Environmental World History Essay

Ying-yai sheng-lan chiao-chu

THE COUNTRY OF MAN-LA-CHIA1

[MALACCA]

From Chan City2 you go due south, and after travelling for eight days with a fair wind the ship comes to Lung ya strait;3 after entering the strait you travel west;4 [and] you can reach [this place] in two days.

Formerly this place was not designated a ‘country’; [and] because the sea [hereabouts] was named ‘Five Islands’, [the place] was in consequence named ‘Five Islands’.5 There was no king of the country; [and] it was controlled only by a chief. This territory was subordinate to the jurisdiction of Hsien Lo;6 it paid an annual tribute of forty ¡lang’1 of gold; [and] if it were not [to pay], then Hsien Lo would send men to attack it.8

In the seventh year of the Yung-lo [period],’ [the cyclic year] chi-ch’ou, the Emperor ordered the principal envoy the grand eunuch Cheng Ho and others to assume command [of the treasure-ships], and to take the imperial edicts and to bestow upon this chief two silver seals, a hat, a girdle and a robe. [Cheng Ho] set up a stone tablet and raised [the place] to a city; [and]

1 Giles, nos. 7622; 6653; 1144; Malacca, port on the west coast of the Malay peninsula, 2° 12′ N, 1020 15′ E; in Ma Huan’s time politically unimportant, but of considerable, and rapidly increasing, importance as an entrepôt of international trade, where for the first time the commerce of the world’s major trade-route, between Venice and the Molucca islands, was concentrated in one central point according to a definite plan. For Malacca see Hsiang Ta, Kung Chen, pp. 14-17; Fei Hsin, ch. 1, pp. 19-21 (Rockhill, Part it, pp. 117-18); Ming shih, p. 7918, row I (Groeneveldt, pp. 248-54); Wheatley, Khersonese, pp. 306-20; Winstedt, History, pp. 44-50; Meilink-Roelofsz, pp. 27-35; Coedès, États, pp. 441-3; Hall, History, pp. 190-8.

2 Champa; Central Vietnam. i Giles, nos. 7479; 12,797; 7751. Lung ya strait appears to be that part of Singapore

Main strait lying between Pulau Satumu or Coney islet (Raffles lighthouse) on the north and the chain of islets and reefs (Poulo Nipa, Kent rocks, Poulo Pelampong, Potilo Takong besar, Helen Mar reef, and Buffalo rock) which form the southern side of Singapore Main strait. See Appendix 4, The location of Lung ya strait.

♦ The true direction is north-west. 5 K seems better, ‘ Because the sea had five islands, [the place] was in consequence

called Five Islands.’ The Five Islands are the Water islands, about 6J miles south-east of Malacca pier.

6 Thailand. ’ The equivalent of 40 Hang was 47-96 ounces troy weight. All three texts have ‘40

Hang’-, Chang Sheng’s reading of ‘5000 Hang’ is very wide of the mark; see PeUiot, ‘Voyages’, p. 389.

8 Thailand still controlled the east coast of the Malay peninsula down to, and includ­ ing, Singapore; it remained the inveterate enemy of Malacca.

» That is, 1409. Both the Shih-lu and the Ming shih give the date as 1408, and this was accepted by Pefflot; but Duyvendak has demonstrated that the date given by Ma Huan is correct; see PeUiot, ‘Voyages’, pp. 285-6, and Duyvendak, ‘Dates’, p. 366.

108 IOO

The Country of Man-la-chia

it was subsequently called the ‘country of Man-la-chia’.1 Thereafter Hsien lo did not dare to invade it.2

The chief, having received the favour of being made king,3 conducted his wife and son,4 and went to the court at the capital5 to return thanks and to present tribute of local products. The court also granted him a sea-going ship, so that he might return to his country and protect his land.

On the south-east of the country is [Page 23] the great sea; on the north­ west the sea-shore adjoins the mountains.6 Ah is sandy, saltish land. The climate is hot by day, cold by night. The fields are infertile and the crops poor; [and] the people seldom practise agriculture.7

There is one large river whose waters flow down past the front of the king’s residence to enter the sea;8 over the river the king has constructed a wooden bridge, on which are built more than twenty bridge-pavilions, [and] all the trading in every article takes place on this [bridge].’

