The History of Sumatra | Page 8

by Antonio Pigafetta, the companion of Ferdinand Magellan, of the famous circumnavigatory voyage performed by the Spaniards in the years 1519 to 1522, it is stated that, from their apprehension of falling in with Portuguese ships, they pursued their westerly route from the island of Timor, by the Laut Kidol, or southern ocean, leaving on their right hand the island of Zamatra (written in another part of the journal, Somatra) or Taprobana of the ancients. Mention is also made of a native of that island being on board, who served them usefully as an interpreter in many of the places they visited; and we are here furnished with the earliest specimen of the Malayan language.
PORTUGUESE EXPEDITIONS.
Previously however to this Spanish navigation of the Indian seas, by the way of South America, the expeditions of the Portuguese round the Cape of Good Hope had rendered the island well known, both in regard to its local circumstances and the manners of its inhabitants.
EMANUEL KING OF PORTUGAL.
In a letter from Emanuel King of Portugal to Pope Leo the Tenth, dated in 1513, he speaks of the discovery of Zamatra by his subjects; and the writings of Juan de Barros, Castaneda, Osorius, and Maffaeus, detail the operations of Diogo Lopez de Sequeira at Pedir and Pase in 1509, and those of the great Alfonso de Alboquerque at the same places, in 1511, immediately before his attack upon Malacca. Debarros also enumerates the names of twenty of the principal places of the island with considerable precision, and observes that the peninsula or chersonesus had the epithet of aurea given to it on account of the abundance of gold carried thither from Monancabo and Barros, countries in the island of C(cedilla)amatra.
Having thus noticed what has been written by persons who actually visited this part of India at an early period, or published from their oral communication by contemporaries, it will not be thought necessary to multiply authorities by quoting the works of subsequent commentators and geographers, who must have formed their judgments from the same original materials.
NAME OF SUMATRA.
With respect to the name of Sumatra, we perceive that it was unknown both to the Arabian travellers and to Marco Polo, who indeed was not likely to acquire it from the savage natives with whom he had intercourse. The appellation of Java minor which he gives to the island seems to have been quite arbitrary, and not grounded upon any authority, European or Oriental, unless we can suppose that he had determined it to be the I'azadith nesos of Ptolemy; but from the other parts of his relation it does not appear that he was acquainted with the work of that great geographer, nor could he have used it with any practical advantage. At all events it could not have led him to the distinction of a greater and a lesser Java; and we may rather conclude that, having visited (or heard of) the great island properly so called, and not being able to learn the real name of another, which from its situation and size might well be regarded as a sister island, he applied the same to both, with the relative epithets of major and minor. That Ptolemy's Jaba-dib or dio was intended, however vaguely, for the island of Java, cannot be doubted. It must have been known to the Arabian merchants, and he was indefatigable in his inquiries; but at the same time that they communicated the name they might be ill qualified to describe its geographical position.
In the rude narrative of Odoricus we perceive the first approach to the modern name in the word Sumoltra. Those who immediately followed him write it with a slight, and often inconsistent, variation in the orthography, Sumotra, Samotra, Zamatra, and Sumatra. But none of these travellers inform us from whom they learned it; whether from the natives or from persons who had been in the habits of frequenting it from the continent of India; which latter I think the more probable. Reland, an able oriental scholar, who directed his attention to the languages of the islands, says it obtains its appellation from a certain high land called Samadra, which he supposes to signify in the language of the country a large ant; but in fact there is not any spot so named; and although there is some resemblance between semut, the word for an ant, and the name in question, the etymology is quite fanciful. Others have imagined that they find an easy derivation in the word samatra, to be met with in some Spanish or Portuguese dictionaries, as signifying a sudden storm of wind and rain, and from whence our seamen may have borrowed the expression; but it is evident that the order of derivation is here reversed, and that the phrase is taken from the