Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.9025

c10.9025

It is a remarkable circumstance, which has been noted by Crawfurd, that a name which appears on Ptolemy's Tables as on the coast of the Golden Chersonese, and which must be located somewhere about Maulmain, is *Μαλεου Κωλον*, words which in Javanese (*Malāyu-Kulon*) would signify "Malays of the West." After this the next (possible) occurrence of the name in literature is in the *Geography* of Edrisi, who describes *Malai* as a great island in the eastern seas, or rather as occupying the position of the Lemuria of Mr. Sclater, for (in partial accommodation to the Ptolemaic theory of the Indian Sea) it stretched eastward nearly from the coast of Zinj, *i.e.* of Eastern Africa, to the vicinity of China. Thus it must be uncertain without further accounts whether it is an adumbration of the great Malay islands (as is on the whole probable) or of the Island of the Malagas (Madagascar), if it is either.