4to, (204 x 163 mm). Five parts in two volumes, altogether 918 pp., one leaf of text (R4) lacking from the third part in the first volume and supplied in a mid-20th century facsimile. Contemporary vellum with blindstamped titles and giltstamped volume numbers to spines, second volume spotted; some waterstains. All edges sprinkled red.

A trove of the best Malay dictionaries available in the early 18th century, including the famous Dutch-Malay “Vocabularium, ofte wooert-boeck” prepared by Caspar Wiltens and Sebastian Danckaerts, first published in 1623, here in the enriched 1706 second edition, next to Frederick Gueynier's “Vocabulaer, ofte woorden-boeck, nae ordre van het alphabeth in't Duytsch ende Mallays”, first published at Batavia in 1677 and revised by Petrus van der Worm for the present 1708 edition, “in which state it is the best Dutch and Malayan dictionary that has appeared” (Marsden).

It includes a four-page list of Arabic loan-words in Malay compiled by Melchor Leydekker, as well as an early description of the Sejarah Melayu, considered the first Western recognition of this significant text.

In addition, the present collection comprises Godardus Arthus' and Frederick Houtman's “Dictionarium, ofte Woord ende spraeck-boeck, in de Duytsche ende Malaysche tale”, first published in Amsterdam in 1603, but here reprinted from the 1673 Amsterdam edition. Apart from a detailed vocabulary prepared by Houtman, this work features extensive dialogue in Dutch and Malay parallel text supplied by Arthus.

Wilten's "Vocabularium" was the basis for many similar dictionaries, including the two remaining works in the present collection: David Haex's "Dictionarium Malaico-Latinum et Latino-Malaicum", essentially a Latin translation of Wilten's work, next to Justus Heurnius' "Vocabularium; ofte Woorden-boeck, Duytsch en Mallays", first issued in 1640. - Andries Loder was appointed official printer to the Dutch East India Company at Batavia in 1699, a post he retained until 1710. Though he was preceded by a number of other printers at Batavia, the quality of his work and typography was of a far higher standard than that of his predecessors, and the present work appears to be the first serious scholarly publication of the press.

Provenance: both volumes have consecutive ownership inscriptions to flyleaf: gifted in 1745 from Jacob Mossel of Batavia to Thomas Goddard, who in turn gifted it to Christian Tham in 1748. Jacob Mossel (1704-61) was Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies from 1750 to 1761; he was also the first director of the Dutch Opium Society founded in 1745, a private opium-trading venture; later in the Björn Löwendahl collection.

Zenker 6451; Vater/Jülg 243; Zaunmüller 266. Marsden, A Grammar of the Malayan Language XXXIXf; Landwehr, VOC, 757f. Diehl, Printers and Printing in the East Indies to 1850, I, 12-16. Not in Smitskamp.