Malay Peninsula—Not the Home of Lehi – Part II

Continuing from the previous post regarding a Reader’s view of the Malay Theory and our response to that. 
    The Reader also has stated about Malay “It was known as an island, and it very well could have been an island as the sea levels were 2 meters higher between the time of the Jaredites and the the time of the Lehites”; however, in the writings of the 1500s of Sumatra and Peninsular Malay, there is not only no mention of any such thing, but a long, constant record of both Chinese and Malay writings talking about Malay as a peninsula. Equally important, is the geologic work done in this area showing just the opposite, not that “island” and “sea levels were higher,” but in actuality they were lower and what is now islands and a long, narrow peninsula was much earlier larger, connected land areas as the following geologic maps show based on geological findings as shown in Harold K. Voris, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois:

The area of Indonesia, including the Malay Peninsula as viewed geologically over the past 120 million years (top) to 40 million years ago (middle) to 10 million years ago (bottom)—certainly showing geologically that Malay went from a much larger area to the present shape long before the Jaredites and Nephite, which totally contradicts his claim – Maps According to Blackwell Science Ltd 2000, Journal of Biogeography, vol27, pp1153-1167. The point is, the opposite of what the Reader claims

There are eight maps in all covering the time involved for the purpose of primarily serving to illustrate how the Sunda Shelf connects the major islands of the Indonesian archipelago (Sumatra, Java and Borneo, the latter still connected to to the mainland of Southeast Asia) with Indochin and how the Sahul Shelf forms a broad connected between Australia and New Guinea. It should be kept in mind that sea levels over the past 30 million years in this area have been well documented in associated with tectonic changes (R. Hall & J.D. Holloway, Biogeograhy and Geological Evolution of Southeast Asia, Backhuys Publishers, Leiden, 1998, p417).
    It might also be noted that the reference of the Island of Qumr has absolutely no references that we can find anywhere connected to Malay or Indonesia. A wide-range of searches brings up Comoro or Comorous in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Africa, which has a city called Moroni as its capital, coming to us from the Bantu language Mūrūnī and meaning “in the heart of the fire.” It also has references to the Arabic “qamar” in reference to the “Moon,” though “qamar” actually means “whiteness.”  In relation to a people, the Arabs associated or designated the Qumr/Khmers (Cambodians) as ethnic brothers of the Chinese, but the origins of the word Qumr, continue to be unclear; however, qamar, associated with the “moon” was a deity worshipped in Babylonia during the Jewish occupation there. Kumra in Aramaic means “priest,” Qumran or Qumaran mean “the two moons” or “sun and moon.” The root QMR in Hebrew can also mean “gambling.”

In addition, using this reader’s earlier comment of the 15^th century, Tomé Pires, a Portuguese apothecary  one of the first Europeans to arrive in South East Asia after the Portuguese conquest, wrote in his Suma Oriental (A history of the Eastern Lands and a book of Asian  trade from the Red Sea up to the Chinese) 1512-1515 about being in Malaca, where he avidly collected and documented information on the Malay-Indonesia area, and personally visited Java, Sumatra, and Maluku) and speaks of the Terra de Tana Malaio which he referred to the southeastern part of Sumatra, where the deposed Sultan of Melaka, Mahmud Shah established his exiled government. A little later, the Portuguese historian, Emanuel Godinho de Erédia wrote of the region of "Malaios" surrounded by the Andaman Sea in the north, the entire Malacca Strait in the center, a part of Sunda Strait in the south, and the western part of South China Sea in the east (Mohamed Anwar Omar Din, "Asal Usul Orang Melayu: Menulis Semula Sejarahnya (The Malay Origin: Rewrite It's History)," Juirnal Melayu, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2011, pp28–30). In not one of these instances, of historians and professional people writing about this area of the Malay Peninsula spoke of it as "an island" the Reader indicates, but all referred to it as a peninsula.
    This is found in the history of Krabi, a part of Kra Peninsula (Isthmus of Kra that connects the Peninsula to the Asian continent) dating to 1200 A.D. and referred to as a peninsula.
    Originally, the Malay Peninsula was referred to as the Kra Peninsula, connected to the mainland by the Khokhok Kra, a narrow neck of southern Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, which connected the Malay Peninsula to the Asian mainland. This area, by the way has an elevation of 4580 feet—rather difficult to submerge beneath sea level. In fact, the Kra Isthmus, the joining of the southern peninsula to the mainland, is the joining of two cordillera mountain chains or between two sections of the central cordillera, the mountain chain which runs from Tibet through the Malay peninsula. The southern part is called the Phuket chain, which is a continuation of the greater Tenasserim range, extending further northwards for over 250 miles beyond the Three Pagodas Pass. The Titiwangsa Mountains are to the south, 28 miles from Songkhla.

