BIMANA. 



according to the same authority, by nations radically distinct from the 

 Malays ; speaking languages entirely different, and using various written 

 characters, original and peculiar to each. These nations are governed by 

 their several laws and institutions : and, excepting the state of Menangkabu, 

 in the Island of Sumatra, it is on the shores of these islands only, and in 

 the Malay Peninsula, that the Malays are to be found. Besides the state 

 of Menangkabu, in the interior, Sumatra has on its eastern side the Malay 

 states of Acheen, Siak, and Palembang. In the Peninsula, the principal 

 Malay states are, Queda, Malacca, and Johore, on the western ; Tringano, 

 Patani, and Pahang, on the eastern side. However the Malay nation 

 may have originated, it has spread itself far and widely ; and its tribes 

 have ever acquired a predominance, the result of mental vigour and 

 energy of character, over the aborigines of the districts, or islands, appro- 

 priated by right of conquest. At one time the Malay power in the Indian 

 Archipelago appears to have been far greater than at present. That the 

 Malays once occupied a high and commanding political station in these seas, 

 appears (as Raffles observes) to be beyond a doubt ; and that they main- 

 tained this position until the introduction of Mahometanism, seems equally 

 probable. " From the geographical situation," he adds, " of the more 

 important countries then occupied by them, they were the first to come in 

 contact with Mussulman missionaries, and to embrace their tenets ; to 

 which circumstance the dismemberment of the empire, and the decline of 

 their power, previously to the arrival of Europeans in these seas, may, 

 perhaps, be attributed. At that period, however, the authority of Menang- 

 kabu, the ancient seat of government, was still acknowledged ; and the 

 states of Acheen and Malacca long disputed the progress of the Portuguese 

 arms. The whole of Sumatra, at one period, was subject to the supreme 

 power of Menangkabu ; and proofs of the former grandeur and superiority 

 of this state are still found, not only in the pompous edicts of its sove- 

 reigns, and in the veneration and respect paid to the most distant branches 

 of the family, but in the comparatively high and improved state of the 

 cultivation of the country, and in the vestiges of antiquity which have 

 been recently discovered in it." At what time the people of Menang- 

 kabu embraced the doctrines of the prophet, Sir S. Raffles could not 

 correctly ascertain : the conversion of Malacca and Acheen took place in 

 the thirteenth century ; but it is very doubtful whether Menangkabu was 

 converted previously to this date ; although the Mahometan faith is said 

 to have been promulgated at Sumatra as early as the twelfth century. It 

 was about this latter period (1160), according to the same authority, that 

 a colony, issuing from the interior of Sumatra, established the maritime 

 state of Singapura, at the extremity of the Malay Peninsula, where a line 

 of Hindu princes continued to reign until the establishment of Malacca, 

 and the adoption of the Moslemin tenets, in 1276. Whatever, in more re- 



