Introduction
The study of Oriental languages is the original sense of the now infamous term 'Orientalism'. As one author puts it: ‘the Other is located most fundamentally in language, the medium for representing selves and others’.465 Studies of dictionary-making and language learning manuals have seen these scholarly endeavours as defining the boundaries of languages through factors like the selection of script in which a language should be represented, the inclusion or exclusion of loan words, the definition of 'high' and 'low' forms, and the formulation of theories about the origins and spread of languages.466 The teaching of English worldwide has been viewed as a vehicle for the spread of colonial power and ideology.467 Nevertheless, there have been few in-depth studies of the mechanics of linguistic projects relating to non-European languages before the late eighteenth century. The practical involvement of the early East India Company in language instruction has also been overlooked.468
This chapter focuses on the beginnings of English scholarship on the Malay language during the second half of the seventeenth century. This period saw the translation of the four gospels into Malay, the production of manuscript Malay grammars, and culminated in the 1701 publication of
465 M. Shapiro, ‘A political approach to language purism’, in The politics of language purism, ed. by B. Jernudd and M.
Shapiro (Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 1989), p. 28.
466 Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge, Chapter 2, 'The Command of Language and the Language of Command', 16-51; Joseph Errington, “Colonial Linguistics”, Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001), 19–39; Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-1800 (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2003), Chapter 9, 'Language, power and hegemony in European Oriental Studies'; Joseph Errington, Linguistics in a colonial world : a story of language, meaning, and power (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008).
467 R. Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (Routledge, London and New York, 1998);
468 For example, Cohn, 'The Command of Language and the Language of Command' claims that no English factors knew any Indian languages until the 1740's or 50's. Earlier attempt to promote language learning are noted in Shreesh Chaudhari, Foreigners and Foreign Languages in India (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.
304-516
the first complete bilingual English-Malay and Malay-English dictionary, attributed to the merchant Thomas Bowrey.469 I aim to demonstrate how the grammars and Bowrey's Dictionary were
assembled through the materials made and collected by a number of merchants over around three decades with the assistance of scholars and the patronage of the East India Company. Examining the process by which the Dictionary was produced helps shed light on the aims and practises of
language learning in the early East India Company more widely. Looking at the introductions, dedications, dialogues, and other material included in the Dictionary and the related material reveals much about the scholarly contexts of linguistic material produced in the period and about the contemporary situation and aims of the East India Company in its settlements in the Malay world. I use the Dictionary and the correspondence of Thomas Bowrey with the Oxford Orientalist Thomas Hyde to examine the process of collecting words, scripts, and phrases and making
comparisons between them to formulate theories about the spread of languages and cultures.
Malay is an Austronesian language widely spoken in modern Malaysia, southern Thailand,
Singapore, Indonesia, and Brunei, also in parts of the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Taiwan.
It has affinities with languages of South Africa, Madagascar, New Zealand, and the Polynesian islands.470 Malay had been a language of trade in and beyond the Indonesian archipelago for several centuries before representatives of the English EIC made their rather late appearance in Asia in the early seventeenth century. The regions in which Malay was a lingua franca overlapped with areas in which Portuguese, Arabic or Persia and Chinese were important and the overlaps between these tongues are evident both in the resulting loan words and creoles and in the materials which describe and attempt to define Malay.
469 Thomas Bowrey, Dictionary English and Malayo, Malayo and English (Printed by Sam. Bridge for the Author London, 1701). The Dictionary has no page numbers, references given below are therefore to sections.
470 Paulette Dellios, 'A lexical odyssey from the Malay world', Studia Universitatis Petru Maior – Philologia 4 (2005), 141-144.
The earliest surviving linguistic material relating to Malay is a rather extensive Chinese list of words and phrases, probably compiled some time between 1403 and the arrival of the Portuguese in 1511, given that it does not contain loan words from that language.471 The European traders and missionaries who arrived in the East Indies quickly grasped the importance of Malay and began to produce their own linguistic materials. These can be broadly divided into wordlists (vocabularies and phrasebooks), translations of Christian texts into Asian vernaculars, and linguistic studies of Asian vernaculars, although there was much overlap between these categories. These linguistic materials naturally relied heavily on the cooperation of Malay speakers as well as on Malay printed and manuscript materials. The first European work on Malay appears to have been the list of around four hundred words compiled by Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian gentleman companion of Ferninando Magellan with the aid of Magellan's slave Henrique, who spoke Sumatran Malay.472 Although no published Malay-Portuguese linguistic materials survive, it seems likely that such works were circulated in manuscript form.473 The Dutch took the initiative for the production of Malay language materials during the seventeenth century. Dutch scholarship moved swiftly from a wordlist of 1599474 to the 1603 publication in Amsterdam of a book of Dutch and Malay dialogues compiled by Frederick de Houtman, an interpreter in the service of the VOC.475 Religious works followed
swiftly, with the Gospel of St Matthew translated into Malay as early as 1612, Mark in 1638, Luke and John in 1646. Several other translations of Biblical texts followed over the course of the century.476 A work entitled Spiegel vande Daleysche Tale or 'A Looking-Glass of the Malayan
471 E.D. Edwards and C.O. Blagden, 'A Chinese Vocabulary of Malacca Malay words and phrases', Bulletin of the London School of Oriental Studies, 6 (1930-32) 715-745. The vocabulary contains 482 words arranged under headings.
