Appendix B - A PERAK DYNASTIC LEGEND.

There are two well-known accounts of the coming of the present Malay dynasty to Perak, one apochryphal, one (pp. 7, 8, 9) well authenticated.

The apochryphal version (JRASSB. 1882, No. 9, p. 89) relates how, when " Baginda Dai," later referred to as Sultan Mahmud, " reigned at Johor Lama," he despatched one Nakhoda Kasim¹ to look for a place suitable for settlement. Reaching Bruas Nakhoda Kasim heard of the Perak river and travelling as a huckster of salt and tobacco came to Temong in Upper Perak. While her father was selling produce to Nakhoda Kasim, a Negrito girl paring sugarcane cut her finger. The blood that gushed out was white. Nakhoda Kasim married her. Soon after their marriage there came a great flood and in the foam of her bathing-place the Nakhoda's wife found a girl, whom the couple adopted and called Tan Puteh alias 'teh Purba alias Dato' Temong.²

Now one day Negritos, hunting at Mousedeer Hill (Bukit Pelandok) near the river Plus, found a thick-jointed bamboo containing a male infant. In due course this infant, To' Changkat Pelandok, married Tan Puteh but the marriage was never consummated. When To' Changkat Pelandok died, he left Tan Puteh mistress of Perak and bade her seek a Raja from the family of his master Sultan Mahmud of Johor (sic). Her minister, Tan Saban of Tanah Merah, got a prince complete with regalia from Johor. Leaning over the boat's side to look at fish (or else in a great storm when he threw it to the gods of the sea), this prince lost his crown at Slat Lembayan on the Perak river, so that the rulers of Perak have no crown to this day. Near Kota Stia the prince was met by Tan Puteh and Tan Saban and escorted to Kota Lumut, where he married a daughter of Tan Saban and was installed as Sultan Ahmad Taju'd-din. After a short reign, during which he organised a political constitution, he died leaving a son about two years old.

Sultan Malik Shah, nephew of the deceased ruler, hastened from Siak to his uncle's place at Tanah Abang (or Red Earth) and broke the neck of the young heir. The chiefs accepted the usurper, all except the grandfather of the murdered boy, Tan Saban, who fought Malik Shah for three years. One day at Kota Lama Tan Saban's leg was grazed by a magic bullet from the matchlock of Megat Terawis, a Minangkabau adventurer in the Sultan's forces. The bullet bore the terrifying inscription: " This is Megat Terawis,

¹ A variant MS. calls him Nakhoda Ragam from Siak. His grave is at Teluk Perang.   ² To this day her descendants cherish her grave with its stone nisan at Kuala Temong.

A Perak Dynastic Legend. Page 123

son of a concubine of the Raja of Pagar Ruyong: wherever it falls, he will become a chief." Knowing that he must now die, Tan Saban left his daughter and his property to Megat Terawis. Tan Saban died and Megat Terawis became a chief—one account says he became Bendahara.

Not long after this Sultan Malik Shah went upriver to fix the boundary between Perak and Patani. On the mountain Titi Wangsa he found a wild cotton-tree with white flowers on the Perak side and red on the Patani side, and at the foot of the mountain was a great rock in the river. With his sword the Sultan cleft the rock so that the water ran on one side to Perak and on the other to Patani. So he fixed the boundary. On his return Malik Shah halted at Chegar Galah where a small stream ran white into the Perak river. Sent to examine its whiteness Megat Terawis found an aruan fish with large white breasts suckling her young! So the Sultan called the country Perak which means Silver!

It is needless to criticize the mythical elements in this story. The tale of a Bamboo Princess occurs also in the Malay version of the Ramayana, and in the Kedah and Achinese Annals: the Rajas of Raman may not eat bamboo-shoots because their ancestor came out of the bamboo and the " Malay Annals " tell of a Champa prince born from an areca-palm spathe (Malay Reader— Winstedt and Blagden, Oxford 1917, p. 182).

The story of the Negrito girl is a compromise between the matrilineal predilections of Malay jurists and the aristocrat preferences of the Perak court, which drew the line at negrito blood in the veins of the royal family.

There are many historical inaccuracies in the legend. No Baginda Dai' ever reigned at Johor Lama: Daik on the island of Lingga was the capital of the Johor family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries! Sultan Mahmud of Daik died in 1812 A.D.! Royal houses are conservative and no ruler of Malacca or Johor ever used the title Taju'd-din, " Ornament of the Faith." It has been the title of no authentic ruler of Perak though it was that of a Kedah Sultan, Ahmad Taju'd-din, who conquered and ruled Perak from 1818 until 1822, when Selangor restored the rightful Perak Sultan, Malik (Mansur) Shah (Anderson's Considerations, p. 188). Terawis too is a Kedah dialect form of Terawih. Certainly no member of the Megat family had usurped the office of Bendahara in the XVIth century, when the early Sultans of Perak reigned: working on the generations of the Megat family tree, Wilkinson computed that they were Bendaharas of Perak from 1670 to 1770 A.D. Nor again, as we shall see, does Tan Saban enter into the authentic story of the first Sultan of Perak. How should he? The pedigree of the Sri Adika Raja family has des-

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cendants from Tan Saban in the fourth generation who flourished as late as 1780 and 1800 A.D.! The authentic founder of the Perak dynasty created a Tun Mahmud, son of Tun Isap Berakah his first Bendahara, and when the " Malay Annals " were composed at the beginning of the XVIIth century the Bendahara of Perak (Sejarah Melayu p. 227) was a Tun Mai who had married a cousin of the wife of Tun Sri Lanang (fl. 1580-1615), author of the " Malay Annals."

It looks as if the names of Sultan Ahmad Taju'd-din and Sultan Malik Shah must belong not to the sixteenth but to the nineteenth century. Has uncritical tradition jumbled the Kedah invasion of 1818 with the Kedah meddling in the reign of the eighteenth century Sultan Muzaffar Shah, who made a Kedah raja his first Bendahara and Megats his Orang Kaya Besar and his Temenggong? It looks as if uncritical history has been imposed upon uncritical legend.