It is possible that this was Phra Rama of
Sukkothai. (See Cathay, 519; Elliot, III. 27)
[5] Mr. G Phillips supposes the name locac to be Ligor, or rather lakhon
as the Siamese call it. But it seems to me pretty clear from what has
been said the Lo-kok though including Ligor, is a different name from
Lakhon. The latter is a corruption of the Sanskrit, Nagara, "city."
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE ISLAND CALLED PENTAM, AND THE CITY MALAIUR
When you leave Locac and sail for 500 miles towards the south, you come to
an island called PENTAM, a very wild place. All the wood that grows
thereon consists of odoriferous trees.[NOTE 1] There is no more to say
about it; so let us sail about sixty miles further between those two
Islands. Throughout this distance there is but four paces' depth of water,
so that great ships in passing this channel have to lift their rudders,
for they draw nearly as much water as that.[NOTE 2]
And when you have gone these 60 miles, and again about 30 more, you come
to an Island which forms a Kingdom, and is called MALAIUR. The people have
a King of their own, and a peculiar language. The city is a fine and noble
one, and there is great trade carried on there. All kinds of spicery are
to be found there, and all other necessaries of life.[NOTE 3]
NOTE 1. - Pentam, or as in Ram. Pentan, is no doubt the Bintang of our
maps, more properly BENTAN, a considerable Island at the eastern extremity
of the Straits of Malacca. It appears in the list, published by Dulaurier
from a Javanese Inscription, of the kingdoms conquered in the 15th century
by the sovereigns reigning at Majapahit in Java. (J.A. ser. IV. tom.
xiii. 532.) Bintang was for a long time after the Portuguese conquest of
Malacca the chief residence of the Malay Sultans who had been expelled by
that conquest, and it still nominally belongs to the Sultan of Johore, the
descendant of those princes, though in fact ruled by the Dutch, whose port
of Rhio stands on a small island close to its western shore. It is the
Bintao of the Portuguese whereof Camoens speaks as the persistent enemy
of Malacca (X. 57).
[Cf. Professor Schlegel's Geog. Notes, VI. Ma-it; regarding the
odoriferous trees, Professor Schlegel remarks (p. 20) that they were
probably santal trees. - H.C.]
NOTE 2. - There is a good deal of confusion in the text of this chapter.
Here we have a passage spoken of between "those two Islands," when only
one island seems to have been mentioned. But I imagine the other "island"
in the traveller's mind to be the continuation of the same Locac, i.e.
the Malay Peninsula (included by him under that name), which he has
coasted for 500 miles.
