128 ON THE MALA'YU NATION, 



With respect to the Maritime Institutions which I have now the honor 

 to lay before the Asiatick society, they have been selected on account of 

 their singularity and characteristic peculiarities. The power of life and 

 death vested in the JVakhodak may be considered as purely Malay, or at 

 any rate to have had its origin in the Eastern Islands: the Arabs, from 

 whom alone they could have borrowed a foreign sea-code, not possessing, 

 as far, as I have been able to ascertain, any treatise -whatever on maritime 

 law, or in any instance admitting the authority ,-of the Waihodak or 

 captain of a vessel to inflict capital punishments. lln this point of view, 

 the paper, even in its present state, may not foe ...uninteresting ; and it may 

 tend, in some degree to account for some of the numerous peculiarities of 

 a nation generally believed to act on most occasions^ solely from in- 

 dividual will, and ferocious passios, 



