History of The Malay Language - Old Malay (4th Century - 14th Century CE)

14th Century CE)

The beginning of common era saw the growing influence of Indian civilization in the archipelago. With the penetration and proliferation of Sanskrit vocabulary and the influence of major Indian religions, Ancient Malay evolved into the Old Malay language. The oldest surviving speciment of Old Malay, the Dong Yen Chau inscription dated 4th century CE, was discovered in the northwest of Tra Kieu, near the old Champa capital of Indrapura, modern day Vietnam. This is followed by the 7th century CE Sojomerto inscription from Central Java, Kedukan Bukit Inscription from South Sumatra and several other inscriptions dating from the 7th to 10th centuries discovered in Sumatra, Malay peninsula, western Java, other islands of the Sunda archipelago, and Luzon. All these Old Malay inscriptions used either scripts of Indian origin such as Devanagiri and Pallava or the Indian-influenced Kawi.

The Old Malay system is greatly influenced by Sanskrit in terms of phonemes, morphemes, vocabulary and the characteristics of scholarship, particularly when the words are closely related to Indian culture such as puja, kesatria, maharaja and raja, as well as on the Hindu-Buddhist religion such as dosa, pahala, neraka, syurga, sami and biara, which lasts until today.

It is popularly claimed that the Old Malay of the Srivijayan inscriptions from South Sumatra is the ancestor of the Classical Malay. However, as noted by some linguists, the precise relationship between these two, whether ancestral or not, is problematical and remained uncertain. This is due to the existence of a number of morphological and syntactic peculiarities, and affixes which are familiar from the related Batak and Javanese languages but are not found even in the oldest manuscripts of Classical Malay. It may be the case that the language of the Srivijayan inscriptions is a close cousin rather than an ancestor of Classical Malay. Moreover, Old Malay remained in use as a written language in Sumatra right up to the end of 14th century, evidenced from Bukit Gombak inscription dated 1357 and Tanjung Tanah manuscript of Adityavarman era (1347-1375).