Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/359

 OF MAHOMEDANISM IN JAVA. 315 all the other Sunda districts, and Bantam, were subject to the king of Pajqjaran, In the western districts, the work of conversion went on as rapidly a? in the eastern, and at the same time. The most active and distinguished of the leaders in the work of conversion throughout the island, are known by the name of the nine Susuhunans or apostles, of whom as many fabulous and puerile tales are related, as if in Europe they had been the worthies of three thousand years ago. The truth is, that such of them as were foreigners, or rather the descendants of foreigners, were a set of adven- turers who, as usual, traded as well in religion as in merchandise, and who were more remarkably characterized by the cunning of petty traders, than by that high and chivalrous enthusiasm which dis- tinguished the hardy and high-born chiefs of Arabia, that spread the religion of the prophet over the countries of Western Asia, in the early ages of Moslem history. * Unquestionably, the most able and enterprising of all these was the apostle of the western districts, Shekh Maulana, Sultan of Cheribon, called Su- suhanan Gunung-Jatiy from the place of his resi- dence. He was by birth an Arab, but had sojourned for years among the Mahomedan countries of the
 * Ockley's History of the Saracens.