considerably there and extended itself to the neighbouring
islands. Diogo do Couto, another celebrated historian,
who prosecuted his inquiries in India, mentions the
arrival at Malacca of an Arabian priest who converted
its monarch to the faith of the khalifs, and gave him
the name of Shah Muhammed in the year 1384. This
date however is evidently incorrect, as that king’s
reign was earlier by fifty years. Corneille le
Brun was informed by the king of Bantam in 1706 that
the people of Java were made converts to that sect
about three hundred years before. Valentyn states
that Sheik Mulana, by whom this conversion was effected
in 1406, had already disseminated his doctrine at Ache,
Pase (places in Sumatra), and Johor. From these
several sources of information, which are sufficiently
distinct from each other, we may draw this conclusion,
that the religion, which sprang up in Arabia in the
seventh century, had not made any considerable progress
in the interior of Sumatra earlier than the fourteenth,
and that the period of its introduction, considering
the vicinity to Malacca, could not be much later.
I have been told indeed, but cannot vouch for its
authenticity, that in 1782 these people counted 670
years from the first preaching of their religion, which
would carry the period back to 1112. It may be
added that in the island of Ternate the first Mahometan
prince reigned from 1466 to 1486; that Francis Xavier,
a celebrated Jesuit missionary, when he was at Amboina
in 1546 observed the people then beginning to learn
to write from the Arabians; that the Malays were allowed
to build a mosque at Goak in Makasar subsequently
to the arrival of the Portuguese in 1512; and that
in 1603 the whole kingdom had become Mahometan.
These islands, lying far to the eastward, and being
of less considerable account in that age than subsequent
transactions have rendered them, the zeal of religious
adventurers did not happen to be directed thither so
soon as to the countries bordering on the sea of India.
By some it has been asserted that the first sultan
of Menangkabau was a Xerif from Mecca, or descendant
of the khalifs, named Paduka Sri Sultan Ibrahim, who,
settling in Sumatra, was received with honour by the
princes of the country, Perapati-si-batang and his
brother, and acquired sovereign authority. They
add that the sultans who now reside at Pagar-ruyong
and at Suruwasa are lineally descended from that Xerif,
whilst he who resides at Sungei Trap, styled Datu Bandhara
putih, derives his origin from Perapati. But
to this supposition there are strong objections.
The idea so generally entertained by the natives, and
strengthened by the glimmering lights that the old
writers afford us, bespeaks an antiquity to this empire
that stretches far beyond the probable era of the
establishment of the Mahometan religion in the island.
Radin Tamanggung, son of a king of Madura, a very intelligent
person, and who as a prince himself was conversant
with these topics, positively asserted to me that