A grammar of the Malayan language, with an introduction and praxis..

INTRODUCTION. vii
From such a Malayan country rather than from any maritime
estabhshments, which ahvays hear the stamp of colonization, we
might be justified in presuming the Malays of other parts to
have proceeded in the first instance ; but it happens that we are
not obliged to rest our opinion upon this reasoning from proba-
bilities, for we have in support of it the authority of the native
historians of the peninsula, the most distinguished of whom
assert in positive terms that the earliest Malayan settlers there,
by whom the city of Singa-pura was founded at njong tanah or
" the extremity of the land," in the twelfth century, migrated
in the spirit of adventure from Sumatra, where they had pre-
viously inhabited a district on the banks of the river Maldyu,
said, in the style of mythology, to have its source in the moun-
tain of Mahd-meru. For some details respecting this emigra-
tion, the transactions that succeeded, the expulsion of the
Malays from Singa-piira, in the reign of their fifth king, Sri
Iskander Shah, by the forces of the king of Majapdhit, at that
time the principal monarch of java, their founding the city of
Malacca in J 253, and also respecting the connexion still under-
stood to subsist between Manangkdhau as the parent state, and
that of Rembau, a district situated inland of Malacca, " the
raja of which, as well as his officers receive their authority and
appointments from the Sumatran sovereign," I must take the
liberty of referring the reader to the History of Sumatra (ed
3. p. 325 to 345), in which he will find the authorities for what
is here advanced, collected and discussed. It is not however tc
be confidently expected that an opinion so much at variance witt
those hitherto prevailing on the subject, will be adopted without
further and strict investigation. To the advocates for the supe-
riority of the Malays oi' the peninsula and of their language
over