Page:A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language with a Preliminary Dissertation- Dissertation and Grammar, in Two Volumes, Vol. I (IA dli.granth.52714).pdf/295

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Argument for the diffusion of the Malayan languages from names of places and nations.which I have as yet hardly adverted—names of places and nations, and I shall here offer some observations on it. The great majority of the names of places and people belong to local idioms, but here and there at salient points, Malayan names, chiefly connected with navigation, are to be found. In the western parts of the Archipelago, indeed, they are very frequent, and need not be dwelt on, but they extend, also, to the most remote eastern parts, and may even be traced to the Philippines.

The following Malayan words, forming the first members of the compounded words by which the names of places are so frequently expressed, it appears to me certain, were imposed by the Malays or Javanese; pulo, "isle," "island," "islet;" tanjung, "headland or promontory;" batu and karang, "rock;" muwara and kwala, "embouchure of a river;" tâluk, "a bay or cove;" gunung, "a mountain;" labuhan, "a harbour" or "anchorage;" kampung, "a quarter;" and, although Sans- krit, kuta, "a fort or castle." Of these we have a good many examples. In the island of Bali, Karang-asâm is the name of a state, and signifies "the rock of the tamarind tree." Among the Molucca islands we have Pulo-babi, "hog island;" Pulo-ubi, "yam island;" Pulo-nila, "blue island; " nusa-laut, "sca island;" Pulo-lata, "the creeping islets," applied to a chain of rocky islands, and tanjung-kroh, "muddy point." In the island of Lombok, we have Labuhan-aji, which in Javanese means "king's anchorage," or "royal harbour." Gunung-api, a volcano," literally "fire-moun- tain," occurs frequently in the most easterly parts of the Archipelago.

Independent of these compounded names, we have specific ones derived from the Malayan languages. Lombok, which gives its European name to the island, signifies, in Javanese, the "capsicum pepper;" Alas, the name of a place in the island. of Sambawa, signifies, in the same language, "a forest." Timur, the name of the large island bearing it, means, in Malay, "the east." Dili, the name of a district of the same island, is also that of a Malay state on the north-eastern coast of Sumatra ; and Kupang, the name of another, signifies, in Malay, a kind of