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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
About the date of the Maritime Code (or more strictly Digest) of Malacca, Malay copyists have gone out of their way to create confusion. Maxwell Malay MS. 47 in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, relates how sea-captains went to Bendahara Paduka Sri Maharaja to approach Sultan Muhammad (d. ca. A.D. 1446) to ratify maritime laws, and Raffles MSS. 33, 34, and 74 cite both Paduka Sri Maharaja, Bendahara to Sultan Mahmud (asc. 1488, d. 1530), and at the very end of the same paragraph Sri Nara 'diraja, Bendahara to Sultan Muhammad. Raffles MS. 68 ascribes both the Malacca Code and Maritime Laws to Muhammad. Most MSS. ascribe the latter to Mahnaud's reign and all of them are marked by Bugis maritime terms. There is no record of Bugis ships frequenting Malacca as early as 1446 and there seems no doubt that scholars have been right in assigning the Maritime Digest to the time of Sultan Mahmud.
