buildings and stone images. These last show two distinctly different styles, a primitive and indigenous one and a later more evolved one with statues of single figures and groups. This later style is thought to derive from some colonizing movements from the mainland of south-eastern Asia between 200 and 100 B.C. It is clear that the Dong-s'on phase of the 'Indonesian civilization' was present in the Pasemah culture. Amongst the sculptures there is a stone representation of a Dong-s'on bronze drum, and on the Danau Gadang tea-estate near Korinchi Lake there was found a full-sized bronze drum of the type shown in the stone sculpture, while two more such drums were found in the Lampong country further south. A sea-trade with the mainland of Indo-China is proved by these bronze drums and also by finds of Han dynasty artifacts (including bronze ones) in southern Sumatra, on the borders between the Jambi and Korinchi countries, on the Danau Gadang estate, and on the borders of the Korinchi country where the most remarkable of all was found-a piece of a vase bearing the stamp of a Chinese date corresponding to 45 B.C. It is not possible to say exactly when the Pasemah culture passed out of existence but it seems safe to say upon the archaeological evidence that it was still flourishing during the first two or three centuries A.D. The warriors and the fierce human types represented in the more evolved sculptures would be just the kind to attract to themselves the name of Raksasa from the early Indians. The whole evidence taken together shows that the Pasemah people were warlike and prosperous. The three-peaked Dempo and the Pasemah plateau answer to Trikuta nilaya, and the remains of structures on the plateau with the sculptures answer to the great city of Lanka. Furthermore, the name Lanka plays a considerable part in old Malay tradition and has a marked connection with Sumatra. A Sultan of Minangkabau during the eighteenth century A.D. stated in a letter that God sent a speaking-bird named Hocinet to look for a spot on which an inheritance might be established and "the first place he alighted upon was the fertile island of Lankapura, situated between Palembang and Jambi, and from there sprung the famous Kingdom of Manancabow."23 Thus, the city (pura) of Lanka lingered through the centuries in Sumatran traditional memory. But the strangest thing of all is that the ability of the Raksasas to assume different disguises, though a belief concerning them in ancient India, has a remarkable explanation for this part of Sumatra, which can be stated best in the words of that eminent Malayan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 23 W. Marsden, The History of Sumatra (London, 1811), pp. 338-40: here pulau is translated as 'island'; but, as has been noted above, it had a wider meaning in Sumatra. |