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Indian Influence in the Malay World1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Richard Winstedt
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It might be thought that geography would have opened the Malay archipelago predominantly to the influence of China, but oddly enough the impact of her great civilization on the Malay world has been slight. As early as the seventh century a.d. Chinese monks sailed down to Sumatra to study the Buddhist canon, and eight centuries later the Sultans of Malacca and other Malay princes were still sending envoys to China as Malay rulers had done for hundreds of years. But China's difficult language and intricate ideographs, and her want of missionary zeal and of continuous overseas imperialism were barriers to other than trade relations. To the western half of the Malay archipelago India was nearer, and India got first into the field. With little exaggeration it has been said of Europe that it owes its theology, its literature, its science, and its art to Greece: with no greater exaggeration it may be said of the Malayan races that till the nineteenth century they owed everything to India: religions, a political system, medieval astrology and medicine, literature, arts and crafts.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 76 , Issue 3-4 , October 1944 , pp. 186 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1944

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References

page 193 note 1 The Sultans of Perak are descended from the Raja Parameswara who founded Malacca c. 1400. That title probably implied that its founder was married to a princess above him in rank (Dr. vanCallenfels, Stein, Oudheidkundige Verslag, Batavia, 1923, pp. 165–6)Google Scholar. According to d'Albuquerque he was from Palembang, the consort of a Javanese princess, and the myths set down in the ‘Malay Annals’ would derive the Malacca house from Palembang. Callenfels prefers the view that Raja Parameswara was a Javanese nobleman (JRAS., Malayan Branch, 1937, vol. xv, pt. iiGoogle Scholar, “The Founder of Malacca,” pp. 160–6). In that case it is possible that the Malacca house claimed connection with Palembang through the marriage of the Raja Parameswara with a Muslim princess of the Pasai family that ruled Sri Vijaya's old colony, Kedah, and perhaps Trengganu, and may therefore have claimed relationship with the Sailendra rulers of Sri Vijaya. The son of the marriage assumed the old Sri Vijaya title of Sri Maharaja and introduced some ancient system of court ceremonial. (Did Pasai rule Kedah in the fourteenth century ? Winstedt, R. O., JRAS., Malayan Branch, 1940, vol. xviii, pt. ii, p. 150)Google Scholar. The crest of the Sailendra house was two carps (Hindoe-Javaansche Geschiedenis, DrKrom, N. J., Hague, 1931)Google Scholar. On a Perak royal trumpet and a Perak royal necklace figure a naga and a fish (“History of Perak,” Winstedt, R. O., JRAS., Malayan Branch, 1934, vol. xii, pt. i, pls. iii and xiii)Google Scholar, but so far this symbol is unexplained. According to the Perak State secret the first ruler of Palembang bore the obviously corrupt title of Bichitram Shah, for which there must be some Sanskrit foundation. Pasai folk-lore made the founder of Pasai a Merah Silu (? = Sinhalese Mahasilu= Pali Mahachuli, Chula).