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An old Malay dictionary

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

An old Malay dictionary

R. Mee’s 1929 article in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society examines Thomas Bowery’s 1701 A Dictionary English and Malayo, Malayo and English, identifying it as the first Malay-English dictionary produced by an Englishman and a pioneering work in both Malay vocabulary and grammar. Mee’s central argument is that, given the conditions under which it was compiled—entirely from personal observation over nineteen years of trading in the Archipelago, with no prior English-language reference to guide the author—Bowery’s achievement was considerable and the work retains significant value for students of the language’s historical development.

Summary

Mee provides a detailed description of Bowery’s dictionary, walking through its structure: a title page and dedication to the Directors of the English East-India Company, a preface in which Bowery outlines the geographic and linguistic scope of the Malay language, a map of the Malay-speaking world, 268 pages of English-to-Malay entries, 200 pages of Malay-to-English entries, grammar rules, twenty-one pages of miscellanies, ten dialogues, specimen letters, a section on the Mohammedan computation of time, and examples of the Malay script. The preface is of particular interest for Bowery’s distinction between “true Malayo” spoken in the Peninsula and “Basadagang,” the trading language used across the islands, as well as his observations on the Arabic origins of the Malay script and the borrowing of religious and material-culture vocabulary from Arabic, Persian, and Indian sources (pp. 316–318).

The most substantive portion of Mee’s analysis concerns the linguistic evidence preserved in the dictionary. He highlights Bowery’s use of the possessive particle “poonea” (e.g., “Kitta poonea” for “My”) and the noun-forming suffix “awn” (e.g., “Pacataawn” for perkataan, “Janjeawn” for janjian), both of which had largely fallen out of use by the early twentieth century. Mee reasons that because Bowery would have encountered both courtly speech (from Rajas and Shabandars) and the pidgin-like Basadagang of port populations, the persistence of these forms across widely separated locations suggests they were once fairly general throughout the Archipelago (pp. 320–321). The dialogues, particularly the tenth, provide a rich picture of the political and commercial geography of the early eighteenth century, including tribute payments, weights and measures, and the trading patterns of the English, Dutch, Chinese, and other communities in the region (pp. 322–325).

Mee also raises a tantalising but unproven hypothesis: that the “antediluvian book” from which Stamford Raffles is said to have mastered Malay on a long voyage to the East may have been Bowery’s dictionary itself, given its availability in London and its status as the only English-language Malay grammar of the period (p. 316).

Key Findings

  • Bowery’s dictionary was printed in London in 1701 and dedicated to the Directors of the English East-India Company; it comprises 268 pages of English-to-Malay and 200 pages of Malay-to-English entries, arranged alphabetically to the second letter (pp. 316, 319).
  • Bowery compiled the work during a long voyage home in 1688 aboard the Bangala Merchant, drawing on nineteen years of navigation and trading experience in the Malayo Country, Sumatra, Borneo, Bantam, and Batavia (p. 317).
  • The possessive particle “poonea” (e.g., “Kitta poonea” = My, “Tuan poonea” = Thy) and the noun suffix “awn” (e.g., “Pacataawn” = perkataan, “Janjeawn” = janjian, “Kajadeawn” = kejadian) are recorded as still in use, forms that had largely disappeared from Malay by 1929 (p. 320).
  • The tenth dialogue records that the Raja of Quedah received an annual tribute of approximately one thousand pecool of the best pepper and fifteen thousand pecool of tin, while Junsalon (Johor) paid four hundred bahar of tin annually, one bahar equalling 1,591 pounds, 12 ounces, and 12 grains in English avoirdupois (pp. 323–325).
  • The Malay weight system is documented in full: 1 miam = 1 booncal; 20 booncal = 1 cattee; 100 cattee = 1 pecool; 2 pecool = 1 bahar Malayo; and 1 booncal = 1 ounce, 8 pennyweights, and 28 grains in English troy weight (pp. 324–325).
  • The map included in the dictionary marks “P. Panjang” opposite “Old Queda” (identified by Mee as present-day Pulau Pinang), “P. Lada” (Langkawi), and “Songecalang” (Selangor), but shows the “Strate of Singapore” without naming the island itself (p. 319).

Conclusion

Mee’s definitive assessment is that Bowery’s dictionary, though no longer of practical use to a modern learner of Malay, constitutes a valuable historical document that preserves an extended picture of the language as spoken in the trading ports of the Archipelago in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—a picture that, allowing for the inclusion of vocabulary gathered from across the region, does not appear to have changed substantially by 1929.

Context

  • Mee’s article draws entirely on a single physical copy of Bowery’s 1701 dictionary; no other archival sources are consulted. Its historiographical contribution lies in drawing attention to a neglected early English-language Malay reference and in using its linguistic data to trace archaic forms (the “poonea” possessive, the “awn” suffix) that had since disappeared from the language.

References