1 According to the Ming shih (p. 7918, row 1), in 1405 the emperor appointed the chief ‘to be king of the country (kuo) of Malacca’; this implies that the emperor recog­ nized the ti, ‘territory’, as a huo, ‘country’, having a certain degree of political organ­ ization. On his third expedition, Cheng Ho would have reached Malacca in 1410, and he then raised the town in status to a ch’eng, ‘city*.

2 Chang Sheng’s statement (Rockhill, Part n, p. 114) that ‘it ceased to be a de­ pendency of Hsien Lo’ doesnot appear in Ma Huan’s original version, or in Kung Chen or Fei Hsin. Malacca did not finally repudiate its vassalage to Thailand until after 1488 (Winstedt, History, p. 58). But Thailand still claimed suzerainty over the whole peninsula when the Portuguese captured Malacca in 1511, and the four northern states of Malaya, that is, Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, and Perlis, acknowledged the supremacy of Thailand until 1909 (Winstedt, History, p. 237).

2 The chief was the founder and first king of Malacca; in the Ming shih he is called ‘Pai-fi-mi-su-la’, that is, Permiçura (Parameswara); he took the title of Sultan Iskandar Shah (Brown, p. 52) about 1413.

4 Or ‘wives and sons’; the Chinese text is imprecise. 5 They would have returned on the ship of Cheng Ho, who reached Nanking on

6 July 1411 (Duyvendak, ‘Dates’, p. 361). 6 On the contrary, the sea is on the south-west, and the mountains on the north-east.

Kung Chen makes the same mistake. Groeneveldt (p. 243) translated ‘The country is bordered on the west by the ocean, and on the east and north by high mountains’; an examination of Groeneveldt’s text at the British Museum discloses that, as PeUiot Suspected, Groeneveldt has tacitly altered Ma Huan’s statement in such a way as to conform with geographical facts (PeUiot, ‘Voyages’, p. 390).

2 It takes several years to develop an organized system of irrigated rice-fields. The earliest settlers must have lived largely on sago-flour, tubers, and fruits. Rice was imported from Pedir and Pasai in Sumatra; see Winstedt, History, pp. 48—9.

8 The Malacca river. v The bridge of trading-booths is shown on several old drawings; for instance, see

the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. XXIX (1956), pp. 162, 166. It became well known in the Far East, and attracted merchants from east and west; see Winstedt, History, p. 49. Foreign merchants resided in the town from the earliest years (Wheatley, Khersonese, p. 312).

 

 

Ying-yai sheng-lan chiao-chu

The king of the country and the people of the country all follow the Muslim religion, fasting, doing penance, and chanting liturgies.1

As to the king’s dress: he uses a fine white foreign cloth to wind round his head; on his body he wears a long garment of fine-patterned blue cloth, fashioned like a robe; [and] on his feet he wears leather shoes. When he goes about, he rides in a sedan-chair.

The men of the country wrap the head with a square kerchief. The women dress the hair in a chignon behind the head. Their bodies are [only] slightly dark.2 Round the lower part they wrap a white cloth kerchief;3 [and] on the upper part they wear a short jacket of coloured cloth.

Their customs are pure and simple. Their dwellings are constructed like storeyed pavilions; in the upper [part of the house] they do not lay down a plank [flooring]; but at a point about four ch’iht high [from the ground] they take strips formed by splitting a coconut tree, and lay them down at spaced intervals on [supports], binding them securely with rattans—just as a goat­ shed [is made]; [the strips] are arranged in an orderly manner, with a bed serving as a couch on which they sit cross-legged; [and] all their drinking, sleeping and cooking is done up there.5

The men mostly practise fishing for a livelihood; they use a dug-out boat made from a single tree-trunk, and drift on the sea to get the fish.

The land produces such things as yellow su incense,6 ebony, ta-ma-erh1 incense, and ‘flower tin’. Ta-ma-erh incense is in origin the gum from a species of tree; it runs out into the ground; [and] when they dig it up, it

1 Sultan Iskandar Shah was succeeded by his son Raja Tengah who assumed the title of Sri Maharaja (1424-44). Sultan Iskandar Shah must have embraced the Muslim faith about 1413, since he had been converted before he assumed the style of Megat Iskandar Shah (Winstedt, History, p. 49), and we find that style under the year 1414 in the Ming shih (p. 7918, row 1; reading Mu-wa Sa-kan-ti-erh Ska for Mu-kan Sa-yii-ti-erh Ska, on which see Pelliot, ‘Encore’, p. 220). The conversion of the people took place ‘in the course of time’. On the religion of the Malays and on the survival of pre-Muslim Hindu elements, see N. Ginsburg and C. F. Roberts, Malaya (Seattle, 1958), pp. 227—33, and p. 317, respectively.

