Dammar -- Ma Huan (ca. 1433 CE)

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Ma Huan on Dammar

The land produces such things as yellow su incense, ebony, dama’er incense, and ‘flower tin’. Dama’er incense is in origin the gum from a species of tree; it runs out into the ground; [and] when they dig it up, it looks like pine-resin or pitch. When you set fire to it, it flares up; [and] the foreigners all use this substance and set it alight to serve as a lamp. When they have finished building a foreign ship, they take some of this substance, melt it, and smear it in the seams, so that the water cannot get in; it is very effective. Many of the people in that land collect this substance to transport it to other countries for sale. The sort of [dama’er] which is bright, clear and good, resembles golden amber; its name is sundulusi. The foreigners make it up into cap-buttons and sell them. The ‘water-amber’ of the present day is this substance. (Mills, pp. 110-111)

“Giles, nos. 10,494; 7591; 3333; ‘dammar’; Malay damar, an exudation from various coniferous and dipterocarpous trees; see Yule and Burnell, under ‘Dammer’, p. 294b. The substance is still obtained and used in the way described by Ma Huan (Groeneveldt, p. 244, n.). See Wheatley, ‘Commodities’, pp. 92-3.”

- J. V. G. Mills, Malacca, p. 110, n. 7