Note 13 — JAVA AND CAMBODIA.

Once more the connection with Gujarát is supported by the detail in the Java account which makes Laut Mira the starting point for the colonising fleet. This Sir S. Raffles supposed to be the Red Sea but the Mihiras’ or Meds’ sea may be suggested as it seems to correspond to the somewhat doubtful Arab name Baharimad (sea of the Meds ?) for a town in western India sacked by Junaid. Against this evidence two considerations have been urged13: (a) The great length of the voyage from Gujarát to Java compared with the passage to Java from the east coast of India; (b) That no people in India have known enough of navigation to send a fleet fit to make a conquest. As regards the length of the voyage it is to be remembered that though Sumatra is more favourably placed for being colonised from Bengal Orissa and the mouths of the Godávari and Kṛishṇa, in the case either of Java or of Cambodia the distance from the Sindh and Káthiáváḍa ports is not much greater and the navigation is in some respects both safer and simpler than from the coasts of Orissa and Bengal. In reply to the second objection that no class of Hindus have shown sufficient skill and enterprise at sea to justify the belief that they could transport armies of settlers from Gujarát to Java, the answer is that the assumption is erroneous. Though the bulk of Hindus have at all times been averse from a seafaring life yet there are notable exceptions. During the last two thousand years the record of the Gujarát coast shows a genius for seafaring fit to ensure the successful planting of north-west India in the Malay Archipelago.14