Malayan and Indonesian Studies: Essays Presented to Sir Richard Winstedt on His Eighty-Fifth Birthday

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MALAYAN AND INDONESIAN STUDIES

SIR RICHARD WINSTEDT K.B.E., C.M.G.,

D.Litt. (Oxon.), Hon. LL.D. (Malaya)

MALAYAN AND INDONESIAN STUDIES Essays presented to

SIR RICHARD WINSTEDT on his eighty-fifth birthday EDITED BY

JOHN BASTIN Lecturer in the History of South-East Asia School of Oriental and African Studies

AND

R. ROOLVINK Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts Leiden University Library

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. i GLASGOW NEW YOU TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON CAPE TOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI

LAHORE DACCA

KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG TOKYO

0 Oxford University Press 1964

FIRST PUBLISHED 1964 REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD BY VIVIAN RIDLER PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 1967

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We should like to thank Miss Simone Cecile Parrish of the Department of English in the University of Malaya for translating the original French version of the essay by Professor G. Cœdès, Mr. J. Ngai of the Department of Geography for preparing the maps, and Miss Ong Beng Thye and Mrs. Gayl D. Ness for typing some of the essays. JOHN BASTIN R. ROOLVINK

CONTENTS LIST OF PLATES

ix

ABBREVIATIONS

xi

introduction: Sir Richard Winstedt and his Writings by JOHN bastin

i

I. A Possible Interpretation of the Inscription at Këdukan Bukit (Palembang) byg. cœdès

24

11. Desultory Remarks on the Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula by paul wheatley 33 in. Takuapa: The Probable Site of a Pre-Malaccan Entrepot in the Malay Peninsula by alastair

76

lamb

iv. The Opening of Relations Between China and Malacca, 1403-5 by wang gungwu 87

v. The Achinese Attack on Malacca in 1629, as Described in Contemporary Portuguese Sources by c. R. boxer 105 vi. British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the Malay Peninsula During the Late Eighteenth Cen­ tury by D. K. BASSETT 122

vu. Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of Modern Malayan History by john bastin vin. A Kedah Letter of 1839 by c. skinner

141

156

ix. The Origins of British Control in the Malay States Before Colonial Rule by c. m. turnbull 166

x. The Colonial Office and the Protected Malay States by EMILY SADKA 184

Contents

viii

xi. Migration and Assimilation of Rural Chinese in Trengganu by l. a. p. gosling 203

xii. Hikayat Raja-Raja Posai and Sejarah Melayu by a. teeuw 222

xiii. The Character of the Malay Annals by

p. e. de

JOSSELIN DE JONG

x i v. Two New ‘Old* Malay Manuscripts by*, roolvink

xv. A Malay Scriptorium by p. voorhoeve

235

242

256

xvi. The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman, but not a Sufi, a Saiva, and a Vaisnava by c. hooykaas 267

xvii. ‘Internal Conversion’ in Contemporary Bali by CLIFFORD GEERTZ

282

xviii. Amir Hamzah: Malay Prince, Indonesian Poet by a. h. Johns 303 xix. Sumbangan Sir Richard Winstedt Dalam Pënyëlidekan Pëngajian Mëlayu by zainal-'abidin bin AHMAD 320 INDEX

341

LIST OF PLATES Sir Richard Winstedt, K.B.E., C.M.G., F.B.A., D.Litt. (Oxon.), Hon. LL.D. (Malaya)

Frontispiece

Achinese Siege of Malacca 1629. From a water-colour sketch in the MS. ‘Livro do Estado da India Oriental’ of c. 1635-46 in the British Museum, Sloane MS. 197, folio 382 facing p. no Map—Mainland South-east Asia and Sumatra

128

Facsimile reproduction of the letter discussed in the essay

162

Map—Kedah, Penang, and ‘Seberang Perai’ (Province Wellesley)

163

Map—Kuala Trengganu Chinese Migration

208

Guto listening in

268

Gentorag. From Tyra de Kleen, Mudrâs

269

Sengguhu rescuing Smith

272

Sengguhu officiating. From Tyra de Kleen, Mudrâs

274

Sengguhu’s helpers. From Tyra de Kleen, Mudrâs

275

ABBREVIATIONS Add. MSS.

BEFEO BKI BSOAS CO

FEQ I.O.L.

Additional Manuscripts, British Museum, London. Bulletin de VÉcole Française d'Extrême Orient (Hanoi).

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [van Nederlandsch-Indië} (The Hague). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). Colonial Office Records, Public Record Office, London. Far Eastern Quarterly (Wisconsin; New York). India Office Library, Commonwealth Relations Office, London.

Jaarboek BG Jaarboek van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Künsten en Wetenschappen (Jakarta). JA Journal Asiatique (Paris). JASB Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta). JBRS Journal of the Burma Research Society (Rangoon). JFMSM Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums (Kuala Lumpur; Taiping).

JIA

Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (Singa­

JMBRAS

Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society

JRAS

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (London). Journal of the Straits Branch Royal Asiatic Society

pore). (Singapore).

JSBRAS

(Singapore).

JSEAH JSS JSSS MJTG MKNAWL

MRM S.F.R.

S.S.R.

TAG

Journal of Southeast Asian History (Singapore). Journal of the Siam Society (Bangkok). Journal of the South Seas Society (Singapore). [Malayan} Journal of Tropical Geography (Singapore). Mededeeling der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde (Amsterdam). Memoirs of the Raffles Museum (Singapore). Sumatra Factory Records, India Office Library, Common­ wealth Relations Office, London. Straits Settlements Records, National Museum, Singa­ pore.

TijdscKrift van het Koninklijk Aardrijkskundig Genoot­ schap (Amsterdam).

Abbreviations

xii

TBG

TP VBG VKAW

VKI

Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-} Land- en Volkenkunde uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Künsten en Wetenschappen (Jakarta). T'oung Pao (Leiden). Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Künsten en Wetenschappen (Jakarta). Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Weten­ schappen te Amsterdam (Amsterdam). Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituât voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [van Nederlandsch-Indie} (The Hague).

INTRODUCTION SIR RICHARD WINSTEDT

AND HIS WRITINGS JOHN BASTIN

Richard Olof Winstedt was bom at Oxford on 2 August 1878, the son of a naturalized Swede and an English mother, Sarah Castell, of a family found for centuries in and near Oxford.1 His younger brother Eric (victim of Dean Farrar’s Little by Little) gained a demyship to Magdalen College, and as an undergraduate created a sensation in the academic world by discovering hitherto unknown lines of Juvenal in a Bodleian Library manuscript. Richard, perhaps from the goitre that barred him from athletics, was as bad an examinee as he was abnormally quick in reading. When he was in the sixth form at Magdalen College School, its future headmaster, C. E. Brownrigg, to whom he always felt in­ debted, declared that he had forgotten more than the rest of the form had ever read. He entered New College as a Commoner, narrowly missed Mods, with an aegrotat, but still yellow from jaundice sat the examination. He had left the study of the set books for the last month, and instead of the classics read the whole of Robert Louis Stevenson’s then fashionable works; but that last month proved to be one of illness, and Winstedt narrowly missed a First. In Greats, too, he got a Second, being more interested then in English literature than in history or philosophy. He took the Joint Examination for the Home, Indian, and Colonial civil services but, misreading the title of the essay, his special subject, 1 Information for this essay has been derived from a number of sources, the most important being: Sir Richard Winstedt, ‘My Books', Malaya, i. 4 (Apr. 1952), 25-26; H. R. Cheeseman, ‘Malaya’s Debt to Sir Richard Winstedt’, British Malaya, xxv 4 (Aug. 1950), 74-76; Who's Who 1962 (London, 1962), sub. Winstedt, Sir Richard; D. D. Chelliah, A History of the Educational Policy of the Straits Settlements with Recommendations for a New System Based on Vernaculars (Singapore, i960). Quotations, unless otherwise indicated, come from the first two sources.

2

Introduction

was awarded only half marks, an accident for which he was after­ wards grateful for decreeing him a career in Malaya. He arrived in Perak in December 1902. Many years later he wrote that he was disappointed not to find himself surrounded by pirates or threatened by creeses but set instead to index the Perak Gazette and help arrange a Christmas bazaar. In his luggage he had brought with him Ruskin’s Modern Painters and Conrad’s Almayefs Folly with the intention of essaying novel writing. His literary style had been praised at Oxford, among others by his Greats tutor, Hastings Rashdall, and by a contemporary under­ graduate, Compton Mackenzie; and though he maintains that he subsequently lost this style by producing papers as compact as possible to save the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society from avoidable expenditure on its Journal, the basic reason for his omission to essay novels was that he found himself more interested in ideas than in persons. In any event he realized that if he was to compete with Conrad he would first have to learn all he could about the beliefs and customs of the Malays, and that was to occupy him all his life. In those days cadets in Malaya were given unrivalled oppor­ tunities for learning of this sort. During his year as Inspector of Schools in Perak Winstedt saw Europeans only four or five days of every month, so that most of his time was spent in the company of Malays, ‘on rafts and elephants, in house-boats and in gharris’, laying the foundations of that copious vocabulary which he was later to use with such effect in his dictionaries. It was at this time that he met the lexicographer, R. J. Wilkinson, who proved perhaps the main influence on his life.1 In 1907 he contributed a paper entitled ‘The Literature of Malay Folklore’ to Wilkinson’s Papers on Malay Subjects',2 two years later he published two- other papers in that series, ‘The Circumstances of Malay Life’ and ‘Malay Indus­ tries: Arts and Crafts’. These latter contributions .were a direct 1 He referred in the introduction to ‘A History of Malaya*, JMBRAS xiii. 1 (I935)> to ‘Mr. R. J. Wilkinson, C.M.G., whose encouragement and example first turned me to Malay studies nearly thirty years ago*. See also his obituary note to Wilkinson in ibid. xx. 1 (1947), 143-4, and bis review of Wilkinson*s A Malay-English Dictionary in JMBRAS xi. 2 (1933), 145. 2 C. A. Gibson-Hill, ‘Notes on the series “Papers on Malay Subjects’* *, JMBRAS xxv. i (1952), 194-9, serves as a useful guide to the early editions of these Papers, but does not list all of the subsequent editions published in Kuala Lumpur between 1922-36.

Sir Richard Winstedt and his Writings

3

outcome of his period in Perak, as also were the earlier tales which he had published in Temple Bar during 1904-5. It was while serving as Assistant District Officer in Tapah that Winstedt formed friendships with two remarkable Malays who provided him with a mine of information about Malay lore. The first was Penghulu Raja Haji Yahya of Chendriang, who had been styled Perak’s Poet Laureate by the former High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States, Sir Frank Swettenham, a desig­ nation which the Raja thereafter always subscribed below his signature. He was not only a Malay euphuist, ‘who took more pains than a Victorian lady over the nice conduct of his fingers when carrying a tea-cup to his lips’, but was also an authority on Malay court ceremonies. It was he who was responsible for introducing to Winstedt, Pawang Ana, who had recovered the body of Perak’s first British Resident, J. W. W. Birch, after he had been murdered by Malays in 1875. Beginning on Saturday afternoons and ending on Sunday evenings, this old Sumatran warrior recited Awang Sulong and other Malay folk-tales while Winstedt took them down. ‘[N]ever since’, he wrote, ‘have I wondered at the Iliad and the Odyssey being transmitted per \ord\ virum,' Transferred to Matang, Winstedt began collecting material on Malay sea-fishing and a Kedah folk-tale, this time in manuscript, entitled Trong Pipit, At Gopeng he suffered from malaria, which had first begun to plague him at Tapah, and he also contracted septicaemia, which reduced his weight to five stone ten pounds. After doctors had despaired of his life, Wilkinson attempted to rally his strength by encouraging him to write a scientific grammar for Peninsular Malay. Winstedt’s reply was characteristic : he was quite ignorant of the subject but he was willing to learn it by writing a book. Years later he described how he went about the task : T got half a dozen letter-pads and headed the pages ber- ter­ me- and so on, inserting under these captions all the sentences where they occurred in half a dozen Malay classics, by which method I found, for example, that the prefix her has exactly the same nuances as the Greek middle.’ His memory from his Oxford days of Goodwin’s Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb served him well. The first edition of his Malay Grammar was published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1913 and established him at the age of thirty-five among the forefront of British scholars of Malay. His merits were immediately recognized in the University

4

Introduction

of Leiden, which has always been chary in its praise of British workers in the Malay field, and he was subsequently described in the Federal Council by Raja Chulan as ‘the talented inventor of Malay grammar’!1 After long leave, Wilkinson arranged for his protégé to be posted to Kuala Pilah so that he might study the matrilineal system, and the bibliography attached to this essay indicates well enough what he accomplished in that line. It was during his stay at Kuala Pilah that he wrote Colloquial Malay: A Simple Grammar with Con­ versations and compiled An English-Malay Dictionary which was based on Wilkinson’s Malay-English Dictionary but contained much original material. The three volumes of this work were published by Kelly and Walsh in Singapore during 1914-17. For the compilation of this dictionary Winstedt had the assistance of a small number of Malay ‘word-catchers that lived on syllables’ ; in addition, by way of incentive, he offered prizes for the best collection of words on buffaloes, ploughing, house-building, and so on. In the same manner he offered holiday prizes to Malay students at Tanjong Malim for the best collection of pantun when he was preparing the publication of Pantun Mëlayu, the preface of which excited international interest. It was because of his knowledge of the Malay language and customs that he was appointed in 1916 Assistant Director of Education in the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States, to revise and improve the system of Malay vernacular education. For this purpose he was sent, shortly after his appointment, to study the educational systems in Java and the Philippines. As a result of his report the direction of Malay education in the Federa­ tion was changed radically, with new-textbooks of local interest issued, and greater prominence given to arts and crafts in the curriculum of Malay schools. The teachers’ training colleges at Malacca and Matang were amalgamated in 1922 to form the Sultan Idris Training College at Tanjong Malim, and a Malay Translation Bureau was established there to prepare books suited to this new outlook in Malay education. Reporting in 1921 on Winstedt’s six years work in the Education Department, E. C. H. Wolff, the Acting Director of Education, stated that it was no exaggeration to 1 There is a well-known Malay saying, which Dr. Haji Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad cites in the concluding essay of this Festschrift, ‘God gave the Malays their language, and Winstedt gave them their grammar’.

Sir Richard Winstedt and his Writings

5

say ‘that Malay vernacular education [had] been revolution­ ised. . .J1 Winstedt’s contributions to education in Malaya extended far beyond the Malay schools. Between 1924-31 when he was Direc­ tor of Education his energy and enthusiasm stimulated effort and initiative throughout his Department. He presided over the Educa­ tional Conferences held in Kuala Lumpur in 1923,1925, and 1928, and the enthusiasm generated at these meetings was largely due to the skill with which he directed the discussions. The late H. R. Cheeseman, who many years later succeeded to the post of Direc­ tor of Education, has left on record his own assessment of Win­ stedt’s services to Malayan Education : With zeal no whit inferior to that shown by the most enthusiastic schoolmaster, he studied school organisation and method, ever consider­ ing what should be done in the light of local needs and local problems. He collected a team of experts, an Education Headquarters Staff, con­ sisting not only of men capable of advising on general educational problems but also of specialists in physical training, art, music, etc.... It is not surprising that as long as an officer of the Malayan Civil Service of his calibre and of his interest in Education filled the post of Director of Education, schoolmasters did not feel embittered by the fact that the Department of Education, unlike other technical departments in the country, was denied technical direction and control. For he made him­ self an expert in education. When he presided over technical committees on school syllabuses, training class programmes, and the like, the professional officers were amazed by his knowledge and understanding of the technical problems under consideration. He was prepared to toil in the fields as well as direct from the heights. In addition to the readers for the Malay schools for which he was responsible, he wrote (after the 1928 Conference when an appeal for local text-books was made) two readers for English schools, namely Eastern Tales and Right Living and Right Thinking. (This latter book, a primer on moral and social topics, has been republished for use outside Malaya—it had the unusual distinction of receiving the approval of the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Methodist Bishops as well as of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other religious leaders in Malaya.) In educational vision and planning Cheeseman ranked him second only to Raffles, and it is interesting to note that the prin­ ciples of practical education which inspired the latter’s reforms in 1 Chelliah, Short History, 72. In 1921 Winstedt married Sarah O’Flynn, M.B., Ch.B., of the Colonial Medical Service. 823121

B

6

Introduction

west Sumatra during 1818-24 were basically the same as those propounded by Winstedt for the vernacular schools in Malaya a century later. He was, in fact, described as a ‘second Raffles’ on account of his ‘love for the Malays and their language, and his enthusiasm for their progress’ in the farewell address presented to him by representatives of the teaching profession in Malaya when he ceased to be Director of Education in 193i.1 In assessing Winstedt’s work it is important to lay particular emphasis on his contribution to education because it is not generally realized that of his thirty-two years in Malaya nearly half were spent in the service of the Department of Education. Between 1921-31 he was the first President of Raffles College and as such was the chief architect of its fortunes; he also served on the council of the College of Medicine for a number of years, and in 1928 was Chairman of the Committee on Medical Research which was responsible for endowing the College with funds adequate for its work. His official connexion with education in Malaya and Singa­ pore came to an end three years later, but between 1936-9 he was a member of the Colonial Office Advisory Committee on Educa­ tion following his retirement from Malaya in April 1935. Despite the multifarious official duties connected with the Department of Education and his membership of the Straits Settle­ ments Legislative Council (1924-31), and of the Federal Council of the Federated Malay States (1927-31), Winstedt somehow managed to find time for his studies. In 1925 he published his important book, Shaman Sawa and Sufi: A Study of the Evolution of Malay Magic, which essayed to bring order into a subject on which Skeat had collected so many disjecta membra. The inspiration for the book, which sought to unravel a highly complex system of magic on the basis of historical and comparative data, derived from the fact that many years previously he had been given as a college prize a three-volume edition of Frazer’s Golden Bough. It was this particular work and Skeat’s Malay Magic, which he had discovered shortly after his arrival in Malaya, that turned his attention to a subject which has continued to hold a fascination for him. It was somewhat ironical that after the publication of Shaman Saiva and Sufi Frazer should have lifted most of the book into one of his later volumes without permission or acknowledgement except for a brief note to the effect that Winstedt apparently knew his 1 Chelliah, Short History, 72.

Sir Richard Winstedt and his Writings

7

subject; Skeat praised the book, later published under the title The Malay Magician, in generous terms. Shaman Sawa and Sufi was essentially an historical work and history soon began to absorb almost the whole of Winstedt’s attention. In 1918 he had produced in collaboration with Daing 'Abdu’l-Hamid bin Tengku Muhammad Salleh the first scientific work on Malay history written in Malay. This was Kitab Tawarikh Mëlayu, and according to Dr. Haji Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad ‘was undoubtedly the book which, by popularising the Arabic word tawarikh, first opened the eyes of the average Malay to the meaning of history as distinct from legend’.1 Winstedt’s first full-dress work in this field was ‘A History of Johore’ which was published in JMBRAS in 1932, the year following his appointment as General Adviser to that state. Historical monographs on Perak, Selangor, and Negri Sembilan soon followed, and these led in 1935 to the im­ portant, and in many ways, remarkable book, ‘A History of Malaya’. Like most of Winstedt’s writings of this period this work was written between half-past four and eight o’clock in the morning before the daily routine of his official life began. Only one who has experienced the enervating effects of a tropical climate can appreciate fully the energy that accomplished so much in so many fields. After serving four years in Johore, Winstedt was offered the post of Reader in Malay at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. It was during the tenure of this post, which he continued to occupy until his sixty-ninth year, that he published the earliest version of the Sèjarah Mëlayu (The Malay Annals) and A History of Malay Literature, which led directly to his being elected in 1945 a Fellow of the British Academy, an honour he probably prizes above all his distinctions. He had been appointed a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1926, and nine years later a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1939 he became a member of the Board of Governors of the School of Oriental and African Studies, which post he held for twenty-one years, and in 1940 was elected for the first time Director of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Three years later he became President of the Society and has been re-elected to that office on no less than four 1 R. O. Winstedt and Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad, ‘A History of Malay Litera­ ture, with a Chapter on Modem Developments’, JMBRAS xvii. 3 (1939), 151.

8

Introduction

occasions. He is, in fact, the first member of the Colonial Civil Service to have held that distinguished post, and also the first to have been elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Winstedt’s interests and activities are reflected in the wide range of offices he has held both in the East and the United King­ dom. In Malaya his chief relaxation had been yachting, and in 1934 he served as Commodore of the Royal Singapore Yacht Club. Four years later, following his retirement, he was elected President of the Association of British Malaya. In London during the war he began broadcasting in Malay twice weekly in the Overseas Service of the British Broadcasting Service, and at the same time wrote a remarkable series of articles for the Daily Telegraph in which he predicted the fall of Malaya to the Japanese. After 1945, along with Sir Cecil Clementi and Sir Frank Swettenham, he played a leading role in contesting the British Government’s attempt to introduce the Malayan Union, drafting a letter to The Times and writing articles on the subject for the Spectator and other British periodicals. During 1947-8 he served as Vice-Chair­ man of the Executive Committee for the Royal Academy’s Winter Exhibition of Art from India and Pakistan, and headed a delega­ tion to India to choose the exhibits. Those same years saw the publication of The Malays: A Cultural History, a brilliant piece of incisive writing, and his popular Malaya and its History, written at the request of Professor R. Coupland of Oxford University for a series on British Commonwealth History. But Winstedt’s chief work in the years of retirement has been the compilation of Malay dictionaries, culminating in the unilingual Kamus Bahasa Mëlayu which was published by Marican and Sons in i960. For his Malay Grammar and collection of folk-tales Ox­ ford University conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Letters, and in 1951, in recognition of his services to education and scholar­ ship, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of Malaya. Four years earlier he had been awarded the triennial Gold Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is impossible to give here an adequate account of Winstedt’s achievements, or attempt a final assessment of his work as a scholar, for he is still a remarkably active man who continues to publish at a rate which astonishes and baffles men half his age.1 However, in 1 Between 1960—2 new editions of no less than eight of his works appeared, including a revised and enlarged edition of ‘A History of Malaya’.

Sir Richard Winstedt and his Writings

9

the concluding essay in this Festschrift Dr. Haji Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad has offered a critical appraisal in Malay of Winstedt’s contribution to Malay studies, and it may therefore not be entirely inappropriate to refer in the last paragraph of this introduction to a number of the points made in the essay written as ‘a sincere tribute’ by a Malay ‘for his labours ... in the opening up of Malay studies in Malaya’.1 Winstedt is the last and greatest of the British ‘colonial’ scholars of Malaya. He stayed longer in the country than many of his predecessors, and his interests in Malay studies have been more comprehensive and penetrating. Those interests are not limited to one or two fields but cover almost the whole range of Malay culture : language, history, economics, arts and crafts, law and religion; only in the field of Malay music has he made no contribution. It is true that he received much stimulus from the works of the older generation of British scholars, especially Wilkinson and Blagden, as well as those by Dutch scholars in the field, but he has not accep­ ted their conclusions uncritically and has always advanced his own forthright opinions. Of course it is not necessary to agree with everything that he has written, especially his interpretations of some Malay proverbs ; Malays, moreover, sometimes feel that his history is written from a British point of view, and are critical of the fact that all of his expository writing is in English. But his industry, even in his old age, as well as his ability and learning, can only make one extremely critical of those who pass superficial judgements on him. When everything has been said, Sir Richard Winstedt, ‘will leave behind him, more especially on account of his Malay studies and research, a high reputation among that small company of Britons whose names are associated with Malaya’.2 1

Dr. Haji Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad in a letter of 21 Dec. 1961 addressed to

the editors. 2 The above paragraph is a freely written account of a number of points taken from Za’ba’s essay in this volume. The final statement was made by him many years previously, and is cited in Cheeseman, British Malaya xxv. 76.

Introduction

IO

BOOKS AND BROCHURES1 (i) DICTIONARIES

An English-Malay Dictionary (Singapore, 1914-17), 3 vols. 2nd ed. i vol. (Singapore, 1920), 3rd ed. (Singapore, 1949)* Reprinted (Singa­ pore, 1952). Dictionary of Colloquial Malay (Malay-English & English-Malay) (Singapore, 1920). 2nd ed. (Singapore, 1939), 3rd ed. (Singapore, 1941), 4th ed. (London, 1943). Reprinted (London, 1944)» 5^ e 77-78. The Grand Peregrination, M. Collis, pts. 1 and 2 (1950), 95. Les Mu'bng, J. Cuisinier, pts. 3 and 4 (1950), 196. 823121

C

22

Introduction

The Beginnings of Religion, E. O. James, pts. 3 and 4 (1950), 206-7. Introduction to the History of Science, G. Sarton, pts. 3 and 4 (195°)» 207. The Art of India and Pakistan, Sir Leigh Ashton, pts. 1 and 2 (1951), 125-6. i. The Truth about Korea, R. T. Oliver; 2. The Koreans and their Culture, C. Osgood, pts. 3 and 4 (1951), 208-9. Malay Sayings, C. C. Brown, pts. 3 and 4 (1951), 209-10. The Chinese in South-East Asia, V. Purcell, pts. 3 and 4 (1951), 210. Archaeological Research in Indo-China, O. R. T. Janse, pts. 3 and 4 (1951), 219-20. The Prehistory of Japan, G. J. Groot, pts. 3 and 4 (1952), 162-3. i. Zakelijk Proza in Bahasa Indonesia, C. Hooykaas. 2. (a) Penyedar Sastera. (b) Perintis Sastera, C. Hooykaas and Datoek Besar, Raihoel Amar. 3. Woordenboek Bahasa Indonesia-Nederlands, H. D. van Pernis. 4. Inleiding tot de Bahasa Indonesia, M. G. Emeis. 5. Vorm en Functie in Klassiek en Modern Maleisch. De Verbale Constructies, M. G. Emeis, pts. 1 and 2 (1953), 79-80. i. Kepustakaan Djawi, R. M. Ng. Poerbatjaraka. 2. Kepustakaan Djawa, R. M. Ng. Poerbatjaraka and Tardjan Hadidjaja. 3. Sedjarah Melaju, T. D. Situmorang and A. Teeuw, pts. 1 and 2 (1953), 81. Sanskrit in Indonesia, J. Gonda, pts. 3 and 4 (1953), 173-4« Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals’, C. C. Brown, pts. 3 and 4 (1953), 174-5Twee Maleise Geschriften van Nûruddin Ar-Räniri, P. Voorhoeve, pts. 3 and 4 (1955), 179-80. The Nine Songs, A. Waley, pts. 1 and 2 (1956), 96-97. Indonesian Trade Society, J. C. van Leur, pts. 3 and 4 (1956), 235-6Indonesian Sociological Studies, i, B. Schrieke, pts. 3 and 4 (1956), 237. Studies in Country Malay, C. C. Brown, pts. 3 and 4 (1957), 233-4. A Guide to English-Malay Translation, C. C. Brown, pts. 3 and 4 (1957), 254-5Calendar of Philippine Documents, P. S. Lietz, pts. 3 and 4 (1957), 235. Prehistory and Religion in South-East Asia, H. G. Quaritch Wales, pts. i and 2 (1958), 86-87. Een 16^ Eeuwse Maleise Vertaling van de Burda van al-Bûsirï, G. W. J. Drewes, pts. 3 and 4 (1958), 203. Malaya—A Political and Economic Appraisal, L. A. Mills, pts. 3 and 4 (1958), 204. Angkor, B. P. Groslier, pts. 3 and 4 (1958), 204-5. The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under the Japanese Occupation, 1942-5, H. J. Benda, pts. 1 and 2 (1959), 71.

Sir Richard Winstedt and his Writings

23

Dutch Asiatic Trade 1620-1740. K. Glamann, pts. 1 and 2, (1959)» 7I-72Socialism in South East Asia, Saul Rose, pts. 1 and 2 (i960), 80. i. A Critical Survey of the Languages of Sumatra, P. Voorhoeve; 2. A Critical Survey of the Languages of Borneo, A*. A. Cense and E. Uhlenbeck, pts. 1 and 2 (i960), 80-81. The White Rajahs of Sarawak, R. Payne. The White Rajahs, Steven Runciman, pts. 1 and 2 (1961), 59. The First Contest for Singapore, 1819-24, H. J. Marks, pts. 1 and 3 (1961), 59-60. The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, 1813-20, J. Bastin, pts. 1 and 2 (1961), 60. Under Chartered Company Rule (North Borneo, 1881-1946), K. G. Tregonning, pts. 1 and 2 (1961), 60-61. Rusembilan, A Malay Fishing Village in Southern Thailand, T. M. Fraser, pts. i and 2 (1961), 62-63. Malay Kinship and Marriage in Singapore, J. Djamour, pts. 1 and 2 (1961), 62. A Critical Survey of Studies on the Anthropology of Nias, Mentawei and Enggano, P. Suzuki, pts. 1 and 2 (1961), 63. An Indonesian-English Dictionary, John M. Echols and Hassan Shadily, pts. 3 and 4 (1961), 133. A Critical Survey of Studies on Malay and Bahasa Indonesia, H. Teeuw, and H. W. Emanuels, pts. 3 and 4 (1961), 136. From Empire to Nation, Rupert Emerson, pts. 3 and 4 (1961), 164. (ii) Journal of the Straits and Malayan Branch of the Royal Asia­ tic Society Brandstetter's Indonesian Linguistics, C. O. Blagden, JSBRAS Ixxvi (1917), 69-72. Malay Poisons and Charm Cures, J. D. Gimlette, 2nd ed., JMBRAS i. i (1923), 264-5; 3rd ed., JMBRAS vii. 2 (1929), 376. Masa'lah Sa-ribu, Dr. G. F. Pijper, JMBRAS iii. 1 (1925), 84-85. Matriachy in the Malay Peninsula, G. A. de C. Moubray, JMBRAS ix, i (1931), 158-9. Oudheidkundig Verslag, 1930; Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeo­ logy, 1929, JMBRAS x. i (1932), 160-2. A Malay-English Dictionary, R. J. Wilkinson, JMBRAS yi. 2 (1933), *45« (iii) Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums Indo-China and its Primitive People, H. Baudesson, ix. 1 (1920), 96-99.

