of the Archipelago at all, and almost certain that
he could not hâve meant the Malayan Peninsula.
The first direct mention made of any portion1 of
the Archipelago is by the geographer Ptolemy,
about the middle of the second century. Two
names are distinctly mentioned in his map, which
are unequivocally native, viz., Malayu, and Jaba,
Java, or Jawa, which are all synonimous. Thé
word Malayu has appended to it the term /colon,
and Jawa diu, or dib. Malayu and Jawa, it is ah
ready sufficiently known, are the names of the two
great countries, or rather the two great tribes of the
West, I shall presume to make a few observations
on each, endeavouring to illustrate the subject
by an application of the more accurate knowledge
of those countries, and their inhabitants,
which has been acquired of late years. I think
that the great geographer, or rather those from
whom he had his information, must have had the
notices in question directly from Hindus, and
these again from the people of Java particularly.
The word Icolon is without any alteration
Javanese, and means “ the west,” and the com**
pound word Malayu-kolon, exactly in the order
in which it stands, Malays of the west. The
Javanese must, therefore, the inference is, in all
probability, have furnished the information in question,
and the term west has probably reference to
the geographical position of some one tribe of Malays
in relation to others ; for, to this day, the original
Malays are divided into several distinct tribes,
according to their geographical situation. The people
of Java, when interrogated, would, at all events,
have called aw# Malays “ people of the west,” and,
indeed, do so now. There is an unanswerable objection
against supposing Malayu-kolon to be on the
Malayan peninsula, or, supposing this last to be the
Golden Ghersonesus, or Khruse, at all, which will
occur at once to every one familiar with the well-
known history of the Malays.. It is this ; in the age
of Ptolemy, *and for many ages after it, the Malayan
peninsula was uninhabited, or inhabited only by a
few negro savages, resembling the cannibals of Andaman,
wretched beings with whom there could have
been no intercourse, or at least no commerce. The
Malays did not emigrate from Sumatra, their parent
country, and settle in the Malayan peninsula, until
the comparatively modern period of the year 1160, a
thousand years after the time of Ptolemy, while Malacca
was not founded until 1252, and every other
Malay state on the Peninsula is of still more recent
foundation. The term dib, or diu, appended to Java,
and meaning country, or island, is pure Sanskrit,
and happens not to be a word of that language
ever used, that I am aware of, in any of the dialects
of the Archipelago. It is fair, from this, to
argue, that those who used the term in describing
Java to the merchants of the west, were not na