ABSTRACT
The head and cornerstone of the Malay State (negeri = nagara Skt.), itself a Hindu concept, is the ruler, Yang di-pertuan “He who is made lord” to give him his Malay title, Raja to retain his Hindu style, or Sultan to employ the Muslim description. And research has confirmed the truth of folk-lore in the “Malay Annals” that the origin of this Malay royalty was due to the marriage of Indian immigrants with the daughters of local chiefs, their children inheriting Hindu ideas of territory and divinity grafted on to primitive Malay conceptions of the tribe and of the magical power of chiefs and medicine-men. Tome Pires tells how eighteen Celates (or proto-Malays who lived partly on land and partly in boats on the Selat or Straits) went to Parameswara, first ruler of Malacca, to remind him it was their advice that had led to his removal from Muar to Bertam, where he lived before founding a settlement at Malacca. “They asked him to fulfil his promise and reward them with some gift of honour, on which petition the said Parameswara made them mandarins—which means nobles—them and their sons and their wives for ever. Hence it is that all the mandarins of Malacca are descended from these, and the kings are descended through the female side, according to what is said in the country.” This royal descent may be a survival of a matrilineal system.
