Reading between the lines of the description of Malayadvipa, one gets the impression that the Indians found two types of indigenous peoples in the place. There were those with whom they were able to mingle, and to these they applied the name Mlecchas. There were those who stayed in their high fastnesses, would not allow the Indians into their country, and rejected the Indian gods. To these the Indians gave the name Raksasas and the name of Lanka to their capital. There is very general agreement with the view of Professor Heine-Geldern that Hindu-Sumatran culture took birth at the very latest during the second century A.D., and, if evidence can be adduced from Sumatra whereby the Trikuta nilaya can be identified, the rest of the description of Malayadvipa, will fall into place. This evidence, however, needs some introduction.

It is certain that when the Indians first came to Malaysia and Indo-China they found in existence at various places culture-groups of the same basic type, for the over-all pattern of which 'Indonesian civilization' is a convenient description, though no form of Writing used by these groups has been discovered. This civilization reached its peak during the period of bronze culture called Dong-s'on. The 'Indonesian civilization' was accompanied throughout by the practice of the megalithic cult, and the most remarkable feature of its Dong-s'on phase was the use of bronze drums, considered as cult objects with supernatural powers, like the gongs still in use amongst certain ethnic groups in northern Annam and Tongking. During the best period of the Dong-s'on culture the drums bear depictions of human and religious scenes from which scholars have been able to build some picture of the final phase of the 'Indonesian civilization’ and to point to some affinities with the manners and customs of the Dayaks in Borneo. Though the exact period of the Dong-s'on culture cannot be fixed, it is agreed provisionally at present that in its homeland on the mainland of Indo-China it began in the fourth or third century B.C. and lasted to about the end of the Later Hah dynasty.

e name Minangkabau, which the late Professor Van der Tuuk considered to mean 'original home', was recorded first in A.D 1365, and it is considered that at that time it was commensurate with the kingdom of Malayu which stretched from the Padang Highlands south through Korinchi and east beyond Jambi. The Sultanate of Minangkabau was founded at the beginning of the seventeenth century A.D., when its ruler became converted to the Muslim faith.

The sacred Gunong Dempo with its twin peaks, Lumut and Merapi, rises 10,364 ft. half-way along the plateau of Paseman, and on that plateau there is a most important group of megalithic monuments with menhirs, dolmens, stone troughs, slab-graves, terrace