History of the Indian Archipelago by John Crawfurd

Author:John Crawfurd [Crawfurd, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, General, India & South Asia
ISBN: 9781108056168
Google: AgwOx1_Sw1YC
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-03-28T15:59:02+00:00

Of the quinary scale, or calculation by fives, even the Polynesian language itself affords relics. It is, however, very remarkable, that this evidence is not derived from the civilized languages of the great western tribes, but from the less cultivated ones of the minor tribes to the eastward. In some of the languages of Celebes, and of several of the surrounding islands, we discover the almost universal term for five, lima, to be derived from its natural source, the same word meaning, the hand. In the Ende language already quoted, the terms for six and seven are accordingly nothing else than Jive and one, and jive and two. Farther traces of the prevalence of this classification seem to have been banished by the encroachment of the decimal scale, which ultimately obtained in all.

The language of the Sundas or mountaineers of Java alone contains evidence of the former existence of the senary scale of classification. Gănăp, which is six in that language, means also complete, terminated, evidently in relation to its forming the term or limit of their first system of numerals.

The denary scale has, in the progress of society, as with other people, superseded the rest, and is now of universal prevalence. The language, however, in which it is clothed, is usually so obsolete, that it is not often we can trace a satisfactory etymology. In many of the languages, as the Malay, Sunda, Achi, Mandar, and Ende, the term for nine means rtro, and one short of, or taken away from. In the Achínese, the etymology is very distinct, Sakorang, literally translated, being one short or wanting ; and it is- hardly less so in Malay, where Sambilan evidently means one taken, that is, taken from the heap or whole.

The terms for ten, for hundred, and for thousand, have escaped my attempts to trace them to their origin. Twenty, thirty, forty, are two tens, three tens, four tens, and the regular mode of forming the intermediate terms consists in simply affixing the digits. It is not improbable, but at some period in the history of numbers, the principal terms were represented by specific terms. We have one example of this in the word widak, which is sixty in the Javanese, and some other dialects. Remnants of the quinary scale are also to be discovered in this department. Twenty-five is Lowe, and fifty is Ekăt in Javanese. The same language frequently counts by fives in the intermediate numbers, as will be seen in the specimen of the numerals. By this mode of reckoning, which proceeds as far as eighty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, &c. are expressed by saying, five short of forty, five short of fifty, &c. From ten to twenty, the numeral terms are formed by adding to the digit the inseparable particle wăalas or bias, which I suspect to be the same as the Javanese word talas, done or finished, in reference to the end of the scale. The intermediate terms between twenty and thirty are formed occasionally in a

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