Chapter II - THE COMING OF THE MALAYS.

Soon after 1360 Majapahit sacked and burnt Singapore, then almost certainly a colony of the Buddhist empire Srivijaya, that is of Palembang in Sumatra. Its ruler, Parameswara, who according to d'Albuquerque was a prince of Palembang, fled first to Muar and then to Malacca, which under the influence of Gujerati traders soon became Muslim and a great centre for trade.* From the middle of the fifteenth century the descendants of Parameswara, rulers of Malacca who with Islam had adopted the title of Sultan, started an imperialist policy, extending their sway as far inland as Sungai Ujong, over Klang, Pahang, Trengganu and Johor, over Lingga and over Siak, Deli, Kampar and Indragiri in Sumatra. Then in August 1511 Afonso d'Albuquerque captured Malacca. Sultan Mahmud fled first to Pahang, next to Riau whence he was driven by the Portuguese in 1526, and finally to Kampar in Sumatra where he died about 1528.

During the reign (1488-1528) of this Sultan Mahmud, his Bendahara or prime minister the Paduka Tuan (whose grave is at Segamat) accompanied by ten Malacca captains had conquered a place Manjong " formerly a large country/' because it was on bad terms with Bruas. In gratitude the Raja of Bruas gave his sister, Putri Siat, to his conqueror's grandson Tun Isap Berakah, by whom she became the mother of Tun Biajid the Bendahara who founded Johor and of Tun Mahmud first Bendahara of Perak. The Raja of Bruas accompanied Paduka Tuan back to Malacca where he was made ruler of Manjong and given a naubat or royal band and the title of Tun Aria Bija 'diraja. Acknowledging the Sultan of Malacca as his suzerain he now settled at Manjong. After the Portuguese captured Malacca, Tun Aria Bija 'diraja neglected to pay homage to his suzerain in his exile at Riau, whereupon Tun Isap Berakah, now Sultan Mahmud's Bendahara, fetched his wife's neglectful relative, at the same time marrying his own son Tun Mahmud to that son's cousin, Tun Mah, a daughter of this ruler of Bruas, and putting the young man in charge of Selangor. Was Tun Aria Bija 'diraja a Muslim? It would appear so. Whether he was a full-blooded Malay is unknown.

These references to Bruas in the " Malay Annals " are among the earliest authentic Malay references to any part of Perak. And Perak tradition avers that the decline of Bruas was due to the silting up of a great estuary of the Perak river, now known as Dindings River. Situated on that estuary Bruas possessed an ideal capital: the river silted up, the modern village is many miles to seaward of the old site. One Bruas locality, the Fort (Kota), is

* My History of Johore contains a chapter on the Hindu and Malacca ancestors of the Perak royal house. ROW.,

The Coming of the Malays. Page 7

so placed that one must believe local tradition that the rice fields of Dendang were once a harbour. Formerly, Malays say, little " Buddhas " were picked up about the fort, which is now razed to the ground. The " Main Gate " (Pintu Gerbang) is a little pass a mile away and is said to have been once a fort. The ''Drumming Ground" (Tanah Gendang) is associated with unexplored caverns. Legend declares that the lost town was so large it took a cat three months to do the circuit of the roofs! The site of Manjong is unknown but Bruas has survived in fact and in myth, because it was the spot from which those great Malay imperialists, the Bendaharas of old Malacca, needled the way for the present Perak dynasty.

The authentic account of the early Malay history of Perak occurs in a chapter of Sir Stamford Raffles' copy of the " Malay Annals," which was recently discovered and published by Dr. Blagden. Before that discovery one was disposed to question the Perak claim that its first ruler was the elder son of the last Sultan of old Malacca, scepticism being due to a passage in the " Malay Annals " which led to confusion between Sultan Mansur, second ruler of Perak, and a Sultan (Muda) Mansur of Perak who died in the middle of the XVIIth century. But Raja Bongsu the " author " of the Raffles chapters of the " Malay Annals" was almost certainly Sultan 'Abdu'llah Maayat Shah of Johor (b. 1571 d. 1623, patron of Tun Sri Lanang, author of the long-known " Malay Annals"), and anyhow his intimate knowledge of early Johor topography leaves no doubt as to the authenticity and date of his chapters, while written in Johor they record beyond dispute the version of Perak history accepted early in the XVIIth century at the Johor Court. The claim that Muzaffar Shah, first Sultan of Perak, was the elder son of Sultan Mahmud, last Sultan of Malacca, is not therefore an invention of Perak court annalists.

