SUMBAWA (Dutch Soembawa), one of the Little Sunda islands in the Dutch East Indies, east of Lombok, from which it is separated by the narrow Alas Strait. It has an area of 4300 sq. m., or, including the neighbouring islands, 5240 sq. m. The deep bay of Salé or Sumbawa on the north divides the island into two peninsulas, and the isthmus is further reduced by the narrower Bay of Chempi on the south. The eastern peninsula is deeply indented on the north by the Bay of Bima. Four mountain chains cross the island in a west to east direction. he northern, as in Bali and Lombok, is of volcanic origin. Tambora, forming a minor peninsula east of Sumbawa Bay, is said to have lost a third of its elevation in the eruption of 1815, but is still 9055 ft. high. In the southern chain is found a limestone formation analogous to that in Bali, Lombok and Java. Between these two chains are round hills consisting of lavas or sometimes of volcanic tuffs, covered with the long silvery grass which also clothes vast prairies in Java and Sumatra. There are no navigable streams. The climate and productions are not unlike those of Java, though the rains are heavier, the drought more severe, and the fertility less. Sulphur, arsenic, asphalt and petroleum exist. The natives live solely by agriculture. But out of a total population of about 75,000 there are 11,000 foreigners, living mostly by trade and navigation. The natives consist of Sumbawans proper, a people of Malayan stock; of Buginese and Macassar immigrants, and of wild tribes of the mountains of whom nothing is known. Mahommedanism prevails throughout the island, except among the mountain tribes.
Politically Sumbawa, with its four independent states, belongs to the confederated states of the government of Celebes and its dependencies, a situation to be explained by the fact of the old supremacy of the Macassaresi over Sumbawa, Flores and Sumba. The independent states are Sumbawa proper, Dompo, Sangar and Bima. Two other states on the northern extremity of the island were so far devastated by the Tambora eruption of 1815 that their territory, after lying for long uninhabited, was in 1866 divided between Dompo and Sangar. Sumbawa proper occupies the western peninsula. The residence of the sultan is Sumbawa on the north coast. It is surrounded with a palisade and ditches. The inhabitants of this state employ sometimes the Malay and sometimes the Macassar character in writing. A considerable trade is carried on in the export of horses, buffaloes, goats, dinding (dried flesh), skins, birds' nests, wax, rice, katyang, sappanwood, &c. Sumbawa entered into treaty relations with the Dutch East India Company in 1674. Dompo is the western half of the eastern peninsula. The capital of the state, Dompo, lies in the heart of the country, on a stream that falls into Chempi Bay. Bada, the sultan's residence, is farther west. Sangar occupies the north-western promontory of the island, and Bima the extreme east. Bima or Bodjo, the chief town of the latter state, lies on the east side of the Bay of Bima; it has a stone-walled palace and a mosque, as well as a Dutch fort.
See Zollinger, “Soembawa,” in Verhandelingen van het Batav. Genootschap, xxiii.; Ligtvoet, “Anteekeningen betreffende den economischen Toestand en de Ethnographie van Soembawa,” in Tijdschr. Bat. Gen. xxiii.
SUMBUL, or Sumbal, also called Musk Root, a drug occasionally employed in European medical practice. It consists of the root of Ferula sumbul, Hook., a tall Umbelliferous plant found in the north of Bokhara, its range apparently extending beyond the Amur. It was first brought to Russia in 1835 as a substitute for musk; and in 1867 was introduced into the British pharmacopoeia. The root as found in commerce consists of transverse sections an inch or more in thickness and from 1 to 3 or more inches in diameter. It has a dark thin papery bark, a spongy texture, and the cut surface is marbled with white and blackish or pale brown; it has a musky odour and a bitter aromatic taste. The action and uses of the drug are the same as those of as asafetida (q.v.) It owes its medicinal properties to a resin and an essential oil. Of the former it contains about 9% and of the latter ⅓%. The resin is soluble in ether and has a musky smell, which is not fully developed until after contact with water.
