Jawi is a word of Arab origin, and is formed in accordance with the rules of Arabic grammar from the noun Jawa, Java. Just as from Makah, Meccah, is derived the word Makk-i, of or belonging to Meccah, so from Jawa, Java, we get Jawi, of or belonging to Java. When this name was first applied to Malays, the Arabs had not an accurate knowledge of the ethnography of the Eastern Archipelago. Without very strict regard to ethnical divergencies, they described all the brown races of the eastern islands under the comprehensive and convenient term Jawi, and the Malays, who alone among those races adopted the Arabic alphabet, adopted also the term in speaking of their language and writing.[48]
As in Malay there are no inflexions to denote change of number, gender, or person, the connection of Jawi with Jawa is quite unknown to the Malays,
just as the second part of the word senamaki (sena-maki, senna of Meccah[49]) is not suspected by them to have any reference to the sacred city. There is a considerable Malay and Javanese colony in Meccah,[50] where all are known to the Meccans indiscriminately as Jawi.
Marsden devotes several pages of the introduction to his Malay Grammar to a discussion as to the origin and use of the expression orang di-bawah angin, people below the wind, applied by Malays to themselves, in contradistinction to orang di-atas angin, people above the wind, or foreigners from the West. He quotes from De Barros and Valentyn, and from several native documents, instances of the use of these expressions, but confesses his inability to explain their origin. Crawfurd quotes these terms, which he considers to be “native,” and remarks that they are used by the Malays alone of all the tribes in the Archipelago. A much more recent writer characterises these terms as “Noms dont on ignore encore la vraie signification.”[51]
The expression is not of Malay origin, but is a translation into that language of an Arabic phrase. Instances of its use occur in the “Mohit” (the ocean), a Turkish work on navigation in the Indian seas, written by Sidi al Chelebi, captain of the fleet of Sultan Suleiman the Legislator, in the Red Sea. The original was finished at Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, in the last days of Muharram, A.H. 962 (A.D. 1554). It enumerates, among others, “the monsoons below the wind, that is, of the parts of India situated below the wind,” among which are “Malacca, Shomotora, Tanassari, Martaban, and Faiku (Pegu).”[52]
TRANSLITERATION OF MALAY IN THE ROMAN CHARACTER.
Malay is written in a character which has been borrowed from a foreign literature in comparatively modern times, and which but imperfectly suits its sounds. With the introduction of the Muhammadan religion, the Malays adopted the Arabic alphabet, modified to suit the peculiarities of their language.
In Malay literary compositions there is great diversity in the manner of spelling many words. The accentuation of the spoken dialect differs so much from Arabic, that it is difficult, even for native writers, to decide when to write the long vowels and when to leave them out. This is the point in which diversity is most common.
Every European author who writes Malay in the Roman character has to decide on what system he intends to render the native language by means of our alphabet. The Malay alphabet has thirty-four letters, so it is obvious that ours will not accurately correspond with it. It is open to him, if he wishes to obtain a symbol to correspond with every letter of the Malay alphabet, to employ various means to denote those letters for which we have no equivalents; or he may dismiss the native alphabet from his mind altogether, and determine to write the language phonetically. In a language, however, which abounds in Sanskrit and Arabic words, he should, of course, avoid the adoption of any system of spelling which would disguise the true origin of words of foreign derivation.