What I Know About Ceram 

The vocabulary of the language of Ceram Island, <На Островѣ Церамѣ>, in Yankievich de Mirievo’s Dictionary consists of eleven entries, all denoting numerals. There are two entries for the number ‘seven’, and one entry each for the nine other numbers between one and ten. The dual entries for the number ‘seven’ are significant – because they reflect an error on the part of the editor or editors responsible for the dictionary. One of the entries, as shown below, is a novelty introduced by Yankievich. It does not derive from any of his established sources. It may not even derive from Ceram at all.

The immediate source of Yankievich’s Ceram numeration is the previous edition of the dictionary edited by Peter Simon Pallas. Pallas did not include Ceram among the 200 languages for which he provided vocabularies (up to 273 words). However, he did include it among the 22 additional languages for which he provided numerals only. Ceram is identified as language number 203 in the appendix to Part II of Pallas’ dictionary. The numbers from this language are presented on pages 488-489 of the appendix. Interestingly, Pallas presents only ten numbers (from 1 to 10). There is no duplicate entry for ‘seven’, or any other number. This supports the contention above that the duplication was a novelty introduced by Yankievich. He (Yankievich) may have thought that he was providing a better, more transparent representation of the number ‘seven’ in Cyrillic (although, in that case, one wonders why he retained the other less transparent one). He may also simply have made a mistake – and copied the additional number from some other source or even some other language (not Ceram). These and several other possibilities remain to be explored.

The source of the Ceram numbers in both Pallas and Yankievich can be positively identified as “Appendix No. II” in Volume III of A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean … in the years 1776, 1777, 1178, 1779 and 1780 written by Captain James King. This is the official account of Captain James Cook’s third and last voyage around the world (Volumes I and II being written by Cook himself). However, the Ceram numbers were not collected during this voyage, but were instead collected during Cook’s first circumnavigation from 1768 to 1771. The compiler, as King makes explicit in “Appendix No. II”, was Sydney Parkinson, a young artist (draftsman) who was a member of Cook’s scientific team during the first voyage. As related by Parkinson himself in his Journal (published in 1773), the vocabulary was collected in Batavia (= today’s Jakarta, Indonesia). Neither Parkinson nor Cook ever set foot on Ceram. The consultant, apparently, was a native of the island, whom Parkinson happened to meet and interview in Batavia. Parkinson provides no further details about this individual, so it is impossible to say exactly where he (or she) was from and what language s/he may have spoken. Given that there were (and are) numerous indigenous languages on and around Ceram Island, I am reluctant to attribute the numerals in the vocabulary to any one of them. We may actually never know which language, if any, is represented by these numerals.

Internal evidence suggests that both Pallas and Yankievich took the Ceram numbers from King’s “Appendix II” mentioned above, and not from the original numeration published by Parkinson. Compare the lists below:

Note that King, or his printer, mistranscribed the Ceram word for the number ‘one’, and used a ‘u’ in place of Parkinson’s original ‘n’. This error was repeated in both Pallas’ and Yankievich’s numeration, which demonstrates, I believe, that neither one of them took their lists of numbers directly from Parkinson’s Journal. Again, I am at a loss to explain why Yankievich included two entries for the numer ‘seven’. The novel entry (i.e. the one he introduced) does indeed seem to be a better transliteration of the original ‘O peeto’ than Pallas’ ‘О-питу’ (which would appear to represent an unattested ‘O peetoo’, with a long or geminate final ‘oo’). Nevertheless, as stated above, one wonders why Yankievich retained Pallas’ original entry and did not simply replace it with his own. Note that both of Yankievich’s entries for the Ceram number ‘seven’ appear on the same page in his dictionary (Vol. III, p. 350). In fact, they appear on consecutive lines on the same page – which, in my mind, precludes the possibility that he was simply unaware of the duplication. Like the mystery above regarding the identity of the language represented here, this mystery regarding the reason or justification for Yankievich’s duplication may never be solved.

References:

Cook, James and James King. 1784. A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, undertaken, by the command of His Majesty, for making discoveries in the northern hemisphere, . . . Performed under the direction of Captains Cook, Clerke and Gore, in His Majesty’s ships the Resolution and Discovery, in the years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779 and 1780. In three volumes: Vol. I and II written by Captain James Cook, F.R.S., Vol. III by Captain James King, LL.D. and F.R.S. . . . Published by order of the Lords Commisioners of the Admiralty. London, Printed by W. and A. Strahan for G. Nicol and T. Cadell.

Pallas, Peter Simon. 1787-1789. Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa; Augustissimae cura collecta. Sectionis Primae, Linguas Europae et Asiae complexae. Vols. 1-2. Petropoli: Tipis Iohannis Caroli Schnoor.

Parkinson, Sydney. 1773. A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas in His Majesty’s ship “The Endeavour”. Faithfully transcribed from the papers of the late Sydney Parkinson, draughtsman to Joseph Banks, Esq. … London: Richardson and Urquhart, Evans, Hooper, Murray, Leacroft and Riley.

Yankievich de Mirievo, Theodor. 1790-1791. Сравнительный словарь всѣхъ языковъ и нарѣчій, по азбучному порядку расположенный. Vols. 1-4. Saint Petersburg: Tip. Brejtkopfa.