WHILE many believe some ruined forts in Kedah belonged to Raja Bersiong, and that an altar at Sungai Batu Pahat in Merbok was where his victims were killed, there is no archaeological evidence for any of it.
The Bujang Valley, a sprawling 224sq km area stretching from Merbok to Sungai Muda, is filled with hundreds of Hindu and Buddhist candi (temples), signifying a vibrant entrepot spanning more than a millennium between the third and 14th centuries before the Malaccan Sultanate emerged.
Merchants from China, India and Arabia traded ceramics, glass beads, spices, and aromatic woods for the locals’ repair services and forest products.
These temples are built using imported materials and technology -- terracotta, laterite and granite bricks cemented together using a mixture of eggs and honey (though the merchants soon found more cost-effective material in sugarcane molasses instead).
The area forms a historical complex at the Lembah Bujang Archeological Museum. These candis were unearthed from various areas in the Merbok area and reconstructed at the museum.
One archaeologist, who wishes to remain anonymous, suggests that Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa was contemporaneous with that period in Lembah Bujang, but archaeology has not so far corroborated the stories in that document.
He says the locals were experts in timber structures, which would not stand the test of time as long as the terracotta, granite, and laterite temples of Lembah Bujang.
"It is difficult to prove the existence of the kings mentioned in Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa based on Lembah Bujang archeological find," he said.
The lack of written evidence also suggests that Lembah Bujang was not so much a city as an international trading hub.
Kedah and Perlis National Archive director Shafie Awang says there was no known correspondence between the ancient Kedah kingdom with others before the 17th century.
“Papers, unless kept in a controlled humidity and temperature, naturally decay,” he said.
At present, the oldest documents archived in Malaysia are letters by Sultan Abdul Hamid from 1882 to 1943, recognised by Unesco on its Memory of World Register.
“We are continuously looking for ancient documents on ancient Kedah history,” Shafie said.
The historians have made a firm stand that Raja Besiong is but a character from an epic and a story adored by romantics, but many Kedahans believed the king’s blood runs in its people.
At her food stall tucked away in a village between Bukit Selambau and Jeniang, Mak Chu (not her real name) wipes her hands on her apron and bends down behind her counter to extract out a tightly rolled piece of paper.
It is a genealogy chart filling the breadth of ten sheets of A4 paper taped together.
“I am the seventh generation of Raja Bersiong,” said Mak Chu proudly.
Raja Besiong had at least two wives, she explains: a Malay and a Pattani. Mak Chu’s father was descended from the Malay lineage, and had travelled to Pattani as a trader.
There he had married another descendant of Raja Bersiong, of the Pattani lineage. Years later, they moved back to Kedah and raised the Fanged King’s seventh generation.
When war broke out between Kedah and Siam in 1821, the princes of various lineages fought over the throne. Those not favoured were hunted down, and their families retreated deep into the hinterlnd of Kedah, discarding their titles to live as commoners.
Mak Chu said they still feared repercussions if the truth be told. “It is not true that Raja Bersiong is a myth,” she said. “He was once the ruler of Kedah.”
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This is the final of a four-part series.
NST pictures by Syaharim Abidin and Shahrizal Md Noor
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