— 136 — 



and faithfully served the king, who showed great confidence in him; as the 

 king's younger brother saw himself kept at a distance, he became jealous 

 and secretly killed him ; sometime afterwards he went out on horseback and 

 was thrown so that he died; his attendants saw the spirit of the treasurer 

 on the spot and since this time every house has sacrificed to him. 



Tung Hsi Yang K'au (1616). Book 4. 



Djohore does not produce any rice and the inhabitants are accustomed 

 to go in small ships to other countries, exchanging the products of their 

 own for rice. When they meet merchant-vessels bound for other places, 

 they invite them to come to their country also. When our ships go there 

 they have to pay fixed duties; the trade is done on board the ships and 

 they have no shops on shore. 



Pahang (*), 

 Hsing-ch'a Shêng-lan (1436). 



This country is situated at the west of Siam ( 2 ) ; it is surrounded by 

 rocky ridges of mountains, which, seen from a distance, have the ap- 

 pearance of a table-land. The ground is fertile and they have abundance of 

 rice. The weather is often very warm. 



Their customs cannot be much praised; they make human images of 

 fragrant wood and kill people in order to make a sacrifice of the blood, 

 when they pray for luck or try to ward off evil ( 3 ). 



Men and women have their hair in a knot and are clad with a single 



O 5? j^n, ' these two characters are properly pronouneed p'ang-k'ang, but the first, which 

 has the sound p'e" or p'a n in ïukien, is often used for rendering the sonnd pa or p'a, whilst the 

 second character is taken for hang_on account of its primitive, which often has this sound in other 

 combi nations. 



( 2 ) This is of course erroneous, but we must remember that everything west of Borneo was 

 called the Western-ocean, rit! y¥ and people who went there were said to go the west, even 

 if this was not really the direction in which they traveled. 



( 3 ) The author of this account visited this place in 1412, as one of the followers of the 

 celebrated envoy Chêng Ho. We must therefore believe what he says, and it would seem then that 

 the worsbip of Siva or Kali, in its worst form, still existed there at the time. Altogether we 

 have reason to think that Mahomcdanism was not completely prevalent yet in those parts at the 

 beginning of the 15th century, for of Malacca and Johore too we read that they still burned their dead, 

 though they were called Mahomedans, and it is probable that only the superior classes were con- 

 verted to the Islam as yet. 



