NOTES ON TWO PERAK 3IANUSCEI PTS. 189 



The illness and death of Mozafar Shah are related with 

 considerable fullness of detail and the date of the latter 

 event is given, which is valuable as enabling the reader to 

 fix approximate dates for other events recorded in the nar- 

 ration. Mozafar Shah died on Friday the 11th of Zulkhaidah 

 A. H. 11(57 (A. D. 1756). Among other incidents of his 

 illness we read that " there was a woman in the palace whom 

 "the king ordered to be killed and she was accordingly 

 '• executed, for she was out of her mind.'- The unfortunate 

 creature was no doubt suspected of being a witch and of 

 having caused the Eaja's illness by her spells. But this 

 violent reined}' was unavailing, for the chronicle states that 

 ••after this, the king's illness grew more and more severe.' 5 

 iPerak seems to have been an. unsafe place for reputed 

 witches, for not long ago when visiting S. Jarum Mas on 

 the Perak coast I was shewn the place [Kwala Bujang Lim- 

 becs) where a former Panglima Bukit G ant ang had caused 

 a beautiful woman named Allang Suyoh to be executed for 

 witchcraft. She was known among the people as Bujang 

 Limbas.) 



The Eaja Mudawho succeeded to the throne took the title 

 of Sultan Iskandar Zulkarnein. In describing the domestic- 

 events of his reign, the author has exhausted his vocabulary 

 and it is the detailed accounts of the Court ceremonies on 

 all sorts of occasions that make the work so valuable in the 

 eyes of Malays. Accounts of palace festivities, the installa- 

 tion of chiefs the amusements of truthful princes, the 

 superstitious ceremonies practised in cases of illness, reli- 

 gious observances, and royal prograsses fill page after page, 

 while events of historical interest receive comparatively 

 little notice. 



The former, though curious, possess little general interest 

 and I propose here to translate only one passage, which gives 

 the reason for a singular superstition which to this day 

 prevents a Perak sovereign from inhabiting the house in 

 which his predecessor had died. 



" It is related that the king ( Iskandar Shah) determined 

 k * to remove from Brahman Indra, for he did not feel easy 

 s - in mind while he remained in the abode of the late Eaja. 

 " And he took thought day and night how he might fix upon 

 " a spot in which he might establish a capital for his own 

 " reign, Then the king said (to the Eaja Muda and the 



