Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/92

 74 •GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE frequently four or five ; but for abstract words, parti- cularly such as relate to the operations of the mind, and which are familiar in the most barbarous ages of European languages, the deficiency of everj- one of the Polynesian languages is pitiable. For mind we have nothing but the metaphorical sense of the word heart ; for understanding we are driven to the Sanskrit or Arabic ; for memory we have no- thing but the verb to remember, used substantive- ly ; ioY friendship we fly again to the Arabic ; for dissimulation, scholars have got up an awkward translation, meaning a heart aivry ; for merit there is no word at all ; for modesty none but the one that expresses shame ; for integrity no expression what- ever ; for right, expressing either just claim, or ex- pressing property, none ; for reason none ; for ar^ gumeni none. *" Whenever we press the languages of the oriental islands into our service on such occa- sions, we offer violence to their genius. The peo- ple are strangers to the modes of expression in which such words are necessary, and when foisted into their language, the result is ambiguity or non- sense. The East-Insular languages, then, may just- ly be characterized as not copious, but "wordy. There are no less than five written characters known among the nations of the Indian islands, tween air at rest and air in motion; there is, in fact, no na* the term for wind.
 * Not one of the East-Insular languages distinguishes be»