I A POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION OF THE INSCRIPTION AT KËDUKAN BUKIT

(PALEMBANG)1 G. CŒDÈS

Among the few epigraphic texts from the kingdom of Sri Vijaya, that bearing the oldest date is engraved on a stone found at Këdukan Bukit, at the foot of Sëguntang, the hill which dominates the town of Palembang.2 In his ‘A History of Malaya’ Sir Richard Winstedt has written that this inscription commemorates the foundation, by means of magic rites, of a capital of Sri Vijaya in a.d. 683.3 This has been the most widely held interpretation for the last thirty years. The inscription, which gives three dates of the year 604 s'aka (a.d. 682), in which took place successively the embarkation of the king, the deployment by land and sea of an army of more than 20,000 men towards a certain destination, and the success of this expedition, has given rise to various interpretations. For my part I have until now confined myself to expressing the opinion that the Këdukan Bukit inscription is ‘a document of great importance for the history of S’rîvijaya’, without attempting to state the precise historical event to which it refers. No doubt I ought to adhere to this prudent course, awaiting fresh facts which might illuminate what this text has left obscure as a result of an unfortunate break in the stone which prevents one from knowing the final destination of the a.d. 682 expedition. I have for some time, however, been haunted by the possibility of an interpretation which does not seem to have occurred to any of the authors who have had occasion to study this inscription. 1 This essay has been translated from the French by Simone Cécile Parrish, Department of English, University of Malaya. 2 Published for the first time by Ph. S. van Ronkel, Acta Orientalia, ii (1924), 19, then by G. Cœdès, ‘Les inscriptions malaises de Çrïvijaya’, BEFEO xxx (1930), 33, and finally by G. Ferrand, ‘Quatre textes épigraphiques malayosanskrits de Sumatra et de Banka*, JA ccxxi (1932), 272. 3 JMBRASiûi (1933), 23.

Interpretation of the Inscription at Këdukan Bukit

25

In order to clarify the exposition which follows I think it may be useful to reproduce the inscription, which is fairly short, and its translation z1

svasti s'ri s' akavarsätita 604 ekädas'i s'uklapaksa vulan vais'äkha dapunta hiyam näyik di sämvau manalap siddhayätra di saptami s'uklapaksa vulan jyestha dapunta hiyam marlapas dari minäna tämvan mamäva yam vala dualaksa danan ko duaratus cära di sämvau danan jälan sarivu tlurätus sapulu dua vanakna dätam di mata... sukhacitta di pancami s'uklapaksa vula\n äsädha] ... laghu mudita dätam marvuat vanua . . . s'rivijaya jaya siddhayätra subhiksa . . .

Prosperity! Good Fortune! In the expired year 604 s'aka2 the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of the month Vais'äkha (23 April, a.d. 682), our divine Lord embarked to carry out a successful expedition. On the seventh day of the bright fortnight of the month Jyestha (19 May, a.d. 682), our divine Lord left Minäna Tämvan; he led an army of twenty thousand [men] plus two hundred following by ship, and one thousand three hundred and twelve [men] by land. All arrived at . . . satisfied at heart. The fifth day of the bright fortnight of the month Äsädha3 (16 June, a.d. 682)... light-hearted, joyous, arrived to make the country... Sri Vijaya, victorious, successful in his expedition, endowed with plenty . . . Ph. S. van Ronkel,4 who was the first to make this inscription known in 1924, wrote that he was tempted to regard it as announ­ cing the foundation of Sri Vijaya; and in 1931 N. J. Krom5 did not consider this impossible. But neither expressed an opinion on the circumstances which determined this foundation. In 1932 G. Ferrand, taking advantage of pertinent comments of R. A. Kern6 on the meaning of the words marlapas dari minäna ‘to 1 The translation takes note of the observations of G. Ferrand, JA ccxxi. 237 fr., and of B. C. Chhabra, ‘Expansion of Indo-Aryan culture’, JASB, letters, i (1935), 19« 2 The reading of this date, for which there has been some hesitation as between 604 and a.d. 605, has been established by L. C. Damais, ‘Études d’épigraphie

a.d.

indonésienne. III. Liste des principales inscriptions datées de l’Indonésie*, BEFEO xlvi ( 1952), 98, who has given the corresponding date in the Christian era. 3 It has been possible to restore the name of the month which has disappeared in the break in the Kèdukan Bukit stone, thanks to the fragment of the Télaga Batu inscriptions (see below). 4 Acta Orientalia, ii. 21. 5 Hindoe-Javaansche Geschiedenis (The Hague, 1931), 121 • 6 ‘Enkele aantekeningen op G. Cœdès’ uitgave van de Maleische inschriften van Çrîwijaya’, BKI Ixxxviii (1931), 510.

26

A Possible Interpretation of the

leave the river mouth (in order to go upstream)’, interpreted the inscription as describing the success of an expedition directed from Palembang against the capital of Maläyu.1 But in 1934 J. W. J. Wellan2 observed, first, that Palembang, since it was not situated on the Musi estuary, could not correspond to Minäna Tâmvan, the point of departure of the expedition mentioned in the inscription. Secondly, he noted that it is impossible to reach Maläyu, which was then situated at Jambi, by going up the Musi, and that in postulating a sea-expedition bound for Jambi, the twenty-eightday voyage implied by the dates of the inscription,3 would be out of proportion with the distance to be covered. Lastly, he stated his willingness to admit the hypothesis according to which the inscription commemorated the foundation of Sri Vijaya, without naming the exact spot from which the expedition would have set out to achieve this result. In 1937 J. L. Moens4 named this point of departure, which he placed on the Malay Peninsula, as being the most likely area from which the founders of a new kingdom on the island of Sumatra could have come. The following year N. J. Krom5 thought it possible to suggest a fresh reading for the last characters of the seventh line (di mata . . .) to be understood as di malayu : in his view the inscription recounted the foundation of Sri Vijaya on the Palembang site which would previously have borne the name of Maläyu. Accepting N. J. Krom’s reading, and developing the hypothesis of J. L. Moens, K. A. Nilakanta Sastri concluded in 1940,6 and repeated in the following words in 1949 : ‘The mention of a large army travelling by land and water from the mouth of the river upstream to the environs of Palembang suggests the success­ ful completion of a military expedition which is recorded in the inscription. Obviously the performers of the siddhayâtrâ were Malays who came from across the sea and were already Hinduised. The result of the expedition was their successful overthrow of Maläyu and their settlement in the conquered territory which came thenceforth to be known as S’rivijaya.’7 1 JA ccxxi. 275. 4 ‘Çrïwijaya, 1250 jaren geleden gesticht’, TAG li. 365-6. 3 J- W. J. Wellan, ibid. 363, 367, assumed that the month whose name has been obliterated was Açâdha, which the fragment of the Tëlaga Batu inscription

has confirmed. 4 ‘Çrîvijaya, Yâva en Kafâha’, TBG Ixxvii (1937), 333-5. 5 *De heiligdommen van Palembang’, MKNAWL (n.s.) i. 7 (1938), 25-26. 6 ‘S’rï Vijaya’, BEFEO xl (1940), 249. 7 History qf Sri Vijaya (Madras, 1949), 29.

Inscription at Këdukan Bukit

27

The idea that the Këdukan Bukit inscription recounts the success of an expedition from outside, resulting in the foundation of the kingdom of Sri Vijaya after the conquest of Maläyu, was taken up again in 1952 by R. Ng. Poerbatjaraka1 who, with the help of an argument which would be too long to summarize here, proposed to identify Minâna Tâmvan with the present Menangkabau. This led him to conclude : ‘ If what we think is true, there must have once been a Minangkabau chieftain who set out on an expedition and after a stay at Jambi continued on to Palembang where, having been victorious, he built in this territory a town which he named Sri Vijaya.’2 The last author to concern himself with this problem is J. G. de Casparis, who in 1956 made known a new epigraphical document of some importance,3 as it gives an opportunity to fill in a lacuna in the Këdukan Bukit inscription. This is a fragment from Tëlaga Batu, in the eastern section of the town of Palembang. Described as early as 1936 by W. F. Stutterheim,4 this very incomplete fragment originally gave the same text as the Këdukan Bukit stone, with the addition of a reference to the foundation or to the visit of a vihära. The chief interest of this inscription is to provide the name of the month which figured in the third date, but which had disappeared in the break in the Këdukan Bukit stone; it is âsâdha, as J. W. J. Wellan had previously supposed. J. G. de Casparis has taken advantage of the publication of this fragment of the inscription to give his own interpretation.5 Having noticed that the periods between the three dates: 11 Vais'äkha (the embarkation of the king), 7 Jyestha (the departure from the estuary), 5 Asädha (arrival at a destination regrettably unknown), are respectively twenty-five and twenty-eight days, he points out that the latter period cannot refer to a return voyage from the Musi estuary to Palembang because this would not take twenty-eight days. Furthermore, there is no reason why it should be from the place where the king had gone (let us say on a pilgrim­ age) that he would necessarily have taken his army. J. G. de Casparis envisages two other possibilities. Either a single voyage, interrupted on the seventh of the month of Jyestha, is involved 1 2 3 4

Riwajat Indonesia (Djakarta, 1952), i. 35* French translation by L. C. Damais, BEFEO xlviii (1957), 623. Prasasti Indonesia, ii (1956), 11, inscr. e. Jaarboek BG iii, 199. 5 Prasasti Indonesia, ii. 12-14.

A Possible Interpretation of the

28

(which is Poerbatjaraka’s opinion)—though in this case it is diffi­ cult to admit that the king should have undertaken this voyage without his army, to rejoin it only twenty-five days later—or else two voyages are involved, the first having begun on 11 Vaisâkha and destined to attain success, the second constituting an expedi­ tion of over 20,000 men having begun on yjyestha and concluding successfully on 5 Äsädha. J. G. de Casparis holds to this second interpretation, observing that it does not support that of N. J. Krom, which postulates an expedition against Malâyu beginning on 7 Jyestha, since twenty-eight days would not in that case suffice. I would add that so far as N. J. Krom’s hypothesis, based on the Malâyu reading, is concerned, so competent an epigraphist as L. C. Damais rejects it categorically, as it rests on an impossible reading.1 Thus, as we have seen, most writers place Minäna Tämvan at the mouth of the Musi and consider this place either as the point of arrival of an expedition from overseas after a twenty-five-day voyage, ending in the foundation of Sri Vijaya (on the old site of Malâyu, according to Krom), or else as the point of embarkation of an expedition against Malâyu by river (according to R. A. Kern), or by sea (according to G. Ferrand). The first hypothesis, according to which Sri Vijaya would only have begun to exist under this name in a.d. 682, founders when referred to Chinese testimony. As early as a.d. 671, indeed, Yitsing mentions Che-li-fo-che as a port of call on the China to India route, where he stayed for six months.23Furthermore, the Hsin T'ang Shu reports that Che-li-fo-che sent embassies to the Court of China from the Hien-heng period (a.d. 670-3) to the K‘ai-yuan period (a.d. 713-41), that is from before a.d. 673.3 Finally, it is possible that Sri Vijaya is mentioned under the name of Kin-li-p’i-che from the beginning of the T’ang period (which begins in a.d. 620).4 It is, therefore, certain that Sri Vijaya existed under this name before a.d. 682, and that there is no question of dating its foundation from that year. With regard to the second hypothesis, according to which 1 2 3 4

BEFEO xlviii. 622. E. Chavannes, Religieux éminents, 119. P. Pelliot, ‘Deux itinéraires*, BEFEO iv (1904), 334. BEFEO iv (1904), 324 and n. 5.

Inscription at Këdukan Bukit

29

Minäna Tämvan would be the point near the capital of the departure of a military expedition, it is reasonable to ask why the king him­ self should have embarked twenty-five days before the mobiliza­ tion of his army. It seems more natural for a ruler to await the completion of preparations before embarking and giving the signal for departure. In fact, there is nothing in the text which obliges or even encourages one to place Minäna Tämvan in Sumatra; in placing it overseas, would not a solution to the problems raised by the inscription be reached more easily ? If, as seems logical, one takes the first date (11 Vaisâkha = 23 April), that is the date of the king’s embarkation, as being also the date of the departure of an expedition from Palembang, the twenty-five days which separate this date from the second (7 Jyestha =19 May) appear as an interval quite sufficient for reaching a point on the Javanese coast, or on the Malay Peninsula or even on the southern extremity of the Indo-China land mass, and for preparing there for the departure of an expedition or foray into the interior of the country. Having reached this place, named in the inscription as Minäna Tämvan, the king, having disembarked part of his army (of this there was previously no question since it is only from Minäna Tämvan that the king divided it into two groups, one of land, the other of marine troops) gives the signal for departure on 7 Jyestha (19 May) and travels up the estuary where he landed. And twenty-eight days later, when he had achieved his goal and brought back the fruits of victory, on 11 Äsädha (16 June), he put into effect an operation, which owing to the textual lacuna cannot be precisely ascertained, but which can reasonably be assumed to have been the subjugation of the conquered country. What, it may be objected, about the return ? Does the inscription not mention it? But why should it be mentioned? What matters are the dates of departure from the capital and of the expedition proper from the point of disembarkation (dates no doubt carefully fixed by the royal astrologers), and the date of arrival at the goal and of the final victory. This last, expressed in the phrase jaya siddhayätra, probably consisted of the establishment of the suzerainty of Sri Vijaya over a country (yanua) whose name possibly appeared in the lacuna, followed by a word such as bhakti, as in a passage of the Kota Kapur inscription mentioned below. And now, what could be the country in question? Where is it

3o

A Possible Interpretation of the

reasonable to seek the destination of the overseas expedition under­ taken in a.d. 682 by the armies of Sri Vijaya? To begin with, one may dismiss the island of Java, since if Sri Vijaya had achieved a victorious campaign there in a.d. 682, the Kota Kapur inscription would not say, four years later, that it had been engraved just after the departure of the army of Sri Vijaya on an expedition ‘ against the land of Java which was not subject (bhakti) to S’rivijaya’.1 A raid against the Malay Peninsula is not, in itself, impossible, but there is no indication in any source that such a raid could have taken place. On the other hand, a campaign in Cambodia, resulting in the death of the Khmer king is attributed by an Arabian text2 to the Maharaja of Zâbag, whom there are good reasons for identify­ ing with the king of Sri Vijaya. In this case, it would be appropriate to look for Minâna Tâmvan at one of the mouths of the Mekong. It is there that the armada from Palembang would have disembarked (the number of boats has been reckoned at about fifty).3 An interval of twenty-five days is a period perfectly credible for the crossing to be effected with the south-west winds prevailing between April and June, and for a halt at the point of disembarkation long enough to allow for the preparation of an expedition into the interior. The king of Cam­ bodia at this time was Jayavarman I. The site of his capital is not known for certain. If it was no longer Is’änapura (Sambor-Prei Kuk), the capital of Is’anavarman I (c. 616-35), it may perhaps have been Naravaranagara (Angkor Borei). In any case, the town must have been easy to reach via one of the branches of the Mekong. Once the disembarkation had been effected of the 1,312 men, who were apparently reserved for the defence of the banks of the river up which the fleet was travelling with 20,000 men on board, and after a twenty-eight days’ march, and perhaps some skirmishing and other incidents, the king, having achieved his goal, would have proclaimed the subjugation of the country to Sri Vijaya. This hypothesis would be no more than an insight, a mere idea in the air, which I should not have risked formulating did there not 1 BEFEO xxx. 48. 2 G. Ferrand, Voyage du marchand arabe Sulaymân (Class, de l’Orient, Paris, 1922), vii. 98-102. 3 J. W. J. Wellan, TAG li. 365.

Inscription at Këdukan Bukit

31

exist several facts which, without definitely confirming it, never­ theless allow it to be given due consideration. My teacher, Sylvain Lévi, never ceased impressing upon his pupils that ‘reasoning is never worth as much as fact; fact is impersonal and definitive. The contrivances which ingenuity or strength of mind construct are only the idle games of illusory personality’. I have tried, throughout my career, to conform to this doctrine by dedicating my labours to the publication of epigraphical texts and archaeological documents. Perhaps I am wrong in depart­ ing on this occasion from this line of conduct in order to risk erecting a ‘reasoning* on what are apparently very frail foundations. But there are, I repeat, a certain number of ‘facts’ which appear to be in its favour. Not one of them, taken in isolation, constitutes even the beginning of proof. But taken together, they form a cluster of arguments which are not altogether negligible. First, there is a remarkable correspondence between this a.d. 682 expedition and the end which we can reasonably assign to the reign of Jayavarman I, the last dated inscription of which is of a.d. 681.1 Second, the name Jayanäs’a, borne in a.d. 684 by the king of Sri Vijaya who is the author of the Talang Tuwo stele,2 and who in all probability is identical with the Këdukan Bukit king, means ‘destroyer of victory (of enemies)’. But it can also mean ‘destroyer of Jaya’, that is, of Jayavarman I. Third, the disappearance of Jayavarman I was followed by calamities which are referred to in an inscription dated a.d. 713,3 by Queen Jayadevi, his daughter who succeeded him, apparently in default of a male heir. One may ask whether it was not in order to live as far away as possible from the sea, whence invasion had come and might come again, that she seems to have retired to the north of the Great Lake, to what a century later was to become the centre of Angkorian Cambodia, and what was without doubt, at the beginning of the eighth century, the extreme north-western part of the country. Fourth, the toponym Minâna Tâmvan possibly derives from an ethnic name designating a backward racial group of which isolated communities still exist, or at least existed at the beginning of this 1 G. Cœdès, Inscriptions du Cambodge (Hanoi, 1942), ii. 39. 2 BEFEO xxx. 38. 3 G. Cœdès, Inscriptions du Cambodge, (Paris, 1952), iv. 54.

32

Interpretation of the Inscription at Këdukan Bukit

century, over a fairly wide area stretching from the mouth of the Saigon River (notably in the Ba-ria province) to the region to the north-west of Attopeu, passing through Tây-ninh and the western part of the Cambodian province of Thbong Khmum. These aborigines, who are Mon Khmer in speech, bear in the south the name of Tmon1 and in the north that of Thpuon or Tampuon.2 All these names can be traced back to an ancient form Tmvan or Tamvan, which is perhaps attested in an inscription dated a.d. 803 under the form Tmon designating a certain class of slaves.3 The ethnic group thus named must have occupied in the past a much larger area, including the banks of the lower and middle Mekong, whence they must have been driven back towards the hinterland by the Vietnamese in the south, and by the Laotians in the north. There would be nothing impossible in the name Tmvan or Tamvan being used to designate the mouth of the river whose banks they frequented, and one would obtain thus the locality of this Minâha Tâmvan about which so much speculation has already taken place. Thus it may be permissible to suppose that the Këdukan Bukit inscription was engraved as an ex-voto to commemorate a victorious expedition from Sri Vijaya against the Khmer kingdom.4 I should have preferred to have been able to offer to my friend Sir Richard Winstedt some new document as a birthday offering, one of those ‘impersonal and definitive facts’, the supreme goal of research for my teacher Sylvain Levi, rather than this ‘contrivance’, propped up with minor facts of which not one is decisive. May he at least understand, and may the reader understand with him, that I am under no illusions as to the worth of this ‘contrivance’. I would at the most venture to say that it does not seem to me to be more rash than those of my predecessors. 1 E. Aymonier, Le Cambodge (Paris, 1900) i. 281, 305 (Trrfon ou Ta Moeun). 2 A. Bastian, Die Volker des östlichen Asiens (lena, 1868), iv. 294 (Tampuen) ; F. Gamier, Voyage d'exploration en Indochine (Paris, 1873), i. 215 (Thpuon, Tampuon); E. Aymonier, Voyage dans le Laos (Paris, 1895), 150, and Cambodge, ii. 173 (Tampuon). 3 G. Cœdès, Inscriptions du Cambodge (Paris, 1951), iii. 170. The form tmon could be the Angkorian form of tmvan, as I have shown with regard to another series of words containing the diphthong uo (written va) during the Angkor period, but the vowel 0 during the preceding period (Inscr. du Cambodge, ii. 3-4). 4 It is known that several stones inscribed with the word siddhayâtra have been found at Palembang (W. F. Stutterheim in F. M. Schnitger, Oudheidkundige vondsten in Palembang, Bijlage A) and at Bangka (B. C. Chhabra, JASB, letters i, 19).

II DESULTORY REMARKS ON THE

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE MALAY PENINSULA PAUL WHEATLEY

Forty years ago, in the course of compiling a compendium of information about Malaya, Sir Richard Winstedt could do no more than assign the Peninsula a regional setting in the history of the ancient world,1 and this only by drawing heavily on the publications of an early stratum of Dutch scholars2 and on Professor George Cœdès’s recently published classic monograph on Sri Vijaya,3 as well as on his own already extensive readings in Malay literature. Some twelve years later, when he wrote the first and, to date (apart from school texts), the only summary of Peninsular history, Sir Richard was able to devote a full chapter to ‘The Hindu Period’.4 Finally, by 1948, in Malaya and its History, he could draw on Dato’ Sir Roland Braddell’s pioneering papers,5 and the Hanoi edition of Cœdès’s massive synthesis,6 as supports for the still unarticulated skeleton of early Malayan history. And though Sir Richard’s abiding interests lay in Malay texts relating to the Malacca Sultanate and later periods, he did 1 Malaya, The Straits Settlements and the Federated and Unfederated Malay States (London, 1923), 126-9. 2 Particularly Hendrik Kern, W. P. Groeneveldt, H. N. van der Tuuk, N. J. Krom, and G. P. Rouffaer, the last of whom had just published his ‘Was Malaka emporium vöör 1400 a.d. genaamd Malajoer, en waar lag Woerawari, Ma-hasin, Langka, Batoesawar?’, BKI Ixxvii (1921), 1-174 and 359-604, a magnificent refutation of Gabriel Ferrand’s thesis on an eighth-century foundation of Malacca. 3 ‘Le royaume de Çrivijaya*, BEFEO xviii. 6 (1918), 1-36. 4 ‘A History of Malaya’, JMBRAS xiii. 1 (1935), ch. ii. 5 ‘An introduction to the study of ancient times in the Malay Peninsula and the Straits of Malacca’, JMBRAS xiii. 2 (1935), 70-109; xiv. 3 (1936), 10-71; xv. 3 (1937), 64-126; xvii. i (1939)» 146-212; xix. i (194O» 21-74. 6 Histoire ancienne des États hindouisés d'Extrême-Orient (Hanoi, 1944). This was republished in 1948 as tome VIII. 2 of Histoire du Monde [under the direc­ tion of M. E. Cavaignac] and with a new title: Les États hindouisés d’Indochine et d*Indonésie (Paris).

34

Desultory Remarks on the

not shirk the responsibility of hewing from intractable foreign matrices such ores as might enrich the amalgam of ancient penin­ sular history.1 His genius resided essentially in his ability to en­ vision the structural dimensions of history at the same time as he was coping with the innumerable technical difficulties inherent in his materials,2 and it is a tribute to his writings that they have inspired a series of subsequent investigations which, in addition to providing at least partial solutions to some of these textual enigmas, have also begun to recast fundamental problems in a form more susceptible of profitable analysis. It may be appropriate on an occasion such as this to offer Sir Richard a conspectus of the results of some of these researches on the ancient history of the Malay Peninsula. In the first place, during the past two decades source materials have been more fully explored and more subtly exploited. These sources can be divided primarily into two complementary genera, archaeological-epigraphic and annalistic-literary. Of the first category I propose to say little. The annalistic-literary sources, on the other hand, though providing a medium for less spectacular advances, have been subjected to considerable reinterpretation and re-evaluation, and it is these revisions which will form the basis of my remarks in the following pages. Easily the most valuable corpus of written evidence accessible to the historian of early Malaya is that, predominantly annalistic in character, which is incorporated in Chinese dynastic histories, encyclopedias, travel records, and gazetteers.3 So far as I am aware, few new texts have come to light since World War II, and a good proportion of those now available had already been translated, often with scholarly annotation, by the beginning of the nineteentwenties. There was one very important tool, however, which was denied to W. P. Groeneveldt, Gustave Schlegel, J. Takakusu, Édouard Chavannes, W. W. Rockhill, and the earlier generation of sinologists who at one time or another turned their attention to South-east Asia, namely Bernhard Karlgren’s reconstruction of readings for the morphemes of Ancient Chinese.4 Paul Pelliot 1 See Bibliography, pp. 13 ff. 3 See Note A, p. 65. 3 For details see P. Wheatley, ‘Chinese sources for the history of the Malay Peninsula in early times’, Malaysian Historical Sources (University of Singapore, 1962), 1-9. 4 Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese (Paris, 1923). Karlgren

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

35

recognized, even in his ‘Deux Itinéraires’,1 that the reading of the Chinese transliterations of early Malayan toponyms according to a modern Pekingese pronunciation was an illusory business, and did the best he could. Now, with Karlgren’s ingenious solution before us, we have access to the pronunciation of the Ch'ang-an dialect in about a.d. 600. Quite apart from the refined analyses of Chinese grammar that it has made possible, the usefulness of this tool in the restoration of ancient toponyms can hardly be over­ estimated. The second most important body of literary evidence relating to South-east Asia in early times derives from Arabo-Persian writings subsequent to the middle of the ninth century.2 Hitherto, historians of South-east Asia have had to rely mainly on a compendium of French translations of Arab, Persian, and Turkish texts, com­ piled by Gabriel Ferrand eclectically from 'ajaib literature, topographies, formal geographical treatises and encyclopedias,3 supplemented for later periods by the same author’s Instructions nautiques et routiers arabes et portugais,4 During the last twenty years there have been few relevant textual discoveries,5 though several definitive editions of already known manuscripts have been published.6 More important for our present purpose, several Arabic scholars have reopened some of the old problems of Malayan toponymy which have been lying in abeyance since the early revised some readings in ‘Grammata Serica; Script and Phonetics in Chinese and Sino-Japanese’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, xii. i (1940). Photographically reproduced as a separate volume in Peking in 1941. 1 BEFEO iv(i9O4), 131-413. 2 Details in Wheatley, * Arabo-Persian sources for the history of the Malay Peninsula in ancient times’, Malaysian Historical Sources, 10-19. 3 Relations de voyages et textes géographiques arabes, persans et turks relatifs à rExtrême-Orient du vin* au xvm* siècles, 2 tomes (Paris, 1913-14). 4 Vol. Ill of Introduction à Vastronomie nautique arabe (Paris, 1928). 5 Perhaps one of the most noteworthy was Maulânâ Imtiyâz 'Ali 'Arshi’s identification (in Thaqäfat al-Hind, xii, 1. 93-123) -of a Bodleian MS. (No. 1, 666) as a portion of Mas'üdï’s lost Kitab al-Awsaf. This MS. had, in fact, been published in 1938 by Professor 'Abd Allah al-§äwi under an erroneous author­ ship and catalogued by Carl Broqkelmann in Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, v, Supplement i. 220. 6 Notably A. von Rohr-Sauer’s translation of the Mashhad MS. discovered by A. Z. Validi-Togan: Des Abu Dulaf Bericht über seine Reise nach Turkestan, China und Indien (Bonn, 1939), and Jean Sauvaget’s impeccable edition, transla­ tion and annotation of Akhbär a$-$in wa’l Hind (Paris, 1948). In 1959 R. I. Ehrlich published a Russian translation of this last work in Moscow. In addition, Professor Muhammad Husayn Nainar discussed some of the problems associated with this text in his Arab Knowledge of South India (Madras, 1942).

