A TRANSLATION OF THE KEDDAII ANNALS. 320 
Petam Ponto, which were armlets shaped like a snake in its hole 
leatly to dart at its victim and set with jems. The less wealthy 
used a baser metal, or merely a blue glase ring 1 , like those worn by 
the women of India at this day. Before the Raja, there was borne 
the gongam or golden casket, containing his betel mixture &c.” 
Fe e is a description from the same work, of the dress of a 
Malayan exquisite of rank of the thirteenth century. He wore a 
sagara gunong with bees flowered on the wing, A green flowered 
vest and bracelets (of gold) on his aims. He carried in his hand 
a nosegay composed of the saman rasa wali and champaka flowers, 
and he was perfumed with a scented flour. His teeth were ivhite 
as the bunga sri gading, or ivory flower, and his cheek was red 
like the catera leaf. 
It would be difficult to find a Malay in these clays with either 
white teeth or rosy cheeks. Neither staining of the teeth, there* 
fore, nor the use of the betel mixture as it is now used, would seem 
to have then been in fashion during Sultan Mahomed’s reign 
in Malacca, and the teeth of a scull of the earlier period of Kedda 
found by me in the ruins of a mausoleum of note were neither filed 
nor stained. The Bindahara or Commander-in-Chief wore a bunch 
of flowers in his hair, and he had a coat with long sleeves, made 
from four cubits of cloth, (six yards if the cubit was a short one 
and eight to twelve feet if a long one). He used to change his 
dress four or five times during the day, employing a mirror as tall 
as himself^ and while dressing he used to ask his wife to tell him 
how Iris dress became him. He had a number of turbans always 
lying ready rolled out to be put on. Moreover this military fop 
41 used the exercise of the swing ” 
Sultan Mahomed wrote to the Kling country or the Coromandel 
Coast for forty webs of different sorts of chintz, each sort to 
have forty different kinds of flowering. 
The Malays of the piesent day dress very variously, but almost 
all of them are distinguished by the sarong, a piece of checquered 
cotton or silk cloth joined together at the ends; and being passed 
over the head, it is then fastened round the waist, with the skirts 
descending half way down the calf of the leg, or crossed over the 
body like the highlanders plaid. The Bencoollen Malays appear 
to dress with more taste than most of the other tribes. 
In the Sanscrit and Hindu inscriptions of Bakergang in Bengal 
120 miles east of Calcutta which refers to the numerous battles of 
the prince no mention is made of fire arms. Bows, arrows, and 
swords only are named. This was about A. D. 1 1 36, and the 
same omission was in a Sanscrit inscription at Kaira in Gujerat, 
but of doubtful state p] As to mirrors they roust have been 
brought by.the Arabs, and were probably of Venetian manufacture. 
It appears that Kedda was now left for some years without a 
head. It was so for seven years if we are to be guided by the age 
p] J. A. S. B. 
