Portuguese Vocables In Asiatic Languages - Taschenbuch

GAEKWADS ORIENTAL SERIES Published under the Authority of the Government of His Highness the Maharaja Gaekwad of Baroda. GENERAL EDITOR B. BHATTACHARYYA, M. A., Ph. D., Rdjaratna, Jndnaratna. No. LXXIV INFLUENCE OF PORTUGUESE VOCABLES IN ASIATIC LANGUAGES PORTUGUESE VOCABLES IN ASIATIC LANGUAGES FROM THE PORTUGUESE ORIGINAL of MONSIGNOR SEBASTIAO RODOLFO DALGADO Translated into English with notes, additions and comments BY ANTHONY XAVIER SPARES, M. A., LL. B., F. R. S. L PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, BARODA COLLEGE 1936 Oriental Institute Baroda PREFACE. Monsignor S. Rodolfo Dalgados Influencia do Vocdbulario Portugues em Linguas Asiaticas abragendo cerca de cinquenta idiomas published by the Academy of Sciences, Lisbon, was issued in 1913, and at once received a very warm welcome from Orientalists all over Europe interested in philological studies. Sir George Grierson, then in England, thanked the author heartily for his most valuable and interesting work for which, he said, he had been wishing for many years and which would be of the greatest help to him in the linguistic survey of India, just as his excellent Konkani dictionary had been till then. Professors Sylvain Lev and A. Cabaton from Paris, J. Cornu from Austria, and Hugo Schuchardt from Graz, among others, acclaimed the work as an enduring monument to Portugal and a most valuable contribution to Oriental studies, the materials of which, collected with infinite labour, had been put together with great learning and precision. But except Portuguese India, as was to be expected, no other part of India had heard of the authors name, let alone of this or any other book of his. The irony of the situation is obvious for though the result ofthe laborious examination of about fifty different Asiatic languages in search of Portuguese words might make the Portuguese justly and pardonably proud of the part they once played in the cultural history of the East and particularly of India, such a study can have a present day value and importance only to those in India, Ceylon, Malaya, and other parts of Asia interested in the history and development of their respective vernaculars. The situation was brought about purely because Dr. Dalgados Vocabulario, to give the work the name by which it is generally known, is in Portuguese, and scarcely any Indian Orientalist to-day possesses a working knowledge of that language. VI PREFACE With the object of introducing Dalgados work to those interested in such studies, I read before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society a paper entitled The Portuguese Legacy to the East or the Influence of Portuguese on the Languages of the East with special reference to the Languages of the Bombay Presidency. This was in 1922. A paragraph from its concluding part will bear quotation here, in as much as it explains my motive in reading it and, at the same time, makes an avowal of my indebtedness for my materials to the Vocabulario. It remains for me to acknowledge my great and grateful debt to Dr. S. Rodolfo Dalgados Influencia do Vocabulario Portugues em Linguas Asiaticas dbrangendo cerca de cinquenta idiomas. The student who wishes to study from a scientific and philosophical standpoint the process by which the gradual trans plantation of the exotic words on Asiatic soil was affected will find the introduction to this great work of absorbing interest. The book which is published by the UniversityPress, Coimbra, and brought out under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences, Lisbon, is in Portuguese, a language unknown to the majority of scholars in India. I am sure that, on this very account, a few brief remarks on the character of this work as well as on the career and achievements of the indefatigable orientalist and philologist, its author, will not be out of place. And the very same reasons have determined the inclusion of a sketch of the authors life and work in this volume. The paper was published in the Societys Journal No. LXXIV, Vol...