Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/207

 ASIATIC NATIONS. 191 lays in relation to others ; for, to this day, the ori- ginal Malays are divided into several distinct tribes, according to their geographical situation. The peo- ple of Java, when interrogated, would, at all events, have called any Malays " people of the west," and, indeed, do so now. There is an unanswerable objec- tion against supposing Malayu-kolon to be on the Malayan peninsula, or, supposing this last to be the Golden Chersonesus, or Khruse, at all, which will occur at once to every one familiar with the well- known history of the Malays. It is this ; in the age of Ptolemy, and for many ages after it, the Malayan peninsula was uninhabited^ or inhabited only by a few negro savages, resembling the cannibals of An- daman, wretched beings with whom there could have been no intercourse, or at least no commerce. The Malays did not emigrate from Sumatra, their parent country, and settle in the Malayan peninsula, until the comparatively modern period of the year 1 160, a thousand years after the time of Ptolemy, while Ma- lacca was not founded until 1252, and every other Malay state on the Peninsula is of still more recent foundation. The term dib^ or diu, appended to Ja- va, and meaning countiy, or island, is pure Sanskrit, and happens not to be a word of that language ever used, that I am aware of, in any of the dia- lects of the Archipelago. It is fair, from this, to argue, that those who used the term in describing Java to the merchants of the west, were not na-