The passage in question from the Raffles manuscript of the " Malay Annals " runs as follows:—

" When Sultan Mahmud died at Kampar the Sultan Muda ascended the throne with the style Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din Ri'ayat Shah and the Raja Muda was driven out by the Bendahara and all the chiefs. ' Why am I turned out? ' asked the Raja Muda. ' Is it likely that I shall wrest the throne from the Sultan Muda? ' The chiefs replied, ' Nevertheless you must quit the country.' The Raja Muda said, ' Wait! my rice is being steamed and is not yet cooked.' But all the chiefs replied, ' Why delay? Now is the time to quit.' So the Raja Muda left Kampar with his wife Tun Trang and his son Raja Mansur.... and they took passage in a boat to Siak and from Siak to Klang. There was a man of Manjong, Situmi by name, who constantly traded from Perak to Klang and he saw the Raja Muda and took him to Perak, where he was enthroned as Sultan Muzaffar Shah.

Page 8 A History of Perak.

" Now there was a Sri Agar 'diraja, who had been ordered by his father, Tun Isap Berakah, the Bendahara Paduka Tuan " of Johor, " to live in Selangor. There he had become the son-in-law of a prince, having gone to Kedah and married Raja Stia (? Siti) daughter of the ruler of Kedah; and he had taken his bride to Selangor. Sultan Muzaffar Shah invited this chief to Perak and made him Bendahara. Sultan Muzaffar Shah begat a daughter, Raja Dewi: afterwards he begat Raja Ahmad, Raja 'Abdu'l-Jalil, Raja Fatimah, Raja Hatijah, Raja Tengah; in all his consort Tun Trang bore him sixteen children and he had one son, Raja Muhammad, by a secondary wife ………..

" When the news reached Land's End," namely Johor, " that the Sri Agar 'diraja had been created Bendahara in Perak, Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din was exceedingly wroth; and when the Bendahara Paduka Tuan of Johor heard the news, he threw down his head-kerchief and cried, ' I will go bare-headed until I have brought Sri Agar 'diraja before His Highness.' So the Bendahara Paduka Tuan entered the presence bare-headed and wearing only coat and dagger and begged leave from Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din to go to Perak and fetch Sri Agar 'diraja. But the Sultan said, ' No! let us commission Tun Narawangsa to go,' and His Highness asked Tun Narawangsa if he would fetch Sri Agar Raja. Tun Narawangsa replied, ' If Your Highness commanded me to conquer Perak, I would go; but I beg to be excused this errand, because the Queen (Raja Perempuan) of Perak is my niece.' Then the Sultan bade Tun Pekerma go and fetch Sri Agar Raja. When Tun Pekerma had fared up the Perak river as far as Labohan Jong, news of his errand reached the (Perak) Bendahara, who sent him rice in a cooking-pot and curry in a bamboo. Tun Pekerma was exceedingly angry and returning to Land's End related his experience to his Sultan in full durbar, whereupon the Bendahara Paduka Tuan begged to go to Perak: ' If any one else goes, Sri Agar Raja will not come. I will take him by the hand and lead him down to my boat. If he refuses, I will draw my creese and stab him: he shall fall dead on the left, I on the right.'

" Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din Shah agreed and the (Johor) Bendahara went to Perak, where he was formally received by order of Sultan Muzaffar Shah and taken to the palace. Rice was brought and Sultan Muzaffar said to the Bendahara, ' Come let us eat.' But the Bendahara replied, ' I crave to be excused, for Your Highness is the son of my overlord: let Your Highness eat and let me feed from another dish.' Sultan Muzaffar asked, ' Why so? Should I have invited you, if it were not proper? ' The Bendahara Paduka Tuan replied, ' Because it is proper I ask to be excused. People who are not entitled to eat with princes wish to do so for the glory of it: to me it will be no honour, as I am entitled, but I beg to be excused, as Your Highness is the son of my overlord.' But Sultan Muzaffar said, ' No! come and eat, for our long separation has made me long to meet you.' The Bendahara replied,

The Coming of the Malays. Page 9

' Why invite me? Does Your Highness think that the honour will win me over? Let not such a thought enter Your Highness' head. As long as Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din Riayat Shah rules at Land's End, I can have no other master.' Sultan Muzaffar answered, ' I say one thing and you another ' and he caught hold of the Bendahara's hand and put it on the rice; but the Bendahara took the rice off the plate and placed it on a betel leaf and so ate his meal.

" Afterwards the Bendahara Paduka Tuan took leave of Sultan Muzaffar and went to the house of Sri Agar Raja and led him by the hand to his boat and brought him downstream back to Land's End. And Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din Riayat Shah rejoiced that the Bendahara had fetched him."