2 Compared with certain other Asian peoples, for instance, the Chams, who were ‘quite black*.

3 The standard kain sarong is a piece of cloth approximately 42 inches in width and 2 yards in circumference and is worn wrapped around the waist.

4 About 49 inches. 5 The elements of the basic Malay house have been investigated by R. N. Hilton,

‘The Basic Malay House’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. XXIX (1956), pp. 134-55. See also Ginsburg, pp. 81-2.

6 A kind of lign-aloes. 7 Giles, nos. 10,494; 7591; 3333; ‘dammar’; Malay damar, an exudation from various

coniferous and dipterocarpous trees; see Yule and Burnell, under ‘Dammer’, p. 294i. The substance is still obtained and used in the way described by Ma Huan (Groeneveldt, p. 244, n.). See Wheatley, ‘Commodities’, pp. 92-3.

HO

The Country of Man-la-chia

looks like pine-resin or pitch. When you set fire to it, it flares up;1 [and] the foreigners all use this substance and set it alight [Page 24] to serve as a lamp. When they have finished building a foreign ship, they take some of this substance, melt it, and smear it in the seams, so that the water cannot get in; it is very effective. Many of the people in that land collect this substance to transport it to other countries for sale. The sort of [ta-ma-erh] which is bright, clear and good, resembles golden amber; its name is sun-tu-lu-ssu.2 The foreigners make it up into cap-buttons and sell them. The ‘water­ amber’ of the present day is this substance.

As to ‘flower tin’: there are two tin-areas in the mountain-valleys;3 [and] the king appoints chiefs to control them. Men are sent to wash [for the ore] in a sieve and to cook it. [The tin] is cast into blocks the shape of a tou- tneasure4—to make small blocks which are handed in to the officials. Each block weighs one chin eight Hang, sometimes one chin four liangj on our official steelyard. Every ten blocks are tied up with rattan to make a small bundle; [and] forty blocks make one large bundle. In trading transactions they all take this tin for current use.

The speech of the people in this country, and their writings, and marriage- Htes6 are somewhat the same as in Chao-wa.

In the mountain-wilds there is a kind of tree called the sha-ku1 tree. The 1 Cho (Giles, no. 2394), ‘to place’; R. H. Mathews, Clónese—English Dictionary

(Cambridge, Mass., 1945), no. 1259, explains that it is an alternative form of chao (Giles, no. 481), ‘to set fire to’, ‘to blaze up’; this last character is not in Shu Hsin-Ch’eng.

2 Probably Arab-Persian sindarus, ‘gum sandarac’; the word is perhaps connected with chandra^ {chandras), ‘copal’; see Pelliot, ‘Voyages’, p. 391.

3 Fei Hsin says that the tin came from one mountain in Malacca territory; compare Rockhill, Partu, p. 117. The‘district.. . called Shu-sha’mentioned by Rockhill (p. 11Ğ) is a figment of the imagination; the text translated by Rockhill is corrupt; Ma Huan is describing the tree (shu) called ska that is, sago.

4 The tou, so-called ‘peck’, then contained 2-36 gallons; the blocks, although cast in the shape of this measure, must have been considerably smaller.

3 That is, i pound 15 ounces, or sometimes 1 pound 10 ounces, avoirdupois. 6 S and K add ‘funeral-rites’. Ma Huan notes the similarity of certain customs in

Muslim Malacca, Buddhist Palembang, and Hindu Majapahit; but Islam was not yet completely prevalent in Malacca, and even ¡01537 both rich and poor, instead of burying their dead, still adhered to the Hindu custom of burning them (Groeneveldt, p. 248). The Malay and Javanese languages belong to the western branch of the Malayo- Polynesian family, about half the vocabulary of the two languages being approximately the same. The pre-Islamic literature of Malacca consisted mainly of Hindu epics and Javanese tales. Before adopting the Muslim marriage-law, the Malays followed the most usual form of Hindu marriage, that is, the purchase of a girl from her parents.

On the above topics see Sir R. Winstedt, The Malays (London, 1950), pp. 16, 29, 45-6. 139-44-

7 Giles, nos. 9624; 6222; Malay sagu, the farinaceous pith taken from the stem of several species of a particular kind of palm (Yule and Burnell, p. 780 ¿).