472 A. Bausani, 'The first Italian-Malay Vocabulary by Antonio Pigafetta', East and West, New Series 11 (1960), 229-248. Pigafetta describes the language as 'Moorish', spoken in the Moluccas. The list includes words relating to religion, parts of the body, people, animals, trade, travel, and numbers.
473 Luis Filipe Thomaz and Denys Lombard, 'Remarques preliminaires sur un lexique Portuguese-Malais inédit de la Bibliotheque Nationale de Lisbonne', in Papers on Indonesian languages and literatures, ed. by Nigel Philips and Khaidir Anwar (London: Indonesian Etymological Project, 1981).
474 William Marsden, Dictionary of the Malayan Language (London: printed by Cox and Baylis, 1812), p. iv lists 'the vocabulary collected by the Dutch navigators at Ternatī'.
475 Russell Jones, 'Malay Studies and the British: 1: An outline history to the Early Twentieth Century', Archipel 28 (1984), 117-48.
476 Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. III, Book 1, 'Trade, Missions, Literature', (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 272-3 note the work of Sebastian Danckaerts, a
Tongue’ was produced in 1612 for the instruction of Malay youth in Dutch schools in the
archipelago.477 The Malay dictionary of Wiltens and Danckaerts was first published in the Hague in 1623 and re-issued in 1650478 and another dictionary was published in Batavia in 1677, one of several texts printed in the Dutch headquarters.479
The advanced state of Dutch scholarship on the Malay language was closely linked to the trade monopolies and territorial dominance of the VOC in the Malay world directed from their
headquarters in Batavia (modern Jakarta). Like other scholarly projects, linguistic investigations had practical applications: emerging from the interactions of the multi-ethnic communities populating the ports and colonial towns like Batavia, they were codified through alliances of the VOC merchants with scholars in Holland. The resulting dictionaries, training manuals, and
scriptures were deployed to bolster the Company’s power through the creation of bilingual colonial elites and converts to Christianity. English attempts to appropriate Dutch linguistic scholarship on Malay were similarly connected with the English East India Company and should be seen in the context of their attempts to compete with VOC control of trading centres in Sumatra and Java.
Indonesian Contacts and Malay Language Projects in Late Seventeenth Century England
Relations between Indonesia and England began with the East India Company's first voyage, when
Dutch missionary in Amboina from 1617 to 1619 who published a Malay catechism and vocabulary.
477 According to Kees Groneneboer, 'The Dutch Language in Maluku under the VOC', Cakalele, 5 (1994), 1-10, this work was written by the VOC merchant Albert Corneliszn Ruyll and published in 1612 as a sequel to his booklet Sourat. ABC Akan meng ayd'jer anack boudack/ seperti deayd'jern'ja capada segala manusia Nassarany: daen berbagy sombahayang Christaan ('Book to teach the alphabet to the boys, as it is taught to all Christians, with some Christian prayers'). The 'mirror' was intended to instruct the youth in Christianity as well as language.
478 C. Wiltens and S. Danckaerts, Vocabularium ofte Woort-boek naer order vanden Alphabet in ‘t Duysch-Maleysch-Duytch….(‘d-Gravenhage: 1623). See also John M. Echols, 'Dictionaries and Dictionary Making: Malay and Indonesian', The Journal of Asian Studies, 38 (1978), 11-24, p. 15. Echols also notes that a Latin version was issued in 1631. W. Lineham, 'The Earliest Word-lists and Dictionaries of the Malay Language', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Malayan Branch, 22 (1949), 183-187 identifies this as David Haex, Dictionarium Malaico-Latinum et Latinum-Malaicum (Rome, Congr. de Propag. Fide, 1631).
479 F. Gueynier, Vocabulaer, ofte Woorden-boeck, naer ordre van den Alphabet, in't Duytsch ende Maleys (Batavia, 1677), c.f. Echols, 'Dictionaries and Dictionary Making', p. 15, note 19. For discussion of the production of Malay language materials in Batavia during the eighteenth century, Gunn, First Globalisation, p. 233-4.
