518 
TRACES OF THE ORIGIN' OF THE MALAY KINGDOM 
butma reigned in Singapore. That the ancient Singaporeans were of 
a maritime and not an inland agricultural race, may be inferred from 
their selecting as a settlement the best position in these seas for 
commerce, and one of the worst for agriculture.* The Malayan 
town of the 12th century made as rapid progress under Sri Tri- 
buana as the English one did in the 19th under Sir Stamford Raf¬ 
fles, f Ifc speedily became noted as a great emporium, and mer¬ 
chants flocked to it from all quarters.;£ 
in the interior of the Peninsula and of the southern half of Sumatra. 
Several tribes in various stages of civilization still possess the Johore 
islands. Though little known to Europeans they can never have been 
without Malay or Hindu-Malay visitors, for it was by the great ri¬ 
vers of Pl^mbang, Jambi, Indragiri and Kimptir, before whose em¬ 
bouchures these islands lie, that the Hindus of Ceylon and southern India 
must have gradually carried civilization into the interior of southern 
Sumatra. The Indragiri in particular appears to have been crowded 
with Hindu-Malay settlements, many of the numerous villages on its 
banks retaining purely Hindu names to this day. It was by this river 
probably that they reached the fertile plain of Menangkabau. We are 
inclined to think that the Malays on these rivers must have attain¬ 
ed a certain civilization, in advance of the wandering mountain tribes, 
even before the Hindus came. If any colonies of the latter settled in the 
country they must have been few in their numbers or unaccompanied by 
women, for the piesent inhabitants, unlike the eastern Javanese, pre¬ 
serve no physical traces of Indian descent. If Hinduism was gradually 
introduced in the course of a commercial intercourse, the difficulties at¬ 
tending the hypothesis of Hindu colonization would be got rid of. It 
is very conceivable that Hindu merchants remaining in the country for a 
time and unaccompanied by women, like the Klings at this day, would 
be led to marry the daughters of the native chiefs, assume political pow¬ 
er, obtain priests and architects from India, and engraft on the old republi¬ 
can-oligarchical g overnments of the land semi-Hindu monarchical dyna¬ 
sties, the representatives of which, at eachjgeneration of descent, would de¬ 
part further from the Indian type, till all physical trace of foreign blood was 
lost. TheHiudu-Javan influence was probably more modern and compa¬ 
ratively transient. 
* That is, Malayan agriculture. The Mcnangkabaus are a purely agri¬ 
cultural, mining, "and inland trading people, and consequently when they 
began to emigrate to the Peninsula, their proceedings were precisely the 
reverse of those of the Singapore colonists and indeed of all other 
Malays. They passed through the maritime districts, and sought val¬ 
ues amongst the mountains of the interior. 
f In fact it is to Sri Tribuana that the English are indebted for 
the modern Singapore. It is evident from Raflles’s Memoirs that his 
eye was fixed on Singapore long before he visited it, and the enthu¬ 
siasm with which he alludes to it in his correspondence as the an¬ 
cient maritime capital of the Malays, shews that it was this circum¬ 
stance that directed his attention to it and determined his choice. In 
a letter to Colonel Addenbrooke he almost in as many words admits 
this, “But for my Malay studies I should hardly have known that such 
a place [as Singapore] existed; not only the European, but the Indi¬ 
an world also was ignorant of it” (vol. ii. p. IS.) 
t Sfj&ri IM&l&yu. He Burros also tells us that “Singapura was the re- 
