Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 422

FURTHER-INDIAN BRANCH
421
Over go per cent of the Indonesian natives are illiterate. Educated natives use nowadays for their languages mostly either the Arabic or the Roman alphabets. Apart from these two alphabets, some of the native peoples of the archipelago, among them several quite primitive tribes, still employ ancient scripts, all derived, indirectly, from Indian writing, a survival of the period when Indian civilization was spread over the islands. The most advanced people use paper, some of it made locally from the inner bark of certain trees and glazed with rice gruel, but the bulk of native writing was and it is still done by scratching signs on the shiny surface of bamboo strips or palm leaves, which are then strung together into books.
The ancient scripts are still used in parts of Sumatra and Celebes, in Bali and a few others of the Lesser Sunda Islands, and even to some extent in interior Java. Two of the most primitive Philippine tribes, the Mangyan and Tagbanua of Mindoro and Palawan, have also their ancient indigenous scripts. There is, however, only one language and its script which have a true history; that is Javanese, the oldest phase of which is known as Old Javanese or Kawi or Kavi. Of the earlier phases of Batak (Sumatra) and Bugis (Celebes) there are also documentary records available (Fig. 194, 7-8), but these are far less important than those of the Old Javanese language (Fig. 193, 1, i-ii; Fig. 194, 1-6).
It is now accepted by the most authoritative scholars that all these ancient scripts descended from Indian characters; E. E. W. G. Schrader, who suggests that the Malayo-Polynesian culture was based on the Semitic civilization and not on the Indian, is practically alone.
Borneo
The enormous bulk of Borneo, the fourth greatest island in the world, being 4,000 miles long and 1,000 miles wide, with a surface of 290,000 sq. miles and only two and a-half million inhabitants, presents an open problem as regards the existence of an ancient indigenous script. There can be no doubt that writing was once known to the indigenous inhabitants of some parts of Borneo; as a matter of fact, the inscriptions discovered in that island are the earliest written documents hitherto found in the Malay Archipelago. However, these inscriptions are in pure Sanskrit and are, like a few other written documents found in Borneo, of Indian origin and not produced by the native Dayaks. Another inscription, on the bottom of a vase, which was bought in northern Borneo, is considered to be written in the Mangyan character of Mindoro. There is, consequently, no proof of any connection between the people who made use of writing in ancient Borneo and the present Dayaks.
Malaya
There is likewise no proof of evidence that there existed any indigenous script in the Malay Peninsula, although there, too, early Sanskrit inscriptions have been discovered, and Malaya played an important part in the ancient trade between India and the Far East.