KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE 13IBLlOGRAPHICAL SERIES 1 P. VOORHOEVE CRITICAL SURVEY OF STUDIES ON THE LANGUAGES OF SUMATRA 'S-GRAVENHAGE - MARTINUS NI]HOFF - 1955 ISBN 978-94-015-0045-6 ISBN 978-94-015-0522-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-0522-2 Copyright 1955 by "Konmkli,jk Instituut voor de Ta,al-, Land en Volkenkrmde", The Hague, Netherlamds. All rights reserved, including the right to tramslate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. CONTENTS Preface . 1 Introduction 4 Achehnese 5 Gayö . 8 Batak . 9 Malay and Minangkabau 15 Rejang 20 Lampung 21 The Islands East of Sumatra 23 Simalur 24 Nias . 25 Mentawai 27 Enggano. 29 Bibliography N otes to the text . 30 Some general reference works 53 List of abbreviations. . . . . 55 The spelli1~g oi geographical names and names oi languages is according to the English romanization oi Malay. PREFACE The aim of the critical bibliographies, compiled on the initiative of the Board of Directors of the Royal Institute of Linguistics, Geography and Ethnology, is to draw attention to the data on Indonesian lin~ guistics and cultural sciences collected in the past, and to provide guidance in this field. It so happens that these data were often published in journals with a limited circulation, whilst these journals are only available in a few places. Moreover, most of them are only accessible without difficulty to those workers in the fields of Indonesian linguistics and cultural sciences who possess some knowledge of the Dutch language. Apart from providing information, these bibliographies also have an other object, viz. to prevent that meritorious scholarly work would be lost due to the purely fortuitous circumstance - which, however, in actual practice is unfortunately of decisive importance - that this work is not written in a world language and that it cannot be every where easily consulted. The Board therefore hope at the same time to break with the slightly provincialistic nature which for evident reasons used to be characteristic for the studies in language and culture of Indonesia. The Board hope to be able to prevent that new research should have to start unnecessarily again at the very beginning, and also to contribute to a more rapid progress of scientific research in this field by means of a regular publication of these critical reviews of pubIications. In compiling the series of linguistic reviews, of which the first volume is now published, the authors will not restrict themselves to an uncritical enumeration of publications regardless of quality. No useful purpose is served eitherby rescuing from oblivion short vocabularies or summary remarks of a grammatical nature, which have since long been surpassed 1 2 by more extensive works of better qualified scholars. For this reason every volume of this series begins with a short coherent discussion of the grammatical studies, dictionaries and text-editions compiled in the course of time. As regards grammatical and lexical studies, the authors aim at providing complete information; as regards texts, in particular texts in languages in which much material has appeared in print, only those have been selected which can be considered representative for that particular language. A complete enumeration of the publications in and concerning the literature of the various languages is not en visaged; however, reference will be made to the existing surveys in this field. The method outlined above introduces of course a subjective element into these bibliographies, but this is only to be welcomed because the attempt has been made to have these monographs compiled as far as possible by persons who may be considered the best qualified to deal with each particular field. Because the number of Indonesian languages is large, whilst that of the specialists is small in relation, it is practically unavoidable that the opinion on every language and on the scholarly literature concerned will not possess the same measure of expert know ledge nor the same measure of definiteness. Behind the works mentioned in the text numbers have been added corresponding to the numbers in the selected bibliography following the text; there the complete title is to be found. In case no further indications are given, it may be assumed that the works mentioned are to be found in the library of the Royal Institute and in the Leiden University Library. Readers interested in studies not discussed in these pages are referred to the printed catalogue of the library of the Royal Institute and other bib1iographica1 too1s, enumerated at the end of the bibliography. It is quite like1y that at least the works mentioned in the bibliography will be available in the library of the Lembaga Kebudayaan Indonesia, the former "Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences" at Djakarta, Indonesia. The various languages will be dealt with is1and by island, occasionally by archipelago, usually following the geographie division proposed by Esser in 1937. At the end of each volume Esser's linguistic map will 3 be reproduced as far as it concerns the area under review, because since that time no further attempts were made to outline a comprehen sive picture of the geographical distribution of the Indonesian languages. A simple system of abbreviations inserted in the map is intended at enabling the reader to obtain a general impression concerning the degree of the intensity with which the various languages have been studied. This first volume of the series is devoted to the languages spoken on the island of Sumatra· and on the islands to the East and to the West c1ose1y related to the main island. However, Malay and the Bahasa Indonesia will not be treated here; they will form the subject of aseparate volume. The Board consider themselves fortunate in that the very expert for this field, Dr. P. Voorhoeve, government linguist for Sumatra before the second world war, expressed his willingness to compile this bibliography for Sumatra. INTRODUCTION When we survey the history of Sumatran linguistics, the first explorer of any importance in this field is William Marsden. His Malay dictionary (1) and