Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 231

DECEMBER, 1919)
A BRIEF SKETCH OF MALAYAN HISTORY
227
A BRIEF SKETCH OF MALAYAN HISTORY.
BY SIR RICHARD TEMPLE. TI have had reason on several occasions lately to examine the history of the Malays and have found myself hampered in my studies by the want of any short abstract thereof in English, which could keep a general view of the whole subjeot' before my mind, and serve to help me to conceive its many and necessarily confusing details in something like a practical sequence and in a true proportion to each other. I therefore compiled for my own use a brief sketch of the history of the Archipelago and Peninsula, for which combination the best general name I have yet come across in the literature of the subject is Malaysia. As it may be of use to others, I now print it, without laying any claim to having made it an authoritative or complete document.]
South of Indo-China lies the Malay Archipelago, the most important collection of islands in the world. They are sharply divided geographically between those rising out of deep and shallow water by what is usually called Wallace's Line, being thus in two divisions: the Western or Asiatic in the shallow sea which impinges on the great spit of land jutting out southwards from Indo-China, known as the Malay Peninsula, and the Eastern and Melanesian, which approaches Australia. As in the case of Ir.do-China itelf, the aborigines of the whole area of Malaysia were Negritos, wło at some remote fericd were overlain by a kindred race, the Melanesians, ar.d in much later times, in part, by the Malaye, the people with whom we now have to do. The Malays have been generally (and to my mind correctly) looked upon as one of the Indo-Chinese races, but of late they have been by some recognised as a people apart, allied to the Polyresians of the Pacific Ocean further to the East, their immigration into the Archipelago being northwards towards the Asiatic Continent and not southwards away from it. The term "Malay" for the race is from the native name Maláyu, which is traceable as far back as A.D. 671, when the Chinese traveller I Tsing reported on them as the Moloyu, though he actually meant by the expression the people of the Hindu Menangkabau kingdom of Sumatra.
The recorded history of the islands is quite recent, except where ancient Indian, Arabian and European trade penetrated. That is to say, except in Java, Sumatra and allied islands, and in the Malay Peninsula, history may be said to commence with the advent of modern European traders in search of spices, just as their ancient forerunners had gone there for pepper and cloves. In Java and. Sumatra, ancient Indian Hir.du and Buddhist kingdoms were set up, leaving some splendid monuments behind them, to become by the fourteenth century converts to Islam, owing to the proselytising tendencies of Arab and other Muhammadan traders. Nowadays the whole lard of the Malays, where not still occupied by primitive animists, may be said to be Muhammadan : that is, the people profess Islam, while they are at heart animists. The quality of the spices that these regions produce in great abundance has throughout historical times been an irresistible attraction to all maritime nations, and has led the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English to battle for the trade. Indeed, it was the high price of pepper in England, created by a Dutch "corner" in that artiole of commerce at the end of the sixteenth century, that led to the formation of the first English East India Company in 1600, and thus indirectly to the foundation of the British Empire in India.