The visit of the ‘King of Brunei’ to the supreme emperor Yung Lo of China: contemporary and ancient accounts
Su Cheng Yee and Carrie C. Brown (1984) present a two-part study of the 1408 visit of King Maharaja Gana of Brunei to the Ming court at Nanking, combining a contemporary Chinese account translated from the People’s Daily with Brown’s scholarly analysis of two previously untranslated Ming-era inscriptions. The article situates this diplomatic event within the broader framework of Ming tributary relations and raises the unresolved question of the King’s religious identity.
Summary
In September 1408, King Ma-na-je-chia-na (Maharaja Gana) of P’o-ni (Brunei), aged twenty-eight, led a tribute mission of over 150 persons—including his consort, his four-year-old son Hsia-wang, and senior officials—to the court of the Yung-lo Emperor (Zhu Di) at Nanking. The King was received at the Feng-t’ien Hall, feasted repeatedly, and treated with extraordinary honour, taking a place next only to the highest dukes. A month after his arrival, he fell ill and died on 19 October 1408. The Emperor closed the court for three days, ordered a state funeral, and the King was buried at Shih-tzu Kang (Tortoise Hill) outside Nanking, with a shrine and stone tablet erected at the site (pp. 1–2, 6–7).
Brown’s contribution provides full translations of two inscriptions: a eulogy composed by the court scholar Hu K’uang for the tomb tablet, and the text of the State Mountain inscription that the Yung-lo Emperor composed for a mountain in Brunei designated Ch’ang-ning Chen-kuo Shan (“Mountain of Lasting Tranquility, Preserving the Country”). This latter honour was shared by only four polities: Japan, Malacca, P’o-ni, and Cochin. Brown notes the remarkable stylistic repetition between the two texts, suggesting Hu K’uang may have authored both (pp. 4–5, 9–10).
The article also addresses the archaeological and historiographical history of the tomb. Kuwata Rokuro noted it in 1926 under the local name “Ma Hui-hui mu” (Tomb of the Moslem Ma), and an archaeological team rediscovered it in 1958, finding two halves of a stone tablet with partially legible characters matching Hu K’uang’s text. The tomb is now designated a cultural site by the People’s Republic (pp. 10–11).
Key Findings
- The King’s diplomatic objective—securing Chinese patronage to gain independence from Java, under which P’o-ni was then a vassal—was accomplished: the Yung-lo Emperor formally recognized P’o-ni as a Chinese protege and ordered Java to desist from demanding tribute (p. 4).
- The State Mountain inscription was one of only four such designations in the Ming empire, placing Brunei alongside Japan, Malacca, and Cochin in a tier of exceptional diplomatic favour (p. 5).
- The tomb was rediscovered in 1958 on the southern slope of Shih-tzu Kang in Yu-hua T’ai County, Nanking, with two lines of stone statues (men, horses, tigers, goats, warriors) and a partially legible stone tablet whose surviving characters correspond to the opening of Hu K’uang’s inscription (p. 10).
- The question of whether King Ma-na-je-chia-na was Muslim remains unresolved; Brown argues that the complete absence of any reference to Islam in the Ming sources—despite the Yung-lo Emperor’s known tolerance and the prominence of Muslim officials such as Cheng Ho—suggests he was probably not Muslim (p. 11).
- The local name “Ma Hui-hui mu” likely arose from confusion with a nearby tomb of an Arab scholar named Ma-sha-i-heh, whose inscription explicitly calls him “Ma-Hui-hui,” or from conflation with the earlier tribute-bearer Ma-ho-mo-sha of 1371 (p. 11).
- The King’s four-year-old son Hsia-wang was installed as successor and escorted home by Eunuch Zhang Qian; the new King and his mother revisited Nanking in 1411 to pay homage at the tomb (pp. 2, 7).
Conclusion
The article establishes that the 1408 visit was not merely a ceremonial tributary performance but a strategically successful diplomatic mission that secured Brunei’s de facto independence from Javanese overlordship through Chinese recognition. Brown’s recovery and translation of the two inscriptions provide the most detailed primary evidence for the event, while her analysis of the Muslim question—arguing from silence rather than positive evidence—remains the most cautious and methodologically sound treatment of the issue to date.
Context
- The tomb at Shih-tzu Kang is now maintained by the National Preservation of Cultural Relics Unit and is referenced in connection with Tun Mohamed Suffian’s 1983 visit, which prompted the People’s Daily article translated by Su Cheng Yee (p. 1).
- Brown’s article was originally published in the Brunei Museum Journal (1974) and republished here with the author’s permission, indicating its continued relevance to Bruneian historiography (p. 6).