36

Desultory Remarks on the

decades of this century. Prominent among them are Mr. G. R. Tibbetts and Professor S. Q. Fatimi, both of whom have devoted lengthy studies to some of the more intransigent aspects of Malayan historical geography.1 As far as the corpora of Indian texts are concerned, there have been few significant advances during recent years. For the earlier centuries the evidence is nearly all literary in a strict sense, and the greater part of it was translated into at least one of the major European languages during the first flush of Sanskrit and Buddhist studies in the nineteenth century. During the present century it has been re-worked repeatedly by Indologists such as Sylvain Lévi, R. C. Majumdar, K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A. D. Pusalker, V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, and many others. It is unfortunate that the Graeco-Latin sources, on which several earlier historians based high hopes,2 have in fact proved to be weak reeds—though the Ptolemaic recensions may yet be made to yield a scrap or two of unambiguous information. In 1945 Professor Leo Bagrow called in question the date and method of compilation of this corpus,3 and it must be admitted that the pattern of settle­ ment that can be reconstructed from it is more congruous with the Malay Peninsula as depicted in Chinese and Arabo-Persian records from the tenth century a.d.—or even later—than it is with the admittedly fragmentary and obscure picture that conceals more than it reveals of conditions during the second century, when orthodoxy contends that Ptolemy compiled the rearypa^LKT] The close coincidence between the shape of the Ptole­ maic land mass and the actual run of the coasts in South-east Asia makes it unlikely that the Xpvtrq Xepaovfcos can have been anything other than the Malay Peninsula, fused, possibly, with 1 See Note B, p. 65. 2 Notably G. E. Gerini, Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia (London, 1909); F. W. Douglas, Notes on the Historical Geography of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1949); W. Linehan, JMBRAS xxiv. 3 (1951), 86-98; and Sir Roland Braddell, ibid. (1936-41). Sir Richard is the only author known to me who has written a history of Malaya without once mentioning the Geography and referring to Ptolemy only in a two-word parenthesis (equating Td/cœAa with a place-name from the Tanjore inscription of a.d. 1030: ibid. xiii. 1, 26). In his two works mentioned above neither the Geography nor Ptolemy appears in the index. I applaud Sir Richard’s sagacity in rejecting from his narrative material that has so far contributed more to our knowledge of Hellenistic geographical thought than to our understanding of South-east Asian history. 3 ‘The origin of Ptolemy’s Geographia’, Geografiska Annaler, xxvii. 3-4 (1945), 318-87«

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

37

some of the islands to the southward,1 but beyond that the Ptolemaic toponomy is chaotic. If Dr. C. A. Gibson-Hill succeeds in establishing his contention that Zdßapa/Edßava, the name applied to an emporium at the southernmost point of the Golden Khersonese, was connected with the locality known as Sabam to the Portuguese and as Sabon1 on sundry eighteenth-century charts, this may well prove to be a datum-point for future interpretation. The other Classical authors3 who sprinkled Khryse and Argyre so liberally through their texts can, by the nature of their work, never provide more than ornaments for the treasure chest of the antiquary. Finally, it must be admitted that the crumbs of information to be gleaned from Mon, T'ai, and Javanese sources have not so far yielded significant contributions to Peninsular history. Professor C. C. Berg’s bold attempt at a renversement of orthodox Javanese medieval historiography4 is hardly likely, even if partially sustained in the face of hostile criticism, to do more than induce minor re­ assessments in the narrative of Malayan history. In any case it is not unlikely that this author’s salient contribution to South-east Asian historiography will be found to derive not so much directly from his textual analyses as from his forging of a new conceptual tool in the shape of an awareness of the need to elucidate and evaluate the significant patterns of relationships in the past of South-east Asia, what Dr. A. H. Johns has called ‘a morphology 1 See my reconstruction in The Golden Khersonese (Kuala Lumpur, 1961), 146. 2 To say that on textual grounds Edßapa is the preferred reading certainly does not exclude the possibility of Edßava being the correct form. It cannot be empha­ sized too strongly that the historian of ancient South-east Asia cannot do worse than limit his investigations to the world of texts. Even in equatorial South-east Asia, ‘The ground itself, where we can read the information it affords, is ... the fullest and most certain of documents.’ Sabon appears on three charts of the Straits by Mannevillette, all dated 1775, on two by Thomas Jefferys dated 1778, and on others by Bellin, Mount and Page, and John Thornton dated respectively 1754, 1750, and 1711 (all in the University of Singapore Historical Map Collection). Sabam occurs, int. al., on a map published by Godinho de Eredia at Goa in 1613 {vide J. V. Mills, JMBRAS viii. 1 (1930), pl. iii). Both forms of the name are European versions of Indonesian Sawang, a town on the west coast of Pulau Kundur. 3 For summary consult Wheatley, Khersonese, ch. ix. 4 Professor Berg’s studies have been conveniently summarized by F. D. K. Bosch (‘C. C. Berg and ancient Javanese history’, BKI cxii (1956), 1-24) and by J. G. de Casparis (‘Historical writing on Indonesia (early period)’ in Hall, Historians of South East Asia, 143-4 and 159-62). Berg himself recently sum­ marized his views in a chapter entitled ‘Javanese historiography—a synopsis of its evolution’ in Hall, Historians, 13-23* 823121

D

38

Desultory Remarks on the

of events’.1 In other words Berg’s work will have served to empha­ size the importance of analytic categories as a means of giving coherence and significance to the manifold aspects of historical development, and from this revised attitude of mind Peninsular historians will benefit no less than their Indonesian counterparts. The basis of any interpretation of ancient South-east Asian history must be the accurate identification of place-names, and this is a controversial question. In the first place, linguists and epi­ graphers are not always in accord among themselves as to the etymological principles involved, much less as to the validity of reconstructions. The difficulties are exacerbated when the prob­ lem concerns not so much a toponomy evolving according to laws of phonetic change, but the rationalization of indigenous names by diverse groups of foreigners, themselves stemming from several classes of society.21-Ching , for example, was an able philo­ logist, acquainted with the lingua franca of the Nan-Hai and, as a result of a lifetime’s labours in the precise translation of difficult mantras, unusually experienced in the transcription of foreign words.3 The Arabic 'ajaib literature, by contrast, was composed 1 ‘Sufism as a category in Indonesian literature and history’, JSEAH ii. 2 (1961), 10-23. The introductory paragraphs to this paper present an especially lucid statement of the rationale of categories as an integrating concept. Cf. the example quoted on pp. 12-13: ‘Thus it is not the fact of a marriage that is important, but its social and legitimizing function.’ 2 The modem toponomy of Malaya incorporates numerous examples of such rationalizations, e.g. St. John’s Island for Pulau Sekijang; Junk Ceylon for charts (offered to the throne

Ujong Salang. On the Wu-pei-chih

in 1628) Langkawi Island appears as

= Dragon-teeth

Armchair. Sang-hyang-hujung of the Nägarakvtägama (1365) had become Sungei Ujong by the eighteenth century, with a curious deviation to Semujong in nineteenth-century Selangor and Negri Sembilan. 3 I-Ching’s experience in the translation of Buddhist texts predisposed him to pay particular attention to the problem of transcribing into Chinese foreign words beginning with double or treble consonantal clusters (vide R. A. Stein, ii. 1-3 (1947), 220-1). It is, moreover, notice­

‘Le Lin-yi’, Han Hiue

able that I-Ching’s transcriptions of Peninsular names invariably differ from those used in the dynastic histories, encyclopedias, and topographies, e.g. 01 ni

tân tân for WM WM tän-tän/zjän, ka ’dz'a\ R|5 üïï and perhaps

ka

for fe

Euan b'uan for

?ydt d'a for ÿjj]

läng nga sigu/sju, &c., buân b'uân. rt is not

impossible that a detailed analysis of these differences may yet yield the clue to an accurate restoration of these and other toponyms.

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

39

primarily of seamen’s tales, with all that that implies: the names half-heard, the narrative embroidered initially to impress the stayat-homes and subsequently by inadvertence during a thousand repetitions. I-Ching and Buzurg of Ram-Hurmuz are at extremes, but between them lies every conceivable degree of transcriptual and translitérai accuracy. Then, again, it is not always possible to distinguish between transliteration and translation, especially when the original place-names have faded from the map. Shech'ien-shan [ [ [ (Amoy Hokkien Sia-chi-san = the Mount of Shooting Arrows),1 for example, bears little apparent relationship to Gunong Banang and, were it not known that the latter range of hills appears on old maps as Tanjong Sizan,2 might even be interpreted as a descriptive place-name associated with some sort of seaman’s validatory myth. Are Kiei lung Island J^) and Si tsi Rock translations or transcriptions ? The same question arises in the case of the Khrysoanas estuary (Xpvcrodva TTora/jLov cKßoXai), Yävadvipa, TakkolalTaKoiXa, and numerous other place-names. The complexities, difficulties, and limitations of such toponomical studies involving practically a dozen major languages are too well known, and have been expatiated on too frequently, to need recapitulation here. Suffice it to say that there are some scholars who, impressed with the difficulty of extracting worth­ while information from these ancient texts, and from place-names in particular, reject the whole business out of hand. Mr. Tom Harrisson, for example, regards it as no more than a futile verbal juggling, an esoteric but ineffectual logodaedaly, which can be obviated by the use of a little common sense. Other scholars place their faith in archaeological excavation and regard textual analysis and criticism with a suspicious, if not unfriendly, eye. These points of view are refreshing reactions to a great deal of excessively facile historical speculation, and should be answered, not dismissed. Moreover, it cannot be denied that no scholar has yet produced a magistral study of Malayan toponomy remotely comparable with that which R. A. Stein achieved for the Lin-i .3 Neither 1 2

Wu-pei-chih, ch. 240, f. 16 recto. e.g. J. Horsburgh, The India Directory (London, 1843) and Chart of the

Strait of Malacca ( 1856). 3 Stein, Han-Hiue, ii. 1-3 (1947). This monograph must finally and irrevoc­ ably have interred in distinctly unconsecrated ground the old method of identi­ fying place-names simply by means of superficial phonetic similarity. *11 ne suffit décidément pas d’affirmer que tel lieu est, ne peut être que, doit être, est

Desultory Remarks on the

40

can it be denied that archaeology is the only discipline at all likely to provide us with the minutiae of a history of ancient times, but at the moment it. is still true that our appreciation of the quality of life in early Malaya is derived almost wholly from written records. Chapter 82 of the Sui Shu ßH is still our locus classicus for a description of a Peninsular court and its ritual j1 the memoirs of Fa-Hsien ££ |g2 and I-Ching3 still provide our most reliable accounts of sailing routes between China and India; meagre re­ marks in a dynastic history and an encyclopedia together furnish nearly all our information about early Malayan warfare ;4 Chu Fan Chih still affords the most comprehensive (though certainly incomplete) schedule of Malayan trade in the thirteenth century. In fact, only very rarely can archaeology provide a com­ plete inventory of trade goods. Earthenware, stoneware, other ceramics, glass, beads, metal remains, and such-like occur in plenty on a number of sites; damar has been found, I understand, in excavations in Kedah,6 and amber7 is likely to crop up at any time ; but ambergris, gum benjamin, cubebs, galingale, frankincense, visiblement ou évidemment tel endroit. ... La méthode Gerini devrait être morte’ (p. 1, note 1). Possibly the nearest approach to the standard set in Stein’s paper is O. W. Wolters’s study of the ‘Po-ssû pine’, which is, unfortunately, concerned only incidentally with the Peninsula [BSOÆS xxiii. 2 (London, i960), 323-50]. A. Christie’s study of KoAavSto^wvra in the same journal [xix. 2 (1957), 345_53] is another excellent contribution to South-east Asian ethno-history but is not focused directly on the Peninsula. 1 Account of Ch'ang-Chün’s embassy to the Red-Earth Land in a.d. 607-9. 2 Fo-kuo Chi IS SE- It can be shown that Fa-Hsien’s voyage from Ceylon to Shan-tung was accomplished between September 413 and June 414.

3

Ta Fang Hsi-yü Ch'iu-fa Kao-seng Chuan incorporates the biographies of at least thirty-seven Buddhist monks

who voyaged by sea between India and China. 4

Accounts of k'â lâ and tân tân in Hsin Fang Shu

5

222c, and

Jtil, 188 respectively.

Fung Tien

A gazetteer-cum-trade handbook compiled by Chao Ju-kua

in about a.d. 1225. 6 Personal communication from Dr. Alastair Lamb of the Department of

History, University of Malaya, August 1961. 7 That amber was brought to China during the twelfth and thirteenth cen­ turies from both the Middle East and the Coromandel Coast through the inter­

mediacy of Sri Vijaya is attested by Chou Ch’ü-fei Toi-to Chün’s

44

Ling-wai

(1178), ii. 23 and Chu Fan Chih, i. 13 (Feng Ch’eng-

edition, Shanghai, 1938).

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

41

lakawood, storax, rose-water, silks, in fact most of the drugs and aromatics which featured so prominently in early South-east Asian trade, are unlikely to survive on any archaeological site. When we first pick up the tangled threads of Peninsular history in the third century a.d., parts of the isthmus were undergoing radical changes in patterns of authority relationships. In the interpretation of these and subsequent socio-economic transfor­ mations the evidence relating specifically to the Peninsula is seldom sufficient to do more than validate a pattern manifested by a variety of documents for South-east Asia as a whole. Already for an undetermined number of centuries traders from the Indian subcontinent had hawked their merchandise round the coasts of South-east Asia, thereby familiarizing the peoples of that region with a variety of Indian wares. At the same time Indian literature, Hindu, Buddhist, and Tamil, bears abundant witness to the share in this trade borne by wealthy entrepreneurs, a group whose importance was probably underestimated by Van Leur in his epochal reinterpretation of South-east Asian history.1 From these beginnings, through a process not yet wholly elucidated, during the early centuries of the Christian era there was established a crosscultural link between certain chieftains in South-east Asia and the ruling varna in some parts of India. By this medium there was introduced into the former region the concept of the god-king, doubly attractive to South-east Asian chieftains as a means of liberating themselves from the traditional authoritative restraints of tribal adat, at the same time as it induced an implicit (if not, in fact, actual) stratification of their fellow tribesmen, henceforth considered as subjects. A prerequisite for divine kingship of this type was consecration, which in the Indian model could be con­ summated only by the brahman varna. In South-east Asia, too, 1 J. C. van Leur, an economist who turned his talents to social and economic history, drew his shrewd insights into South-east Asian history from a study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century materials, and extrapolated some of his conclusions to explain still earlier developments. He was, in fact, the first scholar to attempt a sociologically acceptable interpretation of the process of Indianization. In view of his method of approach to this problem, it is not surprising that ancient texts do not invariably support his thesis, notably in the matter of populo minuto and the status of ‘pre-Hindu’ Indonesian (and by implication peninsular South-east Asian) states. It is part of the tragedy of Van Leur that, owing to his early death, he was unable to revise what was really only a tentative hypothesis, but which has become a bible for a whole generation of South-east Asian historians. These pages, nevertheless, like so many others, are a tribute to his genius.

42

Desultory Remarks on the

there developed privileged groups styling themselves brahmans and performing consecratory and ritualistic functions.1 The main­ tenance of a state appropriate to a god-king and his priesthood necessitated the ministrations of craftsmen and artisans, who were located within the precincts of the royal palace, and of a peasantry who drew dividends from the annual cycle of plant and animal life within the territory of the god-king. At some time previous to this stage of development there had arisen among nascent regional chieftainships competition for control over labour, which led successful chiefs to seek to extend their authority so as to draw on labour rights in as many of the surrounding villages as possible.2 Opposition to this policy was forthcoming both from less success­ ful chiefs, who rightly regarded a siphoning-off of their labour forces as a diminution of their own power (political status being measured in terms of labour rights), and from other regional chieftains or emergent kings. Concomitantly there arose the need for protective devices such as palisades and walls, and the main­ tenance of a force of warriors, ksatriyas, who in return for a share in the wealth of the court, acted as household guards, organized the peasantry in times of need, and enforced the sanctified authority of the god-king.3 In short there had evolved the city-state, the nägara, focused on a new landscape feature, the town,4 from which, over the first millennium of the Christian Era, there would develop the territorial states and thalassocracies whose conflicting interests comprise the main theme of most of our corpora of epigraphic sources. It is doubtful if the secular socio-economic changes here referred to could have been deduced solely from the fragmentary evidence relating directly to the Malay Peninsula. A wider view is necessary in order to document the change from tribal chief to god-king, from gerontocracy to sultanism, from 1 See pp. 46-7 below. 2 See O. W. Wolters’s interesting suggestion as to a possible role of the Po-ssü in this process, BSOAS xxiii. 2 (i960), 350. 3 This is the process, the creation of a personal administrative and military staff sustaining and protecting the exercise of arbitrary will, in which Max Weber discerned the transition from patrimonialism to sultanism, his term for the maxi­ mization of absolute authority : The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans, by A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons (Oxford, 1947), 346. 4 Cf. C. Geertz, The Development of the Javanese Economy: a socio-cultural approach (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 117: 'Negara, literally, means “capital city,” “palace,” “state” or “country,” thus reflecting the notion of the city as a kind of spring-like source of supra-village (and so, in part, alien) political authority.’

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

43

consensus to hereditary charismatic authority inherent in manifest divinity, from/>awaflg to ‘brahman’, from head-hunter to ksatriya, from primitive tribesman to peasant,1 from kampong to nâgava, from spirit house to temple, from reciprocity to redistribution, in short from culture to civilization, but the Peninsula can certainly provide material illustrating a transformation something after this manner. The earliest information that can be assigned with certainty to the Malay Peninsula depicts this process in its initial stages and relates specifically to the northern tracts, which had already passed under the aegis of the maritime empire of Fu-nan (b'iu nam ^e official report of a Chinese embassy sent to this kingdom in c. a.d. 2453 it is recorded that Fan Shih-man (b'iwan si mi™zmImuan (jffj J) ‘ordered the construction of great ships, reconnoitred thoroughly the Chang-Hai (iiang %ai ÿfô y^)4 and 1 ‘Peasant’ is here used in a Redfieldian sense; e.g. ‘It required the city to bring [the peasant] into existence. There were no peasants before the first cities. And those surviving primitive people who do not live in terms of the city are not peasants.’ Robert Redfield, The Primitive World and its Transformations (Ithaca, 1953), 31. 2 This was not in fact the name of the country but the final syllables in the style of the ruler: Old Khmer kurun bnam = king of the mountain (cf. Skt. parvatabhüpäla, sailaräja), and is but one of numerous manifestations in ancient South-east Asia of a ritual preoccupation with the symbolism of high places, itself a component in a cosmological dualism that opposed mountain and sea. Is it a relic of this dualism which is recorded in the Sung Shih

, Bk. 489 ?

Tn the fifth month [the people of Java (zja b'uâM»amuse themselves in

boats and in the tenth month they repair to the mountains for their delectation.’ (Cf. the dragon-boat festival on the fifth of the Fifth in South China). Possibly the Hsin 'Tang Shu is also hinting at something similar in bk. 222B, where it is related that the King of Ho-ling (xa Ijang gpj also called

quently visited the mountain district of Lang-pi-yeh (läng pji ja ^|) to contemplate the ocean. 3

This embassy is recorded in Liang Shu

ch. 54, ib, 9b, and 22b-

23a. The official report of this embassy is the main written source for our know­ ledge of South-east Asia in the third century a.d. In its original form it has been lost, but numerous fragments have been preserved in later histories and en­ cyclopedias. For the bibliography of the envoys’ report see Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 114-15. 4 K'ang-hsi Tzu-tien

BE

J&L (under ygg) and P'ei Wen-yün Fu

(ch. 40, under y^£) define Chang-Hai as the South China Sea. This is certainly the same name as that which appears in 'Akhbâr a$-$in

wa'l-Hind and Mas'üdî’s Murüj as

and in 'Ajaib al-Hind, 46 as

Desultory Remarks on the

44

attacked more than ten states, including Ch'ü-tu-k'un (k'iuat tuo kuan), Chiu-chih (kiau d'ï) and Tien-sun (tien suan)' nofêiwxjtjgiæa

last of these ‘states’ is the subject of several subsequent notices which have been analysed in considerable detail since Pelliot first brought them to the attention of historians in 1903.1 The toponym JfiL can be shown to be an aberrant orthography for Tun­ sun (tuan suan jj^), but so far no scholar has been able to suggest a satisfactory reconstruction of the original name.2 Even were this possible, it would be no guarantee of a precise location. However, two sentences from the envoys’ report3 leave no room for doubt but that the territory of thip state incorporated the far northern reaches of the Peninsula: [Tun-sun] ‘curves round and projects into the sea for more than 1,000 W4 ® A f and ‘The eastern boundary is in communication with kau t'siau (Canton), the western with t'ien t'iuk (India) and -an siak (= Artak, the legendary founder of the Arsacid dynasty, c. 247 2*6, for Parthia)’ jg £ æ S ïfi 5 'Äl Ä S5 Neither can there be any doubt that this town was an important focus of trade : ‘All the countries beyond both restored by Ferrand as Çankhay (Textes, 41, 154-5). The Arabs apparently confined the term to that part of the South China Sea lying to the north of the latitude of Hai-nan: cf. 'Ajaib, 46: ‘The land (lit. island) of Campä which marks the beginning of the China Sea.* There are also several references in Arab literature to an island of Çankhay (see Ferrand, Textes, index 696), while Dimashqi (Nukhbat) mentions a town by the same name. 1 ‘Le Fou-nan*, BEFEO iii. 263 et passim. The most recent commentary on these texts is that by the present author in ‘Tun-sun j^*, J.RAS (1956),

17-30. 2 See Note C, p. 66. 3

Liang Shu, ch. 54, 7a. This history was compiled by Yao Chfa

and his son, Yao Ssü-lien

in a.d. 629.

4 The li has varied in length from time to time and place to place, and the adoption of any particular figure can only be arbitrary. There is some evidence that during the fifth century a.d. it was reckoned as slightly more than 400 metres [23 cm. (the Chinese foot) X 1,800 = 414 metres: Stein, Han-Hiue, 11-12 and 89]. Cf. Eberhard’s figure of 496-8 m. for the li of Han times ( TP xxxvi. 2)

and Jen Nai-ch’iang’s

(K'ang-tao yiieh-k'an

^|j,

ii. 6, 14) 375 m. for Han times, 360 m. for the T’ang. See also P. Pelliot, Œuvres posthumes: Mémoires sur les coutumes du Cambodge de Tcheou Ta-kouan (Paris, i95i), 125-6.

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

45

the frontier come and go in pursuit of trade. ... At this mart East and West meet together so that daily there are innumerable people there. Rare goods and precious merchandise—there is nothing which is not there.’ W 0 41 • • •

Clearly Tun-sun was one of the emporia strung along the great trade route from the Mediterranean to eastern Asia, in this instance owing its prosperity to a propitious location on or near the major portage of the South Seas, namely the isthmian tract of the Malay Peninsula, where a short journey over one of the trans­ peninsular routes obviated a voyage of nearly 2,000 miles.1 Information about political organization on the Peninsula (or even in South-east Asia) at this time is exiguous, obscure, and equivocal. Whereas two Chinese dynastic histories2 related that there were five princes in Tun-sun who acknowledged themselves vassals of Fu-nan Ï J a ^ater encyclo­ pedia,3 which also drew on the report of the third-century embassy, noted that the rulers of the state were styled kuan luan j=£ that is, they had adopted the Old Khmer title of kurun* It would seem that in the mid-third century the polity of Tun-sun represented a transitional phase between some undetermined ancestral, personalistic political form characteristic of iron-age ladang cultivation5 and the city-state under the sanctified, charis­ matic rule of a deva-räja, the typical development of subsequent centuries. Perhaps the most significant information about this state which 1

See Note D, p. 67.

2

Liang Shu, 54, 7a and Nan Shih c.

(written by Li Yen-shou

Aid, 670), 78, 5a. Both histories were compiled some four centuries

later than the events to which they refer, but both drew heavily on the presu­ mably still extant records of the embassy of a.d. 245. 3 T'ai-p'ing Yü-lan Lfe W M 2 läng nga siausiu ^Jlâng ka siuët liang-bng g'ia siau ÜB • Ar(all = Lankasukd),3 Ko-lo (k'a la -gj* ^),4 and Tan-tan (tân/ziân/tân—tan/zidn/tan Æ JW W/pfi Pl)5 became prominent in T'ang times, while Kedah (kdt[ ?] d'a ka • dz'aÿjn ; Skt. Katäha ; Tamil KadäramjKidäram) and several others appear in the literature as mere mentions. The information relating to each, even when assembled from the whole range of South and East Asian literatures, is never more than fragmentary but, by combining all available materials, it is possible to build up a tolerably detailed, composite picture of the miniature kingdoms which occupied the coastal plains and estuaries of the isthmian tract. Situated focally on a fringe of coastal alluvium or an estuarine plain stood the city proper. Prominent in nearly all the descriptions available to us are its defences : palisades in the riverine or littoral settlement of P'an-p'an (b'udn b'udn S’ & £ W # JS iff ijjj 7k W)’6 wa^s Pited stone in Ko-lo} Kalah ( lj£).7 Lankasuka was surrounded by walls to form a city with double gates, towers and pavilions f H W, 10^11 PI ^);8 Smg-chih (smg g'ßeltäs) City 1 See p. 53 below. The essential information relating to the location of P'an-p'an occurs in the Chiu T'ang Shu (197, 2b): ‘The kingdom of P'an-p'an

is situated to the south-west of the Lin-i

pg, ) on a bay of the sea. To the

north it is separated from the Lin-i by the Small Sea /J'v ... it adjoins the kingdom of Lang-ya-hsiu

[Gulf of Siam]

? TheHwn T'ang

Shu {222c, 4a) adds that P'an-p'an lay to the south of Dväravati. Although these remarks do not afford evidence of a precise location, they do leave it beyond doubt that P'an-p'an was situated on the isthmus. It is tempting to see a pos­ sible survival of this toponym in names which appeared as late as the nineteenth century under forms such as Phun-Phin (on a small island at the head of C'aiya Bay) and Pun-pin (on the west coast near Phuket Island). 2 A city-state on the north-east coast of the Malay Peninsula. For details of location and ethnology and for previous references see Khersonese, ch. iii. 3 Almost certainly focused on the Patani district : vide Wheatley, ‘Langkasuka’, TP xliv (1956), 387-412. 4 See Note F, p. 68. 5 Another city-state on the north-east coast; vide Hsü Yün-ts'iao Ml* ‘Notes on Tan Tan', JMBRAS xx. 1 (1947), 47-63, and Khersonese, 51-55.

6 Wen-hsien T'ung-k'ao, 331 and several other texts. 7 Hsin T'ang Shu, 222c, 2b. Cf. Abü Dulaf in Yâqüt, f. 453. 8 Liang Shu, ch. 54. Copied into T'ung Tien, 188, T'ai-p'ing Huan Yü Chi, 176, and Wen-hsien T'ung-k'ao, 331.

S2

Desultory Remarks on the

jjjR i®1 (a^so known by the honorific si tsi City = Lion City),2 capital of the Red-Earth Land, was protected by walls with ‘triple gates each more than 100 paces from its neighbour’ = g # g" g-|- ^)- Only for Ko-lo is there written reference to the buildings within the walls: ‘the towers, palace and houses are thatched with straw [sc. atap]’ (||| ~^f).3 This is in accord with conditions else­ where in South-east Asia, where only the gods were conceded the right to reside in dwellings of stone or brick. Earthly monarchs, however megalomaniac in their policies, were content with wooden palaces, a custom which persisted until T'ai rulers began to build in brick in the seventeenth century as a result of European influ­ ence. So far archaeology has not contributed to our knowledge of the morphology of these city-states, but with the increasingly rapid tempo of investigation on the Peninsula, such confirmation is bound to come, in Kedah perhaps very shortly. In the meanwhile, until such evidence is forthcoming, we must suppose that at least some of the isthmian towns were laid out on the pattern common to South­ east Asian capitals of this period, that is, as plastic replicas on a terrestrial scale of the Hindu or Buddhist universe. In the centre was the national sanctuary, in stone, housing the palladium of the kingdom and representing Mount Meru, the pole of cosmic forces, axis of the state and abode of the gods. Adjacent to this was the palace of the devaräja, and grouped about it in a cosmic pattern relating to cardinal and sub-cardinal points were the residences of the brahman ministers, the barracks of the praetorian guard, and the royal rice granaries. Beyond these clustered the quarters of the artisans who ministered to the material needs of the court. By thus constructing the capital as a universe in miniature there was esta­ blished between space and time (sc. Nature) and the state that harmony without which there could be no prosperity in the world of men.45It was unusual to find buildings occupying all the territory within the walls of the city, so that it is not unexpected when Abu Dulaf mentions the numerous gardens within the enceinte of Kalah.* 1 Sui Shu, ch. 82. Parallel passages are incorporated in Pei-shih 4L £.■ 95Tai-p'ing Yii-lan, 787, and Wen-hsien Tung-Kao, 331. 2 Tung Tien, 188; Tai-p"ing Huan Yü Chi, 177. 3 Hsin Tang Shu, 222c, 2b. 4 See Note G, p. 70. 5 See Note H, p. 71.

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

53

City populations are notoriously difficult to estimate, and it may be just well that there are few such assessments in the early literature relating to the Malay Peninsula, for they would almost certainly have been misleading. However, for what it is worth, T'ung Tien (188 and later texts) records something over 20,000 families in Tan-tan ZL This would imply a population of the order of perhaps 80-100,000, a certain exaggera­ tion whose only value is as an indication of the impression of popu­ lousness which had been implanted in the minds of Chinese.1 Literary records seldom neglect to mention the ruler of a citystate, but his divine attributes are usually only implied. Perhaps an aura of charisma is discernible in two myths designed to validate successful attempts at usurpation.234In the first Kaundinya (g'iän d/'ièn nziwo), one of the successors [of Chu Chan-fan tiuk isjân d'an) who was reigning in a.d. 357] was originally an Indian brahman who received a divine fiat to rule over Fu-nan. ‘Chu Chan-fan, rejoicing in his heart, arrived in P'an-p'an to the southward. When the people of Fu-nan heard of him, they all arose with joy, went out to meet him and installed him as king.’

g Æ & W fi «

in

'Ufô W S

B B & W A

Clearly ‘the of grace’ had descended on Kaundinya. The second instance concerns a political adventurer who, in the second half of the fifth century, restored the fortunes of Larikasuka* following upon the collapse of the authority of Fu-nan \ ‘In the royal household there was a man 1 See Note I, p. 71. 2 Charisma (lit. ‘gift of grace’) is the quality of personality or situation which sets a man apart from and above his fellows. It is a patent sign of greatness, and is often treated as a manifestation of supernatural power. In any case it frees a ruler from customary limitations on the exercise of his authority and in large measure justifies his expectation of obedience. Cf. the paragraph in which Max Weber introduced this formula: ‘The term “charisma” will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader’ {The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 358).

3 Liang Shu, ch. 54, 10a. 4 Liang Shu, ch, 54, 18b. Repeated in Tung Tien, 188, Tai-pfing Huan Yü Chi, 176, and Wen-hsien T'ung-k'ao, 331. 823121

E

54

Desultory Remarks on the

of virtue to whom the populace turned. When the King heard of this he imprisoned the man, but his chains snapped unaccount­ ably. The King took him for a supernatural being and, not daring to injure him, exiled him from the country, whereupon he fled to India. [The King of India] gave him his eldest daughter in marriage. Not long afterwards, when the King of Lang-ya died, the chief ministers welcomed back the exile and made him king.*

A Et & if > T

Wherever, with one exception, the style of a Peninsular ruler can be restored, it takes a Sanskrit form. The king of Ko-lo, for example, bore the title Sri Paramesvara 5^1] '/$ O & la);I t^ie second of the usurping rulers of Lankasuka was known as Bhagadatta (|Jfc jjjfj b'uâ ka d'ât ta) ;2 the regnal name of a king of Ch'ih-t'u incorporated Gautama jy J=Ç He kiu 00 Ijip&u ta sak/sâî) ;3 and the title of the ruler of Tan-tan probably began with the honorific Sri... (J ^|] ^|J ;g J=* fjftj sat Iji si liang g'ia : the remaining syllables cannot be identified).4 The exception to these Sanskrit styles occurs in P'an-p'an, the most northerly of the city-states, where the reigning monarch was known as the iang liët ïziap J Q J? and his father

as the iang tak miu liàn

jjÿ ^.s So far no one has

1 Hsin Tang Shu, ch. 222c, 2b. 2 Liang Shu, ch. 54, 18b. 3 Sui Shu, ch. 82, 3a. Copied into the accounts listed in note 1, p. 52 above. 4 Hsin T'ang Shu, ch. 222c, 5b. Here the orthography is M g. which may be restored as on p. 38 above or as zjän zjän. In the restoration of these and other words we do well to recall Professor Peter Boodberg’s warning that ‘our precise reconstructions of ancient Chinese words, particularly in Karlgren’s system, are based on the study of rhyming dictionaries, that is, that of the phonetic values of syllables as they occur in pause. In the analysis of transcriptions of polysyllabic names, however, these “dictionary” reconstructions are not necessarily valid for every member of the complex and might even be misleading for unstressed syllables. Furthermore, it is not unlikely that some of the transcriptions of the sixth and seventh centuries reflect already a popular weak enunciation—or amisability under certain conditions—of the final stops -k, -p, -t, in the speech of Northern China’ (‘Three Notes on the T*u-chüeh Turks’, Semitic and Oriental Studies, xi (1951), 2). 5 Wen-hsien T'ung-k'ao, 331 and earlier texts.

