TIN MINING IN PERAK. 3 
The latest mention of these “knife coins” is in the time of Ouang- 
mang, A.D. 9. 
The entering of foreign merchandise into China in the reign of 
Chaou-te, of the Han dynasty, B.C. 85, is recorded by Chinese _his- 
torians, and of the Arabians trading at Canton in the reign of Hwan-te, 
A.D. 147. Logan, in the Fournal of the Indian Archipelago, writes, 
“There is evidence of their (the Chinese) trading to Java in the ninth 
century, and if this trade was then established it is probable that they 
also visited Borneo in very remote times, and even before the Malay 
kingdom of Bruné was formed, for they were themselves engaged in the 
trade with India at least as early as the fourth century.” When Marco 
Polo, the Venetian traveller, visited the Archipelago and China in about 
the year A.D. 1291, there was regular trade carried on by large junks 
with China. This is confirmed by the Arabian traveller, Ibn-Bathoutha, 
who visited India, Malaya and China in the year 1346. The trade 
between India, Arabia and China must have passed through the Straits 
of Malacca, and as tin was undoubtedly sent to the West, it was in all 
probability also sent to the East, then as at the present day. 
There does not appear to be any evidence as to who the people 
were who worked the tin mines in Perak in very early days. They 
were certainly neither Sakais nor Semangs, nor any other of the wild 
tribes of the Peninsula, but they may have been Siamese or Malay 
settlers, the descendants of some prehistoric invaders of the Peninsula. 
Thestone implements that are so abundant in Perak, Kelantan, Pahang, 
and other parts of the Peninsula, and also in Java, Sumatra and the other 
islands of Malaya, seem to prove that the Peninsula was invaded by the 
users of these weapons long anterior to the first invasion recorded in 
history. 
A theory has been put forward by Mr. H. Clifford, in Some Notes on 
the Sakat Dialects (“ Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic 
Society”), that because the d/zong, the parang and the spear are known 
to the Sakais by Sakai names, that therefore they were the makers and 
users of the stone implements. As no stone implements have been 
found in Perak which even in the most distant manner resemble either 
spear-heads or parangs, the theory cannot be maintained, particularly 
when it 1s remembered that the Sakais make and use bamboo-headed 
spears, and that the earliest type of Malayan spear, the ap7zt dendang, is 
undoubtedly derived from a weapon with a bamboo blade; and also that 
the parang, which is a chopping knife with the broadest and heaviest 
portion of the blade at the part farthest removed from the handle, has 
no prototype in the stone implements of any part of the world. The 
parang is a highly specialized implement, evidently developed from a 
sword-like weapon by the gradual broadening of the end of the blade, so 
as to distribute the weight and remove the centre of percussion—the 
effective part of the blade—from the handle end, to a point at or beyond 
its centre. The reason why the chopping knife was not developed in 
the stone age is, obviously, that stone is a material that has not sufficient 
tenacity to withstand the transverse strain which is produced in a blade 
when a blow is delivered with that portion of it which is known as the 
centre of percussion. One type of stone axe which is fairly common in 
