239 
urigist of the binuas. 
It is said, “ after Sri Iseander Shall fled from Singapore to Malac¬ 
ca in the seventh century of the Hejira, that is in the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury of the Christian era, a Menangkabau chief, named Tu Puttair 
came over to Malacca, attended by a numerous retinue. He ascend¬ 
ed the river to Naning where he found no other inhabitants than the 
Jakuns, and settled at Taba and took to wife one of the Jakun dam¬ 
sels ; an example speedily followed by his vassels. ” The tradition 
says also that this colony gradually increased and spread itself over 
Sungei Ujong, Eumbau, Johole, and other places then inhabited 
chiefly by aborigines, or Jakuns. From whence we may infer, that 
if the aborigines or Binuas (Jakuns) were already spread over so 
many places, they must have inhabited the Peninsula from a remote 
period of time, an inference which is strengthened when we consider 
that the manners and customs of this people must be a great obstacle 
fco a swift increase in the population, and again that the Malays at 
that time, (in the thirteenth century ) had but a short time inha¬ 
bited the Peninsula, since we are informed by the Sejara Malayu , 
that Singapore, so celebrated in Malayan history, as having been the 
first place of settlement of the early Malay emigrants from Sumatra, 
and the origin of the empire of Malacca, received her flrst colonists 
only in the twelfth century, when Sang Nila Utama, supposed by Mo¬ 
hammedan historians to have been a descendant of Alexander the 
Great, settled on the island with a colony of Malays originally from 
Sumatra, and founded the city of Singapore. A. D. 1160, that is 
about one hundred years before the arrival of the Tu Puttair at Na¬ 
ning *, where the Jakuns, who were then already numerous, as well 
as in the other places before mentioned, seemed to announce colo¬ 
nists of more than one century. 
Besides, the Binuas are not Mahommedan ; but had they come 
to establish themselves in the peninsula subsequently to the Malays, 
we should expect to find them Mahommedan; for it is scarcely cre¬ 
dible that at the time when the disciples of Mahomed were so ar¬ 
dently waging war everywhere, forcing every nation to embrace the 
Koran, it would have been permitted to the Binuas, and only to the 
Binuas, who would have been few and feeble ,to enjoy the benefit ot 