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

55

succeeded in restoring these titles, but iang may well have re­ presented the Cham word meaning ‘god’. Alternatively it may have been a transcription of a Malay or even an Old Mon word.1 The ritual and protocol at Peninsular courts is also the subject of several references. Corps of brahmans are much in evidence, though there is no specific mention of the office of purohita or of a sacerdotal hierarchy such as feature so prominently in Cambodian epigraphy.2 The brahmans of Tun-sun and P'an-p'an and the problem of their precise status have already been discussed. In Tan-tan there were eight high brähman officers of state, known as Jt A E A A Ä 0 A ® it IJl ÎÈ H

z ■ It will be recalled that the brahmans in P'an-p'an were seeking wealth rather than, or possibly as well as, prestige,4 a statement whose significance may be apparent in the light of a subsequent notice detailing the non-Sanskritic titles of the chief ministers in that state : tb'uat lang sâk ïlâm jï|$ |g£, kuan luan tiei ia kuan luan Wuat yuâ g? kuan luan ïb'uat tiei sâk kâm j=î ~y-.5 These offices have not been identified but the kuan luan element may well have been a transcription of Old Khmer kurun. In the Red-Earth Land it is recorded that there were ‘several hundred brahmans who [on ceremonial occasions] sat facing each other in rows on the eastern and western sides [of the audience hall]’ [ÔJ îfiï zfe- Brahmans also played important roles in the reception ceremonies in honour of the arrival of Chinese envoys in a.d. 608.6 Perhaps most significant of all were the San­ skrit titles or offices of the chief ministers of the court: one sât d'â n «

1 Cf. E. Aymonier, ‘Le Founan’, JA i (1903), 131 ; P. Pelliot, BEFEO iv (1904), 229; G. Ferrand, ‘Le K'ouen-louen’, JA xiii (1919), 254; and G. H. Luce, JBRS xiv (1924), 170. 2 For numerous references to the apparently hereditary office of purohita (Khmer steng an) see the inscription of Sdok Kak Thom as edited and translated by G. Cœdès and Pierre Dupont, BEFEO xliii (1943), I34~543 See Note J, p. 72. 4 p. 47 above. 5 Wen-hsien T’ung-k’ao, 331 and other texts. 6 Sui Shu, 82. See note 1, p. 40 above. The audience-hall of this state as it was arranged for the reception of ambassadors early in 608 was described by a Chinese envoy. His remarks have been translated into French by Paul Pelliot, Coutumes du Cambodge, 150-2. Cf. the very similar description of the throne room in the royal palace of Chen-la H as pictured by Ma Tuan-lin in Wen-hsien T'ung-

k'ao (section on Chen-la).

56

Desultory Remarks on the

ka Id = sädhukära, benefactor or, preferably, särdhakära, assistant); two d'd nja d'dt jisu ([Jg = dhanada, Dispenser of Blessings, an office which figures on a seal from Oc-Eo) ; three ka lji miet ka ( jjftn l] jÿo = karmika, agent) ; and one kiu lâ muât tiei (|?j| = kulapati, the superior of a religious institution). In addition each city appointed a nd zia/ia ka QJß = nâyaka) and ten puât tiei perhaps best translated as chiefs).1 Explicit comments, as opposed to inferential and implied re­ marks, on the religious practices of these Peninsular city-states are rare, and Chinese authors in particular were notoriously mis­ informed about South Asian religions.2 Only two texts, in fact, supply explicit information. Of Ch'ih-t'u it was said, ‘It is the custom to reverence the Buddha, but greater respect is paid to the brahmans’ > ft g g? gg fUJ? In this connexion it is interesting to read that, ‘According to his own account the Buddhist father [of the reigning king] had abdicated in order to ex­ pound the [Eightfold] Path [to Enlightenment]’ ï Ü Hj 1W*4 Whether was indeed a statement of fact or a euphemism for usurpation cannot be known.5 Turning to P'an-p'an we find that there were ‘ten viharas where Buddhist monks and nuns studied their canon. They ate all types of flesh but abstained from wine. There was also a monastery of religious devotees [lit. Taoist priests] who partook neither of flesh nor wine, and who studied the classic of the Asura king. They commanded no great respect. The Buddhist priests were commonly called pjifb'ji Wpu (= Pâli bhikkhu\ Skt. bhiksü), the others t'dm.

« a ± « - W M ± T

ä

H rii W W

1 All identifications are by Professor Georges Cœdès, États hindouisés, 135. This author has drawn attention to the näyaka (a title) of Tangur who also held the office of [adhi\pati as related in an inscription on the socle of a standing Buddha from Lophburi {Recueil des inscriptions du Siam, ii. 14). This is an interesting, but not unexpected, link between the kingdom of Dvâravatï and the Peninsula. In fact the word Tangur itself may just possibly be related to Nangür, apparently the Tamil name of an Indian settlement near Takuapa {Recueil, ii. 49-50)« 2 See Note K, p. 73. 3 Sui Shu, ch. 82, 3a. Copied into several other histories and encyclopedias : see note 1, p. 52. 4 Ibid. 5 See Note L, p. 73.

Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula

57

± S Burial customs, which inevitably reflect religious belief, are generally treated a little more fully than are formal religious practices. In Tun-sun these took the form of reserved burials.12 The corpse was first exposed to vultures and the atmo­ sphere. After a period of time the bleached bones were calcined, enclosed in an urn and consigned to the sea. Speaking in a ‘Con­ fucian’ context, Chinese envoys characterized this as the way of the Superior Man. On the other hand, the corpse of the person of impure conduct would be ignored by the vultures, so that his remains had to be carted away in a basket. The alternative to this procedure was se/f-immolation on a funeral pyre {T'ai-p'ing Yü-lan, 788), T'ung-tien, 188], and it is evident that on this topic the Chinese chroniclers were con­ fused. Such a death cannot at any time have been common among the population generally, though possibly a form of sati may have been practised by widows and even ministers.3 Strangely, by the Chinese envoys it was considered an inferior course of action ■&)' The same theme occurs again in a T'ang account of Ko-lo* where ‘the dead were cremated, and their ashes collected in a metal urn which was then deposited in the sea’ M W /Æ 2i Oct. 1629. After relieving Malacca and scoring further successes against Dutch and English shipping in Sumatran waters, Botelho was mortally wounded in the destruction of the Dutch Indiaman Walcheren off Jambi (5 May 1630).

From Contemporary Portuguese Sources

113

to come out, as they greatly desired to do ; but our armada prevented them from doing so, and harassed them to such an extent with gunfire, particularly from the pontoon and from another one which was made mounting only one cannon, that the enemy were obliged to give themselves up for lost and to try to flee away by land. At this juncture the King of lôr came to our help with 150 sail, most of them belonging to his aunt, the Queen of Patane.1 And though he only arrived at this stage, yet we are much beholden to him, for he had already sent previously fifty vessels which served us very well and supplied us with many provisions, for which he deserves to receive letters of thanks from His Majesty. On this day the General Marajâ died of chagrin at seeing him­ self vanquished and bottled up in a river which he had entered with so little forethought. Every day two or three hundred men deserted to us, which the General Lancamanà and the chief men and nobles realizing, they resolved to flee ; as indeed they fled with five or six thousand men, seeking refuge in the jungle after first killing their women, and abandoning the finest fleet that had ever been seen in Asia, full of great and small cannon, as well as much booty, of which our soldiers took good advantage. This victory was won without stroke of sword, and we believe that the like has never been seen before, when the besieger suddenly found himself besieged and completely destroyed. A work of heaven and of the powerful hand of God Our Lord, to whom alone are due thanks as the Author thereof. The Lancamanà wandered about in the jungle for thirteen days, when, not being able to endure further hardships, he surrendered himself to the King of I6r five leagues from here, who will undoubtedly hand him over to us according to an agree­ ment we have made with him. These are the tidings which came from Malaca by way of Negapatào on the above-said day, and we await further news in the ships which are daily expected, including a galley and another 1 Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Jalil Shah III (reigned, 1623-77), whom the contemporary Portuguese accounts style (as here) ‘King of Johore*; ‘King of Pahang’ (in Xavier, Vitorias, 1633, and elsewhere); and ‘King of Johore and of Pahang’ (in the Diary of the Count of Linhares for 1634). Peter Mundy, writing in 1637 (Travels in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667, ed. Hakluyt Society, iii, London, 1919, 142), also states that the King of Johore was then King of Pahang, and though this is denied by some modem authorities (e.g. C. O. Blagden in his note on Mundy’s observation, op. et loc. cit), I think the weight of contemporary

European evidence confirms it.

114

The Achinese Attack on Malacca in 162g

vessel of those which were captured in the river. Our Lord &c. From the Hospital, on the 3 March 1630. ROQUE CARREIRO1

With all the necessary licenses In Lisbon. By Pedro Craesbeeck, The King’s printer, Anno 1630.

(c) Dispatch from the Captain-General of Malacca to the

Governors of India, 19 February 16302 It seemed to me that my first duty was to send to Your Worships a narrative of everything that happened in this siege, and thus I do so in the briefest and most succinct form possible, because if men­ tion were made of all the relevant details, it would be very lengthy. On the 3 July last year there arrived in sight of this city a fleet of the King of Achem consisting of 236 sail, including 38 galleys with two topsails each, of the type of the one which the governor is sending,3 the remainder being smaller vessels. There came in this fleet 19,400 Muslims, and on the 6th they landed near the hill of Sao Joao, which lies about half a quarter of a league from this fortress. There came a general of this fleet, Lassemane, who was the oldest and bravest captain that the King of Achin had, and his second-in-command was a foster-brother of the King of Achem called the Marraja.4 They were accompanied by many other Captain-Majors of squadrons, who were governors of provinces, and many other renowned captains. I ordered that day a great skirmish to be fought with the Mus­ lims, but I did not want to risk many people therein, since I did not have more than 260 soldiers and up to 120 married men who could bear arms, and 450 local soldiers formed in .four companies that we had raised. Our men killed in this skirmish over 200 Mus­ lims of the best people that they had, including six captains who 1 I cannot certainly identify this man but presume that he was a Jesuit priest and director of the Hospital at Goa. Negapatâo = Negapatam on the Coro­ mandel coast. 2 Translated from the original as printed by Cunha Rivara, Chronista, i. 9-12, and Pissurlencar, Assentos, i. 506-10. 3 The Achinese flagship, called the Terror of the World., which was sent to Goa as a trophy with the captive Laksamana aboard. 4 Laksamana and Maharaja. Cf. note 4, p. no, above.

From Contemporary Portuguese Sources

115

came in the van, without the loss of a single fatal casualty on our side and with only one Portuguese soldier wounded. We regarded this success as a good augury for all the others that we subsequently had during the siege. The Muslims came close with their very strong palisades pro­ vided with many bulwarks, in which they mounted many guns with which they tried to annoy us. They placed the whole of their fleet in a river called Duyon, which is a league and a half from the city,1 and they stockaded the river mouth on the sea side as well as on both banks for as far as the fleet reached, which was a considerable distance. They left outside only seven galleys and a few light craft, numbering not more than twenty. This was the cause of their total ruin, for we had the bar left free, as also the suburb called the Malacca side,2 and thus all the vessels that came hither could enter freely. For I had stationed advice-boats at Pulubutum and off Cape Rachado, which is where all the ships from India, Negapatam and Sao Thome3 must pass. I also had light craft stationed in the straits of Sincapura and Sabäo,4 in order to warn vessels coming from Macassâ and from the lands of the Malays and Javanese for this fortress, with orders to detain arriving vessels off Cape Rachado and in the Straits until I could send jalias by night to convoy them, from among the six which I had fitted out in this roadstead. The convoys functioned at night without the enemy being able to hinder them, for I had calculated the tides so accurately that all the vessels which came entered safely. Before the arrival of the enemy, I informed the King of Jor, our friend and neighbour,5 of the definite news which I had of the 1 Duyon : from Malay duyong ‘dugong’. The name of a river and mukim about 3 miles east of Malacca town. 2 The suburb of Banda Malacca, the modem Bunga Raya. Cf. JMBRAS xxix. 3, p. 163. 3 Sâo Tomé de Meliapor on the Coromandel coast, now a suburb of Madras. Pulubutum = Pulau Butang, the Butang Islands, off the coast of Kedah. 4 Singapore and the strait between Sumatra and Pulau Kundur. Cf. J. V. Mills in JMBRAS viii. i (1930), 225, and pl. vi. 5 Sultan *Abdu’l-Jalil Shah III of Johore (and Sultan of Pahang) and the Queen of Patani were still allies of the Portuguese in 1633, when Antônio Pinto da Fonseca sent six well-equipped ships to help them defeat a rebel prince who had entrenched himself with Siamese support at Singora (Diârio do 30 Conde de Linhares, vice-rei da India, Lisboa, 1937, 23-24)« The Portuguese commander of this expedition, Antönio Vaz Pinto, refused to accept the pecuniary reward offered him by the queen after the rebel’s defeat, ‘saying he had not come for gain but out of gratitude’. Later, the allies fell out, and the Sultan of Johore assisted the Dutch in their final siege of Malacca, 1640-41.

116

The Achinese Attack on Malacca in 162g

coming of the King of Achem’s fleet. The King of Jor thereupon made proclamation throughout his lands that all his vassals should bring all the provisions which they could to Malacca, and this they did with great promptitude and great abundance. And as soon as the King learnt that the fleet of the King of Achem had reached Malacca, he sent a relief-force of one thousand men by land, and a fleet of sixty sail by sea, in which came 1,500 warriors and a very experienced captain-major, with orders from his king to serve in Malacca for as long as the siege lasted, and to die with all his men in defence of the place. The King also wrote to the captain and the city, stating that he was preparing to come in person to the relief of Malacca, and that he would bring a large relief-force from his aunt, the Queen of Patane, for he had sent to ask her for this; all of which he did, as I will say further on, and his captain-major who served here captured two galleys which the General of Achem was sending with dispatches to his king, which was of great con­ sequence for us. After midnight on the fourth day of the month of August, the enemy assaulted the convent of Madre de Deos1 wherein reside Capuchin friars, and which I had ordered to be fortified and gar­ risoned with a detachment of sixty Portuguese and two hundred local men, under the command of an honourable citizen named Diogo Lopes da Fonseca, who was the syndic of that house, and who had volunteered to defend it at great cost to himself. And he did defend it that night with great courage, during which time I sent him reinforcements twice, for the assault of the Muslims, who numbered more than three thousand, lasted until morning. At one time, they penetrated into the grounds of the convent, but they were thrown out again with the loss of many Muslims, and we counter-attacked and took a palisade which they had made adjoin­ ing the convent. After their repulse, they occupied a neighbouring hill which overlooks the convent;2 and from there they pushed for­ ward their palisades close to the convent enclosure and tried to dig themselves in at the foot of the hill on the city side, so as to prevent its being reinforced by our own people. For this reason I was compelled to withdraw from that position, after first evacu­ ating everyone within the convent including the provisions and munitions of war. At eight o’clock in the morning, I ordered the 1 On the hill of Säo Francisco, or Bukit China. 1 Presumably Säo Joäo, or St. John’s Hill, also called Ujong Pasir.

From Contemporary Portuguese Sources

117

whole convent to be fired in such wise that nothing whatever was left unburnt. After its destruction, the garrison, which had been drawn up outside with flying colours, retired in good order to the beat of drum, without the enemy daring to attack them, for they feared I would sally out and succour them. In like manner I maintained the other palisades in the field of Sao Joao for a long time in order to slow down the enemy’s advance and to prevent him from getting close to the walls of this city, which, in fact, they never did dare to attack even after I had decided to evacuate the palisades and ordered them to be fired. At various times I ordered attacks to be made against the enemy’s stockades, in which many Muslims were killed with very little loss on our side. We captured some of their palisades in which we took many weapons ; and the Muslims were so intimidated that they never ventured to cross the river on the side of the Malacca suburb, nor to come close to the walls, for I always had Portuguese soldiers and local auxiliaries stationed outside them and the said suburb was fortified. On the last day of September there arrived five relief ships which had come via Ceylon and been sent by the Bishop of Meliapor with Miguel Pereira Borralho as their captain-major. This relief was one of the reasons for the Muslims’ subsequent defeat, as they thought that no more help would be coming from India, and so they stayed where they were until the lord governor arrived in view of the city on the 21 of October. He had found my advice-boat in Pulubutum, where I informed him of everything that had happened, of the enemy’s situation, and how they had placed their whole fleet in the river Duyon, and that he should hasten to arrive before they could get out; since if he blockaded the mouth of the river they would not be able to sally forth, adding that he would find more news off Cape Rachado. The lord governor arrived here on the 21 October with his whole fleet in company besides two merchant-ships1 and a pinnace. As soon as he arrived I went to meet him, and told him that he ought to go with all his fleet and anchor off the mouth of the river where the King of Achem’s fleet was laid up. This he did, and hastened the completion of a pontoon which we had begun to 1 ‘Dous navios de chatins.* This could mean either Portuguese merchant­ ships or else merchant-ships belonging to Indian traders. Cf. Dalgado, Glossdrio, i. 265-7. The Indo-Portuguese chatim corresponds to the Anglo-Indian ‘chetty*. 823121

I

ii8

The Achinese Attack on Malacca in 162g

make, as well as two others, from which and from his fleet he began such a heavy bombardment of the enemy by day and night (who had all retiréd from the land to their ships on the second day after the governor’s arrival) that he ruined all their fleet with his continuous bombardment, killing and wounding many Muslims and sending to the bottom two very large galleys stationed at the river mouth. All this time the lord governor went with great valour and diligence by day and night between his fleet and the enemy’s stockades, giving orders as to what should be done, always risking his life and person. I frequently begged him not to expose himself so much and as a matter of course, since the preservation of his life was of vital importance to us. At the end of November the King of Jor reached this bar, bringing a fleet of 160 sail, 100 belonging to the Queen of Patane and 60 of his own, in which he is said to have brought 9,000 warriors. He took up the position which the lord governor assigned to him and remained there until the end of the river blockade. The King brought his mother with him, for it is really she who rules since he is still very young. She is a very brave woman and so grateful for the help and reliefs that I have sent her on various occasions in His Majesty’s name—since this is advantageous for the royal service and the preservation of this fortress—that I was informed that she had told the King her son that if he would not go in person to the relief of Malacca, she would throw him into the sea. Here we have treated the King and his mother the Queen with all due respect, and I think that His Majesty is under an obligation to send his warmest thanks to this king and his mother for the great help which they have given us in this siege, and to send him some present, since he is poor and has spent a lot on this occasion. And it is very important that we should keep this king friendly to us as long as he deserves it, since he is our near neigh­ bour; and because I was the intermediary in securing this friend­ ship, I feel that I have the duty of reminding Your Worships and His Majesty of these facts. After the arrival of the King of Jor, the lord governor continued the bombardment, thus compelling the enemy to run the blockade, which the lord governor prevented by ordering the first galley which came out to be attacked by Francisco Lopes, Captain-Major of the jalias, with his jalia and some praus, who bravely fired the galley and therefore the enemy desisted from their plan. They

From Contemporary Portuguese Sources

119

were so cowed by this, that they never again dared to sally out from the river, and they sent to treat of a settlement, which the lord governor answered he would never listen to unless they first sent him Pedro de Abreu, whom they had brought with them as a prisoner in irons, and who had been sent from here as ambassador to the King of Achem over three years ago. The Achinese sent other emissaries again, and they were given the same reply, until finally they sent Pedro de Abreu and two Achinese ambassadors in his company, saying that the General Lassamane and the other leaders of the fleet wished to surrender to the lord governor, and to enable them to do so he should send them a safe-conduct. This was sent them, but because we thought that this was all due to fear and treachery, the lord governor sent to tell them that same day that if he did not surrender himself on the next day he would attack him by force of arms. He did not do so, and that night there was a great storm with heavy rain, and the General of Achem fled with those who were able to follow him. According to what some Achinese told us there would be about 4,000 Muslims who fled to the jungle, which is so impassable on account of its rugged­ ness and the heavy rainfall that it was not possible to send men in pursuit of them. They left the whole of their fleet bottled up in the river with many cannons great and small, and many sick, and some spoil which the lord governor allowed the soldiers to sack. This was one of the most notable victories which have ever been seen in the world, since the besieged lost the whole of the fleet in which they came, without there escaping even a single prau to take the news to their king. All of the men who had retired from the stockades perished, with the exception of some of those who fled into the jungle. During the whole of the time in which the blockade of the river lasted, the lord governor did not sleep one night on shore, nor was there a single unfortunate incident or dissension in our fleet. And I can assure Your Worships that I never saw a General who served His Majesty with such zeal and valour, or with greater honesty. On the third day after the victory, the lord governor left for the straits [of Singapore] to await the vessels from China and Manilla, taking twenty galliots of the armada and leaving the rest under the command of Dorn Jeronimo da Silveira to go to Pera to subjugate that king, who is a vassal of Achem, and reduce him to the obedience

i2o

The Achinese Attack on Malacca in 1629

of His Majesty, or at least to agree to renew the trade which Malacca always had with that kingdom.1 There died of the Achinese who landed to besiege Malacca, 3,000 Muslims from fire and sword, and over 1,000 from disease before the lord governor’s arrival. Those killed in the battle included seventeen well-known captains, and three governors and captain-majors of provinces. On our side, we lost captain Gonçalo Mendes de Vasconcellos in an attack, and up to twenty-five Portuguese on different occa­ sions, and forty of the local men. There were wounded, captain Jorge de Mello, captain Antonio de Carvalho, and the captain­ major of the jalias, Francisco Lopes, and some thirty-five Portu­ guese soldiers—these up to the time of the lord governor’s arrival— and some others were killed and wounded in the armada. During all the time that this siege lasted, the captain of this fortress, Gaspar de Mello Sampaio, helped me very diligently whenever the opportunity occurred, both in constructing palisades and in defending them, as well as in the watches, patrols and rounds, both inside and outside this city, risking his person many times.2 The municipal councillors and all the other citizens likewise honourably performed their duties. Some days after the General of Achem fled, he surrendered himself to the King of Jor, together with some of those who had fled with him, and the remainder were left wandering in the jungle and surrendered piecemeal to our allied Muslims. The King of Jor handed over the General and Admiral of Achem and some other leading Muslims to the lord governor.3 God preserve Your Worships for many years. Malacca 19 February 1630.

(signed)

ANTONIO PINTO DA FONSECA

1 Dom Jeronimo da Silveira’s mission to Perak was temporarily successful, but in Apr. 1632 the Viceroy of Goa received the unwelcome news that ‘the king­ dom of Perak had rebelled and was now allied with the [former] common enemy of Achem’ (Pissurlencar, Assentos, 417). 2 Gaspar de Mello Sampaio, captain of the Malacca garrison in 1629-30, later quarrelled with Nuno Alvares Botelho over questions of precedence and rank, for which he was reprimanded by the Viceroy (Pissurlencar, op. cit. 272-3). He was twice Captain-General of Muscat in the Persian Gulf, where he died in 1636. 3 The Laksamana surrendered to the Sultan of Johore on condition that the latter would not hand him over to the Portuguese, according to a well-informed Dutchman writing from Jambi in Mar. 1630 (Jan Oosterwijck to Anthony Van Diemen, apud Tiele-Heeres, Bouwstoffen, ii. 167). However that may be,

From Contemporary Portuguese Sources

121

he was relatively well treated by Botelho and sent as a state prisoner to Goa in the captured galley, Terror of the World. He died en route at Colombo, ‘of an abcess in his private parts’, which he did not reveal to his captors until it was incurable. The Viceroy Count of Linhares reported his death with mixed feelings, since on the one hand he would have been glad, to have such a distinguished prisoner at Goa, ‘as a spectacle for the many Muslims and Hindus here’, but on the other hand he feared the captive might bribe his way to freedom with the temp­ ting offers he was making to achieve that end (Linhares to the Crown, Goa, 3 Dec. 1630, in Assentos, i. 520-1).

VI BRITISH COMMERCIAL AND STRATEGIC

INTEREST IN THE MALAY PENINSULA DURING THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY D. K. BASSETT

The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the revival of official British interest in the Malay peninsula after a lapse of almost a century. Between 1675 and 1772 the maintenance of the British connexion with the Malay states devolved upon the British country traders. Little new evidence concerning these men has appeared since Sir Richard Winstedt described their activities in his ‘A History of Malaya’ in 1935 and his ‘Notes on the History of Kedah’ in 1936.1 British country traders appear to have concentra­ ted their efforts during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on Kedah, Junk Ceylon and Tenasserim, using Achin in north Sumatra as an intermediate port. They rarely visited Perak or Selangor,2 and their contacts with Johore, Pahang, and Trengganu were infrequent and incidental to voyages to the Far East, rather than the result of an attempt to develop a direct commercial con­ nexion.3 It seems probable that the British country trade with Kedah, Junk Ceylon and Achin continued throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. Between 1750 and 1760 Kedah was also a re­ cognized provisioning point for the ships of the East India Com­ pany bound to Canton.4 As Dutch seapower declined in the Strait, and Dutch political influence in the Malay states was replaced by 1 R. O. Winstedt, ‘A History of Malaya’, JMBRAS xiii. 1 (1935), 105-9; ‘Notes on the History of Kedah’, ibid., xiv. 3 (1936), 158-61. 2 W. Foster (ed.), A New Account of the East Indies by Alexander Hamilton (London, 1930), 40-41. 3 Op. cit. 48, 52, 81-82; also C. Wilkinson (ed.), Voyages and Discoveries by William Dampier (London, 1931), 10-11. 4 H. Dodwell, Calendar of the Madras Despatches, 1744-1755 (Madras, 1920), 126, 133, 138, 188; also log of Duke of Richmond, I.O.L., Marine Records, 492A.

Malay Peninsula during the late Eighteenth Century

123

that of the Bugis, British country traders became more venture­ some. Ten years after Alexander Hamilton described Selangor and Klang as neglected by his fellow countrymen,1 the Dutch authori­ ties at Malacca complained of ‘the continual voyaging of the English’ to the Selangor and Linggi rivers.2 At least four British country ships traded in Selangor between October 1760 and March 1761.3 Two country ships, the Cornish and Neptune, were seized by the Dutch in 1766 for importing opium to Selangor, but the Calcutta Government protested so vigorously that Batavia agreed to waive Dutch treaty rights in Selangor and pay compensation to the ships’ owners.4 A marked expansion of the British country trade seems to have taken place after the Seven Years’ War. The first recorded visit to Riau, the capital of the Johore empire, dates from 1765, when the Plassey (Captain Austin) called there.5 The trade was well-developed by 1771. A contemporary trend was the resumption of a largescale trade to Achin, after a decline in the visits of British country ships in the middle of the eighteenth century.6 Jourdan, of the Madras firm of Jourdan, Sulivan and De Souza, sent the Indian Trader there in 1766 in collaboration with other Madras merchants. Gowan Harrop, the factor for the Madras syndicate in Achin, at­ tracted large numbers of other British and Indian merchants to the port by purchasing their cargoes in return for bills of exchange on Jourdan. This procedure enabled vessels ‘that would otherwise have been obliged to wait many months to collect the goods of the Inhabi­ tants ... to proceed further into the Straits and take advantage 1 Hamilton’s New Account was first published in 1727. 2 Report of Captain A. Ackermans of the Jaffanapatnam to Governor R. Laver, 12 Nov. 1737. Kol. Archief, O.G.K.B., Band 19, ii. 270-1 (microfilms, University of Singapore Library). 3 I.O.L., Marine Records, 492A. Log of Duke of Richmond. 4 N. K. Sinha (ed.), Fort William-India House Correspondence, v (Delhi, 1949), 268, 295. 5 Mr. Ifor B. Powell, in litt., 5 Feb. 1961. 6 Jourdan to Sulivan and De Souza, enclosure to Madras Select Committee, 10 Feb. 1772, S.F.R., 15. According to Jourdan, British trade with Achin ceased because several vessels were ‘treacherously cut off*. George Baker, captain of the Company’s snow London, offered an interesting explanation of his decision to buy rice at Batu Bara in Sept. 1760: ‘not from former experiments only, but from the late circumstance of Captain Austin’s affair with that King’s ship on the Coast [of Coromandel ?] could I so much as presume we would be suffered to buy any in the Atchein dominions’. Baker visited Achin briefly in Oct. 1760. The only shipping he encountered there was three Achinese vessels, two of which belonged to the sultan; the third Achinese ship had been trading to Kedah. I.O.L., Marine Records, 6ooa.

i24

British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

of other markets’.1 The Madras Association, which took over the capital of the original Achin undertaking in December 1770, also seems to have Used Achin as a depot for trade further down the Strait. Jourdan, Sulivan and De Souza sent Francis Light from Achin to Kedah in 1770 to investigate the trade there, and used their own ships to bring tin from Riau to Achin. By February 1772 the Madras Association had exported goods worth almost £120,000 to Achin and had imported Straits produce of an equivalent value. Most of the goods imported were sold to the Company for ship­ ment to Canton.2 It was the large trade of the Association and its reputed mono­ polistic tendencies which first drew the attention of the East India Company to Achin. On instructions from London, the Madras Select Committee sent Charles Desvoeux to Achin in February 1772 in the hope that the trade there would provide ‘such Articles as are staple at the China Market’. The provision of sufficient funds to pay for its exports of silk and tea from China was one of the most serious problems facing the Company in the second half of the eighteenth century. The solution to this difficulty seemed to lie in the establishment of a British settlement in the Malay archipelago which would serve as an entrepot for the collection of South-east Asian produce in demand in China. Another function required of the settlement was that it should supersede Dutch Malacca and Batavia as a provisioning and refitting station for China-bound East Indiamen. The strategic consideration does not seem to have been so con­ stant a factor in British policy as is often believed. The Company recognised the desirability of a naval base on the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal to which the fleet of the Royal Navy could withdraw when the north-east monsoon rendered the Coromandel Coast untenable. The French had a decided advantage in the AngloFrench wars of the period in that they could refit their ships at Mauritius or Achin, whereas the British fleet had to retire to Bom­ bay, from which it was less easy to return.3 But British anxiety to obtain an eastern naval base was stimulated only in time of crisis. The strategic problem was certainly acute in the 1750’s when the 1 Jourdan to Sulivan and De Souza, enclosure to Madras Select Committee, 10 Feb. 1772, S.F.R., 15. 2 Ibid. 3 D. G. E. Hall, ‘From Mergui to Singapore, 1686-1819’, JSS xli. 1 (1953); also Hall, A History of South-East Asia (London, 1955), 422.

