Even on theory it might have been objected that the African tribes are not navigators, and that the Mozambique channel with its strong currents and stronger south-east winds must have been, as it still is, a formidable barrier against intercourse between these tribes and Madagascar. But in point of fact there is no tribe on the island (so far as it has yet been examined) which can be shown to be substantially African, in its language, its features, its habits, its relations to its neighbours. There are pure Africans in abundance (as we shall see) scattered about in certain districts on the west, imported through the Arab slave trade. And that African element has tainted the original Malagasy race. But no original and distinct tribe on the island has yet been pointed out as long settled African colonists: much less can the entire Malagasy people be identified with such a tribe. On the contrary the three great divisions of the Malagasy hold together; embrace almost the entire island; and their language and tribal customs suggest a totally different direction as to their origin.
In illustration of this unity of the races now occupying Madagascar, I have noted with interest that the names given to localities in all parts of the island, Sakaláva, Betsimisáraka and Hóva are of the same character; and are plainly derived from the present Malagasy language. Many of the Sakaláva names are distinctly Hóva. Off the north-west coast we find Nosibe, “big island,” Nosikomba, “monkey island,” and Nosifály, “glad island;” we have Ampásiména, “red sand village;” Mároláhy, “the village of princes,” and Andránomaláza, “famous water.” We have Márovoáy, with its “many crocodiles,” Mojangá “the restorer of health,” and Mevatanána “good place for a town.” On the west coast we have Máintiráno, “the black river,” Mafándráno, “hot springs,” and Mámiráno “sweet waters.” We have one town, Mánandáza “the glorious,” and another, Malaimbándy “the place of indolent lies.” We have Fierénana in Vonizongo and on the Sakalava coast. We have the pass of Ambodifiakárana among the limestone ridges of the Sakalavas, and under the granite moors on the Mania. Hundreds of names are scattered over the east and west coasts, bearing a striking similarity to those of the interior, and applied as fittingly to the places which they indicate. The names and the people are evidently one.
Baron Humboldt, the linguist, long since detected the Malay element in their language. Other writers have followed him. And the more attentively and completely the subject is examined the stronger will the evidence of that origin appear. Unhappily such a complete examination has not yet been made. Malay scholars have but partially understood Malagasy: and Malagasy scholars have looked but little into Malay. And we know scarcely more than was written by the Rev. J. J. Freeman, forty years ago. Yet the materials are beginning to accumulate out of which the comparison may be made in full detail. Besides Marsden’s Grammar and Dictionary, in Crawford’s Malay Grammar, in Wallace’s Eastern Archipelago, in the Appendix of Dr. Turner’s “Nineteen Years in Polynesia,” there are lists of words and idioms in the Malay and its cognate dialects, Samoan, Máori and Tahitian, available for the discussion of the question: and ere long we may hope to see it undertaken thoroughly. I have no pretensions to a knowledge of either tongue. But it happens that during my visit to Madagascar unpublished papers from competent men came into my hands, and I will venture to give a few illustrations which they furnish of the connection between the two languages. Mr. Freeman observes with interest that it is the Betsimisáraka edition of Malagasy which comes nearest to the Malay; and it is the Maláya branch of the language, rather than Javanese or Báli, which comes closest to Malagasy. Here is a simple list of twenty words.
| English. | Malay. | Malagasy. |
| crocodile | buáya | voáya.[[1]] |
| bone | tulang | taolang. (Bets. |
| fly | lálat | lálitra. |
| fruit | búa | vóa. |
| ground | tánah | tány. |
| grow | támboh | mi-tombo. |
| hand | tángan | tángana. (Bets. |
| heaven | lángit | langitra. (Bets. |
| hang | gantong | mi-hantona. |
| fear | tákut | tahotra. |
| moon | bolan | vólana. |
| stone | bátu | váto. |
| year | tahun | táona. |
| spirits | túaka | tóaka. |
| mosquito | nya-mók | móka. |
| two | dúa | róa. |
| four | ámpat | éfat-ra. |
| six | ánam | énina. |
| ten | sa-puloh | folo. |
| twenty | dua-puloh | roa-polo. |
| thousand | sa-riba | arivo. |
[1]. The o in Malagasy is pronounced like the Italian u. This arrangement was a fatal mistake in the early writers of the language; and is calculated to mislead any one outside the island. Hova ought to have been written Húva.
