HISTOEY OF KEDAH. 



And the likelihood of that date is confirmed by the story in the 

 Sejarah Melayu of a Eaja of Kedah coming to Malacca to ask for 

 the nobat (or royal insignia) from Sultan Mahnmd Shah, the last 

 Malay ruler of Malacca, who was driven out bv the Portuguese 

 conquest in 1511 A.D. and died in 1513 A.D. (Leyden's "Malay 

 Annals," pp. 321-3). It is reasonable to suppose that the ruler 

 of Kedah was then a Malay. Here, one may observe that in popular 

 tales the Kedah dynasty begins with a tusked cannibal king, the son 

 of an ogress; Blagden has shown that the legend is borrowed 

 from India, and is copied from the Buddhist Jataka tales (J. B, 

 A. S., S. B. Xo. 79) : it is possible, however, that the story was 

 adapted to symbolize that the ancestry of the dynasty is not purely 

 Malay. 



The Portuguese Barbosa. whose manuscript is dated Lisbon 

 1516, describes Kedah " as a place of the kingdom of Siam:" to 

 the port " an infinite number of ships resort, trading in all kinds 

 of merchandise. Here come many Moorish ships from all quarters. 

 Here, too, is grown much pepper, very good and fine which is con- 

 veyed to Malacca, and thence to China. 7 ' (" Eeinusio,'' Yol. 1, p. 

 318). The influence of Siam cannot have been great to allow a 

 Eaja of Kedah to go to Malacca at the beginning of the 16th 

 century to get regalia from a Malay suzerain ! Xor was it great 

 enough to save Kedah from attack by the Portuguese. In 1611 

 according to De Faria, Dioge de Medoca Furtado sailing down from 

 Tenasserim to Malacca destroyed the towns of "Quedah and Paries*' 

 with fire and sword (Danvers* "Portuguese in India," Yol 11. p. 

 164). 



Again Siamese influence did not baulk Acheen. In 1619 

 Sultan Iskandar Muda, or Mahkota Alam as he was styled, led 

 the rulers of Kedah and Perak into captivity. The Kedah prince- 

 was Sultan Sulaiman Shah (J. E. A. S., S. B. T2, p. 122). Achin- 

 ese influence lasted some years. (J. I. A. Ill, p. 480). The 

 " Kedah Annals " have a curious jumbled story that on the eon- 

 version of 'Sultan MudzafTal Shah to Islam, the king of Acheen, 

 and one Shaikh Xuru'd-din sent him two religious treatises the 

 Siratu'l-mustalcim and the Babu'n-Nilcdh. Xow the Siraiu'l- 

 mustakim was done into Malay by the said Shaikh Xurud-din 

 Muhammad Jilaui ibn Ali ibn Hasanyi ibn Muhammad Hamid 

 a'r-Eaniri in the year 1634 A.D. ( Juynboll's " Catalogue of Malay 

 MSB. in Leiden L^niversity Library,'-' p. 2'5T). That detail helps 

 us to fix a date for the composition (or more probably a late 

 recension) of the Ht. Marong Mahawangsa. But considering not 

 only that the Achinese annals and the Sejarah Melayu point to the 

 close of the XYth century as the time of Kedah's conversion to 

 Islam but also that Sultan Mudzaffal Shah the first convert is 

 always regarded as the great-great-great-grandfather of Sultan 

 Sulaiman Shah who was taken to Acheen in 1619 A.D., it is a. 

 detail which discredits entirely the chronology of the " Kedah 

 Annals." From the confusion of rulers it must have been inter- 

 polated long after 1634. 



R. A. Soc, No. 81, 1920. 



