319 A TRANSLATION OF THE KEDDAH ANNALS. 
out of bis great regard for the youth, gave to him in mar¬ 
riage, his daughter, a lovely girl, for this rnantri was the son 
of an inferior Baja, and descended from one of the four man- 
tris who had originally gone to Siam to form a new country 
of Tiga Bnah or three parts and also to Perak and Patani, 
in short descended from the manlris of Marong Maba- 
wangsa. [14] 
NOTES. 
[!4] Were a Malayan subject of any Malayan country of the 
present day to write a history and comment on it as our author 
does on the actions of its princes he would mostly likely be slain. 
Hence after the converlion to Islamism we have hardly any thing 
more but a meagre list of the Kedda chiefs or Rajas, The four 
ministers of the Rajas appear to have had little influence until the 
acts of the latter had \ ecome so tyrannical that they were forced 
to rule with an outraged people. In the states of Perak and Achin 
the ministers have generally usurped all real power, and have left 
the Rajas in possession of an empty title, one however to which 
owing to their clannish feelings, the Malays will always pay respect. 
“It is not” observes the Malacca native annalist, “ the custom 
u for Malays to commit treason ** 
A Malay living under European rule often considers that 
oppression, which under the sway of a native chief he would chear- 
fully submit to. 
Our author delights in bringing guns into the field, but long, I 
suspect, before they were known to the people of this coast I 
will advert to this further on. lire Gundang Raja or great drum 
is yet in use at the palaces of Malayan Rajas, and is to be found, 
but of a lesser size, at all the mosques where it is beaten on Fridays. 
It is part of a tree hollowed out with one end covered by a dried 
buffalo hrde, 
# r f sham fight here described was got up by the chiefs or mi¬ 
nisters, who might just as well have marched into the fort at once. 
It was to save appearances of treason on the one hand and pusila- 
nimity in a Raja on the other. Tire maids of honor to the princess 
were as in more civilized regions the wives and daughters of the 
Aristocracy, 
Raja Bersiyong would not have been content with “setting the 
Thames on fire” for our author says that when dressed and accout¬ 
ered for the fight he looked as if he “ would set the universe on 
fire.” The parallelism ol tire two ideas is however curious. The 
intercourse of Kedda with India gave him his cashmere .shawl, and 
perhaps other portions of his dress. 
I extract from the “ Malayan annals” a description of a 
fashionably attired man of rank. “ He had anklets of gold called 
koionchong or hollow bracelets of gold, ornamented with silver. 