In their structure and government the two languages resemble one another: but the Malay seems a less formed and complete tongue than the Malagasy. Both languages have the inclusive and exclusive pronouns: and the same form is used in the nominative and objective cases. In both reduplication is common. The prefixes through which the verb is conjugated, though differing slightly in form, constantly bear the same meaning in Malay as in Malagasy and are used in the same way. In both cases the same sort of improvement was needed: and came from the same source. The Arab traders gave to each people the names of the days of the week and of the months of the year. The scales for weighing money are Arabic, mizán. The word for writing, sóratra, seems Arabic also.
Additional improvement to the Malagasy came from their intercourse with the French, who in the course of many years’ visits to the coasts of the island, introduced new articles to their notice, which are still called by their French names. At least seventy French words have become naturalised in Malagasy and that in very curious fashion. The young Malagasy now sits upon a seza, in front of látábat-ra; his rice is brought from the lákozy, and he eats his beef with a fórisét-y. He wipes his face with a mósara, washes his hands with sávona, and dries them on a sáriveta. He keeps his clothes in a lálamóra (armoire); rides forth on his soavály; and wears patent-leather bóty.
The colonisation of Madagascar by the Malay tribes is a topic full of interest: but we know almost nothing about it. It is singular that in the very first mention made of the island, the celebrated notice of it by Marco Paolo, he should have made a strange mistake and mixed it with information which belongs to the Somali country around Cape Gardafui. Madagascar has neither elephants nor hippopotami; neither leopards nor bears nor lions. Nevertheless it is evident that the great traveller learned something real about the island, and of that aspect of it which was specially presented to the great sailors of his time, the Arab and Persian traders, whose fathers had visited it for many ages. Sandal wood is still exported from the northern ports; and the Hindus carry on “a profitable trade.” I do not think that the people whom Fra Mauro speaks of as blown away to the southward were connected with the original settling of Madagascar by the Malays: the accident he describes seems to me of much later date than that settlement; and that it happened to Indian traders who were sailing down the African coast. When they were blown back again, they may have seen shells of the Œpyornis, on the sandy terrace at the south-east end of Madagascar, where M. Grandidier found both shells and bones. Fra Mauro does not say that they saw the living birds. Sindbad’s additions about the elephants and the jewels are applications of “travellers’ tales” and traditions floating about the nautical world long before his day.
That in early times there should have been a Malay immigration into Madagascar is nothing strange. Every thing new which we are learning about the Indian Ocean and the China Sea tends to show how boldly and continuously those seas were traversed before the Christian era. Phœnician navigation, both from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, was ably carried out even in the time of Solomon; and the evidence is accumulating that their colonies, trading settlements, and ports of call were established along all the African and Indian coasts before the Ptolemies had ceased to rule. They had long since learned the regularity of the monsoons and decided how to employ them; Zanzibar and its neigbourhood had become the head-quarters of the Central African trade; and every year a great fleet crossed the Indian ocean from the ports of Gujerat and Malabar with the north-east monsoon. What was a twenty days’ voyage before a fair and steady breeze, to men accustomed to the sea, in large vessels of three hundred and eight hundred tons, such as the Alexandrian corn ships or the buggalows of the Gulf of Cutch, with their strong masts, long yard, and huge sails? To me it seems that they mastered the navigation early: its continuity was never broken till Albuquerque and Almeida took it with violence from their hands: and I venture to think that in the Arab merchants of these Eastern seas, with their Khojah friends in Western India and the “Old Man of the Mountain,” at their head, we have the lineal descendants, in blood and language and employment, of the Phœnicians of ancient times.