CHAPTER I.
Geographical Situation of Java—Name—Extent and Form—Divisions—Harbours—Mountains and Volcanos—Rivers and Lakes—General Appearance of the Country—Mineralogical Constitution—Seasons and Climate—Metals—Minerals—Soil—Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms.
The country known to Europeans under the name of Java, or Java Major, and to the natives under those of Tána (the land) Jáwa, or Núsa (the island) Jáwa, is one of the largest of what modern geographers call the Sunda Islands. It is sometimes considered one of the Malayan Islands, and forms a part of that division of the Oriental Archipelago which it has been lately proposed to designate as the Asiatic Isles. It extends eastward, with a slight deviation to the south, from 105° 11´ to 114° 33´ of longitude east of Greenwich, and lies between the latitudes 5° 52´ and 8° 46´ south. On the south and west it is washed by the Indian Ocean; on the north-west by a channel called the Straits of Súnda, which separates it from Sumatra, at a distance in one point of only fourteen miles; and on the south-east by the Straits of Báli, only two miles wide, which divide it from the island of that name. These islands, and others stretching eastward, form with Java a gentle curve of more than two thousand geographical miles, which with less regularity is continued from Acheen to Pegu on one side, and from Tímor to Papúa, or New Guinea, on the other: they constitute on the west and south, as do Bánka, Bíliton, 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 peninsula of India, Java is distant about one hundred and forty leagues, from Borneo about fifty-six, and from New Holland two hundred.
To what cause the island is indebted for its present name of Java[12] (or Jáwa as it is pronounced by the natives) is uncertain. Among the traditions of the country (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 jáwa-wut,[13] on which the inhabitants are supposed to have subsisted at that early period, and that it had been known previously only under the term of Núsa hára-hára or Núsa kêndang, meaning the island of wild uncultivated waste, or in which the hills run 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:" and 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 the market of Tyre, 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 connection between the Javan of Holy Writ and the Java of modern times. It appears, that the Arabs, who had widely extended their commercial intercourse, and established their religious faith over the greatest portion of the Indian Archipelago, long before the Europeans had navigated round the Cape of Good Hope, designate the whole of the nations and tribes which inhabit those regions by the general term of the people of Jawi, as in the following passage taken from one of their religious tracts:—"The people of Jawi do not observe with strictness the rule laid down for keeping the fast, inasmuch as they eat before the sun sets, while the Arabs continue the fast until that luminary has sunk below the horizon." Jawa or Jawi is also the name by which Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malayan Peninsula, and the islands lying amongst them, are known among the nations of Celebes, who apply the Búgis diminutive Jawa-Jawáka, or Java minor, to the Moluccas, Ámbon, Bánda, Tímor, and Éndé. Jabadios Insulæ, from Jaba, and dib, div or dio, has been employed in the largest sense by Europeans, and it is probable this was once generally the case among the Asiatics, with the terms Java, Jawa, Jawi, and Jaba,[14] which, as the appellations of people inhabiting the countries beyond the continent or distant, some have derived from the word jaù, of very general acceptation in eastern languages, and meaning beyond, distant.[15]
It is, perhaps, in consequence of these names having embraced the whole, or at least several of the islands collectively, that the accounts given by Marco Polo, and other early European voyagers, of particular islands, as Java Major and Java Minor, are so inconsistent with one another. The country described by Marco Polo as Java Minor, seems, beyond doubt, to have been the eastern coast of Sumatra; but that expression, "or Little Java," is now applied exclusively to Báli, as "Great Java" is to the island we are now describing. It is on the latter only, if we except what has been observed of the names given to the Archipelago generally by the natives of Celebes, that the islanders themselves apply the name of Jawa, in any of its forms, to their own country. It has there even a still more confined application, being generally limited to the eastern districts of the island, which may be considered as Java proper, in contra-distinction to the western districts, which are for the most part inhabited by a people called Súnda, from whom the Straits and Isles of Sunda have been named by Europeans.
Whether Sumatra, Java, or any other island of the Archipelago, or the whole or several of them collectively, may not have formed the Taprobane of the ancients, is perhaps still an undecided question, notwithstanding the claims to this distinction which have of late years been rather admitted than proved in favour of Ceylon. The most striking fact detailed in the accounts which have reached us of this ancient country, and one which, from its nature, is least likely to have been disfigured or perverted by the misrepresentations or prejudices of travellers, is, that it was bisected in nearly equal portions by the equinoctial line, and that to the southward of it the polar star was not visible. How can this statement be evaded, or in any way applied to Ceylon? Major Wilford seems inclined to consider Taprobane as derived from the Sanscrit words tapa (penance) and vana (forest or grove), a derivation equally favorable to the claims of the Javans, tapa and wana, or wono, having the like signification in their language; and if, as there is reason to believe, an extensive intercourse subsisted in very remote times between Western India and these islands, where was there a country that could more invite the retreat of holy men, than the evergreen islands which rise in endless clusters on the smooth seas of the Malayan Archipelago, where the elevation and tranquillity of devotion are fostered by all that is majestic and lovely in nature?
Although in Sumatra no traces of their residence have yet been discovered, except in the language and customs of the people; on Java, which is almost contiguous to it, it is abundantly attested by monuments still existing in stone and brass. In few countries, with which we are yet acquainted, are more extensive ruins to be found of temples dedicated to an ancient worship. If tradition may be trusted, every mountain had its tapa, or recluse, and the whole energies and resources of the country would appear to have been applied to the construction of those noble edifices, the ruins of which still strike the spectator with astonishment and veneration.
That these splendid and magnificent piles were erected under the superintendance of a foreign people, more skilled in the arts than the rude and simple natives of the islands, can scarcely be doubted; and that they were sacred to the rites of the Hindu religion, according to some persuasion or other, is equally clear, from the numerous images of deities and attributes by which they are adorned, many of which are still preserved in their original state. Further investigation may perhaps establish Java and Sumatra, or rather the Malayan ports (in which general term we may include all the islands containing the Malayan Ports) as not only the Taprobane or Tapavana of the ancients, but also the Sacred Isles of the Hindus.