Page:Journal Of The Indian Archipelago And Eastern Asia Series.i, Vol.3 (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.107696).pdf/18

A TRANSLATION OF THE KEDDAH ANNALS I have found some obscurity in several of its passages, which, even with the aid of intelligent natives, has with difficulty been removed. Many of the words in it I believe are not in Marsden's Dictionary, and are not now in common use.

The author has not chosen to give his name and he has committed two grievous errors for a historian, as he has neither informed us of the date whence he sets out, or fo that when he himself wrote. But a date in the middle of the work and a copy of the native history of Achín, have enabled me to supply his omissions.

I shall have occasion to shew that the Colony described in this history came from India. Hence it is probable that its Annals were written in some Hindú dialect, until Islamism prevailed in Kedáh, when the previous order of things was subverted, and the Arabic character was introduced.

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THE MARONG MAHAWANGSA

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I.

THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK OF MARONG MAHAWANGSA

The work begins with praises of the Prophet Sulíman or Solomon "to whom the dominion of the whole world and every living thing in it was entrusted by God."

There was a Rájá of Rum who despatched an Ambassador named Rájá Márong [Máhá] Wángsá to China, in order to negociate a marriage betwixt the Prince his son and a daughter of his Chinese Majesty. This Ambassador traced his lineage from the inferior gods. His father was descended from the genii, and his mother from the Dévádévá of demigods. He was a great Rájá amongst the many Rájás who had been assembled by the King on this occasion, and he moreover wore a diadem. (1)

Rájá Márong Máháwàngsa had married, contrary to the wish of his parents, a girl whose father was a Girgássí Rájá and whose mother was descended from the Ráksásá. Wherever he went he took her with him, as he feared the grandees of the [? Persian] Court, who dreaded his preternatural powers (a).

(a) Here we catch him tripping, since, not much further on, he stigmatizes the people found in Kedah by the Ambassador on his arrival as Girgássí, which term corresponds nearly with the Ráksásá of the Hindus, or the evil genie of their mythology.