Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society/Volume 32/The Name "Malayu"
Notes.
The name "Malayu."
The national name of the Malays is mentioned, if not for the first time in recorded history, at any rate with a distinct territorial denotation, as early as the 7th century of our era by I Tsing, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, in two of his works, the Ta-t‘ang-si-yu-Ku-ja-Kao-sêng-ch‘uan or "Memoirs of Eminent Priests who visited India and Neighbouring Countries to search for the Law under the Great T‘ang Dynasty," and the "Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago."
This latter work, the original title of which is Nan-hai-chi-Kuei-nai-fa-ch‘uan, literally "The Record of the Sacred Law, sent home from the Southern Sea," has been translated, together with part of the former, into English, by J. Takakusu, a Japanese scholar, and was published in 1896 by the Oxford Clarendon Press. The author, who visited the Malay Archipelago in the winter of A. D. 671-2 and remained for some time in Sumatra, speaks of the Mo-lo-yu country as being one of the islands of the South Sea in which Buddhism then prevailed. He fixes its position by telling us that it lay to the west of Shih-li-fo-shih (Sri Bhoja or Bhoja), which place appears to be certainly identified with the San-bo-tsai of other Chinese chroniclers and the Sarbaza of the Arabian geographers of the 9th century. I Tsing tells us that Sri Bhoja had, in his time or shortly before his visit, annexed the Mo-lo-yu country.
Sri Bhoja was at this time a great centre of Buddhism, and I Tsing's object in visiting it was to study the sacred Canon and the Sanskrit language. After a stay of six months, he went on to the Mo-lo-yu country and then to India, but about A. D. 688 he returned to Sri Bhoja, and remained there about six years, so that he had ample opportunity for becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the coutry. From other sources[1] this place Sri Bhoja, San-bo-tsai, Sarbaza, etc., as it is variously called, has been identified with almost absolute certainty as being situ- ated on the Palembang river in South-eastern Sumatra; and the Mo-lo-yu country can therefore be confidently regarded as placed immediately to the west or north-west, that is to say about the middle of Sumatra. I Tsing, who stayed in the Mo-lo-yu country for two months on his way to India, says that it was fifteen days' sail from Bhoja, the capital of Sri Bhoja; and it must have been situated approximately under the Equator, for in the middle of the eighth month and in the middle of spring the sun cast no shadow there at noon. Moreover it was balf-way on the route between Bhoja and Ka-cha (a place in or near Achin or Kedah, more probably the former, as it was south of the country of the Naked Feople, ie, the Nicobar and Andaman islands). From Ka-cha ships sailed in thirty days to Nagapatana (Negapatam), and I Tsing himself took ship there for Tamralipti (Tamluk), a port near the mouth of the Hooghly.
It seems therefore that the Mo-lo-yu country was not at this time a purely inland State, but had a coast line on the Straits more or less opposite to where Malacca now stands.
The language of the Mo-lo-yu country was that which served as a lingua franca in the Archipelago generally, and was known to I Tsing and other Chinese authors as the K‘un-lun language. This term was derived, apparently, from the Chinese name of Pulau Condor, on the same principle on which slaves from these regions are often mentioned in Chinese chronicles as K‘un-lun slaves, from whatever part of the Archipelago they might have actually been imported. The reason seems to have been that the Pulau Condor people were the first of the Southern island- ers to come into contact with the Chinese, who afterwards loose- ly extended the term to the inhabitants of the Archipelago generally. This appears to be the meaning of the explanation I Tsing gives when, speaking of the Archipelago as a whole and after enumerating some of the principal islands, he goes on to say, "They were generally known by the general name of 'Country of K‘un-lun' since (the people of) K‘un-lun first visit- ed Kochin and Kwangtung."
That the language was really Malay appears from the fact that the "pin-lang fruit" is mentioned by I Tsing as being used in the Sri Bhoja country and other islands of the Archipelago for chewing with nutmegs, cloves and Barus camphor, for the purpose of rendering the mouth fragrant. Pin-lang is of course the Malay word pinang, areca nut.
In I Tsing's time, it seems therefore that the Malay country par excellence was in Central Sumatra, a fact agreeing very well with native Malay tradition on the subject, which derives the origin of many of the Malays of the Peninsula from the old Cen- tral Sumatran State of Menangkabau.
The etymological signification of the national name Malayu has been a subject of much dispute. I Tsing does not throw any additional light upon it; but he makes it quite clear that the word bad in his time a local significance, and denoted the particular region from which a large part of the Malays of the modern Tanah Malayu love to trace their origin.
C. O. Blagden
- ↑ See especially Groeneveldt's "Notes on the Malay Archipelago," etc., Essays on Indo-China, etc. 2nd series, vol. 1.