The Relations between Southern India 

 and the Straits Settlements. 



By W. A. O'Sullivan. 



A few years ago. a very able paper was read by Mr. C. 0. 

 Blagden before the Straits Philosophical Society, on the subject 

 of "Arabian Influences in the Far East," and evoked a warm 

 discussion. I thought with others at the time that Mr. Blag-den 

 claimed too great an influence for the Arabs, both as a convert- 

 ing and civilizing agency in the Far East. I have since so far 

 modified that opinion, from wider reading, that I am now fully 

 convinced that it was the Arab traders, or rather the Arab 

 bandits whom they brought in their train, who effected the con- 

 version to Islam of the vast majority of the people inhabiting 

 the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago. To this 

 belief I have been induced, not so much by the discovery of any 

 additional historical data beyond what the essayist put for- 

 ward, as by the living testimony afforded by language, a proof 

 more to be relied on than a thousand traditions. Almost every 

 word in Malay connected with religious worship is pure Arabic, 

 only modified by the difficulty the converts experienced in pro- 

 nouncing the language of their teachers. The same is the case 

 with the Achinese, Sundanese. Javanese — in a word, with all the 

 languages of the Archipelago whose speakers have embraced 

 Islam ; the Malays, it may be added, have also adopted the Ara- 

 bic character. 



It is not, then, to India that we have to look as having im- 

 parted to Malaya the present religion of its inhabitants, or such 

 elements of its civilization as are bound up with their creed. But 

 civilization and social development, much as they may owe to 

 religion, are not coincident with it. and I think still that Mr. Blag- 

 den went too far in claiming for the Arabs the lion's share of 

 influence on the social life of the Malays. Right throughout the 

 Indian Archipelago (which I take for convenience sake to include 

 this Peninsula) there co-exists with hiilcum, or religious law, a 

 great unwritten code of native custom, known as adat. This 



