Indian Influence in the Malay World

It might be thought that geography would have opened the Malay archipelago predominantly to the influence of China, but oddly enough the impact of her great civilization on the Malay world has been slight. As early as the seventh century a.d. Chinese monks sailed down to Sumatra to study the Buddhist canon, and eight centuries later the Sultans of Malacca and other Malay princes were still sending envoys to China as Malay rulers had done for hundreds of years. But China's difficult language and intricate ideographs, and her want of missionary zeal and of continuous overseas imperialism were barriers to other than trade relations. To the western half of the Malay archipelago India was nearer, and India got first into the field. With little exaggeration it has been said of Europe that it owes its theology, its literature, its science, and its art to Greece: with no greater exaggeration it may be said of the Malayan races that till the nineteenth century they owed everything to India: religions, a political system, medieval astrology and medicine, literature, arts and crafts.