Malayu, the name

Notes. 

The name "Malayu." 

The national name of the Malays is mentioned, if not for the first time in recorded history, at any rate with a distinct territorial denotation, as early as the 7th century of our era by I Tsing, a Chinese, Buddhist pilgrim, in two of his works, the Ta-t'ang-si-yu-Ku-fa-Kao-sêng-ch'uan or ‘‘Memoirs of Eminent Priests who visited India and Neighbouring Countries to search for the Law under the Great T‘ang Dynasty." and the “Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago." 

This latter work, the original title of which is Nan-hai-chi-Kuei-nai-fa-ch'uan, literally “The Record of the Sacred Law, sent home from the Southern Sea," has been translated, together with part of the former, into English, by J. Takakusu, a Japanese scholar, and was publislied in 1896 by the Oxford Clarendon Press. The author, who visited the Malay Archipelago in the winter of A.D. 671 - 2 and remained for some time in Sumatra, speaks of the Mo-lo-yu country as being one of the islands of the South Sea in which Buddhism then prevailed. He fixes its position by telling us that it lay to the west of Shih-li-fo-shih (Sri Bhoja or Bhoja), which place appears to be certainly identified with the San-bo-tsai of other Chinese chroniclers and the Sarbaza of the Arabian geographers of the 9th century. I Tsing tells us that Sri Bhoja had, in his time or shortly before his visit, annexed the Mo-lo-yu country, 

Sri Bhoja was at this time a great centre of Buddhism, and I Tsing’s object in visiting it was to study the sacred Canon and the Sanskrit language. After a stay of six months, he went on to the Mo-lo-yu country and then to India, but about A.D. 688 he returned to Sri Bhoja, and remained there about six years, so that he had ample opportunity for becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the country. From other sources* this 

place Sri Bhoja, San-bo-tsai, Sarbaza, etc., as it is variously called, has been identified with almost absolute certainty as being situated on the Palembang river in South-eastern Sumatra; and the Mo-lo-yu country can therefore be confidently regarded as placed immediately to the west or north-west, that is to say about the middle of Sumatra. I Tsing, who stayed in the Mo-lo-yu country for two months on his way to India, says that it was fifteen days’ sail from Bhoja, the capital of Sri Bhoja; and it must have been situated approximately under the Equator, for in the middle of the eighth month and in the middle of spring the sun cast no shadow there at noon. Moreover it was half-way on the route between Bhoja and Ka-cha (a place in or near Achin or Kedah, more probably the former, as it was south of the country of the Naked People, ie., the Nicobar and Andaman islands). From Ka-cha ships sailed in thirty days to Nagapatana (Negapatam), and I Tsing himself took ship there for Tamralipti (Tamluk), a port near the mouth of the Hooghly. 

It seems therefore that the Mo-lo-yu country was not at this time a purely inland State, but had a coast line on the Straits more or less opposite to where Malacca now stands. 

The language of the Mo-lo-yu country was that which served as a lingua franca in the Archipelago generally, and was known to I Tsing and other Chinese authors as the K'un-lun language. This term was derived, apparently, from the Chinese name of Pulau Condor, on the same principle on which slaves from these regions are often mentioned in Chinese chronicles as K'un-lun slaves, from whatever part of the Archipelago they might have actually been imported. The reason seems to have been that the Pulau Condor people were the first of the Southern islanders to come into contact with the Chinese, who afterwards loosely extended the term to the inhabitants of the Archipelago generally. This appears to be the meaning of the explanation I Tsing gives when, speaking of the Archipelago as a whole and after enumerating some of the principal islands, he goes on to say, “They were generally known by the general name of ‘Country of K‘un-lun’ since (the people of) K‘un-lun first visited Kochin and Kwangtung,” 

That the language was really Malay appears from the fact that the "pin-lang fruit" is mentioned by I Tsing as being used 

in the Sri Bhoja country and other islands of the Archipelago for chewing with nutmegs, cloves and Barus camphor, for the purpose of rendering the mouth fragrant. Pin-lang is of course the Malay word pinang, areca nut. 

In I Tsing’s time, it seems therefore that the Malay country par excellence was in Central Sumatra, a fact agreeing very well with native Malay tradition on the subject, which derives the origin of many of the Malays of the Peninsula from the old Central Sumatran State of Menangkabau. 

The etymological signification of the national name Malayu has been a subject of much dispute. I Tsing does not throw any additional light upon it ; but he makes it quite clear that the word had in his time a local significance, and denoted the particular region from which a large part of the Malays of the modern Tanah Malayu love to trace their origin. 

C. 0. Blagden.

It has hitherto been considered as an obvious truth, and admitted without examination that, wherever they are found upon the numerous islands forming this archipelago, they or their ancestors must have migrated from the country named by Europeans (and by them alone) the Malayan peninsula or peninsula of Malacca, of which the indigenous and proper inhabitants were understood to be Malays; and accordingly in the former editions of this work I spoke of the natives of Menangkabau as having acquired their religion, language, manners, and other national characteristics from the settling among them of genuine Malays from the neighbouring continent. 

It will however appear from the authorities I shall produce, amounting as nearly to positive evidence as the nature of the subject will admit, that the present possessors of the coasts of the peninsula were on the contrary in the first instance adventurers from Sumatra, who in the twelfth century formed an establishment there, and that the indigenous inhabitants, gradually driven by them to the woods and mountains, so far from being the stock from whence the Malays were propagated, are an entirely different race of men, nearly approaching in their physical character to the negroes of Africa. 

The evidences of this migration from Sumatra are chiefly found in two Malayan books well known, by character at least, to those who are conversant with the written language, the one named Taju assalatin or Makuta segala raja-raja, The Crown of all Kings, and the other, more immediately to the purpose, Sulalat assalatin or Penurun-an segala raja­raja, The Descent of all (Malayan) Kings. Of these it has not been my good fortune to obtain copies, but the contents, so far as they apply to the present subject, have been fully detailed by two eminent Dutch writers to whom the literature of this part of the East was familiar. Petrus van der Worm first communicated the knowledge of these historical treatises in his learned Introduction to the Malayan Vocabulary of Gueynier, printed at Batavia in the year 1677; and extracts to the same effect were afterwards given by Valentyn in Volume 5 pages 316 to 320 of his elaborate work, published at Amsterdam in 1726. The books are likewise mentioned in a list of Malayan Authors by G.H. Werndly, at the end of his Maleische Spraak-kunst, and by the ingenious Dr. Leyden in his Paper on the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations, recently published in Volume 10 of the Asiatic Researches. 

The substance of the information conveyed by them is as follows; and I trust it will not be thought that the mixture of a portion of mythological fable in accounts of this nature invalidates what might otherwise have credit as historical fact. The utmost indeed we can pretend to ascertain is what the natives themselves believe to have been their ancient history; and it is proper to remark that in the present question there can be no suspicion of bias from national vanity, as we have reason to presume that the authors of these books were not Sumatrans.

The original country inhabited by the Malayan race (according to these authorities) was the kingdom of Palembang in the island of Indalus, now Sumatra, on the river Malayo, which flows by the mountain named Maha-meru, and discharges itself into the river Tatang (on which Palembang stands) before it joins the sea. Having chosen for their king or leader a prince named Sri Turi Buwana, who boasted his descent from Iskander the Great, and to whom, on that account, their natural chief Demang Lebar Daun submitted his authority, they emigrated, under his command (about the year 1160), to the south-eastern extremity of the opposite peninsula, named Ujong Tanah, where they were at first distinguished by the appellation of orang de-bawah angin or the Leeward people, but in time the coast became generally known by that of Tanah malayo or the Malayan land.