The Present Condition of the Indian Archipelago. 355 



migrations from one island to another were probably equally limited 

 and accidental ; and the small and scattered communities in such as 

 were inhabited, must, for a long period, have remained secluded from 

 all others, save when a repetition of similar accidents added a few 

 more units to the human denizens of the forests. 



We cannot here attempt to retrace in the most concise manner 

 the deeply interesting history of the tribes of the Archipelago, so 

 exciting from the variety of its elements, and its frequent, though 

 not impenetrable, mystery. We can but distinguish the two great 

 eras into which it divides itself, — that, at the commencement of 

 which some of the inhabitants of the table-land of Asia, having 

 slowly traversed the south-eastern valleys and ranges, a work per- 

 haps of centuries, appeared on the confines of the Archipelago, no 

 longer nomades of the plains but of the jungles, with all the changes 

 in ideas, habits, and language which such transformation implies, 

 and prepared by their habits to give rise, under the influences of 

 their new position, to the nomades of the sea; — and the second era, 

 that, at the commencement of which the forest and pelagic nomades, 

 scattered over the interior, and along the shores, of the islands of 

 the Archipelago, in numerous petty tribes, each with some peculi- 

 arities in its habits and language, but all bearing a family resem- 

 blance, were discovered in their solitudes by the earliest navigators 

 from the civilized nations of the continent. 



The ensuing, or what, although extending over a period of about 

 two thousand years, we may term the modern history of the Archi- 

 pelago, first exhibits the Klings from southern India, — who were a 

 civilized maritime people probably three thousand years ago, — fre- 

 quenting the islands for their peculiar productions, awakening a 

 taste for their manufactures in the inhabitants, settling amongst 

 them, introducing their arts and religion partially communicating 

 these and a little of their manners and habits to their disciples, 

 but neither by much intermarriage altering their genei-al physical 

 character, nor by moral influence obliterating their ancient super- 

 stitions, their comparative simplicity and robustness of character, 

 and their freedom from the effeminate vanity which probably then, 

 as in later times, distinguished their teachers. At a comparatively 

 recent period, Islamism supplanted Hinduism in most of the com- 

 munities which had grown up under the influence of the latter, but 

 it had still less modifying operation ; and, amongst the great bulk 

 of the people, the conversion from a semi-Hindu condition to that 

 of Mahomedanism was merely formal. Their intellects, essentially 

 simple, and impatient of discipline and abstract contemplation, could 

 as little appreciate the scholastic refinements of the one religion, as 

 the complex and elaborate mythological machinery and psychological 

 subtleties of the other. While the Malay of the nineteenth century 

 exhibits in his manner, and in many of his formal usages and habits, 

 tlie influence which Indians and Arabs have exerted on his race, ho 



