Table Of ContentKONINKLIJK 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
