciation to k, t, p, n (ng), n, m. This causes a considerable discrepancy between the spelling of words (especially loan words) and their pronunciation. Thus sampUrn is pronounced sonibun, bhdshd pMsd, nacjara nakhon, saddJiarma sntham, kuiala kuson, sesha set, vdra van, Magadha Makhot. The foreign ingredients in Siamese are principally Sanskrit, mostly in a corrupted form. The importation of Pali words dates from about the 12th century, when, the country having shaken off the yoke of Cambodia, a religious intercourse was established between Siam and Ceylon. Besides these, there are some Khmer (Cam- bodian) and Malay words. a Exclusive of those foreign importa- tions, Siamese is a monosyllabic language in which neither the form nor the accent or tone of a word determines the part of speech to which it belongs. Homonym ous words abound and are only distinguished from one another by the tones. Compare Ian, "white"; kin, "to relate"; Ian, "to flatter"; Idn, "to smooth"; Idn, "relation." "Words are unchangeable and incapable of inflexion. The Siamese are fond of joining two words the second of which is either purely synonymous to or modifies the sense of the first, or is only a jingling addition. There is no article, and no distinction of fender, number, or case. These, if it is at all necessaiy to denote them, are expressed by explanatory words after the respective nouns ; only the dative and ablative are denoted by subsidiary words, which precede the nouns, the nominative being marked by its position before, the objective by its position after, the verb, and the genitive (and also the adjective) by its place after the noun it qualifies. Occasionally, however, auxiliary nouns serve that purpose. Words like "mother," "son," "water" are often employed in forming compounds to express ideas for which the Siamese have no single words; e.g., l&k cdii, "the son of hire," a labourer; ing mil, "the mother of the hand," the thumb. The use of class words with numerals obtains in Siamese as it does in Chinese, Burmese, Anamese, 1 See A. Bastian, " Ueber die siamesischen Laut- uml Ton-Acceute," in Monats- ber. d. k. Akacl. <1. WissenscJi. zu Berlin, June 1867. 2 See Pallegoix, Gramm., pp. 155-156, and Van der Tunk,Cafafcsc7i Leesboek, vol. iv. pp. 127-133, 208-214. Malay, and many other Eastern languages. As in these, so in Siamese the personal pronouns are mostly represented by nouns expressive of the various shades of superior or lower rank according to Eastern etiquette. The verb is, like the noun, perfectly colour- less, person, number, tense, and mood being indicated by auxiliary words only when they cannot be inferred from the context. Such auxiliary words are yd, "to be," "to dwell" (present) ; dai, "to have," leh, "end" (past); ca, "also" (future) ; the first and third follow, the second and fourth precede, the verb. Hui, "to give" (prefixed), often indicates the subjunctive. As there are compound nouns, so there are compound verbs ; thus, e.g., pai, "to go," is joined to a transitive verb to convert it into an intransitive or neuter ; and thuk, "to touch," and tdng, "to be obliged," serve to form a sort of passive voice. 3 The number of adverbs, single and compound, is very large. The prepositions mostly consist of nouns. The order of the words in a single sentence is subject, verb, object. All attributes (adjectives, genitive, adverbs) follow the word to which they are subordinated. The following simple sentence may serve as an example of Siamese construction and diction ; m$a (time) an (read) nansil (book) nt (this) leo (end, done) can (should) fak-vqi (entrust) M (to) phuenban (neighbours) hai (give, cause) khan (they) an (read), i.e., "when you have read this book, please give it to your neighbours that they may read it." The current Siamese characters are derived from the more monu- mental Cambodian alphabet, which again owes its origin to the alphabet of the inscriptions, an offshoot of the character found on the stone monuments of southern India in the 6th and 8th cen- turies. The sacred books of Siam are still written in the Cambodian character, and some have occasionally an interlinear translation in the current Siamese