Malay Peninsula during the late Eighteenth Century

125

British Company countered Dupleix’s intrigues in Pegu with an ill-fated settlement at Negrais, but it seems to have lost much of its urgency between the peace of 1763 and the naval battles of Hughes and Suffren in 1782-3. During the intervening twenty years, the solution of the problem of the Canton remittance was the dominant consideration. It was to the Company’s need for commodities for China that Francis Light appealed when he induced the Madras Select Com­ mittee to send the Hon. Edward Monckton1 to Kedah in February 1772. Light seems to have been anxious to introduce an external stabilising force into the politics of Kedah after the Bugis attack of 1771. He was not particularly concerned whether the sepoys needed to fulfil his proposed military alliance with Kedah were provided by his employers, Jourdan, Sulivan and De Souza, or by the nabob of the Carnatic, or by the Company. Light failed to tempt his employers with an offer of the cession of the coast from Kuala Kedah to Penang and a grant of half of the sultan’s retail trade. Even his sinister hints that the sultan would turn to the Dutch or the Danes if the British failed to help him did not move them.2 Foiled in this direction, Light turned to Warren Hastings, who had recently assumed the government of Bengal.3 In his letter to Hastings in January 1772 Light estimated the trade of Kedah, exclusive of European trade and small Asian ship­ ping, at the fantastic figure of four million Spanish dollars per annum. He listed the commodities produced or imported into Kedah as rice, dammar, rattans, wax, timber, birds’-nests, gold, pearls, silks, elephants, pepper, betel-nut, spices, and tin. The market for Indian piece-goods was very large and at least 300 chests of opium were said to be exported overland to Patani every year. In return for the protection of 100 sepoys, the sultan was prepared to transfer two-thirds of his retail trade to the Company, 1 Monckton was the fifth son of Viscount Galway and joined the Madras civil service in 1762. He acquired land in Madras in 1769» and was the sheriff of the town in 1770. Monckton was a commercial partner of George Smith, the Madras free merchant, and both men arranged to supply the Company with tin for its Canton-bound ships. Monckton became assay master of the mint at Madras on his return from Kedah, and married the eldest daughter of the Governor, Lord Pigot, in 1776. He died in 1832. See H. D. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640-1800 (London, 1913), passim. 2 Light to Jourdan, Sulivan and De Souza, 18 Aug. 1771; Light to same, 25 Nov. 1771; Light to Jourdgn, 25 Nov. 1771, S.F.R. 15. 3 Light to Warren Hastings, 17 Jan. 1772, Add. MSS. 29, 133, ff. 8-12.

i z6

British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

and Light estimated that the Company would make a clear profit of 18,000 Spanish dollars on the arrangement. As an additional incen­ tive for action Light brought forward the bogey of the Dutch, whose predominance in Kedah would be as tyrannical as at Malacca, where the English were ‘scarcely allowed to land’.1 Finally, Light recommended Penang as an alternative rendezvous to Malacca for the Company's ships ‘in case another war happen’. There is a definite distinction between the use of Penang as a stopping-point for East Indiamen on the China run, and the use of Penang as a naval base for the British warships needed to protect Coromandel. Light did not mention the latter function, nor is there any reference to it in the Select Committee’s instructions to Desvoeux and Monckton. Light depicted the Sultan of Kedah to Hastings as an old man ‘sensible of his age and infirmities’ who was surrounded by un­ trustworthy ministers and scheming relatives. His only expecta­ tion was that the Company would provide a small body of sepoys ‘to defend the Qualla’.2 But one of the first questions put to Edward Monckton by the sultan after his arrival in Kedah con­ cerned his readiness to attack the Bugis of Selangor immediately with the escort he had brought from Madras.3 Can Light, who was closely associated with the sultan in commercial matters, have been unaware of the sultan’s attitude towards Selangor ? Or did he avoid an explicit statement of the sultan’s offensive designs because he knew that the Company would draw back from this dangerous complication? In view of his exaggeration of the commercial at­ tractions of Kedah, and his attempt to involve the Company in the internal politics of Junk Ceylon later in 1772, the second explana­ tion seems the more probable of the two. The failure of the Company’s mission to Kedah is usually ascribed to the incompetence of that ‘stuttering boy’, Monckton, 1 The East India Company’s Marine Records show this statement to be palpably untrue. By the 1770’s a far greater number of British ships used Malacca as a centre for local trade than those of any other nation. The trade of the Dutch Company at Malacca had almost ceased, and the prosperity of the port depended on its ability to attract foreign shipping. In Jan. 1773 the retiring Dutch Governor of Malacca, Thomas Schippers, advised his successor that foreign merchants must be treated ‘in a courteous and honest fashion, and all possible convenience and facility will be afforded them*. See B. Harrison, ‘Malacca in the eighteenth century: two Dutch Governors* reports’, JMBRAS xxvii. i (1954), 32. 2 Light to Hastings, 17 Jan. 1772, Add. MSS. 29,133, ff. 10, 11. ‘Qualla’ (Malay: Kuala) usually denotes the mouth of a river. 3 Monckton to Select Committee, 22 Apr. 1772, in Fort St. George Proceed­ ings, 25 June 1772, S.F.R. 15.

Malay Peninsula during the late Eighteenth Century 127 and the unwillingness of the Madras Select Committee to substitute an offensive alliance for the defensive alliance with Kedah which it contemplated originally. But the derogatory description of Monckton originated with James Scott when he was canvassing the suita­ bility of Light for the superintendency of Penang,1 and Monckton has to be judged on his actions and not on a partisan description. Furthermore, even if the Select Committee and the Sultan of Kedah had reached agreement on the nature of the Anglo-Malay alliance, the other demands of the Company would have been difficult to meet. Monckton and Desvoeux received identical in­ structions in this respect. The cost of a British military force sta­ tioned in Kedah or Achin was to be met by the cession of the sultan’s customs dues to the Company, and if this did not suffice the sultan would be expected to make up the deficit from other sources. The prize which Light had dangled before Jourdan, Suli­ van and De Souza—a share of the retail trade—was too cumber­ some and piecemeal to interest the Company. The Madras Select Committee preferred to substitute a contract trade, under which the sultans would buy opium and piece-goods in large quantities and would provide tin, pepper, benzoin, gold dust, and other commodities suitable for China.2 The Sultan of Achin was unable and unwilling to accept British protection on these terms. He had already turned away Giles Holloway, who was sent there by the Bencoolen Government in September 1771 with the same purpose as Desvoeux.3 The sultan was too poor to pay for any military help which might be given him, and he was unable to purchase the goods which the Company planned to deliver as a first stage of the contract trade.4 Des­ voeux, who lived in Achin from March 1772 to January 1773, came to regard the sultan as weak, capricious, and unreliable. He 1 H. P. Clodd, Malaya's First British Pioneer: The Life of Francis Light (London, 1948), 22, 36. The charge of youth and inexperience made against Monckton is a strange one. Light himself was only 31 when he collaborated with Monckton in Kedah. Furthermore, Light first came to India in 1765, whereas Monckton had been a covenanted servant of the Company since 1762. 2 Instructions to Charles Desvoeux and the Hon. Edward Monckton from the Madras Select Committee, 23 Feb. 1772; Madras Select Committee to Secret Committee, London, 28 Feb. 1772» S.F.R. 15.. 3 Holloway obtained an audience with the sultan only on his last day in Achin, and was refused permission to settle a factory. For a summary of his report, see Bencoolen to Court, 26 Nov. 1772, para. 51, S.F.R. 14. 4 Desvoeux to Madras Select Committee, 15 Apr. 1772, S.F.R. 15.

128

British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

also decided that ‘no advantage can possibly accrue to the Com­ pany from having a Factory here which will be adequate to the Expence of supporting it. If the End proposed be the Provision of Goods for the China Market I am sure it will never answer, as the Quantity which can be procured at this Place only is inconsiderable and the risk of advancing Money to Malay Merchants for Impor­ tation very great.’ Desvoeux assured the Select Committee that a false impression had been given of the prosperity of the Madras Association’s affairs in Achin: ‘Men must have been infatuated to have entrusted such large Concerns into the Hands of People so ill qualified to conduct them.’1 The Select Committee decided to recall Desvoeux from Achin at the specific request of the sultan in December 1772.2 Monckton, who arrived in Kedah in April 1772, supported Light far beyond the tenor of his instructions. He sought permission from Madras to modify the offer of a defensive alliance so as to permit him to assist the Sultan of Kedah in an attack on Selangor, Klang and Riau. He encouraged Raja Isma'il, a grandson of Raja Kechil who had claims to the throne of the Johore empire, to bring his forces from Trengganu to Kedah in the expectation that Madras would authorize British support for him if his cause proved a just one.3 He collaborated with Light to obtain for the Company the cession of an extensive territory at Kuala Kedah, the customs revenue there and half the customs revenue of Kuala Perlis, and a monopoly of tin, black pepper, and elephants’ tusks.4 Monckton 1 Desvoeux to Select Committee, 23 May 1772, S.F.R. 15. 2 Fort St. George Proceedings, 29 Dec. 1772, S.F.R. 15. 3 Monckton to Select Committee, 22 Apr. 1772, S.F.R. 15. In Jan. 1773 Thomas Schippers, the retiring Dutch Governor of Malacca, advised his succes­ sor, Jan Crans : ‘Especially must the Prince Regent of Riouw, Dain Cambodia, and the King of Trengganu, with his son-in-law, Raja Ismail, be watched very closely in the present circumstances. What the aims of those princes may be certainly remains obscure, but there is no doubt that all three seem to be dis­ sembling and to be full of dangerous designs. Consequently it is advisable that great care be taken lest the Company become involved in their quarrels ; a strict neutrality should be observed’. B. Harrison, ‘Malacca in the eighteenth century: two Dutch Governors’ Reports’, JMBRAS xxvii. 1 (1954), 32. This statement of Dutch policy is interesting in view of Light’s attempts to invoke the bogey of Dutch intervention in Kedah in 1772. Schippers’s report advocated the main­ tenance of cordial relations with Perak, Siak, Naning, and Rembau, but it does not contain a single reference to Kedah or to the extensive British diplomatic activity in the Malay states in 1772. 4 Contract between Monckton and Sultan of Kedah, Fort St. George Pro­ ceedings of 25 June 1772, ff. 103-4, S.F.R. 15.

Mainland South-east Asia and Sumatra

Malay Peninsula during the late Eighteenth Century 129 admitted that the ^concessions were obtained by persuading the * almost Childish’ sultan that the document to which he set his seal was of a trivial nature.1 Monckton championed the cause of the Sultan of Kedah against the Bugis because he was convinced that Kedah would ultimately prove a profitable settlement to the Company. But Monckton was under no illusions as to the contemporary importance of Kuala Kedah, and his description of the place is an implied indictment of Light for exaggeration. Light had described the sultan as con­ trolling a large trade in opium and tin, but the sultan assured Monckton that he had never traded for more than 10,000 Spanish dollars in his life, except in elephants, which he sold to the Chulias. He confessed that he ‘was too old to bustle and make a Contract for a large quantity of Ophium’ unless Monckton would become his partner. Monckton estimated the sale of opium by Light, who enjoyed a virtual monopoly of that commodity, at only 40 chests per year. It is significant, too, that the six ships which the Company sent to Kedah and Achin to collect tin for China in 1772 received only 150 bahars in Kedah, 100 of which belonged to Sulivan and De Souza, and none at all in Achin.2 The fort from which Light was prepared to withstand Dutch, Danes, and all-comers turned out to be ‘the ruins of a thin Wall built on a bog without any foundation’, which flooded at the spring tides. As for the value of Kuala Kedah as a harbour, the large ships had to lie four to five miles off shore and boats would be needed to load them. Finally, wrote Monckton: ‘It may also be neceésary to undeceive You with respect to the Channel between Poolo Penang & the main, there not being above One Fathom Water in some parts and not 14 as Mr. Light remarks.’1 The Madras Select Committee refused to modify its offer of a defensive alliance with Kedah even though it realized that the Sultan of Kedah was likely to withdraw his concessions. It also referred harshly to the misrepresentations ‘of Persons whose characters are not well known and tried. The Persons employed by the [Madras Association] in that Trade, have, as it now appears, misled them by specious representations in order to continue 1 Monckton to Select Committee, 22 Apr. 1772, S.F.R. 15. 2 The Lioness, Ashburnham, and Royal Henry touched at Kuala Kedah in Aug. 1772; the Lincoln, Norfolk, and 'Anson visited Achin, but the vessel of Sulivan and De Souza bringing tin from Riau failed to arrive at Achin.

i3o

British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

themselves in an employ lucrative in all probability to themselves tho’ ruinous to their Employers.’1 It is improbable that Light defrauded his employers, although he left Monckton the task of collecting debts worth 12,000 Spanish dollars which were due to the Association when he resigned its service and moved to Junk Ceylon in May 1772.2 But he certainly exaggerated the commer­ cial potentialities of Kedah in order to bring about an extension of the Pax Britannica to that region. His conduct in Junk Ceylon followed a similar pattern. Within a few months of his arrival there he described himself to Monckton as shut up in a compound with the inhabitants ‘by one or two thousand Siamese and would very shortly fall a sacrifice to them unless they got Assistance*. Needless to say, the assistance was to come from the Company, to whom the inhabitants would grant any concessions in return for protection.3 One would view Light’s plight with less scepticism if he had not already so distorted the truth in Kedah. As it is, one can only admire his ability to foster conditions favourable to European intervention in a very short time. Monckton was sorely tempted to intervene in Junk Ceylon, particularly since his missions to Riau and Trengganu in August and September 1772 had failed;4 but he contented himself with sending the Cuddalore schooner to ex­ tricate Light peacefully. Monckton left Kedah for Achin and Ma­ dras in December 1772. Six or seven years later, in papers to Thomas Rumbold, the Governor of Madras, and Warren Hastings, the Governor-General,5 1 Fort St. George Proceedings, 14 Oct. 1772, S.F.R. 15. 2 Monckton to Madras, 13 Aug. 1772, S.F.R. 15. 3 Monckton to Madras, 12 Oct. 1772, S.F.R. 15. 4 Monckton sailed to Riau and Trengganu on his own initiative when the Kedah mission proved abortive. His action was approved by the Madras Council. The Bugis at Riau had no desire for British protection at this time, particularly since Monckton attached the same conditions as in Kedah, i.e. the surrender of the local customs duties to cover the expense of a British garrison. The rajah of Trengganu expressed greater interest in a British settlement, but the question of the customs duties prevented an agreement. Monckton to Madras, 12 Oct. 1772, S.F.R. 15. 5 Francis Light to Warren Hastings, undated, Add. MSS. 29,210, ff. 217-22*. Two accompanying papers are unsigned, but they are almost certainly written by Light. They are ‘Descript[io]n of the Island Junksalang’, Add. MSS. 29,210, ff. 225-30*, and ‘Proposals to the Honorable the Governor General and council for establishing a Factory on the Island of Junksalang’, Add. MSS. 29,210, ff. 231-2*. The ‘Proposals’ probably contain Light’s plan for a syndicate. The ‘Description’ may well be the account Light sent to the Hon. Thomas Rumbold. Both the paper submitted to Rumbold and that sent to Hastings in the following

Malay Peninsula during the late Eighteenth Century

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Light again declared his willingness to lead the inhabitants of Junk Ceylon out of their Siamese bondage. An additional incentive for annexing Junk Ceylon had been provided by the Dutch de­ cision in 1778 to divert all Chinese junks and shipments of tin and pepper from the Malacca Strait to Batavia. This ‘arbitrary step’ was interpreted by Light as ‘indirectly prohibiting the English from any of the Eastern Trade; as Rheo in itself produces nothing, the English ships would meet with no Cargoes for China’. The remedy was to encourage the development of tin mining at Junk Ceylon by a beneficent British administration, and to attract there the Bugis, the merchants of Palembang, Siak, Indragiri, Pedir, Tavoy, and Mergui and the fishers of the Tenasserim coast. The requirements of the Junk Ceylon mining community in opium, spirits, and sugar would be met from Bengal instead of Malacca, and a market would also be assured for broadcloth, velvets, muslins, hats, iron, steel, cutlery, and glass-ware. In his paper to Hastings, Light also drew the Governor-General’s attention to the trans­ isthmian trade routes between Takuapa and Chaia and between Trang and Kedah and Singora. Light hoped to find his permanent colonists in Siamese prisoners of war carried to Burma, in 3,000 fugitives from Pegu then sheltering in Siam, and known to him personally, and in Chinese immigrants from Kedah, Malacca, and Singora. The force necessary to seize Junk Ceylon was estimated by Light as four companies of sepoys, a small artillery train, and two sloops. If the Company declined to take direct action, Light hoped to. hire the troops and artillery from the Company on behalf of a syndi­ cate which would annex the island. The members of the syndicate would enjoy all the profits from tin mining, plantations, and pearl fisheries in Junk Ceylon for seven years, after which the rights would pass to the Company.1 The agent of the syndicate in Junk year were written after 1778, because of the reference to the Dutch decision to divert junks to Batavia. On the other hand, Light refers to Rumbold in his letter to Hastings as ‘the Honble Mr. Rumbold’; Rumbold was given a baronetcy in Mar. 1779 and news of his elevation would have reached India within a few months. 1 Light was not blind to his own interests in Junk Ceylon. He warned Hast­ ings : ‘I look on part of this Island to be my property, it was granted by their own free Will, the ground cleared at my own expence, and tho’ unjustly drove off, I think myself at liberty [to] reassume it whenever I have power. If this Island is approved of for the Honble Company, I hope for your Excellencys interest to be appointed Cheif [nr].* Add. MSS. 29,210, f. 222.

i32

British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

Ceylon, and the commanders of the two sloops stationed there, would receive commissions from the Governor-General. The syn­ dicate’s forces were to be restricted to a defensive role, and the prior consent of the Governor-General and Council was required before the conclusion of an alliance with any Asian prince. The time-honoured connexion between the British private trader in the Strait and the Company’s Canton remittance was recognized in the proposals of the syndicate. Its members agreed to pay not less than one lakh of rupees annually into the Company’s treasury at Canton, and guaranteed delivery of local produce to the Com­ pany’s ships at Junk Ceylon for dispatch to Canton within ten days of their arrival. In order to attract vessels from the Moluccas, east and west Sumatra, and the mainland ports from Trengganu to Pegu, the syndicate planned to replace the customs duty at Junk Ceylon with a nominal anchorage charge. Piece-goods and opium from the Company’s possessions were to pay only 2|~3 per cent duty. British manufactures and staples were, to be duty free. It would be difficult to find a more explicit declaration of British commercial aims in the Malay archipelago in the late eighteenth century. The strategic value of Junk Ceylon was barely mentioned by Light, although Britain and France were already at war when he submitted his memorandum on the island to Hastings. In a closing sentence Light wrote: ‘should any accident oblige our Fleet to winter they will find it very usefull.’1 There was no suggestion that a proper naval base should be established at Junk Ceylon, to which the British battle fleet would retire automatically when the north-east monsoon set in on Coromandel. Similarly, the anony­ mous author of a paper advocating the conquest of Dutch Malacca, which must have been presented to Hastings during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-4), made no reference to the strategic implications of his proposal.2 He believed that the fortress of 1 Light to Hastings, loc. cit., f. 222v. Author’s italics. 3 ‘Of the Port of Malacca, its Strength, Situation and the Utility arising from that Settlement was it in the possession of the English East India Company.’ Add. MSS. 29,210, ff. 235-42. The author of this paper was an employee of the Company, who claimed ‘knowledge of the markets in the Northern parts of China’. He visited the Dutch factory at Tanjong Putus up the Perak River in 1775» when the ‘Dutch Chief was very Civil but would not trade with me’. It is possible that he was one of the Company’s Council at Canton, or a supercargo of one of the China ships. He was not a country trader in view of his anxiety to dispense with their services.

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Malacca could be captured easily, either from the north side of the town using the streets as cover to approach the river gate, or by an invasion from the south beach culminating in an escalade of the bastion Wilhelmus near the sea. The only advan­ tage which the Dutch garrison possessed was the commanding position of St. Paul’s Hill, but this unknown English visitor was quick to notice that the fort could be enfiladed from Bukit China.1 The author of the Malacca memorandum interpreted the advan­ tages arising from the conquest of the town in purely commercial terms. Its capture would remove ‘the barrier between the English East India Company and the great line of Commerce to the East­ ward’. Dutch commerce from Japan to the Spice Islands would feel the effect of British competition and the wealth of Batavia would be drained away. Malacca would.provide the English Company with an entrepôt for the disposal of its opium and piece-goods, which it could place on the market at a lower price than any other trader. The Malays and Bugis would resort to the Company’s Malacca warehouses for their purchases, rather than to the country trader, and the commodities they offered in exchange—tin, pepper, spices, birds’-nests, ivory, gold dust, and bars and Spanish dollars—would find an immediate sale in Canton. Even if a pro­ portion of the tin and pepper imported to Malacca was retained there to attract Chinese junks, the Company would still be able to send enough Indonesian and Malayan produce to China to realize £300,000. This sum would purchase cargoes for six East Indiamen at Canton and would reduce the remittance from Bengal pro­ portionately. Finally, the memorialist envisaged the extension of British influence to Perak and Bangka after the conquest of Malacca, in order to oust the Dutch from the two regions which provided them with the bulk of their tin.2 1 For a study of the strategic importance of Bukit China, see C. A. GibsonHill, ‘The fortification of Bukit China, Malacca’, JMBRAS xxix. 3 (1956),

157-81. 2 During the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-4), the British captured the Dutch possessions in India, on the west coast of Sumatra, and Trincomali for a time. No attack was made on Malacca, but the Dutch garrison in Perak surren­ dered with the honours of war to a British force under Captain Bracey and Captain O’Donnell of the marines on 10 Dec. 1781. For the terms of capitulation, see Add. MSS. 29,200, ff. 87-88*. The Dutchmen were given the option of repatriation to Malacca or Batavia because Malacca ‘may be blocked up or already in the possession of his Brittannic Majesty’. 823121

K

i34

British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

There can be little dispute concerning the predominantly commercial character of the British interest in an eastern settle­ ment between 1770 and 1780. There is almost no concern with the strategic problem in the projects advanced by Light, in the instruc­ tions to, and reports from, Monckton and Desvoeux, or in the anonymous paper on Malacca. That the main trend in British policy at that time was the determination to solve the problem of the Canton remittance is confirmed by the abortive British attempts to establish an entrepot on the South China Sea, at Balambangan in 1773-5, and in Cochin-China in 1778.1 The emphasis in British policy shifted once again with the out­ break of the Anglo-French war. In November 1780 Sir Eyre Coote, the Commander-in-Chief in India, warned the directors of the Company that the French in Pondicherry were storing pro­ visions for the outcoming French fleet and were raising troops to help Hyder Ali, who had invaded the Carnatic. In consequence, Lawrence Sulivan and William James, of the East India Company directorate, approached Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, in November 1781 with proposals to destroy Pondicherry completely. They also wanted to seize the French settlement in the Seychelles, and establish a British fort in Achin, with subsidiary settlements in the Nicobar and Andaman Islands. The fort at Achin was particularly important, because the place was regarded as ‘a key to the Streights of Malacca, and may be made the occasional resort of His Majesty’s Ships, when the different Monsoons render it expedient’. Two other considerations influenced Sulivan and James in recommending the founding of a British base at Achin. One was the conviction that the British presidency at Bencoolen on the west coast of Sumatra would fall to the Dutch during the war, thus making it necessary to develop an alternative source of pepper. The other was the rumour that the adventurer, William Bolts, who had helped to form the Imperial Company of Trieste under the patronage of the Empress Maria Theresa in 1775, had already tried to open an Austrian settlement in the Nicobars and was interested in Achin. After referring the recommendations of Sulivan and James to George III, Hills­ borough sanctioned the dispatch of a circular letter to the Com1 For details of the Balambangan and Cochin-China enterprises, see V. T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763-1793 (London, I952)> >• 70-75, 77-8i, 97-102.

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pany’s servants in India, requiring the rapid establishment of a British base in Achin.1 In September 1782 Henry Botham, of the Bencoolen civil service, who was providentially in Calcutta, was sent to Achin to obtain permission from Sultan Ala’u’d-din Muhammad Shah to open a British fort or factory. The local shahbandar, Toh Sallee’, regarded the mission as such a threat to his predominance in Achinese politics that Botham was never allowed direct access to the sultan, and his mission was a failure. In any case, a British settlement at Achin was unlikely to solve the strategic problem, because the roads at Achin were ‘by no means well shelter’d from the Northerly Monsoon, and the Islands which lay off them do not offer any Material advantages for Shipping, as far as they have yet been explored’.2 The commercial attractions of Achin lay in its pepper production, which was .of poorer quality than the Ben­ coolen variety, and in its extensive sugar plantations from which arrack could be manufactured. Although Poh Sallee refused to admit a British factory, he was prepared to accept a British resident ‘to live under the Government of Atchen’.31. Y. Kinloch was sent to fill this post early in 1784 but he remained in Achin for only a short time. The revived interest in the strategic advantages of an eastern settlement was reflected in the papers of Thomas Forrest. Forrest, a senior commander of the East India Company Marine, had played a significant role in locating Suffren’s fleet at Achin in December 1782. Thus it was natural that he should deplore the failure to prosecute the search for ‘a Harbour East of Coroman­ del, where Ships might go to at the Shifting of the Monsoon, or in Distress’.4 Forrest maintained that nothing had been done in this respect since the failure of the Negrais settlement in i759-s It was probably in 1783 that he approached Hastings with his suggestion of a survey of the Andamans, whose inhabitants were no longer believed to be cannibals. In June 1783 Forrest left Calcutta in the 1 Sulivan-James-Hillsborough correspondence, 16 Nov. to 6 Dec. 1781, H.M.S. 155, ff. 361-7, 409-11, 417-18, 441. For an account of William Bolts and the Imperial Company of Trieste, see N. L. Hallward, William Bolts, a Dutch Adventurer under John Company (Cambridge, 1920), 135-89, especially 186-9; also Holden Furber, John Company at Work (Harvard, 1951), 136-7. 2 Botham’s Report, 17 Dec. 1782, H.M.S. 219, f. 607. 3 4

Botham’s Report, f. 605. ‘Of the Islands called Andaman by Thos. Forrest’, Add. MSS. 29,210, f. 215.

5 Ibid.

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British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

Esther brig to make the survey, but he was blown down the Tenasserim-Mergui coast to Kedah. In the process Forrest examined the islands off the western coast of the Kra Isthmus between n° and 90 north latitude and selected St. Matthew’s Island, lying on the ten-degree parallel and opposite the mouth of the Pakchan River, as the most suitable site for a British base. Forrest submitted his proposals for a British settlement on St. Matthew to Hastings and the Council at Calcutta on 7/8 June 1784 in his paper ‘Remarks on the Islands of[f] the Coast of Mergui’.1 The considerations which were of importance to Forrest, with his naval background, were the need to forestall the French in that area, the availability of timber and water, the nature of local currents and the ease with which ships could sail from St. Matthew to Coromandel or England. Whether the place possessed a large contemporary trade was relatively unimportant, because Forrest assumed that commerce and settlers would gravitate naturally to any new British colony. In contrast to Light, who was the pro­ tagonist of a settlement in ports with a well-established trade, Forrest favoured regions which were economically undeveloped and sparsely populated. In consequence, his knowledge of the areas he favoured was often slight and his recommendations lack the circumstantial detail which gave such weight to Light’s descrip­ tions of Junk Ceylon or Kedah. Forrest supplemented his technical grasp of the naval advantages of a particular site with a modicum of naïve political theory. His arguments were often weak, but the sites he selected for a base were chosen so as to avoid contact and political complications with the Asian powers of the mainland.2 The area in which Forrest hoped to find a solution to the strategic problem was to the north of the settlements recommended by Light for commercial reasons. But whereas Light favoured Kedah or Junk Ceylon because they involved fewer problems of communi­ cation than a settlement to the south of Malacca,3 Forrest sought his commercial entrepot at Riau. After his voyage down the Mergui Forrest to Warren Hastings, 7 June 1784, Add MSS. 29,164, ff. 171-2; Forrest to secretary Wheeler, 8 June 1785, with enclosure, Add. MSS. 34,466, ff. 69-75. 2 ‘I would have no connexion with the Continent and their Politicks.’ Forrest, ‘Remarks’, Add. MSS. 34,466, f. 7iv. 3 ‘[Junk Ceylon] cannot be subject to the danger and difficultys a Port on the other side of the Streights of Mallaca is liable too [ric].’ Light to Hastings, 1779 (?), Add. MSS. 29,210, f. 221.