 

 

Ying-yai sheng-lan chiao-chu

people of the countryside take the skin of this article and, as is done with ko’ root in the Central Country, they pound and soak it; after it has settled and been strained, the powder is made into balls the size of lentils; these are sun- dried2 and sold: they are called ‘sha-ku rice’; [and] they can serve as rice for consumption.

On the islands in the sea along the coast there grows a variety of aquatic plant called ‘chiao-chang leaves’;3 they are long—like knives or reeds—and resemble the [shoots of the] ‘bitter bamboo’,4 with their thick rind and flexible nature. [The plant] bears fruit like a litchi5 in appearance and as large as fowls’ eggs; the people take these fruits and make a fermented wine called ‘chiao-chang wine’;6 when drunk, it can intoxicate people, too. The people of the countryside [Page aS] take these leaves and interweave them with bamboo [to make] fine matting; [the pieces]’ are only two cKih broad and more than one chang long;8 they are sold as mats.

For fruits, they have such things as sugar-cane, bananas, jack-fruit, and wild litchi. For vegetables: onions, ginger, garlic, mustard, gourd-melons’ and water-melons—all these they have. Oxen, goats, fowls, and ducks, although they have them, are not plentiful; prices are very dear; [and] one of their water-buffaloes costs more than one chin’0 of silver. Donkeys and horses are entirely absent.

In the waters at the edge of the sea there are always iguana-dragons’1 which injure people; these dragons are three or four ch’ih in height,12 and

1 Giles, no. 6069. A creeping edible bean, identified with Pachyrhąut Thunbergianus (Pelliot, ‘Voyages’, p. 391).

2 Shai kan-, the first character is not in Giles, it is a variant form of no. 9654; the second character (Giles, no. 5814), ‘shield’, is an unauthorized form of no. 5809, ‘dry’.

3 Probably Feng should have punctuated *… plant called chiao-chang-, the leaves are long…’; chiao-chang is Malay kajang-, Ma Huan evidently means the nipa palm (Nipa fruticans); the word kajang was more or less acclimatized among the population of the Chinese ports at the end of the thirteenth century (Pelliot, ‘ Voyages’, p. 39z, n. 1).

4 ylrundinaria japónica (Pelliot, ‘Voyages’, p. 393). s Fruit of Nephelium litchi; see Yule and Burnell, under ‘Leechee’, p. 513 c. 6 See Yule and Burnell under ‘Nipa’, p. 626a. The wine was made, not from the

fruit, but from the sap of the flower-stalks (Groeneveldt, p. 211, n.). ’ The text is probably corrupt; K has ‘weave them into fine mats’. On mats see

Wheatley, ‘Commodities’, under ‘Pandanus mats’, pp. 64-5. 8 The equivalent of 2 ch’ih was 24-4 inches; I chang equalled to feet 2 inches. ’ Tung kua (Giles, nos. 12,248; 6281), ‘eastern gourd’; this vegetable is the same as

the tung kua, ‘winter gourd’ of Champa. Shu Hsin-Ch’eng omits to give this in­ formation.

10 The equivalent of 1 chin was 19-18 ounces troy; the present market-value of the silver would be £8 igr.

11 T’o lung (Giles, nos. 11,397; 747?), as in S and K, which Feng here prefers; C and Kung Chen read ‘turtle dragons’; evidently Ma Huan refers to the crocodile.

12 The equivalent of 3 ch’ih was 36-7 inches.

I12

The Country of Man-la-chia

have four feet; the body is covered with scales; on the back grows a row of spikes; they have a dragon’s head and bared teeth; [and] when they en­ counter a man, they bite him at once.

The mountains produce a black tiger,1 somewhat smaller than the yellow tiger of the Central Country; the hair is black, [but] it has dark stripes, too; the yellow tiger, also, is sometimes found. In the town there are tigers which turn into men;2 they enter the markets, and walk about mixing with people; [and] after they have been recognized, they are captured and killed.

