So much for the history of the Malayan status on the
peninsula» Admitting the historical account that the present
cities were founded by colonists from a more powerful
and civilised people in the Island of Sumatra, we must not
omit to note the feet that there is a race of wild people in
the inland parts of the peninsula, supposed by some to be
the primitive stock from which the whole race originated»
These ale the Orang Benua, a term which in their language
means the people of the land,” or the Indigenous. They
resemble the Malays in physical characters, and, as it appears
» in their language.* Their name, indeed, is not significant
in the modern Malayan, hut it has its appropriate
meaning, as we have already remarked,O* - J in some £of the
Polynesian dialects, which are supposed by Humboldt to
preserve older forms of the common language.
The peninsula of Malacca was probably a place 6f resort
in much earlier times on account of the tin-mines which it
contains. This peninsula is, in the opinion of Dr. Leyden,
the Temala of Ptolemy, and the name was probably derived
from Tema or Teman, which is the Malayan term for tin»
“ We may be permitted,” says Dr. Leyden, u to infer the
antiquity of the Malayan language from its having given a
name to the Cassiterides of the east.”t It was from the east
that the Greeks probably first obtained tin, for its Greek
name kainriTepov beam a strong resemblance to the Indian
name of this metal, and may probably hate been derived
from the Sanskrit “ kast'hiram.” % This would carry back
the resort of Indian people to the Malayan countries to a
very remote era, namely, to a time antecedent to the Trojan
war.
p The Malayan language,” according to Dr. Leyden, “ is
spoken in its greatest purity in the states of Kiddeh or Tanna
Say, Perak, Salangof, Kifiung, Johor, Tringgano, Pahang,
and as far as Patani, where it meets the Siamese. Among
* There is a short vocabulary of the language of the Orang Benua in; Sir
■ T. S. Raffles’* History of Java.
+ Leyden on the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations.
Asiatic Researches, vOl. x.
J Ritter, Erdkunae vonAsren.
MALAYAN SETTLEMENTS. 39
the Western Malays in general i t is spoken with greater
purity than among the eastern islanders; but on the coast
of ; Sumatra at Bqlo-Pavkha it is intermixed with Batta and
other original languages. The Menangkabao race, whose
^hjef, turned the Mahar4j 4, . fong governed the whole island
of Sumatra, speak a dialect of Malayan considerably different
from that of the peninsula. In the Malay/stittes on
the islands of Java, Borneo, and Celebes, dialects of the
proper Malay are spoken, which are intermixed with the Jawa
and Bfigis, or the languages of Java and Celebes, while those
cm the Moluccas and other eastern islands have adopted a
multitude of foreign words/-’ In these remarks Dr. Leyden
refers tb the trading settlements of Mohammedan Makys,
and not to the older tribes, akin fo the Malayan nice,, who
form the earlier population of many islands in the Archipelago.
S ection II.—-Of the Java» Period, or o f ike Age0 Indkm
. Culture among the Nations o f the Archipelago,
» The history of the Island of Java is synonymous Wtfch that
„of Indianjeulture, or of the introduction of the aifo, literature,
and icivilisation of the Hindoos among the nations erf
the Indo-Chinese seas. The history of Java has acquired a
new interest, and the culture of its language, has assumed a
more important place in philology and the annals of literature
through the connection ©f its people with the natives
of India, and the modification which ite ancpnt|idiom fe
found > to haye undergone from the influence of Indian colonists
and the classical language of Hindustan.
During the ages which preceded the extension of Malayan
traffic and colonisation, the Island of Java appears to have
been the centre of a widely-diffused commerce in the Indian
Ocean. In these times the whole Island of Java is said to
have beefl subject to one sovereign, who ruled over a refined
and cultivated people. The Javanese nation was also bravn
and enterprising, and before the introduction of Islam, which
happened about 1400 a., c.» they were lords of the Eastern
Seas, and extended their conquests to Sumatra and Borneo,