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archipelago, Forrest visited Perak in November and December 1783. By some means he met the Bugis sultan of Selangor,1 who was about to attack Malacca in alliance with his uncle, Raja Haji, the famous under-king of the Johore empire. Forrest did not visit Riau,2 but he wrote a letter to Raja Haji,3 who responded with ‘friendly and liberal proposals ... to give up a part of [his] Terri­ tory for the purpose of establishing a Factory, for the Residence of an English Gentleman, to superintend the Commercial Concerns of the . . . East India Company*.4 Forrest made this offer known to Hastings as soon as he returned to Calcutta in April 1784. Riau had become an independent entrepot of great importance since British country traders first began to call there after the Seven Years War. A large number of British ships bound for Can­ ton touched at Riau to dispose of their opium and textiles, and to buy pepper from Borneo and east Sumatra and tin from the Malay states and Bangka. The tin and pepper which reached Riau after August was picked up by British and Portuguese ships returning from Canton and Macao to India.5 Imports of tin to Canton by British country traders seem to have increased markedly after 1774. The East India Company imported 1,595 pikuls in 1768, 7,083 pikuls in 1771, and 14,879 pikuls in 1772. In 1774 the Company landed only 3,412 pikuls of tin at Canton, whereas British country traders imported 19,360 pikuls in that year, com­ pared to 3,310, 1,577, and 4,359 pikuls in 1768, 1771, and 1772 respectively. The total import on Company and British country ships in 1778 was 15,777 pikuls, but the tin on the Company’s vessels belonged to private merchants.6 Most of this tin probably came from Riau, because Cornish tin was not introduced to the China market by the Company until 1789.7 The trade with Riau enabled country traders to assist the Company in meeting its remittance difficulties at Canton, either by placing the proceeds 1 Forrest to Bengal, 15 Apr. 1784, Add. MSS. 34,466, f. 59. 2 ‘Rhio ... Where I never was. .. .* Forrest, Voyage to the Mergui Archipelago (London, 1792), 363 Forrest to Hastings, 7 June 1784, Add. MSS. 29,164, f. 171. 4 Bengal to ‘King of Rhio’, 31 May 1784, Add. MSS. 34»466, f- 65. 5 J. de Hullu, ‘A. E. van Braam Houckgeest’s memorie over Malakka en den tinhandel aldaar (1790)’, BKI Ixxvi (1920), 287. 6 H. B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China (Oxford,

1929), ii and v, passim. 7 H. B. Morse, ‘The provision of funds for the East India Company’s trade at Canton during the eighteenth century’, JRAS (1922), 239.

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British Commercial and Strategic Interest in the

of their pepper and tin sales at the Company’s disposal in China or by selling those commodities to the Company in India for shipment to Canton.1 Even the Hong merchants re-exported opium from Canton to Riau for tin, and when Riau was conquered by the Dutch in October 1784, Sinqua, one of the Co-hong, suffered a loss of 70,000 Spanish dollars.2 The East India Company had not engaged in direct trade with Riau, except when the Betsy was sent there to sell opium in 1782, to cover a loan raised by Hastings to meet the Canton remittance.3 It was the capture of the Betsy by a French privateer at Riau, with the connivance of the Dutch, which precipitated war between Raja Haji and the Dutch Company. At the time when Forrest made known to Hastings the willingness of Raja Haji to accept a British commercial resident, Raja Haji had defeated two Dutch attempts to take Riau and had passed to the offensive against Malacca. Hastings responded quickly to the opportunity, and by 31 May 1784 Forrest had received his instructions and credentials for an embassy to Riau and a letter from Hastings to Raja Haji.4 Forrest’s mission was not designed to secure a British naval base at Riau nor was it intended to embarrass the Dutch, although several British country traders valued the independence of Riau sufficiently at that time to smuggle arms to the Bugis. Forrest had deprecated any hint of a British military establishment at Riau as likely to be disagreeable to Raja Haji.5 Hastings accepted his advice by limiting the objectives of the mission to the establish­ ment of a small trading post at Riau, from which a free trade might be opened ‘not only with the Inhabitants of Rhio, but of all the Neighbouring Islands’. Forrest was advised to promote a recon­ ciliation between the Bugis and the Dutch, and he was ‘to 1 In 1774, for example, Thomas Mercer paid 132,005 Spanish dollars into the Company’s treasury at Canton in satisfaction of a loan from the Company at Calcutta. Mercer, who was successively captain of the country ships Generous Friend (1772), and Crescent (1774), was a good friend of Francis Light and James Scott. He was in Kedah in Jan. 1772 and Scott wrote to him from Selangor in 1783. It seems likely that Mercer paid off his debt at Canton by gathering tin and pepper in the Malay ports for sale in China. The Crescent called at Malacca for a few days in Dec. 1774 on its return voyage from Canton to Calcutta. 2 Morse, Chronicles, ii. 89. 3 Op. cit. ii. 76. 4 Extract from Bengal General Consultations, 31 May 1784, Add. MSS. 34,466, ff. 63-65. 5 . Forrest to Bengal, 15 Apr. 1784, Add. MSS. 34,466, f. 59.

Malay Peninsula during the late Eighteenth Century

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avoid every expression that can be construed in[to] a promise, by which this Government can be committed’.1 The strictly commer­ cial function of the proposed British settlement at Riau was con­ firmed by the instructions given to Forrest that he should continue to explore the islands of the Mergui archipelago. Clearly, Hastings intended that the solution to the strategic problem should be sought there and not in the south. Forrest was unable to sail from Calcutta until the middle of June. On 18 June Raja Haji was killed at Telok Ketapang near Malacca and his army was routed by a Dutch relief expedition under Admiral J. P. van Braam, which had reached Malacca from Batavia on 29 May.2 Forrest received news of this disaster when off Pulau Dinding, and found poor consolation in the belief that ‘the Dutch can’t now say we were disappointed in a Business I never attempted’.3 This unexpected display of Dutch maritime power caused consternation in British circles. ‘The Dutch have, besides Comp[an]ys Ships and Vessels, Six Sail of the Line in the Strait of Malacca’, reported Forrest from Kedah in September 1784. ‘They have taken Salengore [Selangor], and established there their ally, the King of Syack [Siak]. They are going against Rhio, in great Force, & doubtless will Succeed, by which means getting Possession of all the Ports in this Quarter.’4 James Scott, the famous country trader, whom Forrest met in Junk Ceylon in 1784 and described as ‘a very sensible and intelligent gentleman’, must have shared Forrest’s forebodings as to the future of British trade in the Malay states. Scott had been pressing the advantages of Penang as a site for a British settlement upon Hastings since 1780.5 Perhaps as a result of discussion with Scott, Forrest revised certain ‘Memorandums’ describing Penang which he had ‘made during a former Voyage’,6 and sent them to Hastings from Kedah. Forrest hoped to combine a British settlement at Penang with his old project of a base at St. Matthew, which he had annexed for the Company in 1784, and one at Cheduba off the coast of Arakan. Forrest’s project was too ambitious, but his detailed description 1 2 3 4 5

Instructions to Forrest, 31 May 1784, loc. cit., f. 64. W. E. Maxwell, ‘Raja Haji’, JSBRAS xxii (1890), 202-3, 205. Forrest to Hastings, from Kedah, 15 Sept. 1784, Add. MSS. 29,166, £. 135. Ibid. Van Braam actually conquered Riau in Oct. 1784. Light, of course, was recommending Junk Ceylon at that time. See Clodd,

Francis Light, 23, 25-26, 29-32. 6 Forrest to Hastings, 15 Sept. 1784, Add. MSS. 29,166, f. 135.

i4o

British Commercial and Strategic Interests,

of Penang must have been very useful to the Government in Calcutta.1 In due course Light came forward with the offer of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah, and took possession of the island for the Company in August 1786. But the work of fostering governmental interest in Penang was as much the contribution of Scott and Forrest as of Light. Light had an additional claim to fame because he alone possessed the personal influence with the Sultan of Kedah which would facilitate the cession of Penang. Indeed, one wonders whether Penang would have been the island selected for the new settlement had not the Dutch scare suggested that a prolonged consideration of the alternatives was dangerous. Light’s place in history is more assured in retrospect than it was at the time. If Monckton had managed to establish a British settlement at Riau or Trengganu in 1772, Light might have passed into oblivion as the man who misrepresented the value of Kedah to the Company. Had Forrest reached Riau in time, Light’s services would have been superfluous and the British resident .at Riau would have been a civil servant of long standing. Fortunately for Light, the other projects failed and Penang was occupied in a period of apparent crisis. In reality, there was no possibility of the Dutch continuing to dominate the Malay states unless Van Braam’s squadron re­ mained in the East, and the Dutch Company alone did not possess the naval power to close Malacca Strait to the British in time of war. But empires often expand on the basis of misconceptions, and the occupation of the first British possession in Malaya was a case in point. 1 Forrest accompanied his letter from Kedah with an account of ‘Pulo Pinang (Arekanut Island)*, which incorporated descriptions of the neighbouring coast­ line from Junk Ceylon to Perak. He also sent Hastings sketch-maps of Penang, and the Muda and Prai rivers, a map of Alor Star and the hinterland, showing the overland routes to Patani and Singora, a map of the Kra Isthmus from Mergui to Singora, and a sketch of Pulo Jerejak as it appeared from the east. Forrest considered the most suitable alternative points for a British settlement to be Pulo Jerejak, or ‘Flatt Point* (the present George Town), or up the Prai River. See Add. MSS. 29,210, ff. 244-7, 252.

VII PROBLEMS OF PERSONALITY IN THE

REINTERPRETATION OF MODERN MALAYAN HISTORY JOHN BASTIN

IN the preface to his revised and enlarged edition of A History of Malaya (Singapore, 1962), Sir Richard Winstedt wrote: ‘My

account of a country that was my home for thirty-two years is, I hope, impartial, praise and blame being distributed to Asian and European alike, as the evidence warrants. The history is written largely from a Malay angle. . . . That the European chapters bulk so largely is due to the fulness of Portuguese, Dutch and British records.’ Such a disclaimer is a sign of the times, for today Asians are looking critically at the histories of their countries written by Westerners. In a recent article a young Malayan history graduate of the University of Singapore wrote: ‘... we cannot help but note that up to date, much of the history of Malaya has been written mainly by Westerners, based almost entirely on English or Dutch sources. There is, therefore, a strong need for a reinterpretation and a reassessment of Malayan history from the Malayan point of view and based not only on Western sources, but also on Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Siamese sources.’ He dismissed as unauthoritative the work of such historians as L. A. Mills, R. Emerson, B. Harrison, D. G. E. Hall, and Sir Richard Winstedt because, he contended, their work was based ‘more on secondary sources than on primary sources’.1 It is somewhat disturbing to see Winstedt’s work dismissed in this cavalier fashion, for he not only spent a lifetime resurrecting, translating, and analysing Malay sources for historical purposes, but also published in 1918 the first scientific work on Malay history written in Malay, Tawarikh Mèlayu, which, in the words of one 1 Lim Say Hup, ‘The need for a reinterpretation of Malayan history’, Malaya

in History, v. 2 (1959), 4I-43«

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Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of

well-informed Malay critic, was ‘undoubtedly the book which . . . first opened the eyes of the average Malay to the meaning of history as distinct from legend’.1 Winstedt’s contribution in fostering this historical awareness in Malaya may lend considerable support to the recent assertion that it was, in fact, Westerners who gave to South-east Asians ‘not so much a new notion of history as indeed their first real notions of history’,2 but it does not alter the fact that in Malaya it is becoming increasingly fashionable to link him with the earlier generation of British colonial scholars, like Sir Frank Swettenham and Sir Hugh Clifford, and to dismiss them all as ‘Englishmen educated in the last half of the 19th Century, or early 20th Century, when the idea current at English schools and universities was that the history of Asia was the history of the European in that continent, the European in Asia, and not Asia itself’.3 What is needed today, it is argued, is not Westernorientated history as written by these men, but Malayan history written from a Malayan point of view. This need for a reinterpretation of Asian history has been expressed not only in Malaya. Similar views have been stated in India, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Writing in 1944 Jawaharlal Nehru claimed that one of the things that Indians resented most about British rule in India was the British accounts of India’s history: ‘The histories of India that most of us have had to read, chiefly written by Englishmen, are usually long apologies for and panegyrics of British rule, and a barely veiled contemptuous account of what happened here in the milleniums preceding it. Indeed, real history for them begins with the advent of the English­ man into India ; all that went before is in some mystic kind of way a preparation for this divine consummation.*4 A Filipino his­ torian, Gregorio F. Zaide, of the Far Eastern University of Manila, stated in a paper read at the Singapore Conference of South-east Asian Historians in January 1961 : ‘Philippine history during the last four centuries was written mostly by Spanish and American authors. Indutiably [wc], it was an arrogated privilege of the white conquerors to scribble the history of the conquered people. Such a foreign-penned history is, invariably, un-Filipino because it was 1 Zainal-Abidin bin Ahmad in ‘A history of Malay literature, with a chapter on modern developments’, JMBRAS xvii. 3 (1939), 151. 2 D. G. E. Hall (ed.), Historians of South East Asia (London, 1961), 2. 3 K. G. Tregonning cited in The Straits Times, 17 Dec. 1959. 4 The Discovery of India (London, 1956), 287, 93.

Modern Malayan History

143

written from a Western viewpoint. It is either pro-Hispanic, glorifying the achievements of Spain in the Philippines, or pro­ Yankee, extolling the accomplishments of the United States in the islands. It ignores or belittles the role played by Filipinos in the economic, political, and social progress of the Philippines.’1 Indo­ nesians have made similar criticisms of Dutch accounts of their history. At a Seminar on Indonesian History held at Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta in December 1957, Soedjatmoko, a wellknown Indonesian intellectual, lamented: ‘For those among us who feel a sense of responsibility for the life of our nation and for the education of our younger generation to true Indonesian citizen­ ship, it is a matter of great concern that, in what has hitherto been presented as Indonesian history or the history of the Netherlands Indies, there is no coherent body, no single focal point of illu­ mination, no particular frame of reference.’2 Much, of course, may be said in favour of a fundamental re­ interpretation of South-east Asian history. In a now famous passage the late Dutch historian J. C. van Leur drew attention to the fact that the pre-Western period of Indonesian history was treated from an Indo-centric point of view by Dutch historians, but that after the arrival of ships from western Europe, this point of view was shifted 180 degrees and from then on Indonesia was observed ‘from the deck of the ship, the ramparts of the fortress, the high gallery of the trading-house’.3 There was, he contended, something highly unsatisfactory about this, and one may be in­ clined to agree. One wonders, however, whether it is not the wish of some of the advocates of the South-east Asian-centric school to turn the focus 180 degrees the other way? It has, for example, already been suggested that the role of the Portuguese and Dutch is ‘almost extraneous’ to a proper appreciation of modern Malayan history;4 according to G. F. Zaide, what is needed today is the rewriting of Philippine history ‘so that it may truly be a Philippine epic, a fascinating tale of Filipinism from prehistoric times to the 1 ‘New Interpretation of Philippine History’, paper read to the Conference of South-east Asian Historians, Singapore, 1961. 2 An Approach to Indonesian History: Towards an Open Future (Modem Indonesia Project: Translation Series, Cornell University, New York, i960), 18. 3 Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague, Bandung, 1955), 261. 4 K. G. Tregonning, ‘A New Approach to Malayan History’, The Straits Timest 24 Nov. 1958.

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Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of

present’, which would be ‘genuinely Filipino in perspective, Asian in spirit, and global in outlook’.1 The arguments that the early Westerners constitute a more or less extraneous element in modern South-east Asian history, and that there is a need for a nationalistically biased history of South­ east Asia, deserve careful consideration.2 Our immediate concern, however, is to examine some of the implications of the charge that Sir Richard Winstedt has failed to write Malayan history from a Malayan point of view. What is precisely meant by this latter phrase, and what is involved in writing South-east Asian-centric history, is at present the subject of a rather one-sided debate in the JSEAH.i As it is not possible to engage here in theorization within the exact context of that controversy, I propose to take one episode in modern Malayan history which has been treated within a ‘colonial’ frame of reference, and to analyse in essentially simple terms of personality the way in which, presumably, it might be interpreted from a ‘Malayan’ angle, leaving aside the question of value-judgements and a definition of the phrase ‘South-east Asian-centric history’. For convenience we may select as our historical episode one which has already been discussed briefly by Dr. D. K. Bassett in the previous essay in this Festschrift', the mission of the Hon. Edward Monckton to the Sultan of Kedah in 1772. As Dr. Bassett was concerned in this essay with British commercial and strategic interests in Malaya during the late eighteenth century, the mission was described within the context of those interests. Its purpose was simply to obtain commercial and territorial concessions in Kedah ; its failure was due to the fact that the British East India Company was unwilling to afford military assistance to the Sultan, who had been driven out of his capital by the people of Selangor. Taken within this historical framework, Dr. Bassett’s account is coherent and intelligible, but another interpretation is presumably possible if we discard the framework of British commercial and 1 ‘New Interpretation of Philippine History’, paper read to the Conference of South-east Asian Historians, Singapore, 1961. 2 See J. Bastin, The Western Element in Modern Southeast Asian History, Papers on Southeast Asian Subjects, No. 2 (Kuala Lumpur, i960). 3 D. P. Singhal, ‘Some comments on “The Western Element in Modem Southeast Asian History” J. R. W. Smail, ‘On the possibility of an autonomous history of modem Southeast Asia’; G. I. T. Machin, ‘Colonial post-mortem: a survey of the historical controversy’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, i. 2 (i960), 118-23; 2 (1961), 72-102; iii. 2 (1962), 129-38.

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strategic objectives, and begin by asking what was the object of the Sultan of Kedah in wishing to contract an offensive alliance with the British at this time. Instead, that is, of looking at the problem from the Straits of Malacca, and analysing it in terms of Monckton’s aims, an attempt might be made to shift the focus, and, taking a stand in the jungles of Perlis, to see the problem through the eye of the Sultan of Kedah. Taking this point of orientation, questions occur which lie generally outside the range of interests of the historian concerned only with British objectives in the Malacca Strait. Who was this particular Sultan of Kedah ? Who were these enemies of his from Selangor? Why were they invading his country ? In order to answer these questions one must delve into the early eighteenth-century history of Kedah, when Bugis influence in Malaya was becoming more and more marked. For reasons not yet fully analysed, although they may well be connected with the more stringent commercial restrictions im­ posed by the Dutch on the trade of Macassar, the Bugis began emigrating in increasing numbers during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to various parts of South-east Asia.1 In Malaya, where there were already sizeable Bugis settlements in the Klang region as early as 1681,2 these immigrants had a pro­ found and lasting effect on the course of its history. According to Malay tradition, the most famous group of Bugis warriors in Malaya during the early decades of the eighteenth century were five brothers, sons of Upu Tenribong Daing Rilaka, prince of Luwu in the Celebes, a blood relation to the Raja of Boni.3 In the early 1720*5 the five brothers had helped Raja Sulaiman to recapture the royal insignia and treasure of Riau, which had been removed to Siak by the redoubtable Minangkabau ruler of that state, Raja Kechil.4 As a reward for their assistance,5 one of the 1 J. Kennedy, A History of Malaya A.D. 1400-1959 (London, 1962), 58-66; Winstedt, A History of Malaya, 144 ff. 2 R. O. Winstedt, ‘Notes on the history of Kedah’, JMBRAS xiv. 3 (1936), 176. 3 He is described as a brother in Silsilah Mèlayu dan Bugis dan Sakalian Raja-raja-nya (trans. H. Overbeck), JMBRAS iv. 3 (1926), 339-81 ; but accord­ ing to Overbeck (p. 350) he was cousin of the Raja of Boni. 4 Ibid. 348 ff.; Winstedt, A History of Malaya, 142 ff. 5 To put it in its most euphemistic terms. In Silsilah Mëlayu dan Bugis (p. 353) the granting of the post of Yamtuan Muda, to be held in hereditary possession by the Bugis, was agreed to by Raja Sulaiman as a condition of Bugis assistance against Siak. The post was, in fact, granted in recognition of Bugis power in Riau.

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Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of

brothers, Daing Merewah, was appointed Yamtuan Muda ( Yang di-pertuan Muda) or Under-King of the Johore empire at its

capital at Riau, a post which was thereafter held in hereditary possession by the Bugis until the Dutch drove them out of Riau and abolished the office in 1784. Before that, however, the post of Yamtuan Muda gave the Bugis an important influence in the Malay world which they utilized to the full in gaining political power in the Malay states. This was achieved partly by intrigue, partly by force, and partly by marriage alliances. For example, one of the five Bugis brothers, Daing Parani, married the daughter of the Bugis Yamtuan of Selangor, thus reinforcing the Bugis dynasty in that state. According to the Silsilah Mëlayu dan Bugis dan Sakalian Rajaraja-nya it was when Daing Parani, accompanied by two of his warrior brothers, was in Selangor for this wedding that he received a letter from ‘the eldest prince of Kedah’1 requesting the help of the Bugis brothers ‘in his quarrel with his younger brother over the kingship’. Before acceding to this request, Daing Parani stated his wish to return to Riau in order to consult with his brothers, who at length sailed with their followers to Kedah where the eldest prince promised them fifteen bahara of dollars if they would adopt his cause.2 The bargain was struck, and three days later, after enlisting the help of the local Bugis, they marched armed into the audience-hall where the prince awaited them surrounded by his own people. Daing Parani then read out a proclamation (surat pëngëlaran) naming the eldest prince Yamtuan in place of his father.3 As the guns boomed out, the Bugis, as was their custom, 1 Winstedt, A History of Malaya, 145, describes him as ‘the eldest son of a deceased Sultan of Kedah’. 2 See Overbeck, JMBRAS iv. 357 n. 3 Ibid. 357. The genealogies of the Kedah royal house during the eighteenth century are confused and contradictory. Winstedt’s hope, expressed a quarter of a century ago in the concluding sentence of his ‘Notes on the history of Kedah’, JMBRAS xiv. 188, that ‘further research in Kedah may throw more light on the history of its royal house’, has not been fulfilled. Since his publication in those ‘Notes’ of a genealogical list of the Kedah royal house based upon AlTarikh Silsilah Negri Kedah by Hasan bin Muhammad Arshad, there have, however, appeared two additional genealogies, which might usefully be re­ printed in this Festschrift, especially as one of them will not be readily available to students of Malayan history. This is a Genealogical Table of H.H. The late Sultan Sir Abdul Hamid Halim Shah, compiled by Tunku Fariddudin Haji bin Tunku Mansor, and published in Kedah during 1957 as a Mërdeka souvenir. The second list, entitled ‘The Kedah Ruler’s Genealogical Tree’, is an abbrevia­ ted version of this latter Table, and has been compiled by Tunku Fariddudin

Modern Malayan History

147

swore allegiance to the man they had just elevated to the throne. A banquet was held, prayers to the new ruler were offered, and the people, as they dispersed, were warned to be on their guard against the young prince. It is not clear from the Malay genealogies who this particular ruler of Kedah was,1 and for our present purpose it does not much matter. What is important is that a new ruler had been created by the Bugis during the 1720’5, and that he had promised to pay them fifteen bahara (6,000 lb.) of dollars for his elevation. Except for a minor portion, the debt was paid neither then nor in the ensuing forty years, despite repeated requests by the Bugis. Then, in 1770, the Bugis made a final demand to the Kedah royal house, and to its then ruler Sultan Muhammad Jiwa Zainal Abidin Mu'azzam Shah, for payment of the debt. The demand on this occasion was made by Sultan Salahu’d-din of Selangor, who had become creditor by virtue of the fact that his father, Daing Chelak, had been one of the five Bugis brothers who had assisted in the Kedah elevation of the 1720’s.2 It was for this reason that the Selangor forces entered Kedah late in 1770, and it was when confronted with this invasion that Sultan Muhammad appealed to the British for assistance. There was, however, another reason why the Sultan of Kedah was in difficulties at this time, and why he requested an offensive alliance with the British. Sultan Muhammad had no children by his lawful wife, but by two slave women he had three children, the eldest of whom was appointed to succeed him. The election of a bastard so offended Muhammad’s two brothers and nephews that they raised the standard of revolt and invited the assistance of the ruler of Selangor, who was willing to help for reasons already outlined. The Selangor forces invaded Kedah, burned Alor Star, which was at that time a flourishing town, and at Kuala Kedah, then known as Kuala Bahang, took several of the coastal vessels and carried off a considerable quantity of booty.3 Although the and Tunku Nong Jiwa. It was first published in Malaya in History, iv (July 1958). These lists are appended to the present essay, and may be compared with Winstedt’s list of 1936 which is reprinted as Appendix A. 1 Winstedt, JMBRAS xiv. 177 n. 2 Ibid. 177. 3 Francis Light to Bengal, 12 Sept. 1786, cited J. Anderson, Political and Commercial Considerations relative to the Malayan Peninsula, and the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca (Prince of Wales Island, 1824), i53"4- The eldest son succeeded his father Muhammad as Sultan Abdullah Mukarram Shah in 1778, having married the daughter of the Laxamana. His younger

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Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of

local Malays did not join the insurgents, the Bugis managed to install Sultan Muhammad’s two brothers in Alor Star, and he him­ self was forced to flee to Perlis where he apparently settled four or five miles from the mouth of the Sungai Perlis in a village lying within a valley encompassed by steep hills.1 Here, in desperation and despair, he addressed letters to British private traders like Francis Light,2 and to East India Company officials in Cuddalore and Madras,3 promising a cession of territory in Kedah if only he were «afforded military assistance against the usurpers in Alor Star. All that the British sent him, however, was Monckton, who, if not the stuttering youth portrayed by James Scott,4 was certainly not conversant with Malay ways. Viewed within the context of preceding events in Kedah, what chance of success had such a man when he attempted to hurry and press Muhammad into giving away important trading rights, without in return granting what the sultan most desired: an old man’s vengeance against those who had betrayed him, not the least his own brothers,5 and appeasement to an old man’s pride by his restoration to the royal capital of Alor Star which he had himself founded some years before ? The promise of British protection against the Bugis of Selangor, which Monckton offered, meant nothing to him; what he wanted was British troops to sweep his enemies out of Kedah. There is no need to continue here the story of dynastic squabbles in Kedah during the early 1770’s. It is not suggested that this narration provides by any means a fundamental interpretation of this episode in Malayan history, or that it exhausts the subject. Beyond the essentially simple categories of dynastic intrigue in the western Malay states at this period lie the ingredients for the development of a more thorough-going and comprehensive in­ terpretation. If, for example, the question were posed as to why the Sultan of Kedah, who was in some way ‘tributary’ to the ruler brother became Raja Muda of Perlis, and later, in 1798, succeeded to the Kedah throne. Anderson reported local tradition to the effect that Abdullah was not the natural son of Muhammad, but he discounted it in favour of Light’s account. 1 M. Topping, ‘Some account of Quedah’ (1791), Miscellaneous Essays Relating to Indo-China (London, 1886), i. 1. 2 H. P. Clodd, Malaya's First British Pioneer: The Life of Francis Light (London, 1948), 6 ff. 3 Ibid. 18-19. 4 See pp. 126-7 below. 5 According to Anderson, Considerations, 153, the usurpers died in penury in Selangor.

Modem Malayan History

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of Siam,1 did not call for Thai assistance in his difficulties with the Bugis but placed his reliance instead upon British aid, the answer would have to be given in terms not only of Thai but also of Burmese history. For in 1765 the Burmese invaded Thailand, and in the succeeding years inflicted upon them such crushing defeats that Thai authority was for a time usurped in the southern provinces.2 Here is to be found the reason why Sultan Muhammad dared to engage in negotiations with the British for a cession of territory in Kedah during 1771-2: because, that is, the attention of his Thai overlord was occupied elsewhere. Yet for the historian con­ cerned with British political and economic objectives in the Malacca Straits, these events on the South-east Asian mainland have not seemed directly relevant to his purpose. The validity of historical interpretations conceived within such closed ‘colonial’ frames of reference has been questioned in recent years, and in the context of the historical episode analysed above it might well be argued that an account which attempted to de­ scribe events in the round would represent the best compromise, and afford the most satisfactory explanation. It will occasion no sur­ prise to learn that Sir Richard Winstedt in his A History of Malaya has interpreted the problem in precisely this way, first discussing it in terms of events in Kedah, in the manner outlined above, and then examining the subject from the point of view of British colonial objectives.3 It is more than a Malayan historian, Joginder Singh Jessy, has done in his book, History of Malaya (1400-1959), which was published in Singapore only a few months before the appearance of the revised edition of Winstedt’s History, Although he claims in the preface to have interpreted the facts ‘from a Malayan’s point of view’, Joginder Singh Jessy’s account of the period prior to the founding of Penang is presented solely in terms of British commercial and strategic objectives. It is, of course, obvious that a Malayan point of view may be reflected in the assumptions and judgements appearing in the book, and as it is undoubtedly at this level that much of the present controversy is engaged, so at this level it should receive fundamental analysis. 1 The nature of Thai control exercised over the northern Malay states requires urgent study. Certain aspects of the subject have been discussed by W. F. Vella, Siam Under Rama III, 1824-1851 (New York, 1957)» 59“773 Relationship With Burma—Part 2: Selected Articles from The Siam Society Journal (Bangkok, 1959), vi, passim. 3 Pages 144 ff., 163 ff. See also Winstedt, JMBRAS xiv. 176 ff. 823121

L

iso

Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of

This is more than can be attempted here. What is important within the context of the present essay, is that in his approach to the subject and in subject-matter itself, Joginder Singh Jessy’s book is much less concerned with strictly Malay themes than is Winstedt’s

A History of Malaya. Such criticism is valid in so far as it concerns itself with the failure of an author to meet his own stated objectives; whether or not it is fair to criticize a historical work because it handles themes different from those which hold interest for certain readers is an entirely different matter. One of the most curious assumptions made by some of those who call for a radical reorientation of modem South-east Asian history is that an interpretation is valid according to some absolute and external criteria. Phrases like ‘useless’, ‘unreadable’, lacking in ‘real significance’, and ‘defective’ have been used recently,1 all of which appear to ignore the fact that, except in the imprecise way in which words are used in ordinary conversation, there is no such thing as ‘History’, let alone valid or invalid history. ‘All history’, R. G. Collingwood pointed out many years ago in his Historical Association pamphlet, ‘must be the history of something, something particular. . . . The historian cannot first collect data and then interpret them. It is only when he has a problem in his mind that he can begin to search for data bearing on it. Anything whatever may serve him as data, if he can find out how to interpret it’. The way in which an historian frames his problem will be determined by his own interests and commitments, and these will largely determine his selection and use of evidence. There is no correct way of writing history, just as there is, strictly speaking, no history of real significance. The mention of R. G. Collingwood raises a major difficulty connected with the attainment of a satisfactory perspective in the writing of much of the modem history of Malaya. Because of his definition of mind, and his belief in the continuity of thought, Collingwood argued that it was possible for the historian by a pro­ cess of empathic understanding to enter the minds of the actors in historical situations, and so offer an interpretation of events in terms of the viewpoint of the actor himself. An historian should, 1 H. J. Benda, ‘The structure of Southeast Asian history: some preliminary observations’, JSEAH iii. i (1962), 107; H. J. West, ‘The study of colonial history*, ibid. ii. 3 (1961), 73.

