India And Ancient Malaya - PNM · 2019. 5. 6. · of the Australo-Melanesoid racial group. These people also spread to Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and the Andaman Islands. Besides

INDIA and

ANCIENT MALA Y A (FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO circa A. D. 1400)

D. DEVAHUTI M.A. Ph.D. (London) F.R. A.S.

Lecturer in History, University of Queensland,

Published by DONALD MOORE for

• EASTERN UNIVERSITIES PRESS LTD. SINGAPORE

1965

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I. ANCIENT MALAYA

II. MALAY PENINSULA , -

III. SRI VIJAYA, JAVA AND .MALAYA

IV. HINDUISM IN MALAYA

viii

xi

xiii

xvi 1

17

41

69

V. BUDDHISM IN MALAYA 102

VI. THEATRE, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 112

VII. ART, ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE 121

CONCLUSION 139

BIBLIOGRAPHY 142

INDEX 156

vii

CHAPTER I

ANCIENT MALAYA

The Land and Its People

THE HISTORY of ancient Malaya is of absorbing interest to the anthropologist and the historian, as Malaya's geo­graphical situation made it the meeting place of diverse races and cultures. In the words of Sir G. Elliot Smith, Malaya was the "great jumping off place of Asia and cultural exchange". For Indian culture, especially, Malaya acted as the main gate for expansion farther east.

In remote times the peninsula of Malaya was con­tinuous with Borneo, Sumatra, and Java, the whole land mass forming the southernmost extension of the continent of Asia. Celebes, New Guinea and the neigh­bouring islands were, on the other hand, joined to Aust­ralia. There was always a break between Borneo and Celebes and perhaps also between Lombok and Bali. The sea between the archaic continents of Asia and Australia has been found to be very deep, even though the distance at some places, as between Bali and Lombok, is only about fifteen miles. The geologists in­form us that the area covered by the Java Sea was perhaps the first to sink as a result of volcanic activity. Later Borneo and afterwards Sumatra became de­tached and since then many other elevations and de­pressions have occurred.

Today, the peninsula of Malaya projects from the Asian mainland far into the ocean, dividing the Indian Ocean from the China Sea. Modern Malaya comprises the lower half of the peninsula, the narrow northern

2 INDIA AND ANCIENT MALAYA

part being the territory of Thailand. From the view­point of ancient history, however, it will be more ac­curate to think in terms of the peninsula of Malaya­a geographical entity-which was often also a political entity. In the same way Malaysia in the present con­text should have ethnic, not political connotation. Of her northern neighbours, the Hinduised kingdoms of Funan (Cambodia), and Thailand held sway over Malaya, the former in the early centuries A.D. and the latter during the hundred years preceding the rise of Malacca. During the long intervening period Malaya was Sri Vijaya's domain. The disintegration of sri Vijaya in the early fourteenth century coincides with the rise of the Majapahit empire of Java, which exer­cised influence over a large area of the archipelago, including Malaya.

The Indian civilisation to take root so deeply in the Malayan soil pervaded practically the whole of the vast South-East Asian archipelago, including the far-off islands of Celebes and the Philippines. To see it on a gigantic canvas ancient Malaya was in fact one of a huge family of nations that came under the impress of Indian culture. This family consisted of people vastly different from each other, separated by great distances, very much themselves, yet having one thing in com­mon. Hindu influences and the Buddhist religion swept the greater part of the civilised world in the years im­mediately before and after the beginning of the Christian era. Indian art forms, religion, and philoso­phy influenced countries as far west as Afghanistan and Central Asia, as far north-east as China and Japan and as far south-east as the Malay Archipelago.

In the prehistoric period, the Malay Peninsula played an important role in the spread of various races in this

ANCIENT MALAYA 3

part of the world. About 8000 B.C. it served as the connecting link down which travelled the ancestors of the Australian and the Papuan aborigines. About 2500 B.C. the ancestors of the Malays themselves trekked down from Yunnan in China on their way to Malaya, Sumatra, and Java.

The most ancient implements excavated in the Malay Peninsula were discovered at Kota Tampan in the Perak valley. They share some characteristics with artifacts from the pleistocene terraces in the valley of the Irrawaddy. Next in point of time are the skeletal remains, found both in Indo-China and Malaya, of the people of the Mesolithic culture who are classified as of the Australo-Melanesoid racial group. These people also spread to Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and the Andaman Islands. Besides these traits, the Malays show four or five other racial types, but they may be con­veniently divided into three main groups: the Negrito; the Senoi, classed by some as Veddoid, or more recent­ly Indo-Australoid, but generally as Indonesian; and the J akun or Proto-Malay, or Mongoloid Indonesian. The scientist, however, divides them in two blocks, the predominantly Negrito and the predominantly Indo­nesian blocks, especially as in all three are present the older Australoid and Melanesoid strains. Roughly speaking, the Negrito, called Semang in Kectah and Perak, and Pangan in Kelantan, live in the north of Malaya, the Sakai in the centre and the Proto-Malays in the south and around the coasts.

The Negrito, of short stature, with brownish-black complexion and curly hair, is closely akin to the Aetas of the Philippines and the Mincopies of the Andamans (Frontispiece). He probably inhabited a large area in this region in prehistoric times when its shallow seas

4 INDIA AND ANCIENT MALAYA

were dry land. The Negrito is thought to contribute an element in the peoples of Indo-China, Malaya, the Malay Archipelago, New Guinea and parts of India. This ele­ment may perhaps be Melanesoid.

In Malaya there are only about three thousand Negritos-Semang or Pangan. They live in family groups without a tribal head or organisation and lead a nomadic life, living on jungle fruits, roots, and wild game. They do not build houses but sleep on a floor of sticks under a wall-less leaf shelter supported on sticks. They cannot make rafts or boats. Their weapon is the ancient bow and arrow but they have borrowed the blow-pipe of the Sakai. Their language is limited. They dread thunder and lightning.

