In a Malay poem given in the Journal of the Ind. Archipelago, vol i. p. 44, we have these words:—
"Trúsláh ka kampong s'orange Saudágar."
["Passed to the kampong of a Merchant.">[
and
"Titáh bágindú rajá sultání
Kámpong śiápá garángun íní."
["Thus said the Prince, the Raja Sultani,
Whose kampong may this be?">[
These explanations and illustrations render it almost unnecessary to add in corroboration that a friend who held office in the Straits for twenty years assures us that the word kampung is habitually used, in the Malay there spoken, as the equivalent of the Indian compound. If this was the case 150 years ago in the English settlements at Bencoolen and elsewhere (and we know from Marsden that it was so 100 years ago), it does not matter whether such a use of kampung was correct or not, compound will have been a natural corruption of it. Mr. E. C. Baber, who lately spent some time in our Malay settlements on his way from China, tells me (H. Y.) that the frequency with which he heard kampung applied to the 'compound,' convinced him of this etymology, which he had before doubted greatly.
It is not difficult to suppose that the word, if its use originated in our Malay factories and settlements, should have spread to the continental Presidencies, and so over India.