Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/78

 6* LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE and Bugis languages have a great many words in common, but they have many, too, radical and in- variable, which bear no resemblance ; they are in- timately connected, but are not dialects of one tongue, and the people who speak them are mu- tually unintelligible to each other. The pro- portion in which the great Polynesian language enters into those of Celebes may be judged of from this, that in a short vocabulary of the Bugis, about one-fourth is discovered to be of that com- mon tongue. It may be remarked, that words of this class, still current in Celebes, are frequently such as in the languages of the western portion of the Archipelago have become obsolete, or are ap- propriated to more solemn occasions than those of common life. Of the Sanskrit portion of the Celebesian lan- guages, the quantity, compared to that in the Ja- vanese, or even Malay, is inconsiderable. The words will be found to be mostly religious terms, or the names of substances, the use of which has been introduced among the people from India. Every language of the Archipelago will be found to have ingrafted upon it a quantity of Sanskrit, propor- tioned to the extent to which it has been itself cul- tivated ; or, which is nearly the same thing, to the civilization of the people who speak it. The people of Celebes, and their language, are less im- proved than those of the western islands, general-