Page:A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language with a Preliminary Dissertation- Dissertation and Grammar, in Two Volumes, Vol. I (IA dli.granth.52714).pdf/22

 the Archipelago,—the Malays and Javanese; and, adopting this hypothesis, I shall proceed with the inquiry, beginning with a sketch of these two nations and their languages. For con- venience, and in order to avoid repetition, I use the word Malayan for whatever is common to these two people.

According to the universal tradition of the Malays, Sumatra is the parent country of their nation. This greatest island of the Archipelago, after Borneo, contains an area of 128,500 square miles. Its geological formation is partly primitive and partly volcanic. It has some very high mountains and some extensive plains among its hill ranges. Among these plains is that of Mânangkabau on the Equator, the very focus of the Malay nation., Next to Java, Sumatra is the most fertile of the great islands of the Archipelago, and therefore the most likely to be a cradle of early civilisation. The Malays at present possess nearly one half the whole area of the island, including its coasts on the east and west side.

The earliest notice which Europeans received of the existence of the Malay nation, and it was a very meagre one, was given by Marco Polo on his return to Venice in 1295. It was not until 220 years later that they became really acquainted with them. A hundred and thirty years before the Malays were seen by the Venetian traveller, or in the year 1100, took place the only recorded migration of the Malays from Sumatra, that which formed the settlement of Singapore. We must not con- clude, from the comparative recentness of this event, or because the Malays, like the Hindus, have no history, that many earlier migrations had not taken place. When first actually seen by Europeans, they were traders and rovers over the Archipelago. They were the principal carriers of the clove and nutmeg from the most easterly to the most westerly ports of the Archipelago,—forming, in fact, the first link in that long and tedious chain of transport by which these much-valued commodities, were, for nearly twenty centuries, conveyed to Greece and Rome. In the year 180 of Christ the clove and nutmeg were regular articles of import into the Roman Empire; and it is highly probable that the trade was conducted then, in the same manner as when it was first observed by Europeans at its source. By