The best remarks
on the subject I have met with are by Mr. Logan in his Journal of the
Ind. Arch. II. 610.
The "kingdoms" were certainly many more than eight throughout the island.
At a later day De Barros enumerates 29 on the coast alone. Crawford
reckons 15 different nations and languages on Sumatra and its dependent
isles, of which 11 belong to the great island itself.
(Hist. of Ind. Arch. III. 482; Valentyn, V. (Sumatra), p. 5; Desc.
Dict. p. 7, 417; Gildemeister, p. 193; Crawf. Malay Dict. 119; J. Ind.
Arch. V. 313.)
NOTE 3. - The kingdom of PARLAK is mentioned in the Shijarat Malayu or
Malay Chronicle, and also in a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei, of
which an abstract is given by Dulaurier, in connection with the other
states of which we shall speak presently. It is also mentioned (Barlak),
as a city of the Archipelago, by Rashiduddin. Of its extent we have no
knowledge, but the position (probably of its northern extremity) is
preserved in the native name, Tanjong (i.e. Cape) Parlak of the N.E.
horn of Sumatra, called by European seamen "Diamond Point," whilst the
river and town of Perla, about 32 miles south of that point, indicate, I
have little doubt, the site of the old capital.[1] Indeed in Malombra's
Ptolemy (Venice, 1574), I find the next city of Sumatra beyond Pacen
marked as Pulaca.
The form Ferlec shows that Polo got it from the Arabs, who having no p
often replace that letter by f. It is notable that the Malay alphabet,
which is that of the Arabic with necessary modifications, represents the
sound p not by the Persian pe ([Arabic]), but by the Arabic fe
([Arabic]), with three dots instead of one ([Arabic]).
A Malay chronicle of Achin dates the accession of the first Mahomedan king
of that state, the nearest point of Sumatra to India and Arabia, in the
year answering to A.D. 1205, and this is the earliest conversion among the
Malays on record. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there were Kings of
Achin in 1205, or for centuries after (unless indeed Lambri is to be
regarded as Achin), but the introduction of Islam may be confidently
assigned to that age.
The notice of the Hill-people, who lived like beasts and ate human flesh,
presumably attaches to the Battas or Bataks, occupying high table-lands in
the interior of Sumatra. They do not now extend north beyond lat. 3 deg.
The interior of Northern Sumatra seems to remain a terra incognita, and
even with the coast we are far less familiar than our ancestors were 250
years ago.
