Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/183

 ASIATIC NATIONS. I67 western kingdom of Tajnjaran. It would corre- spond with the year 1324 of Javanese time. In the sixteenth year of the same reign, the king of JaO'Wa is described as sending a mission to China, with a gift of a white parrot or cockatoo ! I men- tion this last circumstance only because the name of the king, which is remarkable, if the intei'preta- tion be any thing more than fanciful, bears a close resemblance, indeed almost an identity, with the name or titles of ancient Javanese sovereio-ns. o It is Yafig-xvi-se-sa,* which means *' the mighty • The articulation or pronunciation of the Chinese is so imperfect, and so utterly unlike that of all the rest of man- kindj that it is only by mere accident that they ever pro- nounce a foreign word rightly. Independent, therefore, of their ignorance, their selfishness, their want of feeling and imagination, and their gross and exclusive devotion to objects of mere sensual gratification, their descriptions of foreign countries and manners must be altogether unintelligible to strangers. I shall quote, as examples of their perversion of foreign names, a few of the names of places as they were written down for me by a Creole Chinese of Java. The Chinese born and brought up in the Archipelago, it ought to be noticed, have none of the imperfections in pronuncia- tion of their progenitors. Tagal they make Tak-kat — Cheri- bon — Cha-li-bun Brabas, Golo-bat — Kandal, Gan-tra — Japara, Ji-pla-la — Garsik, Kat-lik-sik — Blambaiigan, Gwa- lam-bang — Sumanip, Syang-kin-lap — Borneo, correctly Burnai, Bun-lai — Palembang — Ku- kang — Banda — Bal-laa — Samarang, Sam-pa-lan — Ternati, Kan-na-ti — Macassar, Bangkasat. It sometimes, however, happens that the name consists of such sounds as are familiar to the organs of