phase has been superseded
by Chinese culture with a little Mohammedanism. But in another area we
find three successive stages of culture, indigenous, Indian and
Mohammedan. This area includes the Malay Peninsula with a large part
of the Malay Archipelago, and the earliest stratum with which we need
concern ourselves is Malay. The people who bear this name are
remarkable for their extraordinary powers of migration by sea, as
shown by the fact that languages connected with Malay are spoken in
Formosa and New Zealand, in Easter Island and Madagascar, but their
originality both in thought and in the arts of life is small. The
three stages are seen most clearly in Java where the population was
receptive and the interior accessible. Sumatra and Borneo also passed
through them in a fashion but the indigenous element is still
predominant and no foreign influence has been able to affect either
island as a whole. Islam gained no footing in Bali which remains
curiously Hindu but it reached Celebes and the southern Philippines,
in both of which Indian influence was slight.[369] The destiny of
south-eastern Asia with its islands depends on the fact that the tide
of trade and conquest whether Hindu, Moslim or European, flowed from
India or Ceylon to the Malay Peninsula and Java and thence northwards
towards China with a reflux westwards in Champa and Camboja. Burma and
Siam lay outside this track. They received their culture from India
mainly by land and were untouched by Mohammedanism. But the Mohammedan
current which affected the Malays was old and continuous. It
started from Arabia in the early days of the Hijra and had nothing to
do with the Moslim invasions which entered India by land.

2

Indian civilization appears to have existed in Java from at least the
fifth century of our era.[370] Much light has been thrown on its
history of late by the examination of inscriptions and of fairly
ancient literature but the record still remains fragmentary. There are
considerable gaps: the seat of power shifted from one district to
another and at most epochs the whole island was not subject to one
ruler, so that the title king of Java merely indicates a prince
pre-eminent among others doubtfully subordinate to him.

The name Java is probably the Sanskrit _Yava_ used in the sense of
grain, especially millet. In the Ramayana[371] the monkeys of Hanuman
are bidden to seek for Sita in various places including Yava-dvipa,
which contains se