NOTES OiN MALAY HISTORY. 



By C. 0. Blagden. 



I. An early reference to Menangkabau. 



In Chan Ju-kua's " Chu-fan-ehi," translated by Hirt and 

 Eockhill, under the heading " Palembang, San-fo-ts ? i,"* p. 61, 

 the following passage occurs : — 



" There is an old tradition that the ground in this country 

 once suddenly gaped open and out of the cavern came many 

 myriads of cattle, which rushed off in herds into the mountains, 

 though the people all tried to get them for food. Afterwards the 

 crevice got stopped up with bamboo and trees and disappeared/' 



The editors have rightly surmised that this contains a refer- 

 ence to the legendary etymology of the place-name " Menang- 

 kabau/^ in Central Sumatra. It evidently represents one of the 

 many variant ways in which " popular etymology," as it is called, 

 has attempted to explain this obscure name. The second half is 

 always identified (rightly or wrongly) with the Malay word for 

 " buffalo," but in other respects the explanations are very various. 

 In connection with this Chinese authority, the chief point of in- 

 terest is that he speaks of the legend as " an old tradition :" 

 evidently it had been current for some time before his own date 

 (which was about the middle of the 13th century of our era) ; and 

 this goes to show that the Menangkabau country was known by 

 that name from a considerably earlier period, that the real mean- 

 ing of the name had been forgotten and there had been time for 

 legends to grow up around it. 



II. An early mention of the old Singapore. 



In Wang Ta-yuan's " Tao i chili lio " (dated 1349 A.D. and 

 recently partially translated by Eockhill in T'oung Pao, March 

 1915), under the heading " Hsien,"f p. 100, the following passage 

 occurs : — 



" The people are much given to piracy ; whenever there is an 

 uprising in any other country, they at once embark in as many 



§ First actually mentioned, I think, in the Nagaratretagama (A. D. 13G5) 

 this Journal, No. 53, p. 147. 



Jour. Straits Branch R. A. Soc, No. 73, 1916. 



