A Manual of the Malay language / With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay

by Sir William Edward Maxwell

“Now the Malays, an essentially nautical people, are in the habit of settling along the banks of rivers and streams, whence it comes that a great number of their towns have taken the names of the rivers on or near which they are situated, such as Johor, Pahang, &c. In this way ‘the country situated near the river of which the current is rapid,’ Sungei Malayu, would take the name of Tanah Malayu, and the inhabitants of this country (governed in those times by a chief named Demang Lebar Daun) that of Orang Malayu, just as the inhabitants of Johor and Pahang are called Orang Johor, Orang Pahang; and their language is called Bahasa Orang Malayu or Bahasa Malayu.

“The name of Malayu thus applied to the people and to the language spread with the descendants of Demang Lebar Daun, whose son-in-law, Sang Sapurba, became king of Menangkabau or Pagar Ruwang, a powerful empire in the interior of Sumatra. A grandson of Demang Lebar Daun, named Sang Mutiaga, became king of Tanjong Pura. A second, Sang Nila Utama, married the daughter of the queen of Bentan, and immediately founded the kingdom of Singapore, a place previously known as Tamassak. It was a descendant of his, Iskander Shah, who founded the empire of Malacca, which extended over a great part of the peninsula; and, after the capture of Malacca by the Portuguese, became the empire of Johor. It is thus that a portion of the Indian Archipelago has taken the name of Tanah Malayu, ‘Malay country.’

“One of the granddaughters of Demang Lebar Daun was married to the Batara or king of Majapahit, a kingdom which extended over the island of Java and beyond it; and another was married to the Emperor of China, a circumstance which contributed not a little to render the name of Malayu or Malay known in distant parts.”[44]

This theory requires that we should suppose that a word of wide application, which is known wherever Malays have established themselves, is, in fact, a Malay word disguised in a form found only in Javanese and the dialect of Palembang. If the arguments adduced in support of it are to apply, we must first of all admit the very doubtful historical accuracy of the Sejarah Malayu, from which they are drawn.

There is a Malay word, layu, which means “faded,” “withered,” and it is only the exigency of finding a word applicable to a river that makes it necessary to look for a derivation in laju, swift. In this or some kindred sense the word laju is found in Javanese, Sundanese, and Dayak; but why it should give its name, in the form of layu, to a river in Sumatra, and thence to the whole Malay race, is not very obvious. A river named in consequence of its swift current would be called by Malays Sungei Laju, not Sungei Malaju. Even if the derivation of Malayu from melaju had the support of the Malays themselves, Malay etymologies are not often safe guides. Not much, for instance, can be said in favour of the fanciful derivation of Sumatra from semut raya, “large ant,” which is given by the author of the Sâjarah Malayu.[45]

It is impossible to treat the story of Sang Sapurba, the first Malay raja, as historical. The name, “Maha-Meru,” sufficiently shows that we are upon mythological ground. The story is as follows:— Three young men descend from the heavens of Indra (ka indra-an) upon the mountain Maha-Meru, on the slopes of which they meet two women who support themselves by planting hill-padi. Supernatural incidents mark the advent of the strangers. The very corn in the ground puts forth ears of gold, while its leaves become silver and its stalks copper. One of the new-comers rides on a white bull, and carries a sword called Chora (Sansk. kshura, a razor) samandang-kini. They are received by the natives of the district (Palembang) and made rajas. He who rides the bull becomes king of Menangkabau, and the other two receive minor kingdoms.

It is not difficult to recognise here certain attributes of the god Çiva, with which, by a not unnatural confusion of ideas, Muhammadan Malays, the recipients of the old traditions, have clothed their first raja.

Maha-Meru, or Sumeru, on which are the abodes of the gods, is placed by Hindu geographers in the centre of the earth. Malaya is mentioned in the Puranas as a mountain in which the Godavari and other rivers take their rise. The white bull of Sang Sapurba is evidently the vahan of Çiva, and the name of the sword bears a close resemblance to manda-kini, the name given in heaven to the sacred Ganges, which springs from the head of Çiva. Most of the incidents in the story, therefore, are of purely Hindu origin, and this gives great probability to the conjecture which assigns a Sanskrit source to the word Malayu. The Straits of Malacca abound with places with Sanskrit names. Not to speak of Singha-pura, there are the islands of Langka-wi and Lingga and the towns of Indragiri and Indrapura, &c. Sumeru (in Java), Madura, Ayuthia (in Siam), and many other names, show how great Indian influences have been in past times in the far East. May it not be, therefore, that Malaya or Malayu[46] was the name by which the earliest Sanskrit-speaking adventurers from India denominated the rude tribes of Sumatra and the peninsula with whom they came in contact, just as Jawi is the name given to Malays by the Arabs, the term in either case being adopted by the people from those to whom they looked up with reverence as their conquerors or teachers? According to this view, the introduction of a river, Malayu, into the story of Sang Sapurba is an ex post facto way of explaining the name, inserted with this object by the native author of the Sâjarah Malayu.

If it be granted that the story of Sang Sapurba is mythological, it becomes unnecessary to follow any attempt to show that the name of Malayu received additional celebrity from the marriages of granddaughters of Demang Lebar Daun with the Batara of Majapahit and the Emperor of China! The contemptuous style in which Malay, Javanese, and other barbarian rajas are spoken of by ancient Chinese historians leaves but slender probability to the legend that an Emperor of China once took a Malay princess as his wife.[47]

From this subject it is natural to proceed to another disputed etymology, namely, the origin of the word Jawi, which is often used by the Malays for the word Malayu in speaking of their language and written character, bahasa jawi meaning Malay language, and surat jawi a document written in Malay. It is not necessary to go into all the various conjectures on the subject, which will be found in the works of Marsden, Crawfurd, Favre, and others.