Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait391903roya).pdf/204

 proved by certain accounts in Albuquerque's Commentaries (2) , but the fact seems to have almost escaped numismatologists, for Millies (12), p. 140, speaking of the currency of the Malay Peninsula says: "Même l'état malai si célèbre de Malaka, qui était parvenu à son apogée au commencement du XVIe siècle, lors-qu'il tomba sous la forec matérielle majeure et l'héroisme des Portugais, ne nous a laissé aucun monument numismatique connu, et nous ne savons même pas, si ce état malai possédait déjà une monnaie propre." In this Millies is certainly wrong, for in Albuquerque's Commentaries (2). Vol. III, p. 77, we find a mention of native coin which tells how King Xaquendarxa (i.e. Iskander Shah), ruler of Malacca, went to see the king of China, wishing to become his vassal and took with him many presents, receiving in return, amongst other privileges, permission to coin small "money of pewter, which money he ordered to be made as soon as he reached Malacca; and to it he gave the name of Caixes which are like our (i. e. Portuguese) ceitils, and a hundred go to the calaim, and each calaim was worth, to an appointed law, eleven reis and four ceitils. Silver and Gold was not made into money, but only used by way of merchandise." The fact that Malacca possessed native pewter coins on the arrival of the Portuguese becomes indisputable when we read that Albuquerque after the occupation of Malacca minted coins under the name of his king, D. Manuel, "in order to withdraw and suppress the coinage of the Moors and cast their root and their name out of the land," and that when the new coinage was ready, he gave orders that all the Moors who held coin of the King of Malacca should convey it thither" (i. e. to the mint) "without delay under pain of death; and so great a quantity of money was thus carried there out of fear of the penalty which had been appointed to them, that the officers could not dispatch their business fast enough." (Vol. III, p. 138).

I am sorry I cannot furnish absolute proof that the collection really contains coins of that early period. There are about 150 tin coins with Arabic inscriptions, but those few which are clear enough to be deciphered are of a much later date. It may be that the most worn and defaced coins belong to the period