154 NOTES ON MALAY HISTOEY. 



ed Malacca in 1409 A. D. The list of many other places 

 which he visited in the course of his official career is given in 

 an extract from the History of the Ming Dynasty by Mr. W. 

 P. Groeneveldt in his valuable "Notes on the Malay Archipel- 

 ago and Malacca," reprinted in "Miscellaneous Papers relating 

 to Indo-China and the Indian Archipelago," 2nd Series, Vol. 

 I., p. 170. He went as far afield as Magadoxu in East Africa). 



Mr. G. Phillips has published facsimiles of these charts 

 in the form of a long continuous strip, divided for convenience 

 into two parts. The part relating to the regions to the east- 

 ward of Tenasserim appears in Vol. XXI., of the S. China 

 Branch R.A.S. and is the one that concerns us here. It con- 

 tains a great deal of geographical information in a much 

 distorted shape. There is no approach to accuracy in its 

 plotting of the outlines of the different countries set down in 

 it. Thus the coast of the Malay Peninsula is laid down as an 

 irregular line, following one almost uniform direction from 

 right to left of the chart, all the way between Senggora and 

 Tenasserim. In fact it is plainly the record of an actual 

 coasting voyage or voyages. Islands are marked in various 

 places along the coast ; and both on these and on many points 

 of the coastline itself appear Chinese characters. Many of 

 these characters represent in transcription the native names of 

 places. Others appear to be Chinese descriptive names. A 

 good many of these various place names have been identified 

 by Mr. Phillips. But he appears to have omitted a certain 

 number of others. His transliteration of the Chinese charac- 

 ters follows a dialect which is evidently not the one in which 

 they were intended to be read and does not tend to facilitate 

 identification. Probably too a good deal of additional light 

 could be thrown on these names by some one possessed of 

 local knowledge. I therefore venture to invite the attention 

 of Chinese scholars in the Straits to these charts and suggest 

 that they should bring their combined local knowledge and 

 Chinese scholarship to bear upon them. 



In the meantime Mr. Phillips' labours enable me to quote 

 a certain number of place names recorded in this chart. Pro- 



Jour. Straits Branch 



