NOTES ON TWO PERAK MANUSCRIPTS.
By W. E. MAXWELL.
Malay history is very little more advanced than it was when Crawfurd remarked on the meagre and unsatisfactory nature of the notices which we possess on "this curious and interesting subject."[1] The Sijara Malayu, or history of the Malacca kings, is the work of a Mohamedan who grafted events which were recent in his time upon legends whose real place is in Hindoo mythology. It possesses little value as a historical document, except as regards the reigns of the later kings of Malacca.
The "Marong Mahawangsa," or "Kedah Annals," professes to treat of the early history of the State of Kedah, and though not justifying, as a historical document, the credit attaclied to it by its translator, Col. Low, it hardly merits, perhaps, the sweeping condemnation of Mr. Crawfurd, who described it as "a dateless tissue of rank fable from which not a grain of reliable knowledge can be gathered."[2] If, as there seems good reason for believing, the Hindoo legends in these works are traceable to the Brahininical scriptures of India, their value from an ethnological point of view may perhaps some day be better appreciated. The Hikayat Hang Tuah fares no better at Mr. Crawfurd's hands than the work of the Kedah historian. It is described as "a most absurd and puerile production. It contains no historical fact upon which the slightest reliance can be placed; no date whatever, and, if we except the faithful picture of native mind and manners which it unconsciously affords, is utterly worthless and contemptible."[3]
Leyden in his Essay on the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese nations[4] gives the following account of Malay historical manuscripts:
