Humboldt’s text known as the “Kawi Essay” forms the introduction to a much longer work on the Kawi language of the island of Java (“Über die Kawi Sprache auf der Insel von Java”). Both were prepared between 1829 and 1835 and published posthumously by his brother Alexander von Humboldt in 1836. The “Kawi Essay” is a case study in what Humboldt calls “Die Betrachtung des Zusammenhangs der Sprachverschiedenheit und Völkervertheilung mit der Erzeugung der menschlichen Geisteskraft … insofern sich diese beiden Erscheinungen gegenseitig aufzuhellen vermögen” (GS, 7, 1:15; [the] consideration of the connection between linguistic diversity and the distribution of peoples with the growth of human mental power … so far as these two phenomena can throw mutual light on each other; KE, 22). Humboldt’s study concerns the influence of Sanskrit on the languages of the Malayan peninsula, especially Kawi. Humboldt considers such questions as the process by which nouns and pronouns of Indian Sanskrit origin come to be found in Kawi, the influence of Sanskrit on sound shifts in the Kawi language, and the absence in both Sanskrit and Kawi of the subjunctive mood. Such investigations form part of a broader inquiry into the nature of language evolution and language change. However, Humboldt clearly distinguishes between two questions: (1) whether the civilization of the Malayan archipelago is chiefly of Indian origin and (2) whether Sanskrit and the languages of the Malayan archipelago have been connected from a time prior to all literature and in a way which can be demonstrated by common elements in both contemporary languages. Humboldt writes in his introduction (GS, 7, 1:10; KE, 18) that there is no evidence that the civilization (“Civilisation”) of the Malayan archipelago is of Indian or Sanskrit origin but (as his study will go on to show) much evidence to support the thesis of a continuous and enduring influence of Sanskrit on the languages of Malaya and Java, especially Kawi.

This distinction is highly significant, because although Humboldt is concerned with the ways in which the diversity and interaction of languages influences the intellectual development of humankind, his study is not in the first place concerned with the way one “civilization” or “culture” may or may not affect another.