Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/19

1837.] Loochoo. We find from the Chinese official memoirs concerning the Loochoos (published first in the reign of Kang-ke, about A. D. 1700 and extended to the 13th year of the reign of Kew-king A. D. 1808 printed at Pekin) that the people of the Loochoos are followers of Buddha, and that they say, about 1275 a Buddhist priest was driven on the island in a boat, whence he came they know not, and that they have had priests ever since. The priest was probably a native of Japan or Corea. Mr. Fisher, a late writer on Japan, saw at Nagasaki some Corean barks, which are occasionally driven on the southern coast of Japan; and it is not very improbable that some may have drifted so far south as the Loochoos.

Sumatra. Having thus far traced the progress of Buddhism from Magadha and Ceylon, over the southern regions of the continent of Asia to its most eastern confines, I will attempt to follow its track through the Indian Archipelago. Assuming that the Buddhists, at some very early period, were driven from the shores of peninsular India, it is very reasonable to suppose that many of them would take advantage of the numerous trading vessels lying in the southern harbours, and escape either to Ceylon, or seek a more distant and secure asylum in the ports to the eastward, with which it is a well authenticated fact they had long been in the habit of carrying on an extensive system of commerce. The first land of any importance made would be probably the Tenasserim coast, or the northern extremity of Sumatra, Achin; and where the general prevalence of mutilated Hindu images is noticed by Sir S. Raffles (Memoirs page 384); whence it is fair to suppose that the prows of the refugees would be turned towards Menangkâbowe, a very ancient empire the capital of which, Pagarnyong, was situated in the heart of Sumatra, and the sway of which extended formerly over the whole of this large and fertile island. The literature, language, and the Buddhist images discovered by Lieutenant Crooke at Jambi, and the Kawi inscription in Menangkâbowe by Sir S. Raffles, go to bear out this notion. The Revd. W. Taylor, in some learned and obliging remarks on my brief note touching the Batta tribe, has fully established the identity with the Sanscrit (Pàli?) of many words existing in the present languages of the neighbouring tribes of Battas. Lieutenant Crooke mentions the existence of a nation of idolaters, in the vicinity of Jambi, called the Kúbus, subject to the sultan of Palembang. The strong inclination of many of these tribes in the interior to the doctrine of the metempsychosis (still partially entertained by the Malays both of Sumatra and the peninsula of Malacca), and the religious veneration in which they hold the names of their ancestors, are now the almost only indications of the tenets of Buddha which formerly prevailed to a certain extent.