often been before on similar subjects, by a great oriental scholar, my friend Professor
Horace Hayman Wilson.
With respect to the native country of the sugar-cane, like wheat and other long
cultivated corns, it has never been found in its wild state. The probability, however,
is, that its original habitats had a wide range. There are, besides many varieties, three
distinct species, or at least as many well-ascertained permanent varieties, of i t ;—the
Indian saecharum officinarum, the ukk of the Hindi, and the ikshu of the Sanscrit ;
the plant immemorially cultivated in Hindustan, brought from thence by the Arabs
to their own country, to western Asia, to southern Europe, and ultimately carried
by Europeans to America; the Chinese Saecharum sinensis, probably as long cultivated
as the Indian; and the Otaheite, Saecharum violaceum, brought within the
last sixty years to Asia and America. This last kind I presume to be the same as the
Malayan cane, or at most a variety of it. The cane originally cultivated by the Malays,
before the introduction by Europeans of foreign species, or varieties, is a large
luxuriant plant with a dark purple cuticle, differing materially in appearance from
the Indian and Chinese canes, and much resembling the Polynesian species. That
they are, indeed, the same seems corroborated by the essential agreement in their
names already alluded to.
From these facts it may be safely inferred that Hindustan, China, and the Malay
Archipelago, taking for granted that the Polynesian tribes received their cane from
the latter, may all be considered parent countries of the sugar-cane. Although the
cane has been immemorially cultivated in all three, the great probability is, that the
Chinese were the sole discoverers of the processes of making a clayed and crystallised
product from it.
SUKADANA. The name of a place, once the seat of a Javanese state on the
western coast of Borneo, in latitude 1° 15' south. It forms part of the Netherland
province of the west coast of that island, but is at present a poor place of no consequence.
The name, imposed no doubt by the Javanese, is Sanscrit, and signifies
“ Parrot’s gift.”
SUKAPURA. The name of one of the districts of the Snnda part of Java, called
by the Javanese Prayangan, or “ land of ghosts.” The name is Sanscrit, and signifies
“ city of gladness.”
SUKAWATI is the name of a district of Java in the country of the proper
Javanese, and situated in the extensive and fertile plain of Pajang. The name in
Sanscrit signifies “ gladness-possessing.”
SUKU and CHATTO. These are the names of some singular ruins in Java,
situated in the districts of Pajang and Sukawati. They stand on the acclivities of
the volcanic mountain Lawu, 11,000 feet above the level of the sea. They are but a
few miles apart, Suku 3525 feet, and Chatto 4220 feet above the level of the sea.
These buildings are composed of blocks of trachyte, but the design and execution are
rude, and some of the objects represented, grotesque and grossly obscene,^—wholly
differing, in this respect, from all the other ancient monuments of Java, implying that
the Javanese themselves were the builders, without assistance from strangers. They
consist of a series of terraces, one rising higher than the other, the Communication
between them being by flights of stairs. On the terraces are the remains of temples
and gateways. There are no Hindu images, but instead, representations of monsters,
Bnakes, birds, and tortoises. The temples were dedicated to the worship of the Linga,
or Hindu Priapus, not as usual obscurely represented, but in its naked and grossest
form. An inscription on the Suku temples in Javanese numeral characters, gives the
date of 1361 of Saka, and one on those of Chatto in the same form, 1356, which correspond
with the years of Christ, 1439, and 1434, so that the earliest of them dates
but 44 years before the destruction of the Hindu capital of Majapait, the era of the
final extinction of Hinduism in Java.
SULPHUR, in Malay balirang, and in Javanese walirang, essentially the same
word. This name extends from Sumatra up to Celebes, when we find a new one for
it, cholok. In one of the languages of the Philippines, the Tftgala, strangely enough,
the name is sanyaya, which is, no doubt, a corruption of the Malayan word sandawa,
saltpetre. In the Bisaya, as well as in the Tagala, the name for gunpowder is mali-
ling, doubtless a corruption of the Malay and Javanese name for sulphur. In the
Madagascar, the name for it is sulifara, a corruption of the French soufre, from which
it may be safely inferred that the article was unknown to the natives of this non-
volcanic island until brought to their knowledge by Europeans. It is hard to say to
what use the natives of the Malay Archipelago could have put sulphur, before the
introduction of fire-arms, unless to the manufacture of fire-works, known by the native
names of m&rchun and rabok. The Malay and Philippine Archipelagos, the most
extensive volcanic region in the world, must necessarily contain a vast supply of
sulphur but hitherto it has been very little availed of for economic use. From the
Philippines alone it is exported, the export being to China only, and at the price at
Manilla usually of about a Spanish -dollar of 4s. 2d. a cwt. Among these islands,
those which most abound in it are Luzon and Leyte, but particularly the last, where
the article is of the best quality. A Spanish writer asserts that the quantity is such
at the volcano of Taal, or Bombon, in the province of Batangas in Luzon, that many
ships might be loaded with it. The difficulty, in all these cases, of obtaining a cheap
supply, must arise from the absence of good roads, and the consequent costliness of
transport.
