Note 7 — Chapter IV · The Malay Pantheon

Cp. Crawfurd, Hist. of the Ind. Archipelago, vol. ii. p. 219. “From some of the usual epithets bestowed upon Siwa by the pagan Javanese, and still familiar to their posterity, the pre-eminence of this deity is clearly demonstrated.... He is the same personage who acts so distinguished a part in the machinery of Malayan and Javanese romances, under the appellation of Guru, or the instructor, prefixing to it the word Batara, a corruption of Avatara, both in sense and orthography, for with the Indian islanders that word is not used as with the genuine Hindus, to express the incarnation of a god, but as an appellation expressing any deity; nay, as if conferring an apotheosis upon their princes, it has been sometimes prefixed to the names of some of the most celebrated of their ancient kings. When Siwa appears in this character, in the romances of the Indian islanders, he is painted as a powerful, mischievous, and malignant tyrant—a description sufficiently consonant to his character of Destroyer in the Hindu triad”; and, again, “ywang is a Javanese word used in the same sense as batara.... Usually the obsolete relative pronoun sang, which has the sense, in this case, of a definite article, is placed before it. Thus sangywang guru is the same as batara guru.... It is probably the same word also which forms the last part of a word in extensive use, sâmbahayang, ‘worship or adoration.’”—Crawfurd, Mal. Grammar, p. cxcviii. To this I may add that the form ywang, when used by the Peninsular Malays, becomes “yang,” sangyang being also found.

Another (and probably better) etymology of batara is given by Favre and Wilken, viz. Sanskr. bhattara, “lord.” ↑