This has always been a connected land, not an island. The very name Indo-chinois when first given (later Indo-China) to describe the area's inhabitant and their languages ("Further India" and "Peninsula beyond the Ganges" were also terms initially suggested), to describe the continuation of the Asian continent. Today it is usually referred to as Mainland Southeast Asia

 

    According to David S. Woodruff, of the Ecology, Behavior, Evolution Section, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, in the Neogene marine transgressions, palaeogeography and biogeographic transitions on the Thai–Malay Peninsula, the Malay Peninsula is tectonically stable peninsula, including those associated with periods of lower sea levels, and has always been so.
    Prior to the foundation of Melaka, reference to Malay peninsula was made in different terms from various foreign sources. According to several Indian scholars, the word Malayadvipa ("mountain-insular continent"), mentioned in the ancient Indian text, Vayu Purana, refers to the Malay peninsula. Another Indian source, an inscription on the south wall of the Brihadeeswarar Temple, recorded the word Malaiur, referring to a kingdom in Malay peninsula that had "a strong mountain for its rampart.” The Greek source, Geographia, written by Ptolemy, labelled a geographical part of Golden Chersonese as Maleu-kolon, a term thought to derive from Sanskrit malayakolam or malaikurram. While the Chinese chronicle of Yuan Dyasty mentioned the word Ma-li-yu-er, referring to a nation of Malay peninsula that threatened by the southward expansion of Sukhothai Kingdom under King Ram Khamhaeng. Marco Polo made a reference to Malauir in his travelogue, as a kingdom located in the Malay peninsula, possibly similar to the one mentioned in Yuan chronicle. Vayu purana, an ancient Hindu text from as early as 350 B.C., along with the Brahmanda Purana text, speaks of the area as a peninsula, not as a separate island as you claim. The aforementioned Vayu Purana discusses its theories of cosmology, genealogy of gods and kings of solar and lunar dynasties, mythology, geography, manvantaarask, the solar system and the movements of the celestial bodies, etc.

The point is, there are numerous odd-ball type writing that can be sighted, some mainstream, most not, but we have yet to find any that deal with the Malay Peninsula ever being an island, but just the opposite, i.e., that much of Indonesia was a single land mass. 
   At the same time we need to keep in mind that some parts of the world refer to Indonesia as the Malay Archipelago (Kepulauan Melayu/Nusantara), which in addition to the peninsula and Borneo/Malay main island, contains some 25,000 total islands, covering 770,000 square miles (1.2 million square miles of sea and land space), and also referred to as Maritime Southeast Asia. It is only natural that the term “island” be applied loosely to numerous places, especially the southern area of the Peninsula; however, no geologic terms of an island have ever been given relating to the Malay Peninsula as a whole.

A gilded map of Nusantara in the Hall of Independence, Jakarta. Dating back to 1336 the term Nusantara has referred to, and literally means, the Malay Archipelago, with the Malay Peninsula at the top and connected to mainland Asia

It should also be noted that the term Nusantara, in Malay, means “Malay World” and has referred to the Peninsula of Malay and the Malay portion of Borneo island since at least 1275 A.D. Indonesian historians believed that the concept of Nusantara was not an idea coined in 1275 as Cakravala Mandala Dvipantara by Kertanegara of Singhasari Dvipantara is a Sanskrit word for the "islands in between" (Wahyono Suroto Kusumoprojo Indonesia negara maritime, PT Mizan Publika, 2009), the synonym to Nusantara as both dvipa and nusa mean "island." The term is used to describe the Southeast Asian Archipelago. Kertanegara envisioned the union of Southeast Asian maritime kingdoms under Singhasari as a bulwark against the rise of the expansionist Mongol Yuan dynasty in mainland China.
    “The islands in between” or more accurately “The islands within” the archipelago in Nusantara were referred to as Negara Agung, the Grand State, or Core Kingdom (the Malay Peninsula and the Malay of Borneo island), and Mancanegra, areas surrounding Negara Agung, which meant “outer islands” and included Java, Sumatra, and many of the other islands. This information can be found in the Pararaton (Pustaka Raja, Sanskrit for Book King, or Book of Kings), a Javanese chronicle dating between 1222 and 1292 A.D.