(*Footnote. The name is said to be derived from the words menang,
signifying to win, and karbau, a buffalo; from a story, carrying a very
fabulous air, of a famous engagement on that spot between the buffaloes
and tigers, in which the former are stated to have acquired a complete
victory. Such is the account the natives give; but they are fond of
dealing in fiction, and the etymology has probably no better foundation
than a fanciful resemblance of sound.)

ORIGIN OF MALAYS.

It has hitherto been considered as an obvious truth, and admitted without
examination that, wherever they are found upon the numerous islands
forming this archipelago, they or their ancestors must have migrated from
the country named by Europeans (and by them alone) the Malayan peninsula
or peninsula of Malacca, of which the indigenous and proper inhabitants
were understood to be Malays; and accordingly in the former editions of
this work I spoke of the natives of Menangkabau as having acquired their
religion, language, manners, and other national characteristics from the
settling among them of genuine Malays from the neighbouring continent. It
will however appear from the authorities I shall produce, amounting as
nearly to positive evidence as the nature of the subject will admit, that
the present possessors of the coasts of the peninsula were on the
contrary in the first instance adventurers from Sumatra, who in the
twelfth century formed an establishment there, and that the indigenous
inhabitants, gradually driven by them to the woods and mountains, so far
from being the stock from whence the Malays were propagated, are an
entirely different race of men, nearly approaching in their physical
character to the negroes of Africa.

MIGRATION FROM SUMATRA.

The evidences of this migration from Sumatra are chiefly found in two
Malayan books well known, by character at least, to those who are
conversant with the written language, the one named Taju assalatin or
Makuta segala raja-raja, The Crown of all Kings, and the other, more
immediately to the purpose, Sulalat assalatin or Penurun-an segala
raja-raja, The Descent of all (Malayan) Kings. Of these it has not been
my good fortune to obtain copies, but the contents, so far as they apply
to the present subject, have been fully detailed by two eminent Dutch
writers to whom the literature of this part of the East was familiar.
Petrus van der Worm first communicated the knowledge of these historical
tr