Page:The Pamphleteer (Volume 8).djvu/86

82 stones, of the shape of English tombstones, covered with inscriptions in the ancient Javanese character, and in the Kawi language; translations (or rather paraphrases, for they principally contain prayers and invocations to the Deity, in a language the meaning of a few words only of which are retained, while the idiom and grammatical construction has long been lost,) have been made, and will be found in the pages of our Transactions. It has fallen to my lot to succeed, not only in decyphering the MSS. recently discovered in Cheribon, but also the inscriptions on the copper plates so long deposited among the records of our society as unintelligible; the results will be communicated to the society in another form, and the subject will be more particularly adverted to, when speaking of the languages and literature.

These inscriptions, which, in general, contain dates, are of the first importance in enabling us to trace the source whence the language and literature may have flowed, and to satisfy our minds of the prevailing worship at any particular period. It is only by an assemblage of as many data as can be collected, from this source, from the remains of the arts, from the language, literature, and institutions of the people of the present day, compared with the best information we can procure of other countries of the East, which may have been civilized at an earlier period, that we can come at any fair and just result. The question is too extensive, too important to be lightly treated, or to be decided upon from any pre-conceived opinion or partial views.

Did not other striking and obvious proofs exist of the claims of Java to be considered at one period far advanced in civilization, it might be sufficient to bring forward the perfection of the language, the accession which that language must in earlier times have received from a distant but highly cultivated source, and the copiousness for which it stands so peculiarly and justly distinguished.

In the island of Java, two general languages may be considered as prevalent. The Sunda language, which prevails in the western, and the Javanese, which is the language of the districts east of Cheribon. The first is a simple dialect accommodated to all the purposes of the mountainous classes who speak it, and perhaps differs from the Javanese, not so much in its construction, as in the portion of original and of Malayan words which it contains. One-fourth of the language, at the least, may be considered to be the same as the Javanese; another fourth is perhaps original; and the remaining half Malayan. At what period this extensive portion of the Malayan was adopted, or whether any part or the whole of this portion may not originally have formed the common language of this part of the country, is yet to be decided. In the Javanese, or language of the eastern division of the island, and also of the lower parts of Bantam