12 REMBAU HISTORY, ETC. 
ment, rather than to any other inland district of Pahang. Again, 
the constitution of none of the nine states shows that the Ba- 
tin element, however great its internal importance, as in Johol 
and Sungai Ujong, received any consideration from Johor. 
The title of Undang, granted to the supreme Chief in each 
State, was held net by the Batin but by a Mohammedan settler; 
and Johor dealt only with the Undang. 
But the theory is also open to chronological objection. 
- At the time of loss of Malacca to Albuquerque (1511 A.D.) the 
Mohammedan Empire of Malacca had no rival in the Peninsula 
other than the Siamese Kingdom. Hence the exclusion’ of 
Perak from a confederacy of inland states of the Peninsula 
subject to Johor at once attracts attention. Now Perak pass- — 
ed by conquest under the sway of Achih in 1530 A.D. in the 
reign of Mansur Shah, the last of the Johor (Malacca) Raja on 
the Perak throne. The confederacy therefore was formed sub- 
sequently to 1530 A.D. 
Again, the formation of the confederacy involved the grant 
of the title of Undang to the paramount Chief in each contract- 
ing state. Rembau tradition relates that the office of Undang 
has existed for some 360 years prior to the election of the 
living holder in 1905 A.D. The date of the formation of the 
confederacy may therefore be given to the 3rd or 4th decade 
of the 16th century A.D. 
This date disproves the first assumption of Lister’s theory. 
Bui the question ofthe inclusion of Jelai and Ulu Pahang in the 
Negri Sembilan confederacy under Johor is strictly a geograph- 
ical problem; and would appear to have arisen from a con- 
fusion between the present content of the geographical terms 
Ulu Pahang and Johor, and their meaning in the first half 
of the 16th century A.D. 
In 1540 A.D., Johor nominally included, with the excep- 
tion of the European Settlement at Malacca, the whole penin- 
_ sula South of Kemaman on the East and the Bernam river on 
_the West. As late as 1785 A.D., the fugitive Johor Raja, 
Mahmud Raiat Shah, in his appeal to Captain Light, Resident 
at Penang, styled-himself the possessor of the royal thrones — 
Jour. Straits Branch 