SULTAN. This Arabian title, first taken by the celebrated Mahommed of Ghizni,
the early Turkish conqueror of India, fell quickly into disesteem even among the
Turks themselves, having been assumed by many of their petty princes, as we find
from Mr. Erskine’s accurate and excellent history of the House of Timur. Many of
the native princes of the Malay Archipelago assumed it, after their conversion to
Mahommedanism, in lieu of the Sanscrit name of raja, or the native ones of
ratu and pangeran. Thus, De Barros informs us that the petty princes of Pasd and
Pedir, in Sumatra, had assumed it before the arrival of the Portuguese, and so
had three of the petty princes of the Moluccas, although, when the Portuguese saw
these islands first, their inhabitants had been barely eighty years converted to
Mahommedanism. The Javanese princes of Mataram took it in 1535, and maintained
it for some time, and it is still the title of one of the two native princes of the interior
of the island. It was taken, also, by the princes of Bantam, and the only considerable
independent Malay prince of Borneo now goes by it.
SULUK. The Malay name of the island and Archipelago which the natives call
Sug, the Spaniards Jolo, and we Soolo, or Sooloo, or Soeloe. See Sooloo.
SUMATRA. This great island, even to its very name, was, down to the arrival of
the Portuguese in India, as unknown to the European world as Cuba, before the
first voyage of Columbus. Its pepper and its frankincense were very likely consumed
by Europeans, but of the place which produced them, they were certainly as ignorant
as of the still remoter countries where grew the clove and nutmeg. In so far as its
name is concerned, even to the present day, it is like the other large islands of the
Archipelago, Java perhaps excepted, without a name familiar to the inhabitants.
Ludovico Barthema, an Italian of Bologna, is the first writer who gives the name as
we now write it. He had visited Malacca and Pedir, in Sumatra, in 1505, that is seven
years after the arrival of the Portuguese at Calicut, and four before their first appearance
in the waters of the Archipelago. He had touched at the places in question in
his voyage from Tennasserim to the Moluccas, and he thus describes Sumatra,
fancying it to be the Taprobane of Ptolemy : “ Next day we embarked in a ship, and
proceeded to a city called Malacha, which lies in a south-eastern direction, and in
eight days arrived there. Near that city is a great strait (fiumara), than which we
had never seen a larger. It is called Gaza, and appears to be above fifteen leagues
broad. And on the opposite side of that strait (fiumara), there is one very great
island, called Sumatra, and its inhabitants say that it is four thousand five hundred
miles in circumference^—Ramusio, Vol. i. page 166. Barbosa, whose manuscript is
dated at Lisbon, in 1516, and whose description appears to refer to a period preceding
the Portuguese conquest of Malacca, in 1511, writes the name like Barthema, or, in
the same orthography as we do now, and as usual his account is far more precise and
accurate than that of his predecessor. “ Having,” says he, “ passed the above-
mentioned island” (Novacar, that is, Nicobar), “ there is a very great island called
Sumatra, which is in circuit seven hundred leagues, or two thousand miles, as
reckoned by the Moors, who have sailed all round it. It runs in a direction from
north-west to south-east, the equinoctial line passing through the middle of it.”—
Ramusio, Vol. i. p. 318. Forty years later, however, we find De Barros writing the
name as Qamatra.
Barbosa tells us plainly from whom his information was derived, and in all probability,
the name, as we now have it, was derived from the same parties,—namely, the
Arabian, the Persian, and the Mahommedan navigators of India, who conducted the
external trade of the Archipelago, and who, we are assured by the early Portuguese
writers, possessed astrolabes, quarter-staffs and charts. Eleven years after the