Rigel Kent

Some days ago, I chanced on a new book by Tunku Halim at MPH. The book title is "History of Malaysia: A Children's Encyclopedia" . As a check on the factual accuracy of the book, I turned to the Parameswara section to see what Tunku has to say about him. To my horror, I read: Parameswara was married to Hang Li Po. Tunku's statement is incorrect for the following reasons. 1. According to Sejarah Melayu, Hang Li Po was a Chinese princess married to Sultan Mansur Shah, not Parameswara. 2. Reputable historians in general doubt the historical existence of Hang Li Po, because the name of the princess cannot be found in the Chinese or Portuguese sources. It is only mentioned in Sejarah Melayu. And Sejarah Melayu is full of historical inaccuracies. Concerning the origin of the name of the Chinese princess, I offer the following explanation. The name "Hang" is easy, it is simply a transliteration of the word "汉", meaning Chinese, or the word could possibly...

A friend of mine is mycophobic. She is afraid of seeing living mushrooms and couldn't handle them as cooking ingredients, but she can eat them when they are cooked. I am curious about the exact etiology of mycophobia, but it is not well-documented in the literature. I rarely find any scholarly discussion on mycophobia. Many suggests maybe mycophobia has a cultural basis. My guess is that mycophobia should not be memetic. It should have a genetic basis. It should be hardwired in the DNA program and is transferrable to the next generation. Although this function is no longer very useful in the modern world. In the long history of human evolution, some groups of human, possibly living in a region surrounded by many poisonous species of fungi, must have evolved the defense mechanism to avert fungi species, for the fear of consumption of deadly mushroom species. This DNA trait is important for the survival of that particular human groups. I offer two hypotheses on the mechanism of mycop...

The official emblem of the state of Malacca shows two light brown mouse deers on each side of the tree of Malacca. This depiction is rather problematic. Because, if the emblem is meant to commemorate the brave Sang Kancil , as encountered by Parameswara in the Sejarah Melayu, then the color of the animal is probably not correct. If you follow the Malay classic carefully, the Sang Kancil mentioned is not light brown but white . The relatively new The logo was unveiled when Malacca was declared Historical City on April 13, 2003 logo of the City Council of Malacca, however, correctly show the two mouse deers in white . On the other hand, the Sang Kancil story purported to explain the founding of Malacca could be a story modified from a folk-tale from Sri Lanka. This fact was first noted by R. O. Winstedt (1922) Two Legends of Malacca, Journal of Straits Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 85, p. 40. I was in the Za'ba Memorial Library , around ...

In Chinese fate calculation, there exists a mapping between the wuxing (五行) and sexagenary components (celestial stem, γ = tiangan 天干 and terrestrial branches, ζ = dizhi 地支). When the birthdate of a person is stated in sexagesimal form, one is able to deduce the xing associated with the eight sexagenary components or bazi (八字). Normally this mapping is in table form: A useful set of numerical formulas to handle the mapping is to use The basic principle to compute the mutual compatibility of two sets of sexagenary birth data is to pair the corresponding sexagenary components of the two individuals and compute their compatibility coefficients. We can then construct a normalized rank based on the eight compatibility coefficients computed, and "foretell" whether the two individuals can live in harmony.