India and Malaysia: The Links that Bind

S. DURAI RAJA SINGAM

Perhaps no other country has in its cultural ground so varied a confluence of civilizations as Malaysia. As it lies by the Straits of Malacca, from time immemorial the meeting point of the busiest trade routes of the world, many a trading or colonizing nation has carried its culture to the shores of this Peninsula, leaving its mole or less permanent mark. Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Arabs, Burmese, Jews, Siamese and Javanese and other Indonesian races have created on this land’s end of the continent of Asia a synthesis of Asian civilization such as can be witnessed nowhere else. Behind this synthesis is the heritage of life and culture from far-flung lands affecting art, music, literature, thought, religion, social systems, government and the fabric of life itself.

An important cementing factor in this Malaysian mixture has been the fact that one country–India–has had the oldest and most extensive influence in the shaping of this country’s story. In Ananda Coomaraswamy’s words, “In Asia all roads lead to India.” For well over a thousand years before the arrival of Islam in the Malay Archipelago, the Hindu-Buddhistic civilization held sway in the Malay Peninsula. And even the arrival of Islam has not materially altered the Indian substratum in Malay life–only a thin veneer of Arab influence covers that heritage.

This Indian influence in the Malay Peninsula is part of a great cultural expansion that started from India and swept every shore of the Indian Ocean, leaving its traces for all time. The history of this expansion has attracted the attention of scholars and historians throughout the world.

The first impact of this expansion, we may reasonably assume, was on the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago just across the Bay of Bengal from India. And that impact resulted not merely in the spread of cultural influences, but in the actual blood fusion of race and race. India, Malaya and the islands of South-East Asia (variously called Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.) show traces of racial relationship that must date to the prehistoric past, and cultural affinities have in historic times become increasingly evident.

That South Indians were in touch with Malaysia thousands of years ago is in keeping with the tradition that the Tamils of Southern India were the leading seamen of the East at the beginning of the Christian era and before. Trade was the prize that drew these sailors from their native shores and in time the Malay Peninsula became the bridge across which Asian humanity, migrating from the Indian mainland, moved across the islands of the Asian Archipelago. Quaritch Wales in his Making of Greater India says that he agrees unhesitatingly with M. Coedes that “all the regions of India contributed more or less to this expansion, but it is the South that had the greatest part.” M. Coedes has shown that Keali is the same as Kedaram referred to in the Chola Tamil inscriptions. The finds unearthed in the north of Perak state, at Taku-Pa, revealed that it was once resorted to by Tamil traders; and this is supported by the inscription discovered in 1902, by Bourke, a mining Engineer of the Siamese Government.

The earliest date of this migration is fixed by some scholars as 1000 B. C. This wave of a new humanity brought with it into these lands a new civilization and a new pattern of life, more highly organized and cultivated than the ones that had prevailed there. The arts of painting, literature, architecture, sculpture and the dance were practically Indian immigrants, who came from every walk of life. The ancient colonial kingdoms of Malaya like Lankasuka in the North, Ganganagara in the West and Indrapura in the East, Sri Vijaya in Sumatra, Tharmanagara in Java, Funan, Chen-la and Champa in Indo-China were all founded by Indians. By the eighth century, the Empire of Sri Vijaya had become dominant on sea and land throughout Malaysia. At the height of its power it included Malaya, Ceylon, Sumatra, part of Java, Borneo and Celebes.

About the first century after Christ, Indian traders from the Coromandal coast began to arrive in the Peninsula. Many of these Indians including skilled craftsmen–architects, weavers and workers in metal–settled here. They introduced Indian customs, including rule by rajas in place of, or side by side with, the old simple Proto-Malay patriarchal or matriarchal tribal organization. They disseminated both the Hinayana Buddhism of the Southern school and the Mahayana Buddhism of the Northern. Indian economic as well as cultural dominance lasted here from the early Christian era up to about the 15th century when the arrival of Islam first weakened and then destroyed it.

The Indian material power continued then, till there came the impact of newer powers –Islam from the Middle East and Western commerce from Europe–which turned the course of history. When the decline of the extensive Indian influence in Malaysia set in, Indians were still well-established in Malacca, carrying on a flourishing trade at the port and possibly with the mainland.

