The Bahnar are an Austroasiatic people of the central highlands of mainland Southeast Asia (modern Vietnam), whose language is cited in Vol. I of The Achehnese alongside that of the Cham as one of the kindred tongues against which the Achehnese language has been compared with important results.
In the opening pages of his first chapter, C. Snouck Hurgronje notes that “a comparison of the Achehnese language (which exhibits noteworthy points of difference from the kindred tongues of neighbouring peoples), with those of Cham and Bahnar has at the very outset given important results.” He immediately adds, however, the cautionary note that “we must for the present refrain from deciding what may be deduced therefrom as regards the kinship or historical connection between the peoples.”
The comparison is significant because it places Achehnese within a wider linguistic field than the immediately adjacent tongues of Sumatra. Cham, the language of the old Hinduised kingdom of Champa on the coast of modern Vietnam, and Bahnar, a representative of the Bahnaric branch of the Mon-Khmer family, are taken together as evidence that Achehnese — itself widely held to be a Cham-related Austronesian language with Mon-Khmer admixture — must be studied in relation to mainland Southeast Asia as well as to the Malay-Indonesian world.
Snouck’s remark is hedged about with scholarly reserve, in keeping with his repeatedly expressed methodological rule: that philological comparison should be admitted only as the basis for “important results” not yet ready for definitive conclusions. The Bahnar comparison thus belongs to that part of Vol. I which sets out the racial and linguistic frame within which the Achehnese are to be understood — a frame that also includes the Gayo highlanders, the Batak sub-groups, the Menangkabau of the Sumatran west coast, and the legendary Mante traditions of an earlier population.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.