[Beings] like the ‘corpse-head barbarian’ of Chan city also exist in this place.3

Whenever4 the treasure-ships of the Central Country arrived there, they at once erected a line of stockading, like a city-wall, and set up towers for the watch-drums at four gates; at night they had patrols of police carrying bells; inside, again, they erected a second stockade, like a small city-wall, [within which] they constructed warehouses and granaries; [and] all the money and provisions were stored in them. The ships which had gone to various countries5 returned to this place and assembled; they marshalled the foreign goods and loaded them in the ships; [then] waited till the south wind was

1 Perhaps Ma Huan refers to the black panther. 2 Belief in were-tigers is still to be found in rural villages (J. N. McHugh, Hantu

Hantu (Singapore, 1955), p. 102). Ma Huan appears to be the earliest writer who records the belief in Malaya. Eredia, in 1613, recounted the solemn excommunication of were-tigers at Malacca in 1560.

3 Ma Huan’s description of the Champa vampire shows that he refers to the Hantu Langsuyar, sometimes called Hantu Pontianak, or its relative the Hantu Penanggalan; see McHugh, pp. 79, 81.

4 Fan (Giles, no. 3399), ‘all’, that is, ‘every time’; Feng takes this reading from S, and as a result considers that the Chinese established this cantonment on every one of Cheng Ho’s seven expeditions (Feng, pp. 25-6); Pelliot, on the other hand, thought that the cantonment was established on a single occasion, to wit, on the seventh expedi­ tion of 1431—3 when Cheng Ho stayed 18 days at Malacca (Pelliot, ‘Voyages’, pp. 395-400; Pelliot, ‘Encore’, pp. 219-20). Wheatley held that the occasion was on the fourth expedition of 1413-15 (Wheadey, Khersonese, p. 324, n. 2). Kung Chen (Hsiang Ta, Kung Chen, pp. 16-17), writing more fully, states that the Chinese treated the cantonment as a ‘foreign prefecture’; ships which had gone to Champa, Java, and other such places brought their goods here for storage; separate flotillas then went to Hormuz and such places, and within a week of the pre-arranged date re-assembled at Malacca; stored goods were loaded on board, and when the fair wind arrived, the combined fleet sailed back to China. This passage on the Chinese cantonment at Malacca is very important; and Pelliot’s understanding of Ma Huan’s text differs on no less than six points from that of Groeneveldt (p. 245) and Wheatley (Khersonese, p. 324).

5 We here have another reference to ships being detached from the main fleet; they were detached, according to Pelliot, at Malacca (Pelliot, ‘Voyages’, pp. 396, 400), and, according to Feng, at Atjeh (Feng, p. 26), where he wrongly locates Semudera (Su- men-ta-la).

8 “3 MH V

 

 

Ying-yai sheng-lan chiao-chu

perfectly favourable. In the middle decade of the fifth moon they put to sea and returned home.1

[Page 2ff] Moreover, the king2 of the country made a selection of local products, conducted his wife and son, brought his chiefs, boarded a ship and followed the treasure-ships;3 [and] he attended at court [and] presented tribute.’*

THE COUNTRY OF YA-LU5

[aru, deli] Setting sail from the country of Man-la-chia6 and travelling with a fair wind, you can reach [this place] in four days and nights. In this country there is an estuary called Fresh Water estuary;7 you enter the estuary and come to the capital. On the south there are great mountains; on the north is the great sea; on the west it adjoins the boundary of the country of Su-men-ta-la;8 [and] on the east there is flat land.

It is suitable for the cultivation of dry-land rice;9 [but] the rice-grains are small. Provisions are always obtainable. The people practise agriculture and fishing for a livelihood.

The customs are pure and simple. In this country the marriages, funerals 1 In 1433 the fifth moon began on 19 May; the second decade, therefore, began on

29 May; Cheng Ho, however, left Malacca on 28 May, which was the last day of the first decade; but the difference of one day is probably immaterial. In May southerly winds become frequent in the central part of Malacca strait, and the south-west monsoon is considered to blow from June to September.

2 In 1433 the king was Sri Maharaja (1424-44), second king of Malacca, son of the founder and first king of Malacca.

3 According to the Ming shih (Groeneveldt, p. 250), the king did not reach Nanking till the autumn, and as Cheng Ho reached Peking on 22 July, the king must have followed in his own ship (Pelliot, ‘Voyages’, p. 400).

* According to Duyvendak, it was as part of a tribute-present from Malacca that spectacles were first introduced into China in 1410 (Duyvendak, “Hsi-yang chi’, pp. 7, ta).

