Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 428

FURTHER-INDIAN BRANCH
+27 The order of the letters in the Javanese character is different from that of the Indian scripts, though it appears that the Indian arrangement was not unknown to the Javanese peoples.
Javanese is written from left to right. Every aksara is written separately, and no space is left between the words. One or two short diagonal lines, in poetry, or, commonly, a comma are the only marks in ordinary writing which indicate stops. In Java, the natives usually write with Indian ink upon paper manufactured by themselves, and sometimes on European or Chinese paper. In Bali, some natives still use an iron style and cut the symbols on a prepared palm leaf, in the same manner as in some parts of India. This practice is still partially continued in some parts of the more eastern portion of Java, and was no doubt at a former period general throughout the island.
SUMATRA
Sumatra is the westernmost and third largest island of the East Indies; it is the largest, after Borneo, of the Malay Archipelago, Chinese records tell us that a Hinduized kingdom existed in south-eastern Sumatra in the fifth century A.D. This maritime kingdom has been identified, since 1918, by Professor Coedès, Dean of the French School of the Far East, with the ancient mighty empire of Sri Vijaya, the San-for-si of the Chinese. In the late eighth and the early ninth centuries A.D., the Buddhist kingdom, Sri Vijaya, embraced not only the greater part of Sumatra, but also the Malay Peninsula, Central Java and numerous islands of the archipelago; there is even a tradition that Cambodia was also overrun. This kingdom was a stronghold of Mahayana Buddhism since the seventh century A.D. In the ninth and eleventh centuries, Sri Vijaya had monasteries in Bengal and South India. In the thirteenth century it seems to have declined, and in 1377 it was conquered by the Javanese, Sri Vijaya left memorials in some important inscriptions of the last quarter of the seventh, and of the eighth century A.D., found in Sumatra, on the island of Bangka, in Ligor and in Central Java.
Explorers and scholars alike have, therefore, been surprised to learn that Sumatra is extremely poor in antiquities, and it is also curious that this island which, generally speaking, experienced the same civilizing influences as Java, should have nevertheless remained backward in development. The indigenous literature as well as much of the old civilization have fallen into decay. Here and there, however, the population possesses a fairly high degree of civilization. Hindu-Javanese, Chinese, Arabs, Indians and others have long been settlers round the coast, and the resulting mixture of blood and other factors have produced there a much higher civilization than that which prevails in the interior. Indeed, many of the indigenous tribes of the interior are still in a comparatively low state of development.
The slight density of population, about 18 per sq. mile (as compared with the extremely high density, of over 820 per sq. mile, in Java), which is due mainly to the unhealthiness of the country, must certainly have played a considerable part in the backwardness of Sumatra. Lying across the equator, the island is obviously tropical. The whole of eastern Sumatra foms vast almost impenetrable jungle marshes, with the concomitants of malaria, dysentery, beriberi, hook-worm and endernic cholera. About 115.000 54. miles out of the total of 161,000 sq. miles of the island are covered by tropical forests. The other half of Sumatra consists