having a length of twelve and a breadth of eight leagues. Like the rest of the group,
it is of Plutonic formation. It has twelve villages, with a total population of 5000
inhabitants, nearly all protestant Christians.
HEMP. The Indian variety of the Cannabis sativa has been introduced into a
few parts of the Archipelago, where there are settlers from the Continent of India. It
is not cultivated for its fibre, but for its intoxicating juice, the Bang of the Hindus,
and the Hashashin of the Arabs, the last being the supposed origin of the European
word Assassin. I t was not the Arabs, however, who made the people of the Archipelago
acquainted with this plant, but the Talugus, or Telingas, as its native name Qanja
demonstrates. The earliest account of hemp as a product of the Archipelago is by
the observant Dampier, who saw it at Achin, in 1688. “ They have here,” says he,
‘ a sort of herb or plant called Ganga or Bang. I never saw it but once, and that was
at some distance from me. I t appeared to me like hemp, and I thought it had been
hemp, till I was told to the contrary. It is reported of this plant that if it be infused
m any liquor, it will stupify the brains of any man that drinks thereof. But it
operates diversely, according to the constitution of the person. Some it makes sleepy,
some merry, putting them into a laughing fit, and others it makes mad; but after
two or three hours they come to themselves again. I never saw the effects of it on
any person, but have heard much discourse of it.”—Vol. ii. p. 126. Although this
account is chiefly from hearsay, nothing can be more faithful in so far as regards the
effect of the hemp juice on the nerves. The natives of the country have not taken
to the use of the intoxicating sap of this plant, and its consumption is almost wholly
confined to strangers and settlers from India, Persia, and Arabia.
HINDU—HINDUSTAN. These are words hardly known to the natives of the
Indian Islands. The name by which the people of India, without reference to their
faith, is known to them, is that of the nation with which they have immemorially
had most intercourse, the T&lugu, whom they call Kaling. For Hindustan, or the
country of the Hindus, they prefix the word for land or country of this nation, as in
Malay, Tanah Haling, and in Javanese, either this or Siti KAling, from the Sanskrit,
having the same import. The name Kalinga, with the elision of the final vowel, it
deserves notice, is the Sanskrit name of the northern part of the Coromandel coast,
and, as my friend Professor Wilson informs me, the Calingarum Regio of the Romans.
Frequently, however, the Indian islanders refer to the country of the Hindus under
the appellation of “ the country across the water”—Tanah-sabrang, an expression
similar to the Italian Tramontana—beyond the mountains—applied to the countries
of Northern Europe.
The time and manner in which the Hindu religion was first introduced into the
Indian islands is, to say the least, a matter of very great curiosity. Without doubt
the monsoons had a very large share in bringing about this event. Favoured by
these, the timid Hindus could early accomplish voyages of a length impracticable to
their more intrepid and adventurous contemporaries of Greece and Italy. It is probable
that they were performing, with ease and safety, voyages from the Coromandel
coast to Sumatra and Java, when the Greeks found a voyage'to the eastern coast of
the Euxine an adventure of hazard and difficulty, although not of one-half the
length. The trade which the Hindus would conduct in the Malay Archipelago,
under the auspices of the monsoons, would naturally lead in time to partial settle^
ment, and, of course, to an acquaintance with the manners and languages of the
people among whom they settled. The introduction of the Hindu religion would
follow, and with it its indispensable concomitants, the Sanskrit language and literature.