The Senoi is comparatively taller, has wavy hair, a cinnamon complexion and more refined features (Plate I). He has Australoid and Veddoid strains, the latter to be found in Ceylon and southern India, but generally the Sakai is considered to be a relative of the Bataks of Sumatra, the Dayaks of Borneo and some hill tribes of Yunnan, Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago. His language is mainly Mon-Khmer.

There are some 24,000 Sakais in Malaya, divided into tribes and families under patriarchal chiefs. They plant rice, sugar, millet, tubers, plantain and tobacco. Their houses, like those of the Proto-Malays, are built on piles. They are animists, believing in a future life and in many evil spirits. They usually desert the place where a death has occurred and put food and weapons on the graves of their dead. Like the Proto-Malays and the Mongols, they believe in the shaman or magician whose dead body they leave suspended on trees so that the tiger who is his familiar spirit may rend his body and release the soul of his master.

ANCIENT MALAYA 5

Most important of all the migrations into Malaya was that of the neolithic Mongoloid Indonesian or Proto-Malay. They left the continent of Asia perhaps between 2500 and 1500 B.C., before the tanged adze was introduced by the Mongoloids of Assam and Burma to the MU1)Qas of Orissa and Chhota Nagpur. The tanged adze is found in Burma, Thailand and Indo­China but not in south Malaya or the Archipelago. The Proto-Malays carried their type of adze from China southward to Laos, Malaya, Java and Sumatra. From there, these peoples, who were to carry their quadrangular adze, their unglazed cord-marked pottery of great variety and their language, to such distances, crossed to the archipelago in outrigger canoes. These canoes are developed from the bamboo outrigger still in use on many rivers of Burma and Indo-China. In these vessels they crossed the seas from Madagascar to the Easter Islands and colonised Polynesia. Even be­fore these neolithic people left the Asian mainland they made pottery and megaliths. They were head-hunters, as they believed in acquiring the soul-energy of the dead they ate. They were familiar with sugar-cane, banana, coconut and bamboo and they cultivated millet and rice which they also used for making fermented drinks. Their diet consisted of sea-food and wild game such as the pig and the buffalo. They lived in houses on piles made of bamboo and had some knowledge of arithmetic and certainly of astronomy, which aided them in their voyages.

The straight-haired and brown-skinned Jakuns who inhabit the southern half of Malaya and the various islands around Singapore are the descendants of the Proto-Malays (Plate II) . Their different tribes in differ­ent places have various names, such as Biduanda,

6 INDIA AND ANCIENT MALAYA

Mantra, Orang Benua, Orang Laut and so on, but they can all be termed-J akuns. They have hereditary patriarchal chiefs. Rice cultivation is not their indus­try. The jungle tribes live on fruits and wild game while the sea-folk are fishermen. They are not Muslims. Their religion is animism but they also invoke Hindu deities. Their language is a form of Malay.

Tome Pires, the Portuguese writer of the sixteenth century, met the Jakuns around the Kerimun Islands where they lived by piracy. As people of s~ lat or "the straits" they are termed by him Cellates. Another con­temporary writer, Ludovico di Varthema, also calls them "men of the sea". These sea-gypsies are said to have guided the founder of Malacca to his settlement, by whom they were later rewarded with titles and offices for their services. Later, in the defence of Malacca against the Portuguese, their poisoned arrows from blow-pipes caused the greatest number of deaths in the enemy's camp. In the eighteenth century they served Johore ably and loyally, installed as they were in high positions by her sultans.

Another notable addition to Malaya's population in ancient times was that of the immigrants from Suma­tra and other Indonesian islands. The most important movement, however, was that which brought the "Deutero-Malays" to this country from the neighbour­hood of Yunnan several hundred years before the com­mencement of the Christian era. These bearers of the iron culture occupied the fertile plains, driving the earlier inhabitants into the hills and jungles. Perhaps because they represented a different strain, perhaps because of the intermarriage of their southern country­men with the aborigines and the Sumatrans, the des­cendants of the Deutero-Malays in Kelantan and Patani

ANCIENT MALAYA 7

are bigger than the southern Malays and have been compared to the Polynesians. The better climate and the superior diet of an early rice-growing area may also have played their part in giving them their stature.

In the course of time various other elements mingled with the early Malays. The Indians were in contact with Malaya probably from the fifth century B.C., the Chinese from the Chou times. The Arabs, the Thais, the Malay immigrants from Java and Sumatra, the Bugis of Celebes and lastly the Europeans have all contributed different strains to the population of Malaya. The gentle, friendly and charming modern Malay, with his broad head, olive skin and semi­Mongoloid eyes and nose, is the inheritor of the various races and cultures that were nurtured on Malayan soil. His description by Duarte Barbosa writing in the sixteenth century would in most respects apply to the modern Malay:

They are well-set-up men and go bare from the waist up but are clad in cotton garments below. They, the most distinguished among them, wear short coats which come half-way down their thighs, of silk cloth-in grain or brocade-and over this they wear girdles; at their waists they carry daggers in damascene­work which ' they call creeses. Their women are tawny-coloured, clad in very fine silk garments and short skirts decorated with gold and jewels. They are very comely, always well-attired and have very fine hair. . .. They live in large houses outside the city with many orchards, gardens and tanks, where they lead a pleasant life. They are polished and well-bred, fond of music and given to love.

At the time of the founding of the first Indianised states in Malaya around the beginning of the Christian era, the Malays were leading a well-settled community life. They had their settlements at river mouths or in the fertile river valleys, the water highway