Under the name of East Indian sumbul, the root of Dorema ammoniacum, Don., has occasionally been offered in English commerce. It is of a browner hue, has the taste of ammoniacum, and gives a much darker tincture than the genuine drug; it is thus easily detected. The name “sumbal” (a word of Arabic origin, signifying a spike or ear) is applied to several fragrant roots in the East, the principal being Nardostachys jatamansi, D.C. (see Spikenard). West African sumbul is the root of a species of Cyperus.
SUMER and SUMERIAN. The Babylonian name Shumer was used in the cuneiform inscriptions together with Akkad, viz. mat Shumeri u Akkadī, “land of S. and A.,” to denote Babylonia in general (See Akkad). In the non-Semitic ideographic documents the equivalent for Shumer is Kēngi, which seems to be a combination of kēn, “land” + gi, “reed,” i.e. “land of reeds,” and appropriate designation for Babylonia, which is essentially a district of reedy marshes formed by the Tigris and Euphrates. It was formerly thought that Shumer was employed especially to denote the south of Babylonia, while Akkad was used only of the north, but this view is no longer regarded as tenable. It is more probable that the expression Shumer designated the whole of Babylonia in much the same manner as did Akkad, and that the two words “Shumer and Akkad” were used together as a comprehensive term. That Shumer actually did mean all Babylonia appears evident from the biblical use of Shinar = Shumer to describe the district which contained the four chief Babylonian cities, viz. Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh (Gen. x. 10), which, according to the Old Testament account, constituted the beginnings of Nimrod's kingdom. The identity of Shinar and Shumer is also demonstrated by the Septuagint rendering of Shinar in Isaiah xi. 11 by “Babylonia.” In short, there can be no doubt that the biblical name Shinar was practically equivalent to the mat Shumeri u Akkadî = non-Semitic, Kêngi-Uri of the Babylonian inscriptions. Furthermore, the fact that the Syriac Sen‛ar = Shinar was later used to denote the region about Bagdad (northern Babylonia) does not necessarily prove that Shinar-Shumer meant only northern Babylonia, because, when the term Sen‛ar was applied to the Bagdad district the great southern Babylonian civilization had long-been forgotten and “Babylonia” really meant only what we now know as northern Babylonia.
The actual meaning of the word Shumer is uncertain. Dr T. G. Pinches has pointed out[1] that Shumer may be a dialectic form of an as yet unestablished non-Semitic form, Shenger, just as the non-Semitic word dimmer, “god,” is equivalent to another form, dingir. Others have seen in the ancient Babylonian place-name Gir-su an inversion of Su-gir = Su-n͡gir, which has also been identified with Shumer. In this connexion Hommel's-theory[2] should be mentioned, that the word Shumer was a later palatalization of Ki-imgir, “land of Imgir” = Shi-imgir, subsequently Shingi with palatalized k = sh and elision of the final r. The form imgir (imgur), however, as a place-name for Babylonia is uncertain. All that can be said at present about this difficult etymology is that in the non-Semitic Babylonian the medial m represented quite evidently an indeterminate nasal which could also be indicated by the combination n͡g. Hence we find Shumer, probably pronounced Shuwer, with a sound similar to that heard to-day in the Scottish Gaelic word lamh, “hand”; viz. a sort of nasalized w. This gave rise to the later inaccurate forms: Greek, Senaar; Syriac, Sen’ar; and biblical Hebrew, Shinar = Shin͡gar.
The so-called “Sumerian problem,” which has perplexed Assyriologists for many years, may be briefly stated as follows. In a great number of Babylonian inscriptions an idiom has long been recognized which is clearly not ordinary Semitic in character. This non-Semitic system, which is found, in many instances, on alternate lines with a regular Semitic translation, in other cases in opposite columns to a Semitic rendering, and again without any Semitic equivalent at all, has been held by one school, founded and still vigorously defended by the distinguished French Assyriologist, Joseph Halévy, to be nothing more than a priestly system of cryptography based, of course, on the then current Semitic speech. This cryptography, according to some of the Halévyans, was read aloud in Semitic, but, according to other expositors, the system was read as an “ideophonic,” secret, and purely artificial language.
The opposing school (the Sumerists) insists that these
