Description
The Sources of Malayan History
BOTH the student and the general reader may well ask why a book on the history of Malaya should begin with the story of the Malacca Sultanate in the fifteenth century and omit the earlier period of Malaya's development. People have been living in Malaya since at least five hundred thousand years before the birth of Christ, and traders from India, China and Arabia, as well as from other parts of South-East Asia, visited the Malay Peninsula frequently during the first millennium of the Christian era. Why then does this book begin only with the foundation of the kingdom of Malacca by a fugitive prince from Sumatra in about the year 1402? The answer is that only after 1402 do sources exist which enable the full history of Malaya to be written.
Malaya emerges into the clear light of history only with the foundation of Malacca. Archaeological researches have revealed fragments of information about conditions in Malaya in prehistoric times and about foreign contacts with the Malay peninsula before the fifteenth century, but at the moment it is not possible to piece these fragments together into a complete picture. Documentary references to Malaya before 1400 are few and vague, and their interpretation is still a controversial matter. With the founding of Malacca we arrive on firmer ground. Portuguese sources, in conjunction with the famous Malay Annals, provide a picture of the Malacca Sultanate which, although it is blurred at the edges, is relatively complete. A brief survey of some of the sources of Malayan History will make this point clearer. ISBN HISTORYOFMALA
