Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/56

 4f2 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE guage, it may be worth while pausing to make some inquiry about. The word Jawi appears to me to be the inflection of the word Jawa of the Javanese language, used as the correlative of Kawi, the one, as already described, meaning common, and the other abstruse language. It seems to have been borrowed by the Malays, like many other words, and, as the latter have no native learned or recon- dite language of their own, in which relation the Arabic stands to the vernacular tongue, they use Jawi as the correlative of Arabi. The Javanese use the word Jawi as equivalent to translation. By the usual rule, the noun or adjective is changed into a verb, and then they familiarly say of an an- cient composition, or of an Arabic one, that it is translated or made into Javanese, as, in earlier pe- riods of our own language, the phrases making English ofy and doing into English, were com- mon. In imitation of them, when the Malays translate from the Arabic, they use the same lan- guage precisely, and even extend the word to every species of translation. I imagine it is this very word for the language which the natives of Arabia have erroneously, but naturally enough, bestowed not only on the Malay language, but the people, and hence, as a common appellation, upon the whole of the na- tives of the Archipelago. The Malayan language affords no internal evi- dence of ancient culture. Its genius is destitute of I