James Lancaster visited Aceh in Northern Sumatra and Bantam, a port on the north-west of the island of Java, establishing agreements for trade. A brief list of Malay words also appears in the description of this voyage, published in 1603.480 Some of the earliest Malay language materials in England are the royal correspondence with the rulers of Aceh.481 Houtman's dialogues were translated into German and Latin and then into English in 1614, the second edition corrected by Augustus Spalding, who had been employed by the English East India Company, rising through the ranks after showing an aptitude for language to become President at Bantam in 1609 and 1613.482 Works of travel were also produced containing word lists, including Sir Thomas Herbert's 1634 Relation of his voyages to the East Indies483 and Ogilby's account of the Mughal Empire.484
Competition between the English and Dutch during the first half of the seventeenth century for control of the spice trade was fierce and included the temporary expulsion of the English from Bantam in 1621 and the infamous Amboyna massacre of 1623. At the time of the reformation of the Company in 1658-62, English trade in Sumatra was centred on Aceh (also referred to as Achin or Acheen),485 where Thomas Bowrey wrote ‘all masters of English ships and vessels are very Nobly Entertained’.486 Despite the welcome English traders received, the port was firmly under the control
480 Anon, A true and large discourse of the voyage of the whole fleete of ships set forth the 20. of Aprill 1601. by the Gouernours and assistants of the East Indian marchants in London, to the East Indies (London, 1603), pp. 23-24.
481 For example, Bodleian MS Douce Or e. A is the end of a letter from 'Alā-uddīn, Sultan of Aceh to Queen Elizabeth, 1011 AH/ 1602 AD. This and others are described in W.G. Shellebear, 'Some old Malay Manuscripts', JSBRAS, xxxi (1901), pp. 110-11.
482 Anthea Fraser Gupta, 'The imagined learner of Malay', in Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles, ed. by Jean-Marc Dewaele, Alex Housen & Li Wei (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2003); David Keith Bassett, 'The factory of the East India Company at Bantam, 1602-1682' (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London, 1955), ii.
483 Thomas Herbert, A relation of some yeares trauaile, (London: William Stansby, and Iacob Bloome, 1634), 202-204.
Herbert also includes vocabularies of the 'Troglodite' language (pp. 16-17), Arabic (pp. 42-44), and Persian (pp. 171-182).
484 John Ogilby, Asia. being an accurate description of Persia, and the several provinces thereof : the vast empire of the Great Mogol, and other parts of India, (London: Printed by the author, 1673) pp. 129-133.
485 A list of the company personnel required in 1662 lists: 18 in addition to the President for Surat, Persia, and Synda; 6 for Rajapore and Deccan; 4 for Calicut and Caile Velha, and 4 persons 'to be employed when occasion shall require in voyaging to Atcheen etc...’. (L.B. Vol. 3 p. 113, Letter, London to Surat, 18th August 1662, copy in MSA, Collections of Papers Received from the India Office, fols. 9-16). The Courteen Association had had a factory at Achin but it was short-lived and impoverished according to Smart, who arrived there with some of the settlers from Madagascar in 1647 (William Foster, 'An English Settlement in Madagascar', English Historical Review, 27 (1912), 239-250).
486 Thomas Bowrey, A geographical account of the countries round the Bay of Bengal 1669 to 1679, ed. by Sir Richard Carnac Temple. (Hakluyt Society: Cambridge, 1935), p. 306.
of the Queen and her officials and the East India Company was never permitted to build the
fortified settlement it coveted there. By the 1660's, Bantam had developed into a thriving port under Sultan Agung and was exporting opium and textiles throughout the region, to the detriment of the Dutch factory at Batavia.487 However, by the mid-seventeenth century, the English presence in both Java and Sumatra was again under threat. The VOC’s drive to bring as much of the Malay world as possible under the control of Batavia involved enforcing trade monopolies, collaborations with enemies of Aceh like Johor and Ternate and the use of military force to exclude Asian and European competitors. The English East India Company therefore stepped up its efforts to forge diplomatic ties in the region to combat the Dutch offensive and supplied arms to the rulers of Bantam from the 1660's to use against the Dutch.488
In August 1675, two visitors from Bantam arrived in London, accompanied by an elephant. Less information about the men is available than about their exotic charge, but they stayed in London until February of the next year489 and it seems likely that, as with other visitors, they would have been scrutinised and questioned by the literati of London. The visitors may therefore have been part of the impetus for the first Malay language project in England, a translation of the four gospels, the Jang Ampat Evangelia490 by the Orientalist Thomas Hyde and the philologist and churchman Thomas Marshall. Marshall had learnt Malay in the Netherlands, where he spent twenty-four years as chaplain to the Company of Merchant Adventurers in Rotterdam before returning to England in 1672.491 The text was adapted from the Malay translations of the Dutch scholars Ruyl and
487 Femme Gaastra, 'War, Competition and Collaboration: the Relations between the English and Dutch East India Companies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in Bowen, Lincoln, and Rigby eds. Worlds of the East India Company.