grammar (2) deserve mention, because the material, in so far as it had not been taken from earlier publications, had been mainly collected in Sumatra. At present these works are only of his torical importance; they were translated into Dutch and into French (3,4) and so they have been used by all later scholars, French and English as weIl as Dutch, and their contents have been digested in their works; only the chrestomathy at the end of his grammar remains valuable. Because we will not discuss literary Malay any further, our remarks on Malay will be restricted to mentioning those publications which are particularly concerned with the Sumatran dialects of this language. Marsden's remarks on other Sumatran languages in his History of Sumatra (5) are no more than a preliminary reconnaissance. By means of word lists he was able to realise that they were basically related, but he did not penetrate any further. In two articles Gonda has discus sed his place in the history of Indonesian comparative linguistics (6). Linguistic maps of the area under survey appeared as early as 1887 (Sumatra and the islands to the West) and 1889 (Bangka and the Riau Lingga archipelago) in the Colonial Reports for those years; they had been compiled by K. F. Holle and J. L. A. Brandes (7,8). Of course, the limits of the linguistic areas are mainly estimates, as detailed local investigations were not yet possible at the time. However, the remark in the additional notes concerning the lesser linguistic areas is still worth repeating: not everything announced as "basa" in the data should be considered as aseparate language. A reliable small linguistic map of the former residency of Bencoolen 5 is tobe found in Resident Westenenk's memorandum on the state of the residency for his successor in office (9). In 1937 Dr. S. J. Esser, the wellknown expert in Indonesian linguis tics, compiled a linguistic map of the whole territory of the former Netherlands Indies for the atlas of Dutch overseas territories published in that year (10), using all the material collected up to then. Concerning the spread and the delimitation of the languages to be discussed in the following pages, I will refer to this linguistic map and to the map reproduced at the end of this volume. Beside studies which have already appeared in print, relevant mate rial in manuscript has been mentioned as much as possible. The author of these lines worked in Sumatra during nearly five years before the war, in his capacity of government linguist; a special commis si on made him study Simalungun Batak during three of these years. Practically all the material I had collected concerning most of the Sumatran languages was lost during the war. Nevertheless, I have mentioned it occasionally, not only because of the faint possibility that part of it may still be found, but also because I hope that others will take up the task again. I did not visit the islands to the East and to the West of Sumatra and I haveonly superficially applied myself to the study of the languages spoken there. The fact that is was nevertheless possible to include these languages in the present survey I owe to the assistance of Dr. J. c. Anceaux, Dr. A. A. Cense and Dr. E. M. Uhlenbeck. The last two gentlemen have also given me their esteemed help in preparing the part concerning the island of Sumatra. 1. ACHEHNESE Van Langen's dictionary (11) and grammar (12) were a meritorious piece of work in their day; their greatest usefulness consisted probably in the fact that they served Snouck Hurgronje as a base for collecting further material. His interleaved personal copies filled with notes are in the Leiden University Library. In this case also the chrestomathy 6 remains valuable. The dictionary and the grammar likewise are partly still useful, because the words are given in the current and occasionally archaic Arabic spelling. On this spelling Snouck Hurgronje has ex patiated at considerable length in his Studies on Achehnese phonology and orthography (13). In these studies he created, long before the birth of phonemics, a phonemically justified spelling of Achehnese in romanization, a spelling wh ich has remained in use in later publications with only small modifications of a practical nature. This spelling is also used in the great Achehnese dictionary (14) compiled by Djaja diningrat who used the material collected by Snouck Hurgronje, as weIl as the results of his study of Achehnese literature and the lexico graphical data collected in Acheh (Atchin) and among Achehnese living in Djakarta, among whom Snouck Hurgronje's former clerk Tnk. Moh. N oerdin deserves special mention. The dictionary excells because of its extraordinarily concise and precise translations; Snouck Hurgronje was a past master in this respect, whilst Djajadiningrat's work in this field equals his in quality. Due to this, it is one of the best dictionaries of an Indonesian language, and also students of languages different from Achehnese will often be able to consult it with profit, e.g. for the semantic value of Arabic loans and for words and ideas common to both Achehnese and Malay, although one will always have to be on the look-out for Achehnese peculiarities. On these peculiarities concerning Arabic loanwords L. de V ries wrote a short article (15). The dictionary contains both the literary idiom and the vernacular, i.e. the standard dialect of Great-Acheh. Occasionally dialect expressions are mentioned, but if war conditions had not pre vented the author from living for a longer period of time in various outlying areas in the interior, more of this kind of material could certainly have been collected. It is regrettable that the traditional spelling in Arabic script is not given, as this often has preserved original final consonants which have disappeared in the pronunciation. The dictionary is not concerned with etymology, apart from that of loan-words. When the great dictionary took a long time to complete, Kreemer published a concise Achehnese dictionary (16), likewise in Snouck Hurgronje's spelling; occasionally it contains some data lacking in the larger work. The Dutcb-Achehnese index by Drewes, announced on the title-page