Dahl (1951, 1977) showed that Malagasy, the Austronesian language spoken as a number of dialects by almost all inhabitants of Madagascar, belongs to the Southeast Barito subgroup,[5] the other members of which (Maanyan, Samihim, Dusun Malang, Dusun Witu, Dusun Deyah and Paku) are spoken in the southeastern part of Borneo. Dahl observed that Malagasy has a relatively small number of Sanskrit loanwords in comparison to the large numbers in some Indonesian languages. According to him this indicated that the East Barito migrants to Madagascar must have left their homeland only just after Indian influence had begun to affect the Indonesian languages and cultures. Considering the fact that Indian linguistic influence in Indonesia can be traced to a date as far back as the fifth century AD, Dahl concluded that the migration must have taken place at this time or slightly after. He does not explicitly consider the possibility of influence from other Austronesian languages.
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