170 REPORT — 1871. 



several are almost certainly of Hindu origin ; one at least is interpreted by tlie 

 geographer himself according to its moaning in the Indian language, and the inter- 

 pretation is correct. Still it is possible that these names were given subsequently 

 to the first Buddhist movements in that direction ; for it is recorded that after the 

 third Buddhist sjmod, held at the city of Pataliputra or Palibothra, now Patna, as 

 early as b.c. 211, missionaries were dispatched to propagate the doctrine in the 

 Suvarna Bhumi, or Golden Land, which is almost certainly Pegu, the Chrijso, 

 Aurea Reqio, or rather, perhaps, Aurea Cliersonesm of the ancients. 



Probably a later and larger wave of migration and propagandism took place not 

 louf after the Christian era ; for it is remarkable that most of those nations of tlie 

 further east that have been tinged with Indian civilization, recognize the Indian 

 era of Salivahana, which is coincident with the year 78 of our reckoning. Another 

 indication of movement eastward about this time is, perhaps, the fact that it is soon 

 after this that cloves, if not other peculiar spices of the Eastern Islands, first appear 

 in the markets of the "Western World. 



Later still, about the 5th and 6th centuries, we recognize in the coincident 

 traditions of the nations a new efflux of influence in the same direction ; but this 

 time it comes not from Continental India, but from Ceylon, an island which, though 

 thoroughly Indianized in its religion and manners, has yet some remarkable afflni- 

 ties in the nature of its products, and perhaps also in that of its people, with those 

 of the further east. This last impulse has never entirely worn out ; and as the 

 Western world in general has looked to Rome, or the Russian world to Constan- 

 tinople, rather than to Jerusalem as the immediate seat of ecclesiastical sanctity, 

 80 those Indo-Chinese nations look still, in a degree, to Ceylon as the Mother of 

 their Faith. 



I have said that, in the countries of which we speak, Indian influence can be 

 largely traced, not only in religion, but in manners, architecture, language, and 

 nomenclature ; and indeed the foreign religion necessarily aftects all these. 

 Throughout these regions we find, in such matters as the etiquettes of the Blood- 

 Royal, the forms of royal palaces and court ceremonial, an extraordinary identity, 

 and aU pointinfj to ancient Hindu usages ; the titles of the monarchs and digni- 

 taries almost universally embrace high-sounding terms of Sanskrit, or rather of Pali, 

 bearing to Sanskrit much the same relation that Italian bears to Latin, that being 

 the dialect in which the Buddhist sacred books were read in Ceylon, and which 

 is still studied as the sacred tongue in Burma, Siam, and Camboja. In Java, by a 

 strange enough chain of circumstances, we find the very title of Arya, Noble or 

 Excellent, which has been adopted as the distinctive note of our Indo-germanic 

 races, assumed by every one claiming nobility among a people of kindred and cha- 

 racter so diverse from our own. 



As regards the nomenclature of these countries, we find Hindu names extending 

 at least as far east as Southern Cochin China, a country long known as Champa 

 or Mahd-champa, a title now confined to a small corner to which the one predo- 

 minant race in later times was limited. This Champa was a name borrowed from a 

 famous Indian state upon the Ganges, occupying the modern district of Bhagalpiir. 

 The Idngdom of Camboja had its name from a region beyond the Indus ; another 

 region in the same quarter, Gandhdra, the country round Peshawar, lent its name 

 to Yunnan, now a Chinese province, but still so styled in Burmese state-papers ; 

 Ayoclhija, the ancient city of Rama, from which is corrupted our modern Oudh, 

 gave its name to great cities both in Siam and in .lava ; the holy city of Mathra 

 on the Jumna has bestowed its name both on an island dependency of Java and 

 on a town of Upper Burma ; Irawadi, the great river of Burma, is but another 

 Airavafi, the river-name which the companions of Alexander in the Panjab wi'Ote 

 as Hydraotes ; Amarapura, the recent capital of Burma, has a name purely Indian ; 

 Sinyhaptira, or Singapore, founded by a Javan colony in the middle ages, and 

 refounded in our own century by the ardent spirit of Stamford Raffles, is the same. 

 And so ad infinitum. 



But it is in the great architectural remains scattered widely over this region that 

 we find the most striking monuments of Indian influence. The original races are 

 none of them addicted to architecture in solid materials, and have long ceased, as 

 a general rule, to use either stone or brick in their own constructions; vxnless it be 