488 William Foster, John Company (London: Bodley Head, 1926).
489 Foster, John Company, pp. 84-85. The elephant was described in an eight-page pamphlet entitled A True and Perfect Description of the Strange and Wonderful Elephant sent from the East Indies and brought to London on Tuesday the Third of August, 1675. Foster notes that the Court Minutes record the men's return on 8 February 1676.
490 Thomas Hyde ed., Jang Ampat Evangelia derrivi tuan kita Jesu Christi, daan Berboatan derri jang Apostoli Bersacti Bersalin dallam bassa Malayo (Oxford: printed by H. Hall, 1677).
491 K. Dekker, ‘Marshall, Thomas (1621–1685)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), [http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/view/article/18149, accessed 2 May 2010] .
Heurnius492 with alterations in orthography to suit English pronunciation. The work was published in 1677 with the aid of the gentleman scientist and religious adviser to the East India Company, Robert Boyle.
The early East India Company actively supported efforts to make converts to Christianity in Asia and copies of the Jang Ampat Evangelia were sent to the Bantam factory for distribution.493 This followed similar incentives elsewhere. For example, in 1660, permission had been granted by the Court of the East India Company for Richard Baxter, 'an eminent divine', to distribute among the East India Company's factors a translation of Grotius' de Veritate Religionis Christianae, translated into Arabic at the expense of Robert Boyle.494 In 1664, the Surat factors noted with pride that their library contained several volumes of the Bible in 'the language which is much esteemed by those that are learned amongst these people'. They also requested an ornate display for their chapel in which the Christian creed was to be surrounded by the names of God in 'as many of the eastern languages as Arabick, Persian &c. as can be procured'.495
The collaboration between Hyde, Marshall, and Boyle to produce the Jang Ampat Evangelia sparked further enthusiasm among the overlapping circles of churchmen, scholars, and members of the East India Company for emulating the Dutch in supporting scholarship and the production of
492 Probably A.C. Ruyl, Het Newe Testament: in Neder-duyt ende Malays overgeset (Enchuysen, 1629), the gospel of Matthew, and A.C. Ruyl and J. Heurnium, De vier heylige Euangelien ... ende ... de Handelingen der h. Apostelen, overgeset in Nederduyts ende Maleys (Amsterdam, 1651). See Thomas Birch ed. Works of Robert Boyle, 6 vols (London: Printed for W. Johnson and others, 1772), VI, p. 561, Hyde to Boyle, 3 September 1676. Hyde also implies in the Jang Ampat Evangelia, p. 2, that he used translations of all four gospels found among the manuscripts of the Leiden Professor of Arabic, Jacobus Golius, which were auctioned after his death (for a contemporary account of which, see Bodleian MS Smith 66, fol. 19 letter to Wallis dated 12 September 1692). The extracts given at the end of OR 70 from the Dutch versions of the Lord's Prayer also indicate that Marshall had access to more Dutch works than are currently extant.
493 According to Anthony Farrington, Trading places: the East India Company and Asia 1600-1834 (London: British Library, 2002), the work appears among a list of 185 books in the Bantam factory. The distribution of the book is noted in IOR G/21/7, fol. 23.
494 Yule, Diary of William Hedges, ii, p. cccliii. Yule notes this is from the Court Book c. 1660 but that the original has been lost. The Arabic translation of Grotius' 1640 work was made in 1660 by Edward Pococke and a copy is retained in the Bodleian library (arab e. 3). The translation is also noted by Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1984), I, p. 364 claims that the work was also translated into Malay, Chinese, and Persian.
495 Maharastra State Archives, Surat 'Outwards', Vol. 1A pt. II, Surat to London 28 January 1664 fols. 4-37.
religious works in Eastern languages. Many of those involved had spent time in Holland and regarded with admiration the strong links that had been built up there between scholarship, trade and religion. A letter of Robert Boyle's written in 1677 refers to Bishop John Fell of Oxford and Lord Berkley as involved the plans of East India Company to sponsor the propagation of the gospel and suggests that to this end, 'sober & learned men should be fitted in the university to be sent into India, & furnished not only with the Arabick tongue, but with Arithmetick and other parts of the Mathematicks & other Qualifications fit to recommend them & make them appear more
considerable & grow more usefull in those parts'. Boyle suggests that as well as sending
Englishmen to preach in local languages, 'we breed some of their forward hopeful youths to the
Englishmen to preach in local languages, 'we breed some of their forward hopeful youths to the