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to use Collingwood’s example, see the Battle of Trafalgar through the eye of Nelson. It is not necessary to follow the full extent of Collingwood’s logic1 to realize that so long as the historian has a sound appreciation of early nineteenth-century naval tactics he can come close to understanding what Nelson was trying to do at Trafalgar because he has available to him the evidence of eye­ witnesses, and the written accounts of the participants themselves. Consider, however, the Malayan scene and the material avail­ able to the historian there. For the most part, at least until the nineteenth century, the bulk of that material is in Western languages : in Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Except for Malay accounts like the Sëjarah Mëlayu, which has been the subject of two essays in this Festschrift, and such questionable works as the Silsilah Mëlayu dan Bugis, which has been used in this essay to analyse events in Kedah prior to 1770, the historian of Malaya has little to fall back upon in the way of indigenous source materials when he attempts to investigate a historical problem which has arisen from a study of the more voluminous Western sources.2 Even in the case of the historical episode analysed earlier, with its heavy emphasis on dynastic intrigue, almost all of the information about the Kedah royal house itself during the 1770’s was derived from Western sources—from the reports of Monckton and the letters of Francis Light. The extent to which these sources can be ‘inverted’ still further remains to be seen, but the point is that even in the area of dynastic history, where the Malay sources are particu­ larly strong, the sultans and rulers remain colourless and shadowy. The degree to which the historian can employ any empathic process in interpreting the history of Malaya is severely limited; and for this reason an internal point of orientation is denied to him. However much he tries, the historian can never extend beyond reasonable limits the inherent substance matter of his source materials. These materials supply him with a mass of motivation so far as the Western actors in the historical situation are concerned; they supply him with almost nothing of the motivation of the Malayan actors. This it is only possible to guess 1

R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 205 ff.; An Auto­

biography (London, 1944), 73 ff. 2 A good account of the Malay sources has been given bÿ J. C. Bottoms, ‘Malay Historical Works’, Journal of the South Seas Society, xv. 2 (1959)» 69-98. Reprinted in Malaysian Historical Sources, (ed.) K. G. Tregonmng (Singapore, 1962), 36-62.

i52

Problems of Personality in the Reinterpretation of

at, or is at best supplied secondhand by contemporary Western observers. In the case of the historical episode analysed earlier in this essay, the motivation ascribed to Sultan Muhammad was derived from the writings of Westerners. It seems that we have here a crucial problem connected with the interpretation of much of the modern history of Malaya : I mean the almost total absence of clearly defined historical personalities. Malayan history lacks a personality base. Certainly we have our dynastic lists, defective though many of them are, with their names of rajas and sultans; but except for an amount of accrued and accruing legend about them we have no real idea of what they thought as distinct historical beings. Malaya has little of the rich indigenous literature which supplies the historian of Europe or of China with the means of understanding historical personality,1 and thus with the means of establishing a satisfactory point of orientation. Lord Acton once declared that no intellectual exercise was more invigorating than to watch the working of the historical mind, and he instanced the case of Napoleon, ‘the most entirely known as well as the ablest of historic men’. The oppor­ tunity of indulging in this exercise in Malayan history is generally absent. The degree to which this absence of a personality base in Malayan history limits the successful attainment of an internal point of orientation of that history has not been sufficiently emphasized, although it has obviously been assumed by those who have in recent years been advocating a sociological approach to the history of South-east Asia.2 Certainly there lies away from the level of human personality and action, and the whole area of intellectual history, the almost totally neglected field of social and economic history. It is, as I have remarked elsewhere,3 a curious fact that, although the political dogmas of Marxism have exercised such a profound and continuing influence on South-east Asia, the Marxist philosophy of history, with its emphasis on social and economic analysis, has exerted little influence on the scholarly 1 Cf. H. L. Boorman, ‘The Biographical Approach to Chinese History: A Symposium’; D. S. Nivison, ‘Aspects of Traditional Chinese Biography* ; R. C. Howard, ‘Modem Chinese Biographical Writing’, JAS xxi 4 (1962), 453-75; D. Twitchett, ‘Problems of Chinese Biography’, Confucian Personalities (ed.) A. F. Wright and D. Twitchett (Stanford, 1962), 24-39. 1 Rente, JSEAH iii. 1 (1962), 106-38; Smail, JSEAH ii. 2 (1961), 88. 3 The Study of Modern Southeast Asian History (Kuala Lumpur, 1959), 19.

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history writing of South-east Asia. No full-scale economic and social history of Malaya has so far been written, and yet it may well be here, in the general field of social and economic history, that a more acceptable point of orientation of Malayan history may eventually be found. Even so, as Dr. M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz has indicated recently, the historian attempting to write such a work will be dependent less on the local sources than ‘on what the Europeans had to say about the trade and industry of the peoples with whom they came into contact’.1 It is clear that the problem of reorientation in the history of Malaya involves more complex categories than it has been possible to discuss here : for among other things there remains the vexed question of value-judgements, not only about the Western element in Malayan history but also about colonialism itself. There are doubtless many judgements and assumptions in the historical writings of Sir Richard Winstedt which will not be accepted by Malayans, but in terms of subject-matter as discussed in this essay no one has interpreted the history of Malaya from ‘a Malay angle’ so successfully as he has done. 1 Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague, 1962), 3.

APPENDIX A. THE KEDAH ROYAL FAMILY (Reprinted JMBRAS xiv. 3 (1936), l86) Maharaja Derba Raja

-

Maharaja ’diraja Putra I------ —--------------------------- ----------------- [• Maha Sura

Maharaja Maha Dewa

Maharaja Kerma ’diraja Maharaja Kerma Maharaja Diwa Maharaja Derma Raja

Maharaja Maha Jewa

Maha Kema

Maharaja Derba Raja (changed name of country to Kedah and his title to Sultan Muzaffar Shah, d. a.d. 1179 (a.h. 13-2-575)) T. Sulaiman T. Muhammad

S. Mu*azzam Shah, d. 1201 (8.8.598) I________________________

S. Muhammad Shah, d. 1236 (13.5.634) 1________________________ S. (?) Maazul Shah, d. 1280 (18.4.679)

S. Mahmud Shah, d. 1320 (15.4.721) m. T. ‘Aishah 1________________________

S. Ibrahim Shah, d. 1373 (11.7.775) m. T. Mala

S. Sulaiman Shah, d. c. 1422 (15.8.826)

1 T. Putri

T. Mahiran

T. Nur ‘Aishah

T. Ahmad

T. (?) Azlin

T. ‘Abdu’r-Rahman

S. Ata’illah Muhammad Shah, d. 1472 (13.8.877)

T. Mansur

S. Muhammad Jiwa Zain al-*Abidin, T. Putri T. Pok d. 1506 (13.1.912) m. T. Meriam I________________________________________ S. Mahmud Shah, d. 1546 (13.11.953) m. Che* Larasari

T. 'Usman

T. Kutam (f.) m. T. Muhammad

S. Muzaffar Shah, d. 1602 (14.2.ion) m. Che*| Tempawan

T. Nur 'Aishah m. T. Isma'il

S. Sulaiman Shah, d. 1625 (1.6.1035) m. Che1 Raknamala 1

T. Jahara 1

S. Rijalu’d-din Shah, d. 1651 (1.11.1062) m. Wan Timah binti Dato* Maharaja 1 S. Muhiyu’d-din Shah, d. 1661 (13.5.1072) m. Wan Sara binti Dato1 Sri Paduka Maha Mantri

T. Sofiah

! T. Rahimah

1 T. Pengiran

S. Zia’u’d-din al-Mukarram Shah, d. 1687 (30.6.1099) m. Che1 Sepachendra

T. Jamjam

S. Ata’illah Muhammad Shah, d. 1698 (13.5.1110) m. Tengku Mahiran___________________________________

S. 'Abdu’llah al-Mu'azzam Shah, d. 1706 (13.6.1118) m. Wan Nang

T. Ibrahim

S. Muhammad Jiwa' Zain al-1 Abidin Mu'azzam Shah

d. 1760 (1.9.1474) m. Tengku Putri

T. Rahimah

T. Latifah

|

| T.’Aishah

T. Ahmad Taju’d-din

S. "Abdu’llah Mukarram Shah, d. 1798 (10.3.1212) m. Wan Kamariah bind Dato1 Laksamana

T. Zia’u’d-din

S. Ahmad Taju’d-din Halim Shah

T. Bisnu

T. Ya’akob

|

T. Jamjam T. Long Puten

d. 1843 (6.3.1259) m. Che’ Alraseh

S. Zainal Rashid al-Mu*azzam Shah, d. 1854 (13.6.1270) m. Wan Mahiran binti Dato1 Mahasura S. Ahmad 'Taju’d-din Mukarram Shah, d. 1879

and 15 other

children

(2.7.1296) m. Wan Hajar binti Wan Isma’il

S. 'Abdu 1-Hamid Halim Shah, b. 1864, asc. 1882

For appendix

T. 'Abdii ’1-Aziz

(d. 1907)

b

and

appendix c,

see at end

T. Mahmud

VIII A KEDAH LETTER OF

1839

C. SKINNER

IN view of their avowedly fragmentary nature, it is not surprising if Sir Richard Winstedt’s ‘Notes on the History of Kedah’12 occasionally seem to present the non-European side of the State’s history as a sort of moon, obtaining its light from the reflection of the far brighter sun of European activities in the area. The present essay attempts to shed some light upon the Malay and Siamese background of Kedah’s more recent history by discussing the letter that is reproduced in facsimile facing p. 162? The exact nature of Kedah’s relationship with Siam in the first two decades of the nineteenth century is still somewhat doubtful ;3 it is enough to state here that, while certainly not a province of Siam, the Sultan of Kedah did recognize the King of Siam as his suzerain, this suzerainty being exercised through the Governor of the province of Nakhon Si Thammarat.4 In 1821 the Governor of Nakhon (Chau Phaya Si Thammasokarat)5 had found cause to 1 JMBRAS xiv. 3 (1936), 155-89« 2 The letter is in the Wachirayan National Library, Bangkok, through the kind permission of whose Director it is reproduced here, It is ‘(MS.) No. 294, (dated) 1201 (of the Siamese Lesser Era, i.e. a.d. 1838-9) Section 3’. 3 See, e.g. L. A. Mills, ‘British Malaya, 1824-1867’, JMBRAS iii. 2 (1925), 33-38; W. F. Vella, Siam under Rama III (New York, 1957), 59-61. 4 Siamese: “nakhç(r)n s(r)î tha(rr)mmarât(ch)” (for the transliteration, see Appendix A). Usually called ‘Legur’ by the Malays, and ‘Ligor(e)’ by the British. 5 Siamese: “eau ph(r)ayâ s(r)î tha(rr)mâsôkarât(ch)”. This was his title at the time of our letter, although the British commonly referred to him as ‘Rajah Ligor(e)’. He was bom c. 1776 and died in 1839 (see “(h)luang anuso(r)n siththika(rr)m, phongsäwadä(r)n myang nakhç(r)n s(r)i tha(rr)mmarät(chy* (‘Chronicle of Nakhon Si Thammarat’), in “cod(Ä)möy (hjluang udom sombat(i)” (‘The Letters of Luang Udom Sombat’) (vol. i, 3rd ed.), Bangkok, i960, 113. The five grades of conferred nobility in Siam were (in ascending order): (1) khun; (2) luang (“(h)luang”) ; (3) phra’; (4) phaya (“ph(r)ayâ”) ; (5) chau phaya (“eau ph(r)aya”). The governors of the more important provinces (and also the Malay vassal-rulers) usually bore the title of Phaya and could, for meritorious service, be promoted to ‘Chau Phaya’.

A Kedah Letter of 1839

157

expel the Malay Sultan,1 and, subsequently, bring in Siamese— the Chau Phaya’s own sons—to govern the State, which was then administered as a Siamese province under the jurisdiction of Nakhon.2 In 1831 the expelled sultan’s forces attacked Kedah and drove out the Siamese,3 but the Chau Phaya was eventually able to put down the rising. Things remained fairly quiet until 1838, when the sultan and his backers were able to promote another large-scale uprising, once again driving the Siamese out of Kedah (which, at that time, still included Perlis and Setul). Outside Kedah, too, the rising met with success: Trang and the greater part of the Patani Malay states were occupied, and the Malays pressed on as far as Songkhla, which they sat down to besiege.4 As with the earlier rising, however, the Chau Phaya of Nakhon proved equal to the situation, and, although forced to sum­ mon help from Bangkok,5 had succeeded in putting down the 1 Sultan Ahmad Täju’d-din Halim Shäh. A son of Sultan 'Abdullah, he succeeded his uncle (Sultan Qiyä’u’d-din) in 1803, the latter’s abdication being apparently ‘suggested’ by the Siamese, in the belief that the nephew would make a better ruler than the uncle. On his accession, given the title of “ph(r)aya (thr)saiburi” (Ruler of Kedah), and subsequently promoted to Chau Phaya, he was none the less ignominiously chased out of Kedah by his fellow Chau Phaya (of Nakhon) in 1821. After many unsuccessful attempts to regain his Sultanate by force, he was eventually allowed to return (as a somewhat nominal ruler of a Kedah reduced in area) some three years before his death in 1845. See Burney Papers (5 vols., Bangkok, 1910-14), ii (4), 174; “phongsäwadä(f)n mpang (thr)saiburi” (‘Chronicle of Kedah’) in “prachum phongsäwadä(r)n—phäkh thï 2” (‘Collected Chronicles, Part 2’) (Bangkok, 1932). 2 Apparently the Chau Phaya of Nakhon was at first prepared to bring back Tâju’d-dîn’s uncle as ruler of Kedah, partly to get the British to continue paying the annual pension of 10,000 dollars that they had paid Tâju’d-dîn; the British, however, refused. Kedah was subsequently brought under direct Siamese rule (through Nakhon) apparently at the same time that Bangkok formally recog­ nized the Chau Phaya’s son as the Phaya of Kedah, in 1825. See Burney Papers, ii (4), 187; ibid, iii (1), 4, 126; ibid, iv (2), 43, 47. 3 This was the campaign in which Tengku Din (Tajuddin’s nephew) played a leading part. 4 Perhaps the best account in English is that of Low (in the Burney Papers, v (1), 160 ff. In Siamese “cod(A)mdy (h)luang udom sombatfi)” (‘The Letters of Luang Udom Sombat’), edited by “krom ph(r)ayâ damrong râchânuphâph” (‘Prince Damrong’) (Bangkok, 1915, 2nd ed.) is invaluable; there are also brief accounts in various of the Siamese Chronicles, e.g. by ph(r)ayä wichia(r)nkhiri, “phongsäwadä(r)n mpang songkhla” (‘Chronicle of Songkhla*) in ‘ prachum phongsäwadä(r)n—phäkh thï 3” (‘Collected Chronicles, Part 3’) (Bangkok, 1928, 2nd ed., 57-63). 5 Much against his will. Robert Hunter, an English merchant in Bangkok, wrote on 21 Jan. 1839: ‘The Rajah of Ligor will be very hard pushed before he calls upon the Siamese Court for assistance, as when here, he said that he could

is8

A Kedah Letter of 1839

rising and reoccupying Kedah before the arrival of the Bangkok army.1 The Chau Phaya had probably intended to reinstate his sons as Governor2 and Assistant-Governor3 of Kedah, but was soon recalled to Bangkok, where perhaps worn out by his exertions, he died in May 1839.4 Before his sons had had time to take up the reins of administration again, the Commanderin-Chief of the main Bangkok army, Phaya Si Phiphat, had arrived.5 The younger brother of the Chau Phaya Phra* Khlang,6 Phaya easily beat the Malays if the English did not assist the Malays . . .’ (Burney Papers, iii (2), 516). 1 The decisive blow in the reconquest of Kedah was the capture of Kedah Fort, on the night of 19-20 Mar. 1839 (cf. S. Osborn, My Journal in Malayan Waters (London, i860, 2nd ed.), 211. Midshipman Osborn of H.M.S. Hyacinth (which was assisting the Siamese by blockading the Kedah coast) went ashore on the morning of 20 Mar., met the Chau Phaya of Nakhon, and badgered him into supplying a couple of bullocks as provisions for the Hyacinth's crew (ibid. 211-21). The main body of the Bangkok army did not reach Songkhla until the second half of Apr. (see “eau ph(r)ayâ thiphâkarawong(s), “phrarächaphongsäwadä(r}n krung ratanakösin(thr) rachchakâ(l)n thi 3" (‘The Royal Chronicle of the Bangkok Dynasty’s 3rd Reign’) (Bangkok, 1934)» *94 and n. 2 According to most of the Siamese sources quoted in this essay, the Siamese Governor of Kedah at this time was called ‘Phra’ Borirak Phubet’ (“phra* borirak phube(sr)t”), the Chau Phaya’s eldest son by a secondary wife. Phra* Borirak Phubet was placed in charge of Kedah in 1825 (see the references to him in Burney Papers, i (3), 338; iv (2), 47), but at the time of the 1838 rising, letters from the Phaya of Kedah to the Straits Settlements authorities in both Siamese and English show that he signed himself ‘Phaya Aphay Thibet’ (“ph(r)ayä aphay thibe(sr)t”), see the Straits Settlements Records, Letters from Native Rulers, vol. F6 (MS., Raffles National Library, Singapore), 125, 162, 165, 167. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that, some time previous to the 1838 rising, Phra' Borirak Phubet had been promoted to Phaya Aphay Thibet (see also Wichiankhiri, Phongsaxoadan Mvang Songkhla, p. 57.) 3 Phra’ Sena Nuchit (“phra* sënâ nuchit’ ’), the Governor’s full brother (Anuson Siththikam, Phongsawadan Muang Nakhon, m). For his taking over the ad­ ministration of the State during the Governor’s absence, see Burney Papers, iii (1), 126. 4 Thiphakarawong, Phrarachaphongsawadan, 196. 5 Thiphakarawong, op. cit. 196, says that Phaya Si Phiphat (“ph(r)ayâ s(r)ï phiphat(n)”) arrived in Kedah on ‘the ninth day of the waning ninth moon/ month’, which, according to the footnote (apparently calculated by adding an extra month, to cover the Siamese ‘leap year’), was towards the end of the first week in Aug. 1839. Although the Bangkok army had arrived in Songkhla more than three months previous to this, Phaya Si Phiphat had had much to do, in­ cluding the settling of a civil war in Kelantan (see the present writer’s ‘The Civil War in Kelantan in 1839’, in preparation). 6 Roughly equivalent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Since 1830 the Chau Phaya Phra’ Khlang had also held the office of the Kralahom (‘kralähöm’—

A Kedah Letter of 1839

159

Si Phiphat,1 was a-considerable figure in his own right—one of the most influential men at the Siamese court at the time—and he had obviously been given authority to take any steps necessary to ensure lasting peace in Siam’s southern provinces and vassal­ states. It is likely, too, that Bangkok had come to the conclusion that Nakhon Si Thammarat had become too much of an imperium in imperto, and that the death of its powerful Chau Phaya provided an excellent opportunity to reduce its power.2 After reviewing the situation on the spot, Phaya Si Phiphat decided that, so far as Kedah was concerned, peace could best be ensured by substituting indirect rule, under Malay governors, for direct rule, under Siamese governors. To restore the restless Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin was, however, rather too risky, so as Governor of Kedah he appointed Tengku Anom (a distant relative of the sultan),3 with one of Tengku Anom’s younger relatives, Tengku Hasan, to assist him.4 The Chau Phaya’s sons were both to be transferred to other and less important posts, the former Governor being made Phaya of Phanga (“phangngä”), while his Deputy was eventually made the Department of the South) and was probably Rama Ill’s most trusted ad­ viser (see Vella, Rama III, 7-8). 1 Captain Burney became well acquainted with him during his 1826 mission to Bangkok. Phaya Si Phiphat was then ‘about 36 years of age . . . possessing great talent . . . always admitted into the Councils of the Ministers . . . the King (Rama III) is said to place much reliance upon his opinions’. (Burney Papers, i (1), 65). He was, too, ‘among the richest in the country’ (ibid, ii (4), 228). 2 Cf. Vella, Rama III, 74-75. 3 The appointment seems to have been of a somewhat temporary nature (Thiphakarawong, Phrarachaphongsawadan, 196-7; cf. Burney Papers, iv (2), 49, and Phongsawadan Muang Saiburi, 85.) I can find no confirmation of the statement made by Vella, Rama III, 75, that he was made Sultan of Kedah. In the past, Tengku Anom had shown that he could be relied upon to uphold Siamese interests. In 1826 he had been the leader of a delegation of Kedah notables petitioning the King of Siam not to restore Tâju’d-dïn as sultan (Burney Papers, i (2), 216). To some extent, however, it was Tâju’d-dîn who had the last laugh, for after Tengku Anom had administered Kedah for over two years, he had to agree to Tâju’d-dîn’s restoration as Sultan. By way of compensation, he was made the ‘Phaya’ of the independent, but much less important, district of Kubang Pasu (ibid, iv (2), 74; Wichiankhiri, Phongsawadan Muang Songkhla, 63 ; for the importance of Kubang Pasu vis-à-vis the rest of Kedah, see J. R. Logan, ‘Notes at Pinang, Kedah See’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, v (1851),

58). 4 Burney Papers, iv. (2), 49; Thiphakarawong, Phrarachaphongsawadan, 197. The latter source suggests that Tengku Hasan was a nephew (“(h)lân”) of Tengku Anom. Low (Burney Papers v (1 )’, 195) merely says that he was ‘a merchant of Penang and a connexion of the ex-Raja’ (i.e. Sultan Tâju’d-dïn).

i6o

A Kedah Letter of 1839

Phaya of Takua Pa (“takua pä”).1 His mission accomplished, Phaya Si Phiphat left Kedah and returned to Songkhla. The 1838-9 rising was only the most recent of the many cam­ paigns fought on Kedah territory during the early decade of the nineteenth century, and the chronic disorder of the period had resulted in a considerable decline, not only in Kedah’s prosperity, but also in its population. Writing in 1837, James Low the Ad­ ministrator of Province Wellesley, estimated that no less than 70,000 Malays had left Kedah to settle in the adjacent British territories, leaving behind them a mere 20,000 people2 to face the hazards of Siamese rule and Malay retaliation. Low’s figures may be exaggerated; it is certain, however, that the number of those remaining suffered another sharp reduction as a result of the failure of the 1838-9 rising. On the night of 6 March 1839, following upon the arrival of the Nakhonese before Kedah Fort, Captain Warren of H.M.S. Hyacinth (that had been detailed to assist the Siamese by blockading the Kedah coast) reported to Governor Bonham at Penang that ‘from sixty to seventy boats of various sizes and descriptions, containing about a thousand women and children, came out from Quedah imploring protection, etc., the Siamese having made their sudden appearance in the neighbourhood. The two following nights the same thing occurred. After partially relieving their wants, they were safely conveyed to Wellesley Province and Penang . . . .’3 Osborn, the man on the spot, noted that subsequently *. . . every night fresh parties of Malays passed out of the [Kedah] river . . . Penang and Province Wellesley were their Goshen’4 until finally 1 Phongsawadan Muang Saiburi, 85; Anuson Siththikam, Phongsawadan Muang, in. As ruler of Phanga, the ex-Phaya of Kedah was given the title of Phaya Borirak Phuthon (“ph(r)ayâ borirak(s) phûthç(r)n”). His younger brother was apparenty given no promotion, but made Deputy-Governor of Phanga, and it was only upon becoming Governor of Takba Pa, that Phra' Sena Nuchit was promoted to be Phaya Sena Nuchit. 2 Burney Papers, v (1), 68. 3 Ibid., iii. (2), 524. Midshipman Osborn, who was the officer who actually escorted the convoy as far as Penang waters, gives a much higher figure, estimating that it contained no less than ‘one junk, one tope, five large prahus, and one hundred and fifteen smaller craft, the whole of them containing probably three thousand souls, of which two-thirds were women and the remainder made up of children, old decrepit men, and a few adult Malays..(Osborn, My Journal, 167). Osborn’s critical faculties were perhaps dulled by the presence among the refugees of a ‘pretty, trembling, dream-like creature’ whom he termed his ‘belle of Quedah* (ibid. 174-6). 4 Osborn, My Journal, 187.

A Kedah Letter of 183g

161

‘. the last instalment of women and children, and the last canoes in the river, escaped from Quedah’.1 Engaged in blockading the Kedah River and points north, Osborn was naturally unable to furnish figures of the number of refugees who escaped to Province Wellesley simply by crossing the Sungai Muda, but it seems safe to say that several thousand Kedah Malays took this easier way of escaping from the returning Siamese.2 The refugees who entered Province Wellesley did not, as a rule, if they entertained any hopes of an eventual return home, go very far, and so one of the biggest of the ‘refugee camps’ was at Penaga,3 some four miles south of the border, where several thousand Kedah Malays waited until such time as God, and the new rulers of Kedah, should think fit to allow them to go back. They did not have to wait long. The drastic decline in Kedah’s prosperity was, of course, correlated with an equally drastic decline in population, and both had caused the new rulers of Kedah and their Siamese overlords no little concern. As the King of Siam’s Chief Minister later confessed to Governor Bonham ‘it seemed that Kedah had almost reverted to jungle’,4 and the Malayan jungle being, as is well known, neutral, furnishes little in the way of revenue. One of the main tasks therefore of the Tengku Anom and his deputy was to encourage the refugees to return home as soon as possible, and, very shortly after their appointment, they sent out proclamations, as well as personal letters, announcing that all those returning home would be allowed to resume possession of their land and property.5 When the news reached Penaga, many of the refugees there 1 Ibid. 202, cf. also Burney Papers, iii (2), 524. 2 Low (in the figures quoted above) estimated that a majority of the 70,000 refugees from Kedah went to Province Wellesley. Elsewhere, he estimated that, after the failure of the 1831 rising, some 16,000 Kedah Malays took refuge in Province Wellesley (J. Low, ‘An Account of the Origin of the British Colonies...’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, iv (1850), 366). 3 The establishment of Kedah refugees at Penaga was of some years standing. In a letter written some ten years previously, Sultan Tajuddin says that he had been advised ‘to move to Teluk Ayer Tawar and try to get all the Kedah people living at Prai, Penaga and Kuala Muda to join me .. .* quoted in R. O. Winstedt, ‘History of Malaya’, JMBRAS xiii. 1 (i935), *92* 4 Burney Papers, iv (2), 48. 5 Low commented that ‘. . . it was found and confessed by the Malays who remained in Keddah that the rule of these men [i.e. Tengku Anom and Tengku Hasan] was more severe and exacting than that even of the Siamese, so that but very few of the Malays who had fairly settled under British rule returned to

iÔ2

A Kedah Letter of 1839

decided that it was now safe to return home, but before they could complete their preparations, another batch of refugees from Kedah arrived in Penang bringing alarming stories of a ‘reign of terror’ carried out by their former Siamese governors before proceeding on transfer northwards. Much disturbed, the Penaga refugees called a halt to their packing, and two of the most prominent of their number penned the letter reproduced opposite,1 which, in translation reads as follows : With Your Highnesses’ pardon, your servants, Hajji Muhammad Salleh ibn Mahmud of Kelantan, and Muhammad Salleh of Kubang Rotan,2 venture to lay this letter before Your Highnesses, Tengku Anom and Tengku Hasan, to whom God has granted the highest3 of ranks and an acknowledged precedence: amen, amen, amen. Your Highnesses’ letter said that, by the will of Almighty God, the State of Kedah had submitted to your Highnesses and that all the Siamese were going back home, together with their Raja.4 Your High­ nesses said that instructions had come from Bangkok5 to this effect— [moreover] that His Excellency, the Commander-in-chief,6 who had come down into Kedah, had gone back to Singgora,7 while the Ruler Keddah although invited to do so by flattering promises’ (Burney Papers, v (i), 195). However, as the administrator of Province Wellesley, Low had some interest in proclaiming, if not proving, that Province Wellesley was to Kedah what Heaven is to Hell. It is interesting to find in the Straits Settlements Records, Letters from Native Rulers, Vol. F5, 224-5, a petition from the ‘poor Malay inhabitants who reside in the territory of Province Wellesley in the district of Captain Low’, dated 1 May 1831, pointing out that although they had ‘fled from Kedah with [the] intention of residing under the protection of the Honour­ able Company ... we are now suffering greater injury under Captain Low . . .’. 1 As the purpose of the present essay is historical and not philological, it is sufficient here to note briefly : (a) the inconsistent spelling (‘ambil/amil’ ; ‘hendak/ hendaq’; ‘qedah/qedah’), and (6) the partial Malayanization of certain of the Arabic-derived words (‘ahwal* for ‘ahwâl’; ‘râjab’ for ‘rajab’j &c.), although in view of spellings such as ‘iradat’ (for ‘irädat’), one suspects that some at least of the Malayanization was involuntary. 2 A village near the mouth of the Kedah River, close to Kedah Fort (see Logan, JIA, v. 54). It was, apparently, the place where the Malay auxiliary troops (of the Siamese garrison of the Fort) kept their families (Burney Papers, v (1), 168). 3 I read “«'ulya”, the superlative (feminine) of “a‘la”. 4 This must be the Siamese ‘Raja Kedah’, i.e. Phaya Aphay Thibet. 5 The Malay here—‘benua Siam’—is habitually used to denote Bangkok, as distinct from Nakhon (through whom Kedah usually conducted its dealings with Siam). 6 The Malay here reproduces the Siamese ‘eau khun mç thaph’. 7 i.e. Songkhla (“songkhlâ”).

