MALALAS (or Malelas) (Syriac for “orator”), JOHN (c. 491–578), Byzantine chronicler, was born at Antioch. He wrote a Χρονογραφία in 18 books, the beginning and the end of which are lost. In its present state it begins with the mythical history of Egypt and ends with the expedition to Africa under Marcianus, the nephew of Justinian. Except for the history of Justinian and his immediate predecessors, it possesses little historical value; it is written without any idea of proportion and contains astonishing blunders. The writer is a supporter of Church and State, an upholder of monarchical principles. The work is rather a chronicle written round Antioch, which he regarded as the centre of the world, and (in the later books) round Constantinople. It is, however, important as the first specimen of a chronicle written not for the learned but for the instruction of the monks and the common people, in the language of the vulgar, with an admixture of Latin and Oriental words. It obtained great popularity, and was conscientiously exploited by various writers until the 11th century, being translated even into the Slavonic languages. It is preserved in an abridged form in a single MS. now at Oxford.
For the authorities consulted by Malalas, the influence of his work on Slavonic and Oriental literature, the state of the text, the original form and extent of the work, the date of its composition, the relation of the concluding part to the whole, and the literature of the subject, see C. Krumbacher’s Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897). See also the editio princeps, by E. Chilmead (Oxford, 1691), containing an essay by Humphrey Hody and Bentley’s well-known letter to Mill; other editions in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum hist. byz., by L. Dindorf (1831), and in J. P. Migne Patrologia graeca, xcvii.
MALAN, SOLOMON CAESAR (1812–1894), British divine
and orientalist, was by birth a Swiss descended from an exiled
French family, and was born at Geneva on the 22nd of April
1812, where his father, Dr Henry Abraham Caesar Malan
(1787–1864) enjoyed a great reputation as a Protestant divine.
From his earliest youth he manifested a remarkable faculty for
the study of languages, and when he came to Scotland as tutor
in the marquis of Tweeddale’s family at the age of 18 he had
already made progress in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew. In 1833
he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford; and English being
almost an unknown tongue to him, he petitioned the examiners
to allow him to do his paper work of the examination in French,
German, Spanish, Italian, Latin or Greek, rather than in English.
But his request was not granted. After gaining the Boden and
the Pusey and Ellerton scholarships, he graduated 2nd class in
Lit. hum. in 1837. He then proceeded to India as classical
lecturer at Bishop’s College, Calcutta, to which post he added
the duties of secretary to the Bengal branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society; and although compelled by illness to return in 1840,
laid the foundation of a knowledge of Tibetan and Chinese.
After serving various curacies, he was presented in 1845 to the
living of Broadwindsor, Dorset, which he held until 1886.
During this entire period he continued to augment his linguistic
knowledge, which he carried so far as to be able to preach in that
most difficult language, Georgian, on a visit which he paid to
Nineveh in 1872. His translations from the Armenian, Georgian
and Coptic were numerous. He applied his Chinese learning to
the determination of important points connected with Chinese
religion, and published a vast number of parallel passages illustrative
of the Book of Proverbs. In 1880 the university of
Edinburgh conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.D.
No modern scholar, perhaps, has so nearly approached the
linguistic omniscience of Mezzofanti; but, like Mezzofanti, Dr
Malan was more of a linguist than a critic. He made himself conspicuous
by the vehemence of his opposition to Westcott and
Hort’s text of the New Testament, and to the transliteration
of Oriental languages, on neither of which points did he in general
obtain the suffrages of scholars. His extensive and valuable
library, some special collections excepted, was presented by him
in his lifetime to the Indian Institute at Oxford. He died at
Bournemouth on the 25th of November 1894. His life has been written by his son.
MÄLAR, a lake of Sweden, extending 73 m. westward from Stockholm, which lies at its junction with the Saltsjö, an arm of
the Baltic Sea. The height of the lake is normally only from 11 in.
to 2 ft. above sea-level, and its outflow is sometimes reversed.
The area is 449 sq. m. The bottom consists of a series of basins
separate by ridges from which rise numerous islands. The
deepest sounding is 210 ft. The outline is very irregular, the
mean breadth being about 15 m., but an arm extends northward
for 30 m. nearly to the city of Upsala with many ramifications.
The area of the drainage basin is 8789 sq. m., of which 1124
are occupied by lakes. The navigable connexions with the lake
are—(1) with lake Hjelmar to the south-west by the Arboga
river and the Hjelmar canal; and by the Eskilstuna river and
the Thorshälla canal; (2) with the Baltic southward through
the Södertelge canal, the route followed by the Göta canal
steamers; (3) with the Baltic by two channels at Stockholm.
The more important towns, besides Stockholm, are Vesterås on
the north, Södertelge and Eskilstuna near the south shore.
The lake offers a field for recreation fully appreciated by the
inhabitants of the capital, and many of those whose business
lies at Stockholm have their residences on the shores of Mälar.
On Drottningholm (Queen’s Island, named from Catherine, wife
of John III.) is a palace with a fine park and formal gardens.
John III. built a palace at the close of the 16th century, but the
existing building, by Nicodemus Tessin and his son Nicodemus,
dates from the second half of the 17th century. At Mariefred
on the south shore there is the castle of Gripsholm (1537), built
by Gustavus Vasa, a picturesque erection with four towers,
richly adorned within, and containing a large collection of
portraits. Strengnäs, on the same shore, became an episcopal
see in 1291, when the fine cathedral, much altered since, was
consecrated. In the episcopal palace, a building of the 15th
century now used as a school, Gustavus Vasa was elected to the
throne of Sweden in 1523. On the northward arm of the lake
is the palace of Rosenberg, used as a school of gunnery, in a well-wooded
park. On a branch of the same arm is Sigtuna, a village
whose ruined churches are a memorial of its rank among the
principal towns of Sweden after its foundation in the 11th century.
Remains prove that on Björkö, an island in the eastern
part of the lake, there was a large settlement of earlier importance
than Sigtuna. Here a cross commemorates the preaching of
Christianity by St Ansgar in 829. Finally, on the northern arm
about 10 m. south of Upsala, there is the château of Skokloster,
occupying the site of a monastery, and presented by Gustavus
Adolphus to Marshal Herman Wrangel, whose son Charles
Gustavus Wrangel stored it with a remarkable collection of
trophies from Germany, taken during the Thirty Years’ War;
including a library, an armoury, and a great accumulation of
curios.
MALARIA, an Italian colloquial word (from mala, bad, and aria, air), introduced into English medical literature by Macculloch (1827) as a substitute for the more restricted terms “marsh miasm” or “paludal poison.” It is generally applied to the definite unhealthy condition of body known by a variety of names, such as ague, intermittent (and remittent) fever, marsh fever, jungle fever, hill fever, “fever of the country” and “fever and ague.” A single paroxysm of simple ague may come upon the patient in the midst of good health or it may be preceded by some malaise. The ague-fit begins with chills proceeding as if from the lower part of the back, and gradually extending until the coldness overtakes the whole body. Tremors of the muscles more or less violent accompany the cold sensations, beginning with the muscles of the lower jaw (chattering of the teeth), and extending to the extremities and trunk. The expression has meanwhile changed: the face is pale or livid; there are dark rings under the eyes; the features are pinched and sharp, and the whole skin shrunken; the fingers are dead white, the nails blue.
All those symptoms are referable to spasmodic constriction of the small surface arteries, the pulse at the wrist being itself small, hard and quick. In the interior organs there are indications of a compensating accumulation of blood, such as swelling of the spleen, engorgement (very rarely rupture) of the heart,
