A TRANSLATION OF THE KEDDAH ANNALS. 
11 
tributaries merely. It is even doubtful if Persia has not been in¬ 
cluded by them under the same title. But it appears from the native 
writings which are extant, that the Malays, and to some extent the 
Indo-chinese, derived most of their knowledge of the west from 
Bagdad, which was considered by them as a portion of the Empire 
of Rumi. In the early history of the Malays,'the first King of 
M er hngkiihau in Sumatra was the son of a Prince of India and of 
the race of Raja Sekandar Zulkarneini, or Alexander the Great. 
It will appear further on, that our author has contrived to blend, 
but in rather a bungling manner, two narratives regarding very 
dissimilar regions and people The lineage assigned to the Am¬ 
bassador sufficiently pioves that his country could not have been 
Rumi, but that it indicates some part of India, and likewise that 
he belonged to one of the two great religious divisions of the In¬ 
dians, the Hindus, and ths Buddhists It is probable enough 
that the contemporaneous arrival at Kedd&h, of two parties of 
strangers, the one from some place in the Byzantine Empire, the 
other from India, gave rise to the confusion we find in the be¬ 
ginning of this Keddah chronicle. 
The voyage of the Ambassador from Rum, is narrated so circum¬ 
stantially, and in general so correctly, with reference to the 
geography of the Coasts along which it was made, that there seems 
to be no reason for our not admitting it to have been performed 
by some known navigator of the period in the direction of the 
Straits of Malacca, if not actually to Keddah. The name of this 
navigator had probably been forgotten, previous to the labours of 
our Author, and was afterwards identified by the latter with Marong 
Mahawangsa, who was the leader of a Colony from India. 
I am almost induced, from the lineage given for him, to believe 
that this latter person partook of the sacerdotal, as well as of the 
lay character. But our Author, owing probably to his Islamitic 
contempt for every phase of religious feeling beyond the pale of 
his own creed, has only casually alluded to the subject. Mhrong 
Mahawangsa is not described by him as having given to Keddah 
a new religion—although his descendants are expressly noticed 
by him, as will be seen further on, as image worshippers. I am 
disposed to think that the Buddhist religion was prevalent in Ked¬ 
dah before the advent of that Colony—and that the Sivaic super¬ 
stition was engrafted upon it by the priests who arrived with the 
colonists. 
Tfoe antiquarian remains which years of research have supplied 
to me, lead me to the conclusion that both Hindus and Buddhists 
had votaries in Keddah for several centuries, while at the same time 
they serve to corroborate the Native Author's assertions. But this 
subject cannot be here entered on. 
Before proceeding further, it may be as well to trace the etymo¬ 
logy of the name Marong Mahawangsa. M&rong is a Siamese 
word used in their astrological or astronomical works. It is 
