Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/123

 POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES. 105 became, in their turn, the chief instruments in propagating it throughout the rest of the Archipe- lago. Commerce and religion went together ; and the Malays of these times were not only the apos- tles of Islam, but the chief merchants of the Ar- chipelago. From this double source, a considera- ble influx of Malay words has taken place into the languages of all the Mahomedan and commercial nations of the Archipelago. They are, indeed, mostly, ^ords relating to religion or commerce, and hence are readily detected. In Javanese, for example, we have the Malay word maldm, night, used in the restricted sense of evening, counting time according to the Mahomedan style. Golok a cleaver, or small hanger, in Malay, is applied in Javanese to the description of side-arms worn by the priests. Tdtak in Malay means to cut or lop off any thing ; in Javanese it is to circumcise. The Bugis and Macassar languages afford many examples. They preserve the primitive words, for instance, for the cardinal points of the compass, but, in commercial language, often apply the Ma- lay ones. The influence of the Malay, in this re- spect, though infinitely smaller, may, in its princi- ple, be compared to that which the Persian has ex- erted on some of the vernacular languages of con- tinental India. We are accustomed to look upon the Hindoos as a people whose religion admits no proselytes, and who are interdicted from emigration by its sacred