The Hindus who effected this were, no doubt, the most active, intelligent, and
enterprising nation of the Coromandel coast, the Talugus, well known to Europeans
as Gentoos and Chuliahs, and to the Malays and Javanese, as KAlings or Klings, as
already stated. These are the only people of Hindustan who at present carry on a
regular trade with the Indian islands, or who, indeed, in any time, are known to have
carried on such an intercourse. The intelligent Barbosa, who describes Malacca before
its conquest by the Portuguese, in 1511, represents this class of traders very much as
we at present find them, only more important from the absence of the competition of
Europeans. “ There are here,” says he, “many great merchants, Moor as well as
Gentile strangers, but chiefly of the Chetis, who are of the Coromandel coast, and have
large ships which they call giunehi” (junks).—Libro de Odoardo Barbosa. Ramusio,
Vol. i. p. 318. The word Cheti, here supposed to be the name of the nation, is, in
fact, only the Tfilugu and Tamil corruptions of Chethi, a trader, itself a corruption of
the Sanskrit Sreshti, having the same signification. I t is, moreover, the same word
which we have ourselves written Set, well known in our early Indian history. The
trade thus alluded to by Barbosa has gone on for the period of nearly three centuries
and a-half since he wrote, and most probably had been carried on for many ages
before it It was in fact, the second stage of that tedious transit which brought the
clove and nutmeg to Western Europe, the first being the home trade of the Malays
and Javanese, which brought them from the eastern to the western ports of the
AlNeitheTthe Malays, the Javanese, nor the Talugus have any record of the time or
manner in which this commercial intercourse commenced, any more than the ancient
Britons had of their trade in tin with the Carthaginians. Circumstantial evidence,
therefore, is all that is available on the subject, and even the amount of this is but
scanty. When Europeans first visited the Archipelago, they found the Malays and
Javanese carrying on what may be called its internal carrying trade, acting, in fact,
the same part which is now in a great measure performed by the principal nation of
Celebes. They collected the native products of the Archipelago, and conveyed them
to the emporia of the west, where they bartered them with the traders of western
Asia, for the manufactures and produce of Hindustan, Persia, and Arabia. They,
themselves, however, it is certain, never went, any more than they do at the present
day, beyond the limits of their own waters. Barbosa enumerates the commodities
which the Malays and Javanese brought to Malacca, then, probably, the most considerable
emporium of the Archipelago. They consisted of camphor, aloes-wood, benzoin
or frankincense, black pepper, cubeb pepper, the clove and nutmeg, honey, bees-wax,
gold, tin, and slaves. He adds, that the native vessels which sailed from Malacca went
as far as Timur and the Moluccas, in quest of those articles, touching at various intermediate
places for trade. Such, then was the state of the internal trade of the
Archipelago when the islands were first seen by Europeans, and such, to all appearance,
it had been for many ages. It is remarkable that several of the most distinguishing
products of the Archipelago are known, and this, too, even in many cases to
the natives themselves, by names which are obviously Sanskrit. Thus, camphor is
kapur, from karpura ; aloes-wood or eagle-wood, garu, from aguru; the nutmeg,
pala, abbreviated and corrupted from jatipahla; the clove, in Javanese, gomeda, from
gomehda, meaning “ cow’s marrow;” and black pepper, maricha, which is unaltered.
From this it is to be inferred that it was the trade of the Hindus that first gave
importance to these commodities, none of which are, even in the present day, much
esteemed by the natives themselves, considered as articles of consumption. Thus,
the clove and nutmeg, as Rumphius long ago observed, are not used as condiments
in the Molucca and Banda islands, and black pepper is hardly more so by the natives
of Sumatra.
In the Javanese chronologies the Hindu religion is alleged to have been introduced
into their island by an Indian king, whom they call Aji Saka. This is a pure myth,
for the name of the personage thus referred to is Sanscrit, the first part of it signifying
king, and the last being one of the names of Salivana, who introduced an era
prevalent in the South of India, which goes by his name. In fixing the commencement
of this era, there is a discrepancy of one year between the Tiilugu and Tamil
nations, the first making it 78, and the last 79 years after Christ. I t is the first of
these that was adopted by the insular Hindus, and which continues to exist in the
island of Bali up to the present time, and does so also in Java nominally, although in
that island lunar having been substituted for solar time, in the year of our time, 1633,
the time no longer corresponds with the original. This fact determines the introduction
of the era of Saka to the Tfilugus, the people whom I suppose to have introduced
Hinduism into the islands. We may add to this the adoption by the Malay and
Javanese of the name of the Tfilugu nation for the whole country of the Hindus.
In order to be able to form a reasonable conjecture respecting the time in which
the intercourse of the Hindus with the Archipelago commenced, and the Hindu
religion was introduced into it, we must have recourse to circumstantial evidence of
a different description. Among the commodities which the MalayB and Javanese
brought to the emporia of the western parts of the Archipelago, to barter with the
foreign traders that resorted to them, the only two not liable to be confounded with
similar products of other parts of the east, are the clove and nutmeg. These, it is
known, are not mentioned in the minute list of merchandise given in the Periplus
of the Erythraean Sea, thought to have been written in the sixty-third year of Christ.
Neither are they named by Pliny, who wrote about the same time. Down, therefore,
to the first century after Christ, the clove and nutmeg were unknown in Europe, and
if known even in the markets of Western India, they would not have been enumerated