hand. The study of the Siamese language was initiated in Europe by La Loubere (1687), from whom Dr J. Leyden ("The Languages and Literature of the Indo- Chinese Nations," in Asiatic Researches, vol. x. pp. 158-289, reprinted in Mis- cellaneous Papers on Indo-China, vol. i., 1886, pp. 84-171) has derived much of his information. Leyden's Comparative Vocabulary of the Banna, Alalayu, and Thai Languages appeared in 1810. The first grammar of the language we owe to James Low, Calcutta, 182S. Very useful Grammatical Notices of the Siamese Language, by the Rev. J. Taylor Jones, appeared at Bangkok in 1842. The Grammatica Linguee Thai of J. B. Pallegoix, Bangkok, 1850, was followed in 1854 by his great Dictionarium in Siamese, Latin, French, and English. An analytical account of the language was attempted by Ad. Bastian in his Sprach- vergleichende Studien, 1870, pp. 191-226. In 1881 L. Ewald brought out at Leipsic his Grammatik der Tai- oder Siamesischen Sprache. Lastly, Prof. Fr. Miiller gave a summary of Siamese grammar in his Grundriss der Sprachwiss- enschaft, vol. ii. part 2, Vienna, 1SS2, pp. 367-376. A new grammar, by the Rev. S. George, is in progress. Compare also W. Schotfc, Ueber die indo- chinesischen Sprachen, insonderheit das Siamesische, 1856 ; and E. Kuhn, Ueber Herkunftund Sprache der tmnsgangetischen Votker, 1883. An English grammar written in Siamese, and designed for use in schools, appeared at Bangkok in 1837. There are no records in Siamese referring to the time antecedent Litera- to the settlement of the nation in their present locality, or, in the ture. words of Mr Ney Elias, ' ' of earlier date than the founding of their first national capital,- Ayuthia, at the commencement of the 14th century." 4 The inscription at Sukkothai, said to be of the year 671 of the Siamese era, nine years after the invention of the present Siamese characters, 5 cannot be put in evidence as an historical record till a facsimile and revised translation shall have been obtained. The few manuscript annals mentioned by Bishop Pallegoix have not yet teen critically examined ; but metrical compositions, contain- ing legendary tales and romances, abound and are eagerly studied. The subjects are mostly taken from the Indian epics, as in the case of the Rdma-kiun or Ramayana, more rarely from Malay or Javanese legend, such as the drama I-hnao. There is a great variety of metres, all of which have been described with much minuteness of detail by Colonel Low iii his article on Siamese literature, in Asiatic Researches, vol. xx. pp. 351-373. 6 In their romantic poetry the Siamese have a greater tendency to describe than to relate ; their pictures of places and scenery are grand and striking and form the best part of their poetical conceptions. The great blemish of their poetry consists in tedious embellishments and a hankering after indecent and often gross allusions, from which but few works, such as Sang Sin Chai and Samut Niyai Si Muang, may be said to be free. The titles of the principal romances are Hoi Sang, Nang Prathom, Sang Sin Chai, Thepha Lin TJwng, Suwanna Hong, Thao Sawatthi Racha, Phra Unarut, Dara Suriw&iig, Khun Phan, Nong Sip Sang, and the dramas I-hnao and Phra Simuang. The plots of some of these have been given by Colonel Low. The most popular of the religious books, all of which are translations or amplifications from Pali originals, is called Somanakhodom (Cramana Gautama), which is identical with the Wcssantara Jdtaka. In miscellaneous literature may be mentioned Stiphdsit, consisting of 222 elegant sayings in the accented metre called Klong, and Wuta Chindamani (Vritta Chintamani), a work on prosody like the Pali Vuttodaya, but treating also of a number of grammatical questions. Ihe fable , literature is of course largely represented ; the lists, however, are 3 See "The Passive Verb of the Thai Language," by F. L. W. von Bergen, Krung Theph Maha Nakhon, 1874. 4 Sketch of the History of the Shans, Calcutta, 18, fi, p. 34. -,*.* 5 Bastian, in Jour. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xxxiv. p. 27, and Sprachvergleichende Studien, p. 227. 6 See also Pallegoix, Gramm. Lingual Thai, pp. 120-l.fti.