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
- ↑ See especially Groeneveldt's "Notes on the Malay Archipelago," etc., Essays on Indo-China, etc. 2nd series, vol. 1.