Rightly has Jawaharlal Nehru said (when he visited Malaya): “The Malays in a long sense are our cousins.” For ever since their acceptance of Islam the Malays have been surrounded, from the cradle to the grave by survivals of Hindu culture–its classical literature, the dance, music and folk traditions. The popular pantheon of Malay folklore throughout Malaya and the Malay Archipelago is still Hindu in colouring. In this pantheon the greater gods are Hindu; the lesser gods Malay. The Malayan cosmology is also Hindu. The shadow play which has popularized the Indian epics is still the most popular form of entertainment in rural Malaysia. The story of Rama, or Cherita Sri Rama as it is called in Malaysia, and the story of Pandava Lima from the Mahabharata are the favourite themes of the Malay shadow play or Wayang Kulit. These versions of the Hindu epics thrown on the screen make palpable India’s impression on Malaysian life. The stories wield a great influence on the traditional life of the Malay. They have taken such a firm hold on their popular imagination that they furnish also most of the motifs of their arts and crafts.

While the political contact and the religious heritage are significant in the history of Indian influence of the Indian languages on the Malay language is very obvious. The latter, which is the lingua franca for the various races that inhabit the Peninsula, is full of Tamil, Hindusthani and Sanskrit as well as Arabic words, many of them in correct use. The words ras (reins), roti (bread), tan (stable), and jori (buggy) are from Hindusthani. Tamil has been the language of the commercial class of Muslims. One Tamil word in Malay is kappal for ship–an object which has long been inseparable from the life and prosperity of the Malay. Other Tamil words in Malay are: maligai (tower), katil (bed), Kedei (shop), tirai (curtain), kolam (pond), mempelai (bridegroom), tandil (overseer), kuli (hired labour), kari (sauce), malai (a garland) and mempelam (mango).

Before the advent of Islam, the Malays borrowed from Sanskrit many religious and ethical terms to express ideas, astronomical and agricultural words, and legal, military, and court terms, together with words for metals, etc. The Malays are indebted to Sanskrit for words describing the body and its parts such as: rupa (form) and pada (foot). The terms for family members and relationships are also often from Sanskrit, e.g., istri (stri–wife or woman); swami (svamin–husband); sudara (sahodara – brother); bangs a (vamsha – race); and kulawarga (kula or varga, for family or class). The Malay names for many birds and animals, e.g., angsa (crow); singha (lion) and gaja (elephant) are similar to the Sanskrit ones. Birds and reptiles belonging to Hindu mythology have their place in Malay folklore, as for instance, Garuda, the eagle of Vishnu. If the sun is suddenly overcast the Perak Malay will say “Gerda is spreading out his wings to dry.” Many religious words used in Malay and in Sanskrit are identical or similar, for example, guru (guru); tapa (tapas); suvarga (svarga); naraka (naraka); puji (puja); bakti (bhakti); mantra (mantra); biku (bhikshu–a religious mendicant); Bisnu (Vishnu) and sastara (sastra).

Sanskrit terms are seen also in names and titles. The Sanskrit honorific “Sri” is added to the titles of Malay chiefs. One Malay member of the Perak royalty was known as the Raja Chulan. When the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit conquered several Malaya States, Malacca was ruled by a Hindu chief who bore the Indian title of Parameswara (Lord of Lords).

In Malay literature and mythology the Indian element predominates. The stories of the Pandavas, of Rama and Sita and of Hanuman are known to Malay children. Sir Richard Winstedt in his paper on the folk tales of Indonesia and Indo-China has pointed out several parallels between Indian and Malay folk tales. A close study of the Hitopadesha and the Panchatantra along with certain Malay folk tales like Mat Janin, Si Lunchai, Pa Belalang and Musang Berjanggut, will give the reader some striking parallels.

It is interesting to find the Malay still paying homage to Shiva as Nataraja, lord of dancers and king of actors, though today he is quite unaware of the name and role of the Hindu god whose theatre is the world.

