Volume II Part 41 (2/2)

The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. 'Tis a pa.s.sing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin; in fact, 'tis altogether different from what we fancied.[NOTE 5] There are also monkeys here in great numbers and of sundry kinds; and goshawks as black as crows.

These are very large birds and capital for fowling.[NOTE 6]

I may tell you moreover that when people bring home pygmies which they allege to come from India, 'tis all a lie and a cheat. For those little men, as they call them, are manufactured on this Island, and I will tell you how. You see there is on the Island a kind of monkey which is very small, and has a face just like a man's. They take these, and pluck out all the hair except the hair of the beard and on the breast, and then they dry them and stuff them and daub them with saffron and other things until they look like men. But you see it is all a cheat; for nowhere in India nor anywhere else in the world were there ever men seen so small as these pretended pygmies.

Now I will say no more of the kingdom of Basma, but tell you of the others in succession.

NOTE 1.--Java the Less is the Island of SUMATRA. Here there is no exaggeration in the dimension a.s.signed to its circuit, which is about 2300 miles. The old Arabs of the 9th century give it a circuit of 800 parasangs, or say 2800 miles, and Barbosa reports the estimate of the Mahomedan seamen as 2100 miles. Compare the more reasonable accuracy of these estimates of Sumatra, which the navigators knew in its entire compa.s.s, with the wild estimates of Java Proper, of which they knew but the northern coast.

Polo by no means stands alone in giving the name of Java to the island now called Sumatra. The terms _Jawa, Jawi_, were applied by the Arabs to the islands and productions of the Archipelago generally (e.g., _Luban jawi_, ”Java frankincense,” whence by corruption _Benzoin_), but also specifically to Sumatra. Thus Sumatra is the _Jawah_ both of Abulfeda and of Ibn Batuta, the latter of whom spent some time on the island, both in going to China and on his return. The Java also of the Catalan Map appears to be Sumatra. _Javaku_ again is the name applied in the Singalese chronicles to the Malays in general. _Jau_ and _Dawa_ are the names still applied by the Battaks and the people of Nias respectively to the Malays, showing probably that these were looked on as Javanese by those tribes who did not partake of the civilisation diffused from Java. In Siamese also the Malay language is called _Chawa_; and even on the Malay peninsula, the traditional slang for a half-breed born from a Kling (or Coromandel) father and a Malay mother is _Jawi Pakan_, ”a Jawi (i.e. Malay) of the market.” De Barros says that all the people of Sumatra called themselves by the common name of _Jauijs_. (Dec. III. liv. v. cap. 1.)

There is some reason to believe that the application of the name Java to Sumatra is of very old date. For the oldest inscription of ascertained date in the Archipelago which has yet been read, a Sanskrit one from Pagaroyang, the capital of the ancient Malay state of Menang-kabau in the heart of Sumatra, bearing a date equivalent to A.D. 656, ent.i.tles the monarch whom it commemorates, Adityadharma by name, the king of ”the First Java” (or rather Yava). This Mr. Friedrich interprets to mean Sumatra. It is by no means impossible that the _Iabadiu_, or Yavadvipa of Ptolemy may be Sumatra rather than Java.

An accomplished Dutch Orientalist suggests that the Arabs originally applied the terms Great Java and Little Java to Java and Sumatra respectively, not because of their imagined relation in size, but as indicating the former to be Java _Proper_. Thus also, he says, there is a _Great Acheh_ (Achin) which does not imply that the place so called is greater than the well-known state of Achin (of which it is in fact a part), but because it is Acheh _Proper_. A like feeling may have suggested the Great Bulgaria, Great Hungary, Great Turkey of the mediaeval travellers. These were, or were supposed to be, the original seats of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Turks. The _Great Horde_ of the Kirghiz Kazaks is, as regards numbers, not the greatest, but the smallest of the three.

But the others look upon it as the most ancient. The Burmese are alleged to call the _Rakhain_ or people of Arakan _Mranma Gyi_ or Great Burmese, and to consider their dialect the most ancient form of the language. And, in like manner, we may perhaps account for the term of _Little Thai_, formerly applied to the Siamese in distinction from the _Great Thai_, their kinsmen of Laos.

In after-days, when the name of Sumatra for the Great Island had established itself, the traditional term ”Little Java” sought other applications. Barbosa seems to apply it to _Sumbawa_; Pigafetta and Cavendish apply it to _Bali_, and in this way Raffles says it was still used in his own day. Geographers were sometimes puzzled about it. Magini says Java Minor is almost _incognita_.

(_Turnour's Epitome_, p. 45; _Van der Tuuk, Bladwijzer tot de drie Stukken van het Bataksche Leesboek_, p. 43, etc.; _Friedrich_ in _Bat.

Transactions_, XXVI.; _Levchine, Les Kirghiz Kazaks_, 300, 301.)

