IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
THE MALAYAN PO-SE--LANGUAGE 473
Florenz has correctly recognized in this series the numerals of a Malayan language, though they cannot throughout be identified (and this could hardly be expected) with the numerals of any known dialect. Various Malayan languages must be recruited for identification, and some forms even then remain obscure. The numeral z corresponds to Malayan sa, satu; 2 to dua; 4 to ampat; 5 to lima; 6 to name; 7 to tujoh; 9 to sembllan; To to sa-puloh. The numeral 20 is composed of toa 2 and ro zo (Malayan puloh); 3o aka (=naka, 3) and ro or furo to. The numeral zoo is formed of sasa z and rata = Malayan -ratus.
Two Po-se words are cited in the Yu yan tsa tsu,1 which, as formerly pointed out by me, cannot be Persian, but betray a Malayan origin.2 There it is said that the Po-se designate ivory as ri 04 pal-nan, and rhinoceros-horn as A Pi hei-nan. The former corresponds to ancient *bak-am; the latter, to *hak-am or *het-am. The latter answers exactly to Jarai hötam, Bisaya itom, Tagalog itim, Javanese item, Makasar etan, Cam hutam (hatam or hutum), Malayan hitam, all meaning "black."3 The former word is not related to the series putih, pûteh, as I was previously inclined to assume, but to the group : Cam baun, bon, or bhun; Senoi biûg, other forms in the Sakei and Semang languages of Malakka biok, biäk, bieg, begiäk, bekun, bekog,4 Alfur, Boloven, Kon tu, Kaseng, Lave, and Niah bok, Sedeng röbon, Stieng bôk (" white ") ; Bahnar bak (Mon bu) .5 It almost seems, therefore, as if the speech of Po-se bears some relationship to the languages of the tribes of Malacca. The Po-se distinguished rhinoceros-horn and ivory as "black" and "white." However meagre the linguistic material may be, it reveals, at any rate, Malayan affinities, and explodes BRETSCHNEIDER'S theory' that the Po-se of the Archipelago, alleged to have been on Sumatra, owes its origin to the fact that "the Persians carried on a great trade with Sumatra, and probably had colonies there." This is an unfounded speculation, justly rejected also by G. E. GERINI ? these Po-se were not Persians, but Malayans.
The Po-se question has been studied to some extent by G. E. GERINI,3 who suggests its probable identity with the Vasu state located by the Bhagavata Puräna in Kugadvipa, and who thinks it may be
1 Ch. 16, p. 14.
2 Chinese Clay Figures, p. 145.
3 Cf. CABATON and AYMONIER, Dictionnaire dam-français, p. 503.
4 P. SCHMIDT, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. VIII, 1901, p. 420.
5 Ibid., P. 344-
6 Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, p. 16. Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia, p. 471. 8 Ibid., p. 682.
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