<3F BORNEO PROPER. 
515 
bore took place 29 reigns previously, and before the Malays were 
converted to Mabotnedauism. A visitor to Brui}£ in 1837 was in¬ 
formed by one of the most intelligent Pangerans that the number of 
rajas who had reigned was 29, although another made the number 
24 and others 30. * Allowing 15 years to a reign he makes the 
year 1460 that of the foundation of the Malayan state. Mr. Craw- 
furd assumes 20 years as the average length of a reign, and thus 
carries back the event 580 years. This would give the year 1244, when 
the Hindu-Malay kingdom of Johore flourished under the name of 
its first capital, Singapura. From 1160, the supposed year of the foun¬ 
dation of Singapura, to 1723, twenty two kings reigned over Jo¬ 
hore,f which gives 25 years as the mean length of a reign.}: Ap¬ 
plying tl\is to Borneo, the state would obtain a greater antiquity than 
that of Singdpura. 
From these data w r e seem warranted in assuming that the Malay 
rule in Brun£ was established before the seat of the Johore pow¬ 
er and commerce was transferred from Singapur& to Malakd, a 
circumstance probable in itself. It is by no means necessary how¬ 
ever to assume that people from Johore or the Johore Archipe¬ 
lago could not have emigrated to Borneo prior to the foundation 
of Singapura. The Sijara Malayu and other Malay histories repre¬ 
sent Singapore as having been peopled not from Menangkabau, 
as is generally supposed,^ but from the neighbouring island of Bdn- 
* Notices of the city of Borneo and its inhabitants made during the vo¬ 
yage of the American Brig Himmaleh in the Indian Archipelago in 1887, 
(Chinese Repository, Yol. VII. p. 186.) 
j Valentyn Vol. I. p. 352. 
$ From the conversion of the people of Banjarmassing to Mahomedanism 
in the end of the 15th. century to the year 1825 twelve sovereigns reigned 
there, which gives 27 years to a reign. ( See Moniteur des Indes, Vol. I. 
p. 164. Temminck vol. ii. p. 176.) On the other hand we find the aver¬ 
age length of a reign in the anarchical kingdom of Achin during a period of 
579 years from 601 to 1180 H., to have been 16 years. Of the 35 kings who 
reigned during this period 11 were removed by violence. In the purely 
Malayan kingdom of Johore only one king has been killed. 
§ It is curious to trace the progress of the now generally received opini¬ 
on that Johore derived its population from Menangkabau. Van der Worm 
in 1677 and Valentyn in 1727 gave correct thongh imperfect digests of the 
Sijara Malayu and other Malay histories. Marsden in the 3d edition of his 
history of Sumatra retracted his previous opinion that the Malays of Suma¬ 
tra had emigrated from the Peninsula, cited the account in the Sijara cor¬ 
rectly from Valentyn and Van der Worm; but added an ingenious conjee- 