NOTE 2.--As regards the _treasure_, Sumatra was long famous for its produce of gold. The export is estimated in Crawford's History at 35,530 ounces; but no doubt it was much more when the native states were in a condition of greater wealth and civilisation, as they undoubtedly were some centuries ago. Valentyn says that in some years Achin had exported 80 bahars, equivalent to 32,000 or 36,000 Lbs. avoirdupois (!). Of the other products named, lign-aloes or eagle-wood is a product of Sumatra, and is or was very abundant in Campar on the eastern coast. The _Ain-i-Akbari_ says this article was usually brought to India from _Achin_ and Tena.s.serim. Both this and spikenard are mentioned by Polo's contemporary, Kazwini, among the products of Java (probably Sumatra), viz., _Java lign-aloes (al-' Ud al-Jawi)_, camphor _spikenard (Sumbul)_, etc.

_Narawastu_ is the name of a gra.s.s with fragrant roots much used as a perfume in the Archipelago, and I see this is rendered _spikenard_ in a translation from the Malay Annals in the _Journal of the Archipelago_.

With regard to the kingdoms of the island which Marco proceeds to describe, it is well to premise that all the six which he specifies are to be looked for towards the north end of the island, viz., in regular succession up the northern part of the east coast, along the north coast, and down the northern part of the west coast. This will be made tolerably clear in the details, and Marco himself intimates at the end of the next chapter that the six kingdoms he describes were all at _this_ side or end of the island: ”_Or vos avon contee de cesti roiames que sunt de ceste partie de scele ysle, et des autres roiames de_ l'autre _partie ne voz conteron-noz rien._” Most commentators have made confusion by scattering them up and down, nearly all round the coast of Sumatra. The best remarks on the subject I have met with are by Mr. Logan in his _Journal of the Ind. Arch._ II. 610.

The ”kingdoms” were certainly many more than eight throughout the island.

At a later day De Barros enumerates 29 on the coast alone. Crawford reckons 15 different nations and languages on Sumatra and its dependent isles, of which 11 belong to the great island itself.

(_Hist. of Ind. Arch._ III. 482; _Valentyn_, V. (Sumatra), p. 5; _Desc.

Dict._ p. 7, 417; Gildemeister, p. 193; _Crawf. Malay Dict._ 119; _J. Ind.

Arch._ V. 313.)

NOTE 3.--The kingdom of PARLaK is mentioned in the _s.h.i.+jarat Malayu_ or Malay Chronicle, and also in a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei, of which an abstract is given by Dulaurier, in connection with the other states of which we shall speak presently. It is also mentioned (_Barlak_), as a city of the Archipelago, by Ras.h.i.+duddin. Of its extent we have no knowledge, but the position (probably of its northern extremity) is preserved in the native name, _Tanjong_ (i.e. Cape) _Parlak_ of the N.E.

horn of Sumatra, called by European seamen ”Diamond Point,” whilst the river and town of _Perla_, about 32 miles south of that point, indicate, I have little doubt, the site of the old capital.[1] Indeed in Malombra's Ptolemy (Venice, 1574), I find the next city of Sumatra beyond _Pacen_ marked as _Pulaca_.

The form _Ferlec_ shows that Polo got it from the Arabs, who having no _p_ often replace that letter by _f_. It is notable that the Malay alphabet, which is that of the Arabic with necessary modifications, represents the sound _p_ not by the Persian _pe_ ([Arabic]), but by the Arabic _fe_ ([Arabic]), with three dots instead of one ([Arabic]).

A Malay chronicle of Achin dates the accession of the first Mahomedan king of that state, the nearest point of Sumatra to India and Arabia, in the year answering to A.D. 1205, and this is the earliest conversion among the Malays on record. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there _were_ Kings of _Achin_ in 1205, or for centuries after (unless indeed _Lambri_ is to be regarded as Achin), but the introduction of Islam may be confidently a.s.signed to that age.

The notice of the Hill-people, who lived like beasts and ate human flesh, presumably attaches to the Battas or Bataks, occupying high table-lands in the interior of Sumatra. They do not now extend north beyond lat. 3. The interior of Northern Sumatra seems to remain a _terra incognita_, and even with the coast we are far less familiar than our ancestors were 250 years ago. The Battas are remarkable among cannibal nations as having attained or retained some degree of civilisation, and as being possessed of an alphabet and doc.u.ments. Their anthropophagy is now professedly practised according to precise laws, and only in prescribed cases. Thus: (i) A commoner seducing a Raja's wife must be eaten; (2) Enemies taken in battle _outside their village_ must be eaten _alive_; those taken in storming a village may be spared; (3) Traitors and spies have the same doom, but may ransom themselves for 60 dollars a-head. There is nothing more horrible or extraordinary in all the stories of mediaeval travellers than the _facts_ of this inst.i.tution. (See _Junghuhn_, _Die Battalander_, II. 158.) And it is evident that human flesh is also at times kept in the houses for food.

Junghuhn, who could not abide Englishmen but was a great admirer of the Battas, tells how after a perilous and hungry flight he arrived in a friendly village, and the food that was offered by his hosts was the flesh of two prisoners who had been slaughtered the day before (I. 249).

Anderson was also told of one of the most powerful Batta chiefs who would eat only such food, and took care to be supplied with it (225).

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