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h, to the Malayan, stands in the same relation as the Saxon to the English, and which I have asserted to be one of the numerous dialects of the widely-extended language found to prevail, with strong features of similarity, throughout the archipelago on the hither side of New Guinea, and, with a less marked resemblance, among the islands of the Pacific Ocean.... To show the general identity, or radical connection of its dialects, and, at the same time, their individual differences, I beg leave to refer the reader [9] to the tables annexed to a paper on the subject which I presented, so long ago as the year 1780, to the Society of Antiquaries, and is printed in vol. vi. of the Archæologia; also, a table of comparative numerals, in the appendix to vol. iii. of Captain Cook's last voyage; and likewise to the chart of ten numerals, in two hundred languages, by the Rev. R. Patrick, recently published in Valpy's Classical, Biblical and Oriental Journal.'
"Again, Marsden states:
"'But whatever pretensions any particular spot may have to precedence in this respect, the so wide dissemination of a language common to all bespeaks a high degree of antiquity, and gives a claim to originality, as far as we can venture to apply that term, which signifies no more than the state beyond which we have not the means, either historically or by fair inference, of tracing the origin. In this restricted sense it is that we are justified in considering the main portion of the Malayan as original, or indigenous, its affinity to any Continental tongue not having yet been shown; and least of all can we suppose it connected with the monosyllabic, or Indo-Chinese, with which it has been classed.'
"When we find an original language bearing no traces of being derived from any Continental tongue, we must conclude the people likewise to be original, in the restricted sense, or to have emigrated with their language from some source hitherto unknown. The Sanscrit and Arabic additions to the or