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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
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286
MARCO POLO BOOK III.
them and stuff them and daub them with saffron and
other things until they look like men. But you see it is
all a cheat ; for nowhere in India nor anywhere else in
the world were there ever men seen so small as these
pretended pygmies.
Now I will say no more of the kingdom of Basma,
but tell you of the others in succession.
NOTE I.—Java the Less is the Island of SUMATRA. Here there is no exaggeration in the dimension assigned to its circuit, which is about 2300 miles. The old Arabs of the 9th century give it a circuit of Soo parasangs, or say 2800 miles, and Barbosa reports the estimate of the Mahomedan seamen as 2100 miles. Compare the more reasonable accuracy of these estimates of Sumatra, which the navigators knew in its entire compass, with the wild estimates of Java Proper, of which they knew but the northern coast.
Polo by no means stands alone in giving the name of Java to the island now called Sumatra. The terms Jawa, /awl, were applied by the Arabs to the islands and productions of the Archipelago generally (e.g., Lublin Jawí, " Java frankincense," whence by corruption Benzoin), but also specifically to Sumatra. Thus Sumatra is the Jdwah both of Abulfeda and of Ihn Batuta, the latter of whom spent some time on the island, both in going to China and on his return. The Java also of the Catalan Map appears to be Sumatra. Javakz' again is the name applied in the Singalese chronicles to the Malays in general. Jcizt and Dawa are the names still applied by the Battaks and the people of Nias respectively to the Malays, showing probably that these were looked on as Javanese by those tribes who did not partake of the civilisation diffused from Java. In Siamese also the Malay language is called Chawa ; and even on the Malay peninsula, the traditional slang for a half-breed born from a Kling (or Coromandel) father and a Malay mother is Jciwí Pcrkcrn, "a Jawi (i.e. Malay) of the market." De Barros says that all the people of Sumatra called themselves by the common name of jauijs. (Dec. III. liv. v. cap. 1.)
There is some reason to believe that the application of the name Java to Sumatra is of very old date. For the oldest inscription of ascertained date in the Archipelago which has yet been read, a Sanskrit one from Pagaroyang, the capital of the ancient Malay state of Menang-kabau in the heart of Sumatra, bearing a date equivalent to A. n. 656, entitles the monarch whom it commemorates, Adityadharma by name, the king of " the First Java" (or rather Yava). This Mr. Friedrich interprets to mean Sumatra. It is by no means impossible that the Iabadiu, or Yávadvípa of Ptolemy may he Sumatra rather than Java.
An accomplished Dutch Orientalist suggests that the Arabs originally applied the terms Great Java and Little Java to Java and Sumatra respectively, not because of their imagined relation in size, but as indicating the former to be Java Proper. Thus also, he says, there is a Great Acheh (Achin) which does not imply that the place so called is greater than the well-known state of Achin (of which it is in fact a part), but because it is Acheh Proper. A like feeling may have suggested the Great Bulgaria, Great Hungary, Great Turkey of the medieval travellers. These were, or were supposed to be, the original seats of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Turks. The Great Horde of the Kirghiz Kazaks is, as regards numbers, not the greatest, but the smallest of the three. But the others look upon it as the most ancient. The Burmese are alleged to call the Rakhain or people of Arakan Afrannla Gyí or Great Burmese, and to consider their dialect the most ancient form of the language. And,
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