In ancient Malay literature, however, one finds several references to Shiva. The great God Shiva is considered the Betara Guru or the Supreme Teacher, the Goddess Kali survives as an evil spirit of the forest; while Sri is invoked at the harvest festivals. According to Malay legends the three Hindu divinities, Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra, together with Kala and Sri preside over the five divisions of time. W. W. Skeat pointed out in his Malay Magic the curious Malay custom by which the lunar month is divided into parts called Rejangs. According to Newbold, “the twenty-eight Reiangs resemble the nacshatras or lunar mansions of the Hindus.

Indian culture has thus filtered through the ages into many phases of Malay life. Its traces survive not only in language and ritual but even in archaeological remains, meagre and scattered though these are. The oldest Buddha image from Malaysia is a bronze one 8½ inches high, excavated in Kedah by Mrs. Quaritch Wales; it is one of the most important archaeological finds from that State. Another interesting find of hers farther south on an old course of the Muda River in Province Wellsley was the remains of a 5th century stupa. The site is believed to be the one where, a hundred years ago, Col. James Low found the 5th century Buddhagupta Mahanavika inscription, now in the Calcutta Museum. During tin-dredging operations Indian bronzes of great age and exquisite workmanship were unearthed. “A jewel of mediaeval oriental art”–so the late Dutch archaeologist, Dr Van Stein Callenfels, called the magnificent bronze statue dredged up near Ipoh in 1931. Dr Callenfels thought that it belonged to the period around 740 A. D., when a Sailendia ruler of Sri Vijaya had extended his influence over Northern Malaya. During the Malayan campaign in the World War II that Buddha statue was looted and only the lower half of the body has been recovered. At the same time, in Pengkalan near Ipoh, was found a bronze lotus pedestal on which a half-reclining figure must have rested. An eight-armed bronze standing figure, 31 inches high, which analysis showed to be of almost pure copper, represents a Mahayanist Avalokitesvara, according to Mrs. Quaritch Wales. It was dredged up in a tin mine at Bidor and is unmistakably South Indian in appearance. It was looted from the Perak Museum, Taiping, but was covered intact from a mine-hole; when I last saw it, after the Japanese occupation, it was at Taiping. These Buddhist finds throw light on early Indian colonization. The earlier Dongson bronze culture of Klang and the Tembeling River belongs still to prehistory so far as historical records go. “India was,” as Sir Roland Braddell says in The Lights of Singapore, “the first historic civilizer of the Malay Peninsula.” It is therefore not surprising that India’s relations with Malaysia are so deeply rooted in the fruitful soil of cultural affinities.

Thus the name and fame of India were reached from ancient times in distant lands. Luxuries of Indian commerce and even speculations of her philosophers were known to the Greeks and the Romans while the religion of Buddha spread as far as China. But when we look for the more direct and penetrating influence of India beyond her borders, it is specially to the lands of South- East Asia like Malaya, Indonesia and Indo-China that we must go. Here Indian colonists and Indian ideas have shaped the history and culture of the religion and India has given the names to many of these lands and their mountains and rivers and cities. Some were brought from India itself by the early colonists, others Sanskrit in form bear witness to Indian imagination in describing their new lands; and the great number of these names is an indication of the leading position of India as a civilizing agency in South-East Asia over many centuries. Remembrances of a most brilliant period of Hinduism in South-East Asia is recalled as one mentions Langkasuka, Singapura, Angkor, Champa, Kambujadesa, Singharadja (in Bali), Jogjakarta, Sitapura (in Patani), Suvarnadvipa, Suvarnabhumi, ravadvipa (Barley Island), Bali, Ayodhya, Madura, Indiagiri or Ganganagara.

Even the very word Merdekawhich is on everyone’s lips in Malaysia today comes from Sanskrit Maha-riddhikawhich means ‘great prosperity’ for in freedom alone lies the greatest prosperity. (Ke-merdeka-an, Indonesian word for freedom. In Malay it means freedom in contrast to servitude.)

In recent years a new term–Greater India–has been widely adopted by historians to describe the long and important connections between India proper and the lands which came under her cultural influence in South-East Asia. Much of that history still remains to be investigated but the main pattern is clear and the extent and importance of the Indian influence is now fully recognised, which we have been able to follow among other ways from our study of the place names of South-East Asia.