170 AUSTRALASIA. 



Javanese aborigines to Brahmanism. At the time of the visit of the Buddhist 

 pilgrim, Fa-hian, early in the iifth century, the Brahman form of Hinduism 

 prevailed throughout the island. Later, it was almost everywhere replaced by 

 Buddhist tenets, although the rites still practised round about a few inaccessible 

 volcanoes recall the traditions of Siva'ism. Numerous Hindu states, whose names 

 are preserved in history or legend, and whose splendour is reflected in the mighty 

 ruins of their cities and temples, were successively constituted, especially in the 

 central and eastern parts of the island. 



During the period of Indian ascendancy, nearly the whole of Indonesia was 

 twice, in the thirteenth and fifteenth century, reduced under the power of a single 

 master. But the Arab Mohammedans were already contending with the Hindu 

 dynasties for the supremacy in Java. In 1478, they destroyed the capital of Mojo- 

 Pahit's empire, which stood near the present city of Surabaya, and during the two 

 or three ensuing generations, they successively overthrew the petty Hindu princi- 

 palities that had hitherto held their groimd. 



But these conquerors were in their turn soon replaced by others. The 

 Portuguese, too weak to reduce the island, did little more than found a few 

 factories on the seaboard, and take part as adventurers in the local civil wars. 

 But the Dutch, who appeared on the scene in 1596, in a few years felt themselves 

 strong enough to assume a dominant position in the country. In 1619 they erected 

 the fort of Batavia, centre of the sovereignty which gradually spread over the rest 

 of Java and the Eastern Archipelago. Notwithstanding some local insurrections 

 and a war of succession, which shook their power to its foundations, between the 

 years 1825 and 1830, they have, on the whole, found in the Javançse perhaps the 

 most submissive and resigned nation known to history. Cases are mentioned of 

 unhappy wretches who quietly submitted to take the place of their chiefs con- 

 demned by the suzerain authority to imprisonment with hard labour. It is sur- 

 prising that such a docile people, yielding so readily to bondage, should have never- 

 theless preserved their gentletiess, sense of justice, probity, and other good qualities. 

 The rapid increase of the Javanese population is commonly appealed to in proof 

 of their material and moral progress, and consequently of the beneficent results of 

 the present administration. Assuredly, if the numerical growth of a people were 

 an indication of prosperity, the Javanese would have to be regarded as amongst 

 the happiest of nations. Within a century, apart from the Chinese and other 

 immigrants, their numbers have augmented tenfold by the excess of births over 

 deaths alone. In 1780, a series of exterminating wars had reduced them to little 

 over two millions ; in 1888, they were at least twenty-three millions, and the annual 

 increase now ranges from three hundred thousand or four hundred thousand to 

 half a million. The density of the population is already far greater than that of 

 Holland and nearly equals that of Belgium ; and as two-thirds of the soil is still 

 untilled, there appears to be no reason why this density should not be tripled, 

 when the whole island is reclaimed. 



Nevertheless there has been an occasional ebb in this steady flow of human 

 vitality. In 1880, a famine, followed by a series of epidemics, reduced the popula- 



