12G 



An Essay on Early Relations 



[No. 37, 



itself indicates the date of A. J, 1070 (A. D. 1152). " Whether 

 the poem was actually written on Java, or brought by the early 

 colonists, may be questionable," says Sir T. Kaffles ; but to my- 

 self there appears no doubt of its having been written on the is- 

 land itself; not only from the lateness of the date ascribed to it, 

 but also from the contents of the poem, which differ from the ori- 

 ginal, in being comparatively a crude epitome. Let us suppose 

 that Milton's great poem, had been heard repeatedly read, or dis- 

 coursed of, by colonists going to Australia, and that there it should 

 be spoken of, or familiarly narrated to their children : until, af- 

 ter a few generations, some one of their posterity, w r ith poetical 

 inclinations, should re-produce a Colonial-English poem, never 

 having read the original : we may imagine some such version of 

 it, as the Brata yvdlia has retained of the Mahabharata. I may 

 note here, only by the way, that the frequent use, in this, and the 

 before mentioned poems, of the word Bataru or Batara-guru for 

 God, or deity, affords a clue to the reason of those terms being 

 of such frequent use with the same meaning in Sumatra. 



In astronomy the Javans have retained, with a slight variation, 

 or corruption, the Sanscrit names of the signs of the zodiac ; and 

 their week of seven days (as distinguished from their period of 

 five days) also retains Hindu names for the days. 



Advancing to the ninth chapter, with which the second volume 

 commences, we come to the interesting subject of the remain- 

 ing architectural, and sculptured antiquities of Java. The most 

 striking portion of these are found at Brambaanam, in the dis- 

 trict of Metarem, near the middle of the Island ; at Boro Bodo in 

 Kedu ; on Gunung Prah'u, and its vicinity ; in Kediri, and at Singha 

 Sari, in the district of Malang, on the east- 

 * VoL 2 ' p - 6 * ern part of the island. * Colonel Mackenzie, 

 in 1812, visited and sketched the ruins at Brambanam, and his 

 journal was published in the seventh volume of the Transactions 

 of the Batavian Society.* I regret that I 

 * P ' '* have never seen it. The different places were 



however visited and reported on to Government by Captain G. 

 Baker of the Bengal Establishment ; whose report, though not 

 what it might have been, yet offers an idea of the whole, ajid oc- 



