The Malay Founder of Medieval Malacca

Extract

It is many years since at an Oriental Congress in Paris Dr. C. O. Blagden started the comparative study of the genealogy of the Malay rulers of medieval Malacca, comparing the account in the then best known version of the Sejarah Melayuor “ Malay Annals ” with the list of rulers recorded in Chinese sources (Essays Relating to Indochina, 2nd series, vol. 1, Notes on Malay Archipelago and Malacca, W. P. Groeneveldt) and in d′Albuquerque′s Commentaries (Hakluyt Soc, 1927). Since Dr. Blagden wrote his paper, there have been pubKshed under my name two other Malay sources for the genealogy of the Malacca dynasty: a chapter from a MS. of the Bustan al-Salatin by Shaikh Nur al-din (JRAS., Straits Branch, 1920, No. 81, pp. 39–47) and an earlier version of the “ Malay Annals ” (JRAS., Malayan Branch, 1938, No. 16). There is also new material in the Suma Orientalis of Tomé Pires (Hakluyt Soc., 1944, vol. ii, pp. 229–259). And there is a valuable paper on the Founder of Malacca by P. V. van Stein Callenfels (JRASMB., 1937, pt. ii, pp. 160–6).