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The Chams of Malacca

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Chams of Malacca

G. E. Marrison, writing in 1951, examines the Cham refugee community in the Malacca Sultanate following the Annamese conquest of Champa in 1471, arguing that the Chams contributed to the racial and cultural admixture of the Malay population of the Peninsula. The article translates and analyses the Champa episode in the Sejarah Melayu, cross-referencing it with Cham, Chinese, and Portuguese sources to reconstruct the political and cultural ties between the two peoples.

Summary

Marrison’s central task is to render the Champa episode from Winstedt’s edition of the Sejarah Melayu into English and to test its claims against independent sources: the Cham Royal Chronicles (Aymonier’s translation), the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, and the History of the Ming Dynasty. His method is comparative identification—he attempts to match the figures in the Malay narrative with rulers known from Cham inscriptions, Annamese chronicles, and Chinese records, while candidly acknowledging that the genealogy in the Malay Annals cannot be sustained as serious dynastic history. The article also situates this specific episode within the broader context of Cham-Malay contact, including linguistic affinities (Blagden estimated at least half of Cham vocabulary as cognate with Malay), shared Islamic identity from the fifteenth century onward, and sustained trade links.

The historical problem Marrison addresses is the near-total neglect of the Cham episode by historians of both Malaya and Indochina. He demonstrates that the arrival of the refugee prince Indera Berma Shah in Malacca is chronologically plausible—placed in the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah, who died in 1477, shortly after the fall of Vijaya in 1471—and that the Ming chronicles corroborate close political ties between Champa and Malacca in the immediate aftermath of the conquest. Marrison further proposes that the Chinese embassy of 1474 was diverted to Malacca specifically to seek out the Cham crown prince, and that Annam used Malacca’s sheltering of the refugee as a casus belli against the Sultanate.

Key Findings

  • The fall of the Cham capital Vijaya to the Annamese occurred in 1471; Sultan Mansur Shah of Malacca died in 1477, placing the arrival of the refugee prince Indera Berma Shah within a chronologically plausible window (p. 91).
  • Tomé Pires (1512) confirms the presence of a Cham community in Malacca, noting that a single shahbandar oversaw the Chinese, Formosan, and Cham communities together, indicating the Cham population was small (p. 91).
  • The Ming chronicles record that in 1474 the Chinese censor Ch’en Chun, unable to enter Champa due to Annamese occupation, diverted to Malacca with his investiture goods; in 1481 Malaccan envoys reported that Annamese had killed and enslaved Malaccan sailors shipwrecked on the Annamese coast, and the Ming court subsequently instructed Malacca to raise soldiers and resist Annamese aggression (p. 97).
  • Champa’s chief export to Malacca was kelembak (scented agarwood), supplemented by dried salt fish, rice, gold, and some pepper; Cham flowered silk (“kain champa”) was also known in Malaya (pp. 97–98).
  • The Cham legend of the prince born from an areca palm corresponds to the inscriptional record of Thang (Harivarman IV, proclaimed king 1074), who was descended through his mother from the areca (kramuka-vamca); the associated cattle taboo in the Malay account aligns with the Siva-worship cult of Po Klaung Garai (p. 95).
  • Po Klaung Garai, identified with the “Po Gelang” of the Malay Annals, founded the Champa irrigation system at Panduranga and was deified; Jayasimhavarman III erected a temple to him there in 1307 (p. 95).

Conclusion

Marrison’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Chams, though a declining remnant by the early twentieth century, made a tangible if modest contribution to the cosmopolitan character of the old Malacca Sultanate, and that their presence in the Malay Peninsula likely left traces in Malay cultural tradition that have not yet been fully identified.

Context

  • Primary sources consulted: Winstedt’s edition of the Sejarah Melayu (1938), the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires (Cortesão ed., 1944), the History of the Ming Dynasty (via Groeneveldt’s compilation, 1880), and the Cham Royal Chronicles (Aymonier’s translation, 1889).
  • Historiographical contribution: The article fills a gap Marrison himself identifies—the Cham episode in the Malay Annals had been largely ignored by historians of both Malaya and Indochina since Blagden’s passing reference in 1902.

References