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 name of the land in the neighbourhood of which such squalls prevail.  In a Persian work of the year 1611 the name of Shamatrah occurs as one of those places where the Portuguese had established themselves; and in some very modern Malayan correspondence I find the word Samantara employed (along with another more usual, which will be hereafter mentioned) to designate this island.

Probably derived from the Sanskrit.

These, it is true, are not entirely free from the suspicion of having found their way to the Persians and Malays through the medium of European intercourse; but to a person who is conversant with the languages of the continent of India it must be obvious that the name, however written, bears a strong resemblance to words in the Sanskrit language:  nor should this appear extraordinary when we consider (what is now fully admitted) that a large proportion of the Malayan is derived from that source, and that the names of many places in this and the neighbouring countries (such as Indrapura and Indragiri in Sumatra, Singapura at the extremity of the peninsula, and Sukapura and