5 Giles, nos. 12,812; 7388 ; Aru; to be located in the vicinity of Belawan (3° 47′ N, 98o 41′ E) in the Deli district on the east coast of Sumatra. Aru at this time possessed no political or economic importance. For Aru see Hsiang Ta, Kung Chen, pp. 17-18; Fei Hsin, ch. 2, p. 27 (Rockhill, Part 11, p. 142); Ming shih, p. 7919, row 2 (Groeneveldt, pp. 217-18); Meilink-Roelofsz, pp. 29-30, Si.

6 Malacca. 7 Giles, nos. 10,646; 10,128; 1245; ‘Fresh Water estuary’, the estuary of Sungai Deli. 8 Semudera, the Lho Seumawe region. The boundary was probably near the Sungai

Tamiang (mouth in 40 25′ N, 98o 15′ E). » In this undesirable system of cultivation, rice is planted in burnt-off jungle; the

system gives poor yields, causes erosion, ruins the primary jungle, and hinders develop­ ment; moreover, the ground must be left fallow for at least four years afterwards. On upland rice culture see Wickizer, p. 11.

114

The Country of Ya-lu

and other such things are all the same as in the countries of Chao-wa1 and Man-la-chia.

The commodities which they use are few, [but] a cotton cloth called k’ao-ni* and rice and grain, oxen, goats, fowls and ducks are very plentiful. Junket is sold in abundance.

The king3 of the country and the people of the country are all Muslims. In the mountain-forest there occurs a kind of flying tiger, as large as a

cat; the body is covered with ash-coloured hair; it has fleshy wings, like a bat, but the fleshy wing of the front foot grows joined to the back foot; it can Ay, [Page 2J\ [but] not far; [and] if people catch it, it will not eat the house­ hold-food, so it dies.*

The land produces such things as yellow su incense and chin-yin incense. It is but a small country.

THE COUNTRY OF SU-MEN-TA-LA5

[SEMUDERA, LHO seumawe] The country of Su-men-ta-la is exactly the same country as that formerly [named] Hsü-wen-ta-na. This place is indeed the principal centre for the Western Ocean.

1 Java, 2 Giles, nos. 5966; 8197; not satisfactorily explained; Pelliot did not accept Groene-

veldt’s explanation of Malay kain, the word for textiles (Pelliot, ‘ Voyages pp. 400-1). Wang Ta-yüan mentions a cloth named kao-ni produced in Bengal (Rockhill, Part 11, p. 436). On cloth see Wheatley, ‘Commodities’, p. 59. Ma Huan omits to mention camphor, which is included by Fei Hsin (Rockhill, Part 11, p. 142). On camphor see Wheatley, ‘Commodities’, pp. 101-5.

3 Perhaps the sultan ‘Hu-hsien* (Giles, nos. 4927; 4440), probably Husain, who was reigning in 1411 (Groeneveldt, p. 217); or perhaps sultan Sajak, whose son was reigning at some time during the period from 1477 to 1488 (see Brown, p. 120).

4 Probably a flying lizard or flying lemur (Rockhill, Part 11, p. 142, n. 1). 5 Giles, nos. 10,320; 7751; 10,481; 6653; Semudera (Samudra). The town of Semudera

stood on the left or west bank of the Krueng Pasai, nearly opposite to Pasai or Pase, and about five miles from the mouth of the river, on the north coast of Sumatra (Brown, p. 44; G. E. Gerini, Researches on Ptolemy’s Geography (London, 1909), p. 642; A, H. Hill (ed.), ‘Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xxxm, pt. 2 (i960), p. 12). The country of Semudera must be placed in the Lho Seumawe district and surrounding region. In Ma Huan’s time and until about the middle of the fifteenth century, the kingdom of Semudera, sometimes called Pasai, while relatively unimportant from the political point of view, was yet the premier state of western Malaysia; and, economically, it constituted the focal point of international trade until surpassed by Malacca. For Semudera (Pasai) see Hsiang Ta, Kung Chen, pp. 18-20; Fei Hsin, ch. 1, pp. 22-4 (Rockhill, Part 11, pp. 156-7); Ming shih, p. 7918, row 3 (Groeneveldt, pp. 211-12); Majumdar, Suvarnadvipa, pt. 1, pp. 374-5; Brown, p. 98; Schrieke, pt. 1, p. 17; pt. 11, pp. 255-6, 260-3; Meilink-Roelofsz, pp. 19, 20, 33, 34, 90; Coedès, Etats, p. 440; Hall, History, p. 191.

”5 8-2