Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/29

OF JAVA. 15 kite without a string, which is driven to and fro by the caprice of the wind ;" or that he is " like dust driven by the wind ;" or " a grain of rice- seed, cast from the hand of the husbandman." In such similes, however, there is no variety ; and without invention or ingenuity, we see the same stale comparisons used, upon similar occasions, by every successive writer, and even by the same writer in the same composition. The derivation of the language will be treated of at such length in the chapter on the character and affiliation of the East insular languages, that it would be superfluous to say much on the subject at present. Suffice it to state, that, to the original meagre stock of the rude tribe from which the Ja- vanese nation sprung, has been superadded, at dif- ferent epochs of its history, a proportion of the great Polynesian language of Sanskrit, and of Arabic. The introduction of the latter is a mat- ter of historic record ; the circumstances of the second of rational induction, from strong presump- tive and collateral argument ; but those of the first are buried in the darkest, and, it may be sus- pected, in nearly impenetrable obscurity. Such are the four great components of the modern Ja- vanese 5 and if we add to them a few trifling and almost adventitious words of modern Persian, Te- linga, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and English^ the analysis is complete.