Chapter MALABATHRUM to MALACCA of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

in 1511. One naturally supposes some etymological connection between Malay and Malacca. And such a connection is put forward by De Barros and D’Alboquerque (see below, and also under MALAY). The latter also mentions an alternative suggestion for the origin of the name of the city, which evidently refers to the Ar. mulakat, ‘a meeting.’ This last, though it appears also in the Sijara Malayu, may be totally rejected. Crawfurd is positive that the place was called from the word malaka, the Malay name of the Phyllanthus emblica, or emblic Myrobalan (q.v.), “a tree said to be abundant in that locality”; and this, it will be seen below, is given by Godinho de Eredia as the etymology. Malaka again seems to be a corruption of the Skt. amlaka, from amla, ‘acid.’ [Mr. Skeat writes: “There can be no doubt that Crawfurd is right, and that the place was named from the tree. The suggested connection between Malayu and Malaka appears impossible to me, and, I think, would do so to any one acquainted with the laws of the language. I have seen the Malaka tree myself and eaten its fruit. Ridley in his Botanical Lists has laka-laka and malaka which he identifies as Phyllanthus emblica, L. and P. pectinatus Hooker (Euphorbiaceae). The two species are hardly distinct, but the latter is the commoner form. The fact is that the place, as is so often the case among the Malays, must have taken its name from the Sungei Malaka, or Malaka River.”]

1416.—“There was no King but only a chief, the country belonging to Siam. … In the year 1409, the imperial envoy Cheng Ho brought an order from the emperor and gave to the chief two silver seals, … he erected a stone and raised the place to a city, after which the land was called the Kingdom of Malacca (Moa- la-ka). … Tin is found in the mountains … it is cast into small blocks weighing 1 catti 8 taels … ten pieces are bound together with rattan and form a small bundle, whilst 40 pieces make a large bundle. In all their trading … they use these pieces of tin instead of money.”—Chinese Annals, in Groenveldt, p. 123.

1498.—“Melequa … is 40 days from Qualecut with a fair wind … hence proceeds all the clove, and it is worth there 9 crusados for a bahar (q.v.), and likewise nutmeg other 9 crusados the bahar; and there is much porcelain and much silk, and much tin, of which they make money, but the money is of large size and little value, so that it takes 3 farazalas (see Frazala) of it to make a crusado. Here too are many large parrots all red like fire.”—Roteiro de V. da Gama, 110–111.

1510.—“When we had arrived at the city of Melacha, we were immediately presented to the Sultan, who is a Moor … I believe that more ships arrive here than in any other place in the world. …”—Varthema, 224.

1511.—“This Paremiçura gave the name of Malaca to the new colony, because in the language of Java, when a man of Palimbão flees away they call him Malayo. … Others say that it was called Malaca because of the number of people who came there from one part and the other in so short a space of time, for the word Malaca also signifies to meet. … Of these two opinions let each one accept that which he thinks to be the best, for this is the truth of the matter.”—Commentaries of Alboquerque, E.T. by Birch, iii. 76–77.

1516.—“The said Kingdom of Ansyane (see Siam) throws out a great point of land into the sea, which makes there a cape, where the sea returns again towards China to the north; in this promontory is a small kingdom in which there is a large city called Malaca.”—Barbosa, 191.

1553.—“A son of Paramisora called Xaquem Darxa, (i.e. Sikandar Shah) … to form the town of Malaca, to which he gave that name in memory of the banishment of his father, because in his vernacular tongue (Javanese) this was as much as to say ‘banished,’ and hence the people are called Malaios.”—De Barros, II. vi. 1.

„ “That which he (Alboquerque) regretted most of all that was lost on that vessel, was two lions cast in iron, a first-rate work, and most natural, which the King of China had sent to the King of Malaca, and which King Mahamed had kept, as an honourable possession, at the gate of his Palace, whence Affonso Alboquerque carried them off, as the principal item of his triumph on the capture of the city.”—Ibid. II. vii. 1.

1572.—

“Nem tu menos fugir poderás deste
Postoque rica, e postoque assentada
Là no gremio da Aurora, onde nasceste,
Opulenta Malaca nomeada!
Assettas venenosas, que fizeste,
Os crises, com que j’á te vejo armada,
Malaios namorados, Jaos valentes,
Todos farás ao Luso obedientes.”

Camões, x. 44.

By Burton:

“Nor shalt thou ’scape the fate to fall his prize,
albeit so wealthy, and so strong thy site
there on Aurora’s bosom, whence thy rise,
thou Home of Opulence, Malacca hight!
The poysoned arrows which thine art