The Tagálog Language.--It should be a matter of great interest to Filipinos that the great scientist, Baron William von Humboldt, considered the Tagálog to be the richest and most perfect of all the languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family, and perhaps the type of them all. "It possesses," he said, "all the forms collectively of which particular ones are found singly in other dialects; and it has preserved them all with very trifling exceptions unbroken, and in entire harmony and symmetry." The Spanish friars, on their arrival in the Philippines, devoted themselves at once to learning the native dialects and to the preparation of prayers and catechisms in these native tongues. They were very successful in their studies. Father Chirino tells us of one Jesuit who learned sufficient Tagálog in seventy days to preach and hear confession. In this way the Bisayan, the Tagálog, and the Ilocano were soon mastered. In the light of the opinion of Von Humboldt, it is interesting to find these early Spaniards pronouncing the Tagálog the most difficult and the most admirable. "Of all of them," says Padre Chirino, "the one which most pleased me and filled me with admiration was the Tagálog. Because, as I said to the first archbishop, and afterwards to other serious persons, both there and here, I found in it four qualities of the four best languages of the world: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Spanish; of the Hebrew, the mysteries and obscurities; of the Greek, the articles and the precision not only of the appellative but also of the proper nouns; of the Latin, the wealth and elegance; and of the Spanish, the good breeding, politeness, and courtesy." [7] An Early Connection with the Hindus.--The Malayan languages contain also a considerable proportion of words borrowed from the Sanskrit, and in this the Tagálog, Bisayan, and Ilocano are included. Whether these words were passed along from one Malayan group to another, or whether they were introduced by the actual presence and power of the Hindu in this archipelago, may be fair ground for debate; but the case for the latter position has been so well and brilliantly put by Dr. Pardo de Tavera that his conclusions are here given in his own words. "The words which Tagálog borrowed," he says, "are those which signify intellectual acts, moral conceptions, emotions, superstitions, names of deities, of planets, of numerals of high number, of botany, of war and its results and consequences, and finally of titles and dignities, some animals, instruments of industry, and the names of money."