Sydney Parkinson's Savu list

[Ross Clark]

About the "publishing mixup": It could easily be just that. If you read
the preface, the whole process of production of the book was a long
history of confusion and recriminations among Banks, Parkinson's brother
Stanfield, and Dr Joseph Fothergill over custody of poor Sydney's
effects, collections and manuscripts. Vocabularies in Parkinson's
possession copied from earlier voyagers could have been included by
mistake with those actually collected by him. 
However, Parkinson mentions both people from Ceram and "Negroes from
Madagascar" as among the many ethnic groups present at Batavia during
his stay. It is at least conceivable that he might have collected these
lists from people he met there. The Gambia numerals are a little harder
to account for.
 
Ross Clark

________________________________

From: an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au [mailto:an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au] On
Behalf Of Richard Parker
Sent: Tuesday, 27 March 2007 11:46 a.m.
To: An-lang at anu.edu.au
Subject: [An-lang] Sydney Parkinson's Savu list


I tried to make sense of Parkinson's Sumatra wordlist (because, to my
untutored 
eye, it looked so strange), but had to give up.
http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/parkinson/239.html
 
I have a transcription of whatever I gleaned in Excel chart form, which
I'll be 
happy to send to anyone who would like it, and could make better sense
of it than 
I did.
 
There seems to have been a publishing mixup:
1 page (247) is headed:
NUMERATION of the Negroes on the River GAMBIA in AFRICA.
Another (242):
A VOCABULARY of the LANGUAGE spoken by the People of the Island
MADAGASCAR.
another (241) has:
NUMERATION of the Natives of CERAM, an island in the EAST-INDIES
 
Parkinson died at sea from dysentery contracted at Princes Island, Sunda
Strait, 
on the way to Cape Town, in early 1771. His journal was published by his
brother, Stanfield, in 1773.
 
Since, so far as I am aware, Parkinson never visited the Gambia, or
Madagascar, or 
Ceram, or Anjenga, on the coast of Malabar, where he listed 'High
Malay'(p 236) it 
would seem that his brother added extra wordlists that Sydney had
collected 
somewhere, without being able to understand their significance. 
 
He spent 13 days on Princes Island, but passed most of his time,
fruitlessly, 
trying to buy food: Quote: "Mr. Banks replied, that he supposed it was
because 
they found a deficiency of turtle, of which there not being enough to
supply one 
ship, many could not be expected. To supply this defect, he advised his
Majesty to 
breed cattle, buffaloes, and sheep, a measure which he did not seem much
inclined 
to adopt." (In other words, he thought the great English botanist was as
mad as a 
hatter - he was probably dead right).
 
regards
Richard Parker
Siargao Island, The Philippines. 
My website at www.coconutstudio.com is about the island and its people,
coastal early humans, fishing, coconuts, bananas and whatever took my
fancy at the time.
 

 
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