Malays, and, in consequence of this, more or less modified their habits of life, it was, again, these same people who attached them- selves to the manners and occupations of their fore fathers, and became in their turn the best qualified to trace out the various products of their own home-jungles. Wandering isolated in the forests, they had but few opportunities to hold any dealings with the Malays; and naturally kept more exclusively to their own lan- guage than those who trafficked with the Malays more frequent- ly, and lived in their neighbourhood. Thus it happened that in preserving the old language (going as it did hand in hand with primitive habits of life) they found a secret means of bringing to their homes a rich booty from the jungle. This superstition is believed in various parts of Johor, and will, for a long time, protect the ancient language from total extinction; and even if the signification of many words is wholly forgotten, yet will they still remain as the true rudiments of the language, and serve as a monument of the original race of the "Orang Utan."
I found it impossible to ascertain sufficiently the number and limitation of the different dialects. That more have existed is probable. I have arranged, somewhat arbitrarily, the following words in two dialects. I have only noted down (as said before) those words which appeared to me not Malay.[1]
- ↑ As the Orang Utan are Nomads it appears to me quite immaterial to specify the place in which I have taken down the words.
"While searching for Camphor, they abstain from certain kinds of food, eat a little earth, and use a kind of artificial language called the Bhâsa Kâpor (Camphor language). This I found to be the same on the Sidili, the Indau and Batu Pahat. From the subjoined specimens it will be seen that most of the words are formed on the Malayan, and in many cases by merely substituting for the common name one derived from some quality of the object, as "grass-fruit" for rice, "far sounding" for gun, "Short-legged" for hog, "leaves" for hair &c.(Here follow 80 words of which 33 are Malay, and of the rest none resemble in the least those given by M. de Maclay.) "It is believed that if care be not taken to use the Bhâsa Kâpor great difficulty will be experienced in finding Camphor trees, and that when found the Camphor will not yield itself to the collector. Whoever may have been the originator of this superstition, it is evidently based on the fact that although Camphor trees are abundant, it very frequently happens that no Camphor can be obtained from them; "were it otherwise," said an old Benua, who was singularly free from superstitions of any kind, Camphor is so valuable that not a single full-grown tree would be left in the forest. Camphor is not collected by the Bermun (Negri Sembilan) tribes, at least on the Western Side of the Peninsula, and they are unacquainted with the Bhasa Kapor."]
