Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/60

 4t6 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE knowledge of which is indispensable to those who study the Koran and its commentaries. These terms their writers, in some species of composition, affect to introduce as a proof of their religious as well as of their literary attainments, but few com- paratively have been incorporated with, or consti- tute a part of the language." " About the num- ber of twenty or thirty words may be pointed out as having a claim, from their familiar recurrence, to be considered as Malayan by adoption." * Even these few words are seldom simple terms, but ex- press, conformably to the wants of the language when they were adopted, ideas of considerable ab- stractness, such as ingenuity, cause, doubt, vigour, value, &c. The number of Telinga words in the Malay is considerably greater than supposed by Mr Marsden. They form, however, no intrinsic in- gredient of the language. The greater number are commercial terms, and the rest words introdu- ced through the medium of translations. One is, indeed, surprised to find the number of words so few, when a well-known fact is adverted to, that much of Malayan learning is at present in the hands of Creole Telingas, in most countries of the Archipelago.
 * Marsdea's Malay Grammar.