Java does not afford the same opportunities for beautiful collections of shells as the Moluccas, Papua, and other Islands. Along the northern coast, few shells are found of beauty or variety, and the corallines have mostly lost their integrity by attrition; but the extensive bays in the southern shore contain many of these objects in a state of beauty and perfection.
[12] The primitive Athenians were called Iones or Iaones (Herodotus, lib. i. &c.) This name is thought to have been given to them from Javan, which bears a great resemblance to Ιάων. This Javan was the fourth son of Japheth, and is said to have come into Greece after the confusion of Babel, and seated himself in Attica; and this report receives no small confirmation from the divine writings, where the name of Javan is in several places put for Greece. See Daniel x. 20. xi. 2. where the vulgar translations render it not Javan, as in the original, but Græcia. The Athenians afterwards named Asia the less _Ionia_.--Potter's Archæologia Græca.
[14] The term _Zapagé_ or _Zabaja_ seems also to have been a corruption from _Jawa_, and to have been used with the same latitude, according to the following notices by Major Wilford. "There was a constant intercourse, both by sea and land, between the kingdom of _Magad'hi_ and China, on the authority of Chinese history; and they traded to an island and kingdom, called Founan, to the eastward of Siam, during the third and fourth centuries. This was probably a Malay kingdom; but we cannot ascertain its situation. It seems that the Malay emperors and kings, as those of _Zapagi_ and _Founan_, did what they could to introduce trade and learning into their dominions, but their exertions proved ineffectual; at least they were not attended with much success; and their subjects soon relapsed into their former mode of life." ... "There are two countries called Maharaja, which are often confounded together; the first, at the bottom of the Green Sea, including Bengal and all the countries on the banks of the Ganges; the second comprehended the peninsula of Malacca, and some of the adjacent islands in the seas of China. In these countries the emperor, or king, always assumed the title of Maharaja, even until this day. Their country, in general, was called _Zapagé_ or _Zabaja_, which is a corruption from _Java_ or _Jaba_, as it was called in the west, and was also the name of Sumatra, according to Ptolemy, who calls it _Jaba-diu_, and to Marco Polo. In the peninsula of Malacca was the famous emporium of _Zaba_: Zubaja, in Sanscrit, would signify then _Zaba_. The empire of _Zabajé_ was thus called, probably, from its metropolis, _Zaba_, as well as the principal islands near it. _Zaba_ was a principal emporium even as early as the time of Ptolemy. It remained so till the time of the two Mussulman travellers of Renaudot, and probably much longer. It is now called _Batu Sabor_, upon the river Jehor, which is as large as the Euphrates, according to these travellers; who add, that the town of Calabar, on the coast of Coromandel, and ten days to the south of Madras, belonged to the Maharaja of Zabaje. The wars of this Maharaja with the king of _Alkoner_ or countries near Cape Comorin, are mentioned by the two Mussulman travellers in the ninth century, and it seems that, at that time, the Malayan empire was in its greatest splendor."--_Asiatic Researches_, vol. ix.