Sumba

The Sumba grouping covers languages once classed as the Bima-Sumba branch of Central Malayo-Polynesian Austronesian. They stretch across the Lesser Sunda Islands, from eastern Sumbawa to Flores, Sumba and Savu, where Hawu may preserve a non-Austronesian substratum. Later linguists split the old branch into Sumba-Hawu and Sumba-Flores groups and treat Bimanese separately.

The Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Bima on Sumbawa traced its origins to around 709. Around 1515 the Portuguese apothecary Tome Pires listed its cloth, horses and slaves among regional exports. Sumba, whose megalithic burials reach back millennia, was claimed by Majapahit in the 1300s and visited by the Portuguese in 1522.

Bima turned to Islam in 1621 under the influence of the Makassarese kingdom of Gowa and as a sultanate long drew tribute from Manggarai, Sumba, Sawu and parts of Flores. From the 1600s the Dutch East India Company tightened its hold on the region.