The contents of the first paragraph of this quotation are identical so far as history is concerned with the account in a Perak genealogy (now in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, and numbered Maxwell MS. 105) translated in 1882 by Sir William Maxwell. Nor are this manuscript and the Raffles' copy of the " Malay Annals " our only evidence. The ordinary text of those annals records how " Raja Muzaffar was married by Sultan Mahmud to Tun Trang, daughter of Tun Fatimah and Tun 'Ali, and had a son Raja Mansur ": Perak genealogies ascribe the name of Mansur to the second Sultan of that State. Again Maxwell MS. 24, one of the fullest and most careful Perak genealogies extant, shows clearly how in Perak the two anomalous Malacca titles of Raja Muda and Sultan Muda were preserved down to the end of the XIXth century. Moreover in 1533 Paolo da Gama encountered off Malacca 27 vessels which Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din of Johor had sent to help his brother the Sultan of Perak: the commander whom Castanheda calls Tuan Barcalar (or perhaps Laksamana) paid his respects to da Gama. As we have seen, Tun Isap Berakah, the Bendahara Paduka Tuan (of Kampar in Sumatra and of Sayong Pinang on the Johor river) had married in Malacca days a Bruas princess, Putri Siat: what more likely than that he should find a new throne for the exiled elder son of Sultan Mahmud in the neighbourhood of his wife's relations? Or, even if he took no such steps, what more likely than that the exiled prince should go there? The mother of Sultan Muzaffar Shah I of Perak was a Kelantan princess, Putri Onang Kening; the mother of his half-brother Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din of Kampar and Johor was Tun Fatimah, daughter of Mutahir, the Malacca Bendahara whom Sultan Mahmud caused to be murdered or perhaps executed in 1510. Tun Fatimah gave her step-son for wife Tun Trang her own daughter by her first husband, Tun 'Ali, whom also Sultan Mahmud had slain for lust of Tun Fatimah; but naturally Tun Fatimah wanted the relic of the old Malacca kingdom for the son of her " hot and forced violation " by Sultan Mahmud and even more naturally the great house of the Bendaharas preferred a ruler with their own blood in his veins.

Page 10 A History of Perak.

What inference can be drawn from the anger of Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din at the appointment of Perak's first Bendahara? Was it the removal of his appointee, Sri Agar Raja, from Selangor that enraged him? Was it that he considered Perak to be a vassal State? A Perak lullaby, that must have been written in or after the reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda (alias Mahkota Alam) of Acheh (b. 1590d. 1636), speaks of the Johor overlord—

Bunga merah banyak di-taman

Sunting dayang masok ka-dalam:

Di-Mekkah Nabi Akhir-zaman,

Di-Johor Mahkota 'Alam.

Or did the appointment of the son of his own Bendahara Paduka Tuan (and the son-in-law of a Kedah prince) to the new Perak office make Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din suspicious lest his elder half-brother might try to revive the old Malacca kingdom from the north? For Sri Agar 'diraja was Tun Mahmud, own son of Tun Isap Berakah, the Johor Bendahara who went to Perak to recall him to Land's End. As we have seen, his father had married him to Tun Mah, a daughter of Tun Aria Bija 'diraja, ruler of Bruas and Manjong, which chief was a relative of Tun Sebat, wife of Tun Isap Berakah. Later after the Portuguese took Bentan in 1526, Tun Mahmud had brought twenty ships from Selangor to remove the old Sultan Mahmud to Kampar and for that service got the title of Sri Agar diraja, which even in those days appears to have been contracted to Dato Sagor.*

There seems no doubt that Sultan Muzaffar Shah was succeeded by his son Mansur Shah, who married a sister of Marhum Bukit, wife of the early Ruler of Johor, Sultan Ali Jala 'Abdu'l-Jalil Riayat Shah † (asc. 1580 d. 1597). The Perak account says— " Raja Muzaffar Shah, when he became Raja of Perak, established his capital at Tanah Abang (= Tanah Merah or ' Red Earth ') and after death was known as Marhum Tanah Abang," this first capital being in the district of Lambor Kanan on the Perak river. Raja Mansur, who seems to have remained behind in Johor, was then sent to Perak by Sultan 'Ala'u'd-din of Johor and made his capital at Kota Lama. Soon after his death Perak was conquered by Acheh and remained under Achinese domination for a century.

Considering the short life of tradition in an illiterate and harassed community, except when tradition is crystallized in practice and ceremony, it is clear that it was from its first two rulers that Perak inherited those solemn Indo-Javanese plausibilities of the old Malacca court which have secured the State in its most desperate straits a continuity of culture and have lasted, a gracious entail, down to the present time. In the sixteenth century Malay

* The last To' Sagor in Perak was hanged at Matang for the murder of Mr. Birch, the British Resident, in 1876; and simultaneously the ancient title was abolished.

† Of Pahang and Malacca royal descent.

