The relations between Southern India and the Straits Settlements
W.A. O’Sullivan’s 1901 article in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society examines the historical civilizing influences on the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago, arguing that while Arab traders introduced Islam, the broader social and linguistic civilization of the Malays was derived from India—first from a northern Aryan Hindu source and subsequently from the Dravidian traders of Southern India. The piece is fundamentally a linguistic-archaeological argument, using the etymology of Malay vocabulary to trace the direction, timing, and nature of foreign cultural contact.
Summary
O’Sullivan opens by revisiting a debate sparked by C.O. Blagden’s earlier paper on Arabian influences in the Far East. He concedes that Arab traders (and their accompanying religious teachers) were responsible for the conversion of the Malay and Indonesian peoples to Islam, a conclusion he supports by observing that nearly every Malay word connected with religious worship is of pure Arabic origin. However, he insists that the Arabs contributed little beyond religion to the social life and adat (customary law) of the Malays. The question he then poses is where the balance of Malay civilization—the arts, social institutions, and unwritten legal codes that distinguish the Malays from “the rudest of savages”—originated.
His answer is India, and he distinguishes two successive phases of influence. The first was a “domination of intellect, if not of conquest” by a genuine Aryan Hindu race from central or northern India, which introduced the foundational Sanskrit vocabulary of Malay (words for religion, plough, time, etc.) and established a Hindu civilization in Java that persisted until 1475. He rejects Crawfurd’s theory that the Telugu were the agents of this early civilizing, arguing that no Telugu vernacular words appear in Malay. The second phase was the commercial influence of the Dravidian peoples of Southern India, particularly the Tamils, who arrived as traders and introduced a body of vocabulary connected with commerce, navigation, and everyday material life. O’Sullivan marshals extensive etymological evidence—kapal (ship), kedei (shop), gedong (storehouse), cherutu (cigar), bedi (gun), mempelai (bridegroom)—to demonstrate that the Tamils not only supplied the Malays with trade goods but also with the very instruments and concepts of commerce and seafaring.
The article closes with a counterfactual: had Islam not been introduced by the Arabs, the Tamil commercial presence might have led to a considerable racial fusion along the coasts. In fact, a partial fusion did occur in later centuries, producing the mixed Jawi Pekan community, in which the Bengali element is as strong as the Tamil owing to the influx of North Indian immigrants and convicts during the East India Company period.
Key Findings
- The Hindu civilization of Java persisted until 1475 A.D., when conversion to Islam took place; Dutch scholars fix the introduction of Hinduism to Java at the beginning of the 6th century A.D. (pp. 68–70).
- Pure Tamil words in Malay include kapal (ship), kedei (shop), gedong (storehouse), peti (box), cherutu (cigar), badam (almond), kalde (ass), belimbing (fruit), beludu (velvet), bedi (gun), and mempelai (bridegroom) (pp. 71–73).
- The Malay word prahu (boat) is derived from the Tamil padagu, suggesting the Tamils introduced the Malays to elementary navigation (p. 72).
- Words of Persian, Arabic, and Bengali origin in Malay (meja, baki, kupi, topi, apam) passed through Tamil as an intermediary, confirming Tamil influence was antecedent to Arabic contact (pp. 72–73).
- The Portuguese, on first visiting the Straits emporia at the start of the 16th century, were “amazed at the concourse of foreign vessels” assembled there, attesting to the long-standing commercial network between Southern India and the Malay coast (p. 71).
- Snouck-Hurgronje records that the settlement of “Klings” (Tamils) from Southern India in Aceh is of great antiquity, and that considerable Tamil colonies took up permanent residence there (pp. 71, 73).
Conclusion
O’Sullivan’s definitive takeaway is that the civilization of the Malays is a palimpsest of two distinct Indian influences: an early Aryan-Hindu intellectual domination that provided the foundational religious and social vocabulary, and a later Dravidian-Tamil commercial penetration that supplied the practical apparatus of trade, navigation, and material culture. He explicitly corrects Marsden’s denial of any Dravidian contribution, and positions the Straits Settlements as the modern crystallization of a relationship between Southern India and the Malay coast that stretches back to pre-Islamic antiquity.
Context
- The article draws on Marsden’s Asiatic Researches (vol. iv), Maxwell’s Malay Manual, Crawfurd’s work, and Snouck-Hurgronje’s writings on Aceh as its principal secondary sources; no original archival research is undertaken.
- O’Sullivan was a senior colonial administrator in the Straits Settlements, and the article reflects the contemporary British administrative interest in understanding the historical roots of the Indian commercial community in the Straits, particularly as it related to the governance of the mixed Jawi Pekan population.