OF BORNEO PROPER. 
517 
and married a daughter of the queen. If a Malay kingdom existed 
in the Johore Archipelago before Sang Nila Utama removed to 
Singapore, it is probable that the rivers of the Peninsula were inha¬ 
bited by the same race.* At all events this people, whatever was 
their geographical range, might have visited Borneo before Sri Tn- 
Tbe Bukit Saguntang-Guntang is in Plembang and is now known by the 
name of JBukitSe buntang, (Verhandeliagen van hel Bat. Genoots. vol. 
ix. p. 60.) It may probably he shewn hereafter that the name Malayu 
having been carried by the clan to Singapore, and thence to the other ma¬ 
ritime Malayan states subsequently formed, came to be applied by foreign¬ 
ers to all the people speaking the same or a similar language, At the 
time when Marco Polo visited the Archipelago the name appears to have 
been still confined to the first maritime state, which he calls Malaieur. 
The primitive Malay stock of Sumatra, from which all the civilised tribes 
were derived, appears to have been the rude tribe still scattered over the 
interior, from the southern limit of the Ilatla country to the extremity of 
the mountain ranges. From this stock civilized tribes probably originat¬ 
ed not only in iVlenangkabau but in other parts of the great region ex¬ 
tending from theRakan to the straits of Sunda, and which, from its posses¬ 
sing all the large rivers as well as the richest inland vallies of Sumatra, 
would be favourable to civilization. The evidences of the language are 
almost decisive on this point. The people on the most southern of these 
rivers, the Tulang Bawang, although so near to Java 5 preserve Malay as the 
bulk of their vocabulary. The same remark appears applicable to Unpeo¬ 
ple on the next river, the Plembang, with the exception of the greater num¬ 
ber of the inhabitants of the capital who are of Javanese extraction. At 
the time when Sang Nila Utama left Plembang the people were Malayan 
according to the Sijara, a fact which the history of the Javanese confirms, 
for they inform us that the Javanese colony which settled at plembang left 
Java in the reign of the last king of Majapahit,f or in the latter half of the 
15th century. The people of the hilly country along the western coast 
from which the feeders of the Piembang are derived also speak dia¬ 
lects essentially Malayan, and having a slight mixture of Sundanese 
(Malay Miscellanies vol. ii. p. 13.) The people of the other rivers to 
the north, the Jambi,i Indragiri, Kampar, Siak and Rafean are Malay. It 
is this whole region, and not merely the small country of Menangkabau 
in its N.W. corner, that we would regard as the primitive land of the 
Malays. The people on all its rivers must have had some intercourse with 
the Peninsula and the Johore Archipelago from times long before the foun¬ 
dation of Singapura, but whether for centuries or thousands of years it is 
hardly possible that wc shall ever know. In all points in which the Pe¬ 
ninsular Malays differ from the inland and purely agricultural Malays of 
the region in question they assimilate to its river and maritime Malays, 
and Malay history does not go back to a period when the maritime Ma¬ 
lays were entirely confined to Sumatra. 
* The Johore Archipelago was probably inhabited from a very remote 
period, anterior even to the existence of any race in Sumatra, by a ma¬ 
ritime branch of the same people, radically Malayan, who are now found 
*f- Dr. Horsfield ante p. 304 (where first is erroneously given for last~) 
BaKIes Hist. Java yoI. ii. p. 126, 133. Crawfurd His. ina. Arch. vol. ii. 
p. 802. 
I In 1820 Lieut Crooke found the population of Jambi entirely Malay¬ 
an (Anderson’s Mission to Sumatra p. 396.) 