The Coming of the Malays. Page 11

royalty was sacrosanct, its members the shadows of God upon earth and masters of magic. The eldest son of the last ruler of Malacca, greatest of Peninsular empires, did not come to Perak without followers and without tradition. The Perak court still cherishes armlets, a chain, a sword, a seal and a creese, reputed heirlooms from its first Sultan, which must be worn at installation by every one of his successors while, to the music of drums headed miraculously with the skins of tiny lice and of clarinets fashioned miraculously from the narrow stems of nettles, they sit preserving that immobility which to their Buddhist ancestors of Palembang was a mark of the commencing divinity of a king. When in 1526 the Portuguese Mascarenhas drove the father of Perak's first ruler out of Riau, the Sri Nara 'diraja consoled his master by remarking justly enough: " So long as Your Highness lives, ten kingdoms can be created." Bearing this old Malacca title of Sri Nara Miraja the chief herald at the Kuala Kangsar court is a descendant of Batala (or Basava) that mythical incarnation of Siva's bull, Nandi, sent down to a Sumatran rice-clearing not as in Indian story to revive declining Saiva rites but to instal as ruler of Palembang an Indian prince who, though in legend he is called Sang Sapurba after a nymph of Indra's heaven, is traditionally reputed to have been the father of the first ruler of Singapore and to be the ancestor of the royal houses of Malacca and Perak. Still on the accession of a Perak ruler Sri Nara 'diraja reads the Chiri or Sanskrit coronation address, such as hailed his first Malacca ancestor " fortunate great king, smiter of rivals, valorous, whose crown jewels ravish the three worlds, whose touch dispels suffering, protector, pilot over the ocean of battle, confuter of opponents, fortunate over-lord of kings of righteousness, supreme lord of the kingdom—Raja Parameswara.'' And, as at the initiation of a child into one of the higher Hindu castes his teacher whispers the name of the god who is to be the child's special protector through life, so into the ear of each new ruler of Perak this court herald whispers the State secret, namely the real Hindu name of the demigod who descended on that hill rice-clearing in Palembang to become the ancestor and guardian of Perak royalty. Down all the centuries the tie has persisted: the descendant of the herald born from Nandi's vomit is herald to the descendant of the divine prince who rode on Nandi's back.

According to tradition Hang Tuah, the famous Laksamana who fought the Portuguese at Malacca, died and still walks in Perak, while among the royal heirlooms is his creese. Certainly Sultan Muzaffar followed to Perak the house that had provided his Malacca ancestors with their prime ministers. His own first Bendahara Sri Maharaja was a member of the same family, as certainly for a hundred and apparently for two hundred years the Perak Bendaharas continued to be. As in Malacca and Johor, so in Perak it was the duty of the Bendahara to find his lord a palace. All the great offices of the Malacca court were re-created

Page 12 A History of Perak.

in Perak: there was a Maharaja 'diraja Penghulu Bendahari, a Temenggong Paduka Raja, a Mantri Paduka Tuan, and there was the old Malacca master of ceremonies, the Maharaja Lela, who could execute traitors and offenders against court etiquette without awaiting the royal mandate. In Johor the title of the Bendahara was alternately Sri Maharaja and Paduka Raja and in Johor as in Malacca the Temenggong was ordinarily promoted Bendahara. In Perak this promotion has lapsed but there is a survival of the old Malacca custom in the title of the Temenggong, and a 1655 agreement between Perak and the Dutch speaks of the contemporary Bendahara Sri Maharaja having been formerly Temenggong. To judge by their titles, Sri Maharaja, Paduka Raja, Maharaja 'diraja and Sri Paduka Tuan, all the Four Great Perak offices must have been held at first by the famous Malacca family of Bendaharas whose members enjoyed the Pasai honorific Tun (or in Perak dialect Tan). A Perak Bendahara famous in legend, Tan Saban, is reputed to have been the last of the house to fill this office of prime minister, and it is claimed that his descendants in Perak have held many old Malacca titles: Laksamana (or admiral), Sri Narawangsa a submerged title of the Sri Adika family, Sri Amar(a) Bangsa 'diraja the more ancient title of the Panglima Kinta, Sri Amar(a) 'diraja the more ancient title of the Panglima Bukit Gantang, Sri Amar(a) 'diwangsa now one of the Sixteen minor chiefs. It is easy to check the authenticity of these early titles: when Hinduism died, the Malay had no guides to Sanskrit. Most of Perak's guardian genies, for example, are late arrivals from the Muslim Deccan: Pahlawan Indra Dewi, Sultan 'Ali (Pen)dekar Perkasa, Sultan 'Alam Maya Udara, Kahar 'Alam Kesaktian, Anak Jin 'Alam Pertawi, Israng Gemala Dewa, Sri Sultan Mardan 'Alam, are all hybrid honorifics jumbling Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian. And, as we shall see, the Achinese accretions to Perak titles of nobility are not difficult to detect.