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Udumbara: Polyflowers packaged as a fruit

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By misreading the Lotus Sutra, Chen De'an 陳德安 (b. 538, d. 597), a Tiantai 天台 patriarch, became the first Buddhist scholar-priest to assign a numerical measure (3,000 years) to the rarity of the blooming of udumbara flower 優曇華 , though this figure was probably intended to be rhetorical rather than literal. Chen was apparently no Chakravartin, and, unsurprisingly, no biologist. If we assume that the authors of the Lotus Sutra was aware that the Udumbaras are actually enclosed within a fruity shell, then perhaps their lament was less about the rarity of the flower itself and more about the difficulty of finding someone sufficiently knowledgeable in botany to recognize that the Udumbara is a hypanthium 内華, and therefore technically distinct from ordinary flowers. Many years ago, C. N. Parkinson, the first Raffles Professor of History at the University of Malaya, warned us that: the...
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The first few weeks of Penang (1786)

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Spanning 1,723 days between 11 August 1786 and 1 May 1791, Light navigated a delicate path. He did not actively try to con the Sultan, though he could easily have bluffed his way through and closed the negotiation on that faithful Monday 1 , during his first audience with the king. He did not do that. Sultan Abdullah, ever cautious and meticulous, insisted on having Macpherson’s reply translated three times independently, using the versions to cross-check a point he had misread in his initial reading. On 8 July 1786, Sultan Abdullah read the Malay translation to Light and pressed him to sign on the document. The king advised him to set aside the plan of settling in Penang, in order to avoid unnecessary expenses should the project fail to materialize. 2 When the Dato Laksamana pressed Light to confirm the annual payment of tiga laksa rials (or some fixed figure he could commit to) and to explain whether a Plan B...
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The headstone of Shaikh Muhammad Saleh (1916)

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It is believed that Nakhoda Nan Intan founded Batu Uban in 1734. It is unclear whether Nakhoda Nan Intan was the same Malay captain who failed to complete the mission assigned to him by Tunku Raden Muhammad (MS 40320/7, f.105). If Nakhoda Nan Intan is indeed Nakhoda Pu Intan, then the Nakhoda who founded Batu Uban would have been a contemporary of the English captain and spoke to him at least once. The site of Dato Keramat appears on a map issued in Singapore to accompany the Singapore and Malayan Directory (1933). It is located at the first quadrant formed by the junction of Dato Keramat Road and Perak Road. The lower right corner of the site was then occupied by a police station, which remains in operation today. This location may mark one of the earliest settlements in Penang (circa 1705), if a description recorded by Saunders (1885) from a Penang Land Office survey register of 1795 ...
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Light's will (1794)

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I, Francis Light of the Parish of Dallingoo in the County of Suffolk, Great Britain and now residing on Prince of Wales' Island in the East Indies do hereby make this my last Will and Testament and do by these presents revoke all other wills and testaments by me heretofore made. Imprimis I give and bequeath the paddy field situated in Nibong plain and containing 100 orlongs of land or thereabouts together with the houses plantation's implements of husbandry and 40 buffaloes unto Martina Rozells who has cohabited with me since the year 1772 to be by her possessed during her natural life and at her death to be divided equally among her children, if no person born of her body remains at her death it shall be disposed of according to her will. Francis Light and Martina Rozells. We were told by Trapaud (1788) and Tuckey (1815) that Light married a Kedah princess, making him, in effect, ...
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