Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/122

 104 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE of a plant, from the flower of which a perfumed essence, in high repute, is drawn. It is composed of the Javanese word gandu, odour, and the San- skrit one, pura, a palace. Rontal, in Javanese, the leaf of the Palmyra palm, used to write upon, is, in Malay, by a very common corruption, lontar. The genu me word is composed of ron, a leaf, and tal, in Sanskrit, the Palmyra palm. It is singular that the word ron had, in its simple uncompound- ed state, been already corrupted into daun, on a principle already explained, it being apparently a word of the great Polynesian language. Had the compound word been formed by the Malays, we should have found it, not lontar, but dauntal. This subject will be renewed when I speak of the introduction of Sanskrit. In a superior fertility of soil, and conveniency of situation, there seems to exist in Java a permanent and effectual cause for ascribing to its inhabitants a higher civilization than could naturally have been the growth of any other part of the Archipelago, and to infer necessarily from thence, that the lan- guages of the people of Java, of. all ages, must, in their times, have exerted the greatest influence on those of the other tribes ; but this by no means excludes a minor influence on the part of the other tribes, and each greater one may be proved to have exerted a powerful influence on the languages of its immediate neighbours. The Mahomedan re- ligion was first introduced among the Malays, who