and ISLANDERS of Asia. 9 



was peopled beyond time of memory by the Hindu race, and formerly, per- 

 haps, extended much farther to the weft and to the fouth, fo as to include 

 Lanca y or the equinoctial point of the Indian aftronomers ; nor can we reafon- 

 ably doubt, that the fame enterprizing family planted colonies in the other 

 ifles of the fame ocean from the Malayadwipas, which take their .name from 

 the mountain of Malaya, to the Moluccas, or Mallicds, and probably far be- 

 yond them. Captain Forrest allured me, that he found the ifle of Bali 

 (a great name in the hiftorical poems of India) chiefly peopled by Hindus^ 

 who worfnipped the fame idols, which he had feen in this province ; and 

 that of Madhura muft have been fo denominated, like the well known 

 territory in the wefternpeninfula, by a nation, who underftood Sanfcrit. We 

 need not be furprized, that M. D'Anville was unable to aftign a reafon, 

 why the Jabadios, or Yavadivipa, of Ptolemy was rendered in the old 

 Latin verfion the ifle of Barley ; but we muft admire the inquifitive fpirit and 

 patient labour of the Greeks and Romans, whom nothing obfervable feems to 

 have efcaped : Tava means barley in Sanfcrit ; and, though that word, or its 

 regular derivative, be now applied folely to Java, yet the great French 

 geographer adduces very ftrong reafons for believing, that the ancients 

 applied it to Sumatra. In whatever way the name of the laft mention- 

 ed ifland may be written by Europeans, it is clearly aw Indian word, 

 implying abundance or excellence ; but we cannot help wondering, that nei- 

 ther the natives of it, nor the beft informed of our Pandits, know it by any 

 fuch appellation ; efpecially as it ftill exhibits vifible traces of a primeval 

 connexion with India: from the very accurate and interefting account of.it 

 by a learned and ingenious member of our own body, wedifcover, without 

 any recourfeto Etymological conjecture, that multitudesof pure Savfcntxvords 

 occur in the principal dialects of the Sumatfans; that, among their laws, two 

 pofitive rules concerning fureties and interefl appear to be taken word for 



B 



