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SITUATION OF THE ISLAND — NAME.
Acheen to Pegu on one side, and from Timor to Papiia, or New Guinea, on the other: they constitute on the west and south, as do Banka, BUiton, the great islands of Borneo and Celebes, and the Moluccas on the north, the barriers of the Javan Seas and the Malayan Archipelago. From the eastern peninsida of India, Java is distant about one hundred and forty leagues, from Borneo about fifty-six, and fi-om New Holland two himdred.
To what cause the island is indebted for its present name of Java^ [ox Jdwa as it is pronomiced by the natives) is imcer- tain. Among the ti’aditions of the coimtiy (which are more particularly mentioned in another place) there is one, which relates, that it was so termed by the first colonists from the continent of India, in consequence of the discovery of a certain grain, called on which the iirhabitants are
supposed to have subsisted at that early period, and that it had been known previously oirly rmder the term of Nusa lidra- hdira or l^usa kendang, meaning the island of uild imculti- vated waste, or iir which the hiUs rim in ridges.
In the tenth chapter of Genesis we are told, that “ the isles of the Gentiles were divided in their lands ; every one after his tongue, after their families, in the nations : ” aird in the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel we find among the rich merchants, those of Javan “ who traded the persons of men, and vessels of brass, to tire market of Tjto, and who going to and fro, occupied in her fairs, brought bright iron, cassia, and calamus.” But we shall leave it to others to trace the con- nection between the Javan of Holy Writ and the Java of modem times. It appears, that the Arabs, who had widely extended their commercial intercourse, and established their
> The primitive Athenians were called lones or laones (.Herodotus, lib. i. &c.) This name is thought to have been given to them from Javan, which i bears a great resemblance to lawv. This Javan was the fourth son of Japheth, and is said to have come into Greece after the confusion of Babel, ! and seated himself in Attica ; and this report receives no small confirmation from the divine writings, where the name of Javan is in several places put for Greece. See Daniel x. 20. xi. 2. where the vulgar translations render it not Javan, as in the original, but Graecia. The Athenians afterwards named Asia the less Ionia. — Potter’s Archaeologia Graeca.
’ Panicum Italicum.