& •f

\

Facsimile reproduction of the letter discussed in the essay

$

Kedah, Penang, and ‘Seberang Perai’ (Province Wellesley)

A Kedah Letter of 183g

163

of Kedah was going to Merdalong1 in this same tenth month.2 Your Highnesses bade us announce to all the Kedah people who had fled to Penaga that anybody who wanted to could go back to Kedah right away, while they still possessed at least a little property—rice (husked and unhusked), cows, buffaloes—all of which Your Highnesses would give back to them. When they heard this, everybody was very pleased and said that they wanted to go back—we would estimate that there were one or two thousand people who were proposing to go back in the month of Rajab or Sha'ban,3 to work their rice-fields and to celebrate the fasting month in Kedah.4 Your servants, too, with blessing of God Almighty, both intended to celebrate the fasting month in Kedah. However, at this juncture there arrived in Penang some sixty or seventy Kedah families who had fled from Kedah, bringing news that the sons of the Deputy-Governor5 of Kedah, called Nai Thang Chan and Nai Sak In6 had seized and carried off people living in the area7 intending to take them away to Merdalong with the Raja of Kedah,8 while the property belonging to those who had escaped had been seized by Nai Thang Chan and Nai Sak In. They said [too] that after His Excellency the Commander-in-chief had left, the Ruler of Kedah took into custody the [members of] Council9 appointed by His Excellency the Commander-in-chief, and began to arrest the Kedah people, although some of them managed to escape to Penang. When they saw this, all those who had proposed to return to Kedah held up with their preparations until such time as the report can be dis­ proved, [and to see] what gave rise to it. Your servants would, therefore, like to hear exactly what has happened before proceeding any further. This is what your servants have to report. 1 2

i.e. Phathalung. i.e. the tenth month of the Siamese (lunar) calendar, beginning during the

second week in Aug. 1839. 3 The first of Rajab was on 8/9 Sept. ; the first of Sha'bân, on 8/9 Oct. 1839. 4 The fasting month (Ramadan) would begin on 7 Nov. and last for some thirty days. The holiday (‘Hari Raya Puasa’) would probably be celebrated on 7 Dec. 1839. 5 I take it that the Malay here represents the Siamese “phra’ palad” (DeputyGovernor), and that the reference is to Phra’ Sena Nuchit, the brother of the Phaya of Kedah. The Burney Papers, iii (1), 126, confirm that he acted as Governor of the State during his brother’s absence. 6 I have been unable to identify these names. I take the first part of each name to be the Siamese “nây” (Mr.) but for the rest, can only conjecture some­ thing like “nây thang can(thr)” and “nây sak(ti) in(thr)”. 7 I take it that the word ‘mukim’ here refers to the district centring around the estuary of the Kedah river, i.e. including Kedah Fort, Alor Star, &c. 8 The Phaya of Phathalung at this time was another son of the Chau Phaya of Nakhon (by his principal wife), and thus a stepbrother of the Governor of Kedah (Anuson Siththikam, Phongsawadan Muang Nakhon, pp. 110-11). 9 The Malay here reproduces the Siamese “kromkâ(r)n” (Council, Committee).

i64

A Kedah Letter of 1839

Letter written on the 13 of Rajab,1 on Saturday, at seven o clock. End [of letter].

What answer, if any, this letter received, is not known, but if Tengku Anom and Tengku Hasan did indeed reply to it, their reply must have been a reassuring one. The Siamese ‘reign of terror’—if this is not an exaggeration often encountered in stories spread by refugees—could only have been of very brief duration, because the various members of the late Chau Phaya’s family had soon taken up the new posts allotted to them by the Siamese Commander-in-Chief. The episode was probably no more than a ‘final fling’ on the part of the Nakhonese, by way of saying to the province of ‘Saiburi’:2 ‘So farewell to the little good you bear me. . . .’3

APPENDIX i. The transliteration of Siamese adopted in this essay is based upon the following scheme :

1 22/23 Sept. 1839. 2 Saiburi* (Siamese “(thr)saiburi”)—not to be confused with the Patani Malay State of ‘Saiburi* (Siamese “sâyburî”)—is the Siamese name for Kedah, (cf. the Malay word ‘Cherai*—an attempt to reproduce the Siamese word). Although direct Siamese rule over Kedah was thus ended, Kedah remained a vassal of Siam until the signing of the Treaty of Bangkok in 1909. 3 King Henry the Eighth, Act III, Scene 2.

A Kedah Letter of 1839

165

(b) Vowels Front

High

Low

Back

i

V

u

e

e

0

a

9

N.B. Vowels may be short (as illustrated above), or long (written with a bar over them, thus “î”, “e”, &c.). (c) Tones Tones are not marked.

Note. ‘Narrow’ transcriptions are usually given on the first mention of the Siamese word, and enclosed within inverted commas, e.g. “nakhq(r)n s(r)i tha(rr)mmarat(ch)”. On subsequent repetition, diacritics are omitted, thus ‘Nakhon Si Thammarat’. Characters written, but not pronounced (in modern Siamese), are enclosed in brackets. 2. The transliteration of Malay is based upon that used by R. J. Wilkin­ son, A Malay-English Dictionary (2 vols., Mytilene, 1932).

3. The transliteration of Arabic uses bars over (for vowel length), dots under (for the ‘velarized’ consonants), and “ä” (for the ‘alif maqsùrah’).

823121

M

IX THE ORIGINS OF BRITISH CONTROL IN THE

MALAY STATES BEFORE COLONIAL RULE C. M. TURNBULL

[By 1867] the narrow interests of the old trading company, the in­ difference of the India Office to an outlying region were now things of the past. As early as 1862 there had been the writing on the walls of the Chinese kongsi houses in Larut: the old policy of isolation was doomed.1 The year 1874 marked a clear turning-point in the history of Malaya, with the apparently abrupt reversal of the time-honoured British policy of non-intervention in the Malay states. It was a change which was long overdue. By the time the East India Com­ pany was abolished in 1858 the Straits Government was already the paramount authority in the Malay Peninsula, and the Governor was urging Calcutta to adopt a more forceful policy in the neigh­ bouring states.2 While the Government of India was careful not to commit itself to this responsibility, Colonel Orfeur Cavenagh, last Indian Governor of the Straits Settlements, who assumed office in 1859, shared the merchants’ confidence in the fruits to be gained from opening up the hinterland.3 Convinced of the inability of most of the Malay rulers—‘for the most part illiterate debauchees’, as he described them4—to establish settled government in their kingdoms, the problem of how to pacify the Malay states without intervening was, to Cavenagh, ‘an enigma the solution of which, independent of its intimate connection with the commercial interests of our own subjects, would seem to be one of the respon­ sibilities attached to our high position as the dominant power in this quarter’.5 1 R. O. Winstedt, ‘A history of Perak’, JMBRAS xii. 1 (1934), 77. 2 Blundell to India, 13 Sept. 1858. S.S.R., R 33, 249. (The R, V, W, U, S, DD, and COD series of the Straits Settlements Records, are kept in the National Museum, Singapore.) 3 Cavenagh to India, 10 Sept, i860, S.S.R., R 37, 261-5. 4 Cavenagh to India, 6 Oct. i860, S.S.R., R 38, 17-18. 5 Cavenagh to India, 13 Oct. i860, S.S.R., R 38, 40-41.

The Malay States before Colonial Rule

167

Cavenagh’s requests for general instructions and for an exten­ sion of responsibility were received in Calcutta in silence, but he embarked on a series of piecemeal solutions to individual problems, which as long as they were successful earned him the cautious and lukewarm approval of the Government of India. His actions were building up a general extension of British influence and control throughout the Peninsula, but the Governor was placed in a difficult and almost intolerable position, driven into adopting a policy which had no official backing. Inevitably his first un­ successful move, which roused angry criticism in Parliament in 1863, led to reproofs from London and Calcutta, and to a total prohibition of any activity while Cavenagh remained in Singapore and the India Office was in control. The Colonial Office, taking over the Straits Settlements five years later at the repeated request of the Straits merchants and with no strategic considerations nor any desire to assume a more dominant role, was only too pleased to accept the clear veto on intervention in the Malay states which Calcutta had laid on Cavenagh. On the eve of the transfer of the Settlements to colonial govern­ ment the interior was still almost unknown to the European community in the Straits Settlements. Even the coasts were not thoroughly surveyed, and in sending a sketch-map of the Malay Peninsula drawn up by the Government Surveyor in 1861, Cavenagh warned Calcutta, *Our knowledge of the Peninsula is so slight that its accuracy cannot be depended upon’.1 The first European to travel across the Peninsula appears to have been Charles Gray, a Malacca merchant, who explored the route to Pahang in 1827 but died a month after his return to Malacca of jungle fever contracted during the trip.2 His experience did not invite emulation among his countrymen, and it was the Chinese who risked their lives in settling in the Malay states to farm, to mine, or to trade. Until the.1840*5 most of the mining was done by Malays, al­ though small scattered Chinese communities were to be found. There were, for instance, about 200 miners at Lukut in 1824 with their own Kapitan China, and nearly a thousand in Sungei Ujong 1 Cavenagh to India, 14 Feb. 1861, S.S.R., R 38, 222-3. 2 ‘Journal of a route overland from Malacca to Pahang across the Malayan Peninsula (in 1827)’, from the Malacca Observer, 27 Feb. 1827, JIA, vi (1852), 369-75 ; T. J. Newbold, Political and Statistical Account of the British Settle­ ments in the Straits of Malacca (London, 1839), ii. 136.

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The Origins of British Control in

four years later.1 But from the 1840’s Chinese immigrants flocked into the Malay states in thousands, to mine tin in Perak, Selangor, and Sungei Ujong, and to open up gambier and pepper plantations in Johore. At first the Malay chiefs borrowed money from Chinese merchants in the Straits Settlements to pay wages and advances to the labourers whom they invited into their territory, and the rulers were entitled to buy tin at settled prices which they then had to sell—but at great profit—to their Chinese backers.2 Sometimes these ventures ended in massacre, as in Sungei Ujong in 1828 and in Lukut six years later. Sometimes the merchants lost their money, as they did when the bid made by Sultan Muhammad of Selangor to prospect for tin in the Klang valley ended in failure. The exactions of Malay riverside chiefs, and the wars which followed, often threatened to put a stop to the tin trade altogether. But these troubles did not involve the British Government in Singapore, nor disturb the peace of the Straits Settlements. A more dangerous threat to peace arose in the 1850’s when more direct control of the mining and agriculture of the interior passed into the hands of the Chinese financiers of Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. They provided advances of capital to Chinese coolies in the Malay states, in return for which they monopolized the right to supply the miners with provisions and opium and to buy their produce at a favourable rate. The amount of capital involved is impossible to assess, for the main evidence rests on petitions from merchants in times of loss, which may well be exaggerated. But it was undoubtedly considerable by the mid1860’s. At that time there were a hundred gambier shops and over 200 provision stores in Singapore which relied almost entirely on the Johore gambier and pepper trade.3 In the early 1860’s the revenue of the small state of Lukut, which depended mainly on 1 Wong Lin Ken, ‘The Malayan tin industry to 1914, with special reference to the states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1959), 43-44. * For example, the arrangements in Sungei Ujong in the 1820’s and 1830’s detailed by Wong Lin Ken, 48-49, quoting P. J. Begbie, The Malayan Peninsula, (Madras 1834), 402-7, and T. J. Newbold, ‘An account of Sungei Ujong’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, iv (1835), 548-9, whereby the Malacca merchants supplied capital to the Dato Kiana of Sungei Ujong and two other chiefs, who advanced it to the miners in return for payment of tin and rights to collect tolls on tin and supply opium. 3 Singapore Chamber of Commerce to Governor, 30 Dec. 1865, S.S.R., W 55, item 301.

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tin, was 15,000 Spanish dollars a month, and when the Sungei Ujong tin trade was temporarily disrupted by the Dato Kiana in i860, the Malacca merchants complained that they had lost i34>°00 dollars in advances to the Chinese tin miners and claimed that the value of tin normally imported from Sungei Ujong amounted to 600,000 dollars. One of the senior officials denounced this ‘privilege of unlimited extortion from the collectors and producers’ as the worst evil in the relationship between the Straits Settlements and the native states.1 And, indeed, the abuse, which was common to all three settlements, went beyond mere exploita­ tion of the unfortunate coolies. The influx of large numbers of foreign miners aggravated trouble in the Malay states, whose organization was ill-suited to absorb large numbers of aliens. The leading merchants who financed the trade were themselves leaders of the secret societies with headquarters in the Straits Settlements, and disputes among the societies in the interior brought disorders in the Straits ports, particularly in Penang. In 1861, for instance, when the Hai San drove the Ghee Hin miners out of Larut, a thousand refugees fled to Penang, destitute and starving. The Hai San leaders planned to follow up with an attack upon the Ghee Hin society in Georgetown. Heavily armed junks began to arrive from Perak, and it was only timely intervention by the Resident Councillor of Penang in confiscating arms and intercepting re­ inforcements that prevented armed strife breaking out in the town.2 As Sir Richard Winstedt has commented, ‘It was Chinese immigration on a large scale that finally broke down Malay ad­ ministration’.3 The influx of Chinese coincided with a disintegra­ tion of the Malay hierarchy brought about by the economic complications of tin-mining, for in Perak, in Sungei Ujong, and in Selangor the rulers were themselves involved in mining ventures, and in general the legitimate rulers fared less well as businessmen than newcomers or subordinate chiefs. By the 1850’s the sultans of Perak had little control outside their own stockades. With the 1 G. W. Earl (then Assistant Resident of Province Wellesley) to Governor’s Secretary, 7 June i860, S.S.R., W 34 (semi-official). 2 Winstedt, JMBRAS xii. 80. Cavenagh to Rajah of Perak, 22 Aug. 1861, S.S.R., V 33, 329-30; Governor to R. C. Penang, 22 Aug. 1861, S.S.R., U 43, 180-1 ; R. C. Penang to Governor, 26 Aug., 7, 11, 20 Sept. 1861, S.S.R., DD 34, items 115, 126, 130, 134; Penang Gazette, 31 Aug., in Singapore Free Press,

26 Sept. 1861. 3 R. O. Winstedt, ‘A history of Selangor’, JMBRAS xii. 3 (1934), 16-17.

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passing over of Yusuf in 1857 and the appointment of the half­ royal Isma'il as Bendahara, the legitimacy of the succession was shaken. The way was paved for the rise of non-royal ambitious chiefs, notably the Laksamana and his party in Lower Perak and the wealthy Mentri Ngah Ibrahim in Larut, who depended for their power on their successful ventures into tin-mining. In Selangor the weak Sultan Muhammad, who succeeded to the throne in 1826, proved so inefficient in his attempts to mine tin that in 1839 he had to turn to the Riau Bugis Juma'at to rescue him from being thrown into a debtor’s prison in Malacca. As a re­ ward Juma'at and his brother Abdullah gained a foothold in the state and consolidated their position by successful exploitation of the tin resources of Lukut and Klang. As in Perak the rift between the legitimate rulers and the wealthy outsiders widened, and the disintegration was aggravated by the succession of Muhammad’s nephew and son-in-law, Abdul Samad, who owed his power to wealth from tin, and who was in league with the brothers Juma'at and Abdullah and in conflict with the blood relations of the dead sultan. Neither Johore nor Pahang possessed comparable wealth in tin, although there was a flourishing Chinese mining community at Kuantan. But the situation in these states was even more preg­ nant with trouble for the Singapore authorities, since European merchants had begun to meddle in politics there, whereas prior to the transfer of the Straits Settlements to the Colonial Office in 1867 there was little European activity in the more northerly states. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 and Burney’s Treaty with Siam in 1826, while setting the pattern for the East India Com­ pany’s general policy of restraint and non-intervention in the Peninsula and the archipelago, left the position of the private merchants anomalous. The division of the old Johore-Lingga empire under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 and the refusal of the East India Company to treat the Sultan of Johore as their vassal,1 led to the campaign of the former subordinate chieftains, the Temenggong of Johore and the Bendahara of Pahang, to estab­ lish themselves as independent rulers. In the intrigues which fol­ lowed European merchants and lawyers, and Chinese traders, farmers, and miners were to become deeply involved and to draw the Straits authorities into their concerns. 1 N. Tarling, ‘British policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, 1824-71’, JMBRAS xxx. 3 (1957), 25-26.

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From the beginning the Straits Government had anticipated trouble in allowing the Temenggong and the Sultan of Johore to live in Singapore as British pensioners,1 but in the early years they were both poor as church mice and offered no temptations for commercial exploitation. By the middle of the century, however, the Temenggong had become a wealthy man, as a result of the prosperity of the gutta-percha trade, over which he had established a stranglehold, and the opening up of the hitherto uninhabited state of Johore by Chinese gambier and pepper planters. In 1857 Governor Blundell estimated the Temenggong Ibrahim’s income at 100,000 Spanish dollars a year.2 Pahang was poorer and less developed, but the Bendahara and the Singapore merchants pro­ fited from the exploitation of the tin mines at Kuantan by Chinese enterprise and the growth of a considerable trade in gold, tin, and rattans. By the middle of the century the European merchants of Singa­ pore began to scheme against one another to acquire a share in the growing wealth of Johore—and to a lesser extent Pahang. One clique, led by W. H. Read, head of Singapore’s leading commercial firm, A. L. Johnston & Co., supported Sultan Ali as the legitimate ruler of Johore, and agitated for the reorganization of the state under a British Resident as the best guarantee for the restoration of peace throughout the Peninsula.3 In opposition, a group of mer­ chants headed by William Paterson and H. M. Simons threw in their lot with the Temenggong and the Bendahara of Pahang as more intelligent rulers who were likely to develop prosperous states and to co-operate with European merchants. In conjunction with William Napier, the senior law agent of Singapore, Paterson and Simons managed the Temenggong’s affairs to their own con­ siderable profit. Read fought hard to obtain a good bargain for Sultan Ali, but when after long wrangling the Treaty of Friend­ ship and Alliance was signed in March 1855 between Ali and Ibrahim, with the approval of the East India Company, Ali, in return for the title of Sultan, a cash payment of 5,000 dollars and a pension of 500 dollars a month, agreed to give up to the 1 Crawfurd to India, io Jan., i Oct. 1824, in C. B. Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (Singapore, 1902), i. 159-63, 178; Tarling,

JMBRAS xxx. 23. 2 Blundell to India, 18 Nov. 1857, S.S.R., R 32, 162-73. 3 For example, letter to Editor of the Singapore Free Press, 11 July 1861, under Read’s pen-name of ‘Delta’.

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Temenggong all claim on Johore and its revenues, except for the province of Muar. Prior to 1874 all'the arrangements made by the British authorities in the Malay states aimed at settling outstanding disputes and avoiding the need for further intervention. It was a policy doomed to failure when meddling in the states of the interior offered such tempting prizes to private individuals from the Straits Settlements. The unintended result was that the authorities built up obligations and responsibilities for preserving the peace of the Peninsula, which the activities of merchants, Chinese miners, and ambitious Malay chiefs sought to extend. Thus the Johore Treaty of 1855 proved to be not the final settlement which the directors antici­ pated,1 but merely the basis for new intrigue. Not only Sultan Ali but many other Malay chiefs were restive in face of the upstart Temenggong’s mounting power and wealth, while in Singapore those European merchants who were not directly concerned with promoting the Temenggong’s cause objected to the treaty and to the secrecy with which it was negotiated.2 Sultan Ali and his family, supported by Read, constantly refused to acknowledge the implications of the 1855 treaty and continued to make fruitless demands for what they claimed to be their share of the increasing revenues of Johore.3 The relations of Blundell, who became Governor a few weeks after the 1855 treaty was signed, with the Temenggong Ibrahim and his European advisers were stormy. The new Governor was anxious to have the Temenggong removed from Singapore and set to govern Johore as an active ruler. With all the demands of the Temenggong satisfied under the 1855 treaty, however, there was no bargaining counter left to cajole him into leaving Singapore.4 Cavenagh inherited Blundell’s worry about the intrigues of the European merchants in the politics of Johore. Troubled by many complaints of the ill-treatment of Chinese fishermen or small traders from Singapore at the hands of officials and villagers on 1 Directors to India, 28 Dec. 1855, in India to Blundell, 11 Mar. 1856, S.S.R., S 23, item 68; Directors to India, 28 Jan. 1857, in India to Blundell, 31 Mar. 1857, S.S.R., S 25, item 76. 2 Singapore Free Press, 10 June, 23 Aug. 1855; Annual retrospect for 1855 in Singapore Free Press, 3 Jan. 1856. 3 Ali to Blundell, 18 Nov. 1858, S.S.R., W 28, item 414,; Cavenagh to Ali, 3 June i860, S.S.R., V 29, 110-11. 4 Blundell to India, 12 May 1859, S.S.R., R 35, 286-7.

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the mainland, he urged Calcutta to expel the Temenggong from Singapore if he failed to guarantee rights for British subjects in his courts.1 Cavenagh’s irritation mounted as further investigations' revealed the duplicity of the Temenggong’s law agents and the degree to which Ibrahim had fallen into their power, and he blamed the inactivity of Calcutta for allowing this situation to develop.2 He was appalled at Ibrahim’s neglect of his state : There is not a road through his territory and the only signs of civilisa­ tion that I am aware of are a house built for H. H.’s accommodation whenever he may visit Johore and a saw mill recently established, doubtless to enable his advisers to realise a handsome profit from the sale of timber procurable in the forests on the mainland.3

The only solution he saw was to build up Abu Bakar, Ibrahim’s eldest son, with whom Cavenagh was much impressed, as the ruler of Johore.4 On assuming sovereignty in Johore on the death of his father in January 1862, the new Temenggong issued a proclamation which the Governor agreed to publish in the Straits Government

Gazette : It will ever be his greatest aim, with the blessing of God, aided by the friendship and good counsels of the British government, to rule his country so as to promote the welfare, prosperity and happiness of its inhabitants.5 To strengthen the Temenggong’s position further, and to foster peace in the southern states of the Peninsula, Cavenagh threw his energies into negotiating a treaty between the Temenggong and the Bendahara of Pahang, which was signed early in 1862. He recommended the measure to Calcutta as : perhaps a prelude to other similar engagements equally recognising our paramount authority and thus enabling us without any undue grasping of power, to imperceptibly extend our influence over the surrounding chiefs and to exercise over their actions that legitimate control which our position so justly demands, a control that, whilst enlarging the circle of operations of our own trade and thus improving its prospects, 1 Cavenagh to India, 12, 18, 28 June; 2, 17, 22 July 1861, S.S.R., R 39, 118-43, 153-5, 170-b I75"9, 197-201» 2O4“5, 3O9_I4; R 4L I33~5* 2 Cavenagh to India, 22 July 1861, S.S.R., R 39, 197-201; Cavenagh, Reminiscences of an Indian Official (London, 1884), 312-14. 3 Cavenagh to India, 22 July 1861, S.S.R., R 39, 200-1. 4 Cavenagh, Reminiscences, 273-4. 5 Temenggong to Cavenagh, 11 Apr. 1862, S.S.R., W 42, item 126.

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The Origins of British Control in

by opening new fields hitherto but imperfectly explored, could only tend to the benefit of the rulers and people over whom it might be exerted.1

His advice evoked no sympathetic response in Calcutta, where the treaty was regarded in the same light as the Johore Treaty of Friendship of 1855—and with no more justification—as the final settlement of an existing problem. While he still employed Simons and Napier, Abu Bakar did not put himself entirely in the hands of agents and lawyers as his father had done, and he set out to free himself from dependence on either the government or the merchants of Singapore. To remove com­ plaints of the ill-treatment of British subjects in Johore criminal courts he revised the harsh Islamic code to make it ‘more conform­ able to European ideas’.2 He set up an English school at Tanjong Putri, the modern Johore Bahru, encouraged vaccination, sponsored experiments in growing cotton and tobacco, and was energetic in capturing and returning escaped convicts to Singapore. Within two years of his succession, Cavenagh was full of praise for the new ruler,3 and by then the economic progress of Johore was advanced enough to induce Abu Bakar at last to move his residence from Singapore to Johore, to the Governor’s great relief.4 At Cavenagh’s suggestion the young ruler paid a visit to England in 1866, which was a great personal triumph. After being lionized in London society and entertained at Windsor, he returned in royal style to Singapore, where he was given an official reception.5 By that time he was acknowledged as more powerful than any other Malay chief, and his authority was beyond challenge. In 1868 he was given the title of Maharaja, and in 1885 he was recognized as Sultan of Johore. Paterson and Simons continued to prosper as the economy of Johore expanded, and Cavenagh could speak of the state on the eve of the transfer of the Straits Settlements to colonial rule as ‘virtually under our protection’.6 But in fact neither the 1 Cavenagh to India. 16 Dec. 1861, S.S.R., R 40, 160-1 ; Cavenagh, Reminis­ cences , 324-5. 2 Temenggongto Governor, 20 Aug., 28 Sept. 1863, S.S.R., W 47, item 127; W 48, item 190. 3 Cavenagh to India, 7 Jan. 1864, S.S.R., R 41, 216-17. 4 Cavenagh to Sir Charles Wood (S. of S. for India), 22 Sept. 1865, Halifax papers, uncatalogued letters, (deposited in the India Office Library, London). 5 Governor to India, 15 Mar. 1866; Singapore Free Press, 19 July; 1, 8 Nov.; 6 Dec. 1866. 6 Governor to India, 17 Jan. 1867, S.S.R., R 41, 381-2.

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Straits Government nor any Singapore mercantile firm could then claim to dominate Johore. Immensely popular in Singapore society, Abu Bakar was loyal to Queen Victoria but determined to retain control of Johore for himself, to promote the wealth of his state and to give British subjects no cause for complaint. It was an ideal background for the promotion of the economic interests of Singa­ pore, and represented a triumph for Cavenagh’s policy as well as for the Temenggong himself. To set up strong enlightened in­ dependent rulers, who could provide peace in their states and security for outside traders, was the goal at which the limited policy of intervention in the role of paramount power was aiming. But it was not paralleled by similar success in other states. In Pahang the Singapore merchants and the Straits Government suffered rebuffs when they were drawn into civil war, which broke out after the death of the old Bendahara Ali in October 1857. During a reign of more than half a century Ali, like his counterparts, the Temenggongs, had consolidated his position as an independent ruler, casting off allegiance to the Sultan of Johore, and under his peaceful administration the Singapore Chinese merchants had built up a valuable trade, from which the Bendahara himself derived a substantial revenue.1 This prosperity was threatened soon after Ali’s death when his younger son, Wan Ahmad, revolted against the new Bendahara Mutahir. The Temenggong and his Singapore supporters wanted to crush the rebellion, and Ibrahim’s lawyer, William Napier, called on Governor Blundell to intervene to restore the Bendahara to his capital, from which he had been temporarily driven out.2 But the Governor, alarmed to see the revival of the dissensions among the European community in Singapore, wanted to localize the dispute and prevent outside intervention.3 To the anger of the Temenggong and his advisers, he foiled the scheme of two European adventurers, who had signed a formal agreement with the Temenggong, where­ by they engaged to recruit a force of about eighty European sailors and eighty Bugis and drive Wan Ahmad out of Pahang.45 1 Bendahara to Governor, 17 June 1862, S.S.R., W 42, item 232. 2 Napier to Blundell, 20 Nov. 1857, S.S.R., W 25, item 466. 3 Blundell to India, 12 Feb. 1858, S.S.R., R 32, 309-16; India to Blundell, 2, 22 Mar. 1858, S.S.R., S 26, items 37, 148. 4 Blundell to India, 18 Nov. 1857, S.S.R., R 32, 168-70; Temenggong to Blundell, 3, 29 Feb. 1858, S.S.R., W 26, items 50, 75; Blundell to Temenggong 5 Feb. 1858, S.S.R., V 24, 110-18; Singapore Free Press, 4 Feb. 1858.

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Trade with Pahang was soon brought to a standstill, and in August 1858 the Singapore Chamber of Commerce appealed to Blundell to take action against Wan Ahmad, who was reputed to be drawing support from the Sultans of Johore and Trengganu.1 Cavenagh followed Blundell in trying to localize the dispute by depriving both Wan Ahmad and the Bendahara of outside help, and when the Singapore Chamber of Commerce appealed once more in July 1861 for active intervention, the Governor was con­ fident that the Bendahara would easily prevail without British support.2 For a time his optimism appeared to be justified. Boats began to arrive once more in Singapore bringing tin and gutta­ percha which had been buried during Wan Ahmad’s occupation,3 and the merchants set out to profit from the situation. The contestants were piling up debts in Singapore. As a reward for the large sums which William Paterson lent him on several occasions and for his undertaking to repay to a Chinese merchant a debt of nearly 12,000 Spanish dollars which the Bendahara had incurred, in November 1861 Mutahir granted Paterson a mono­ poly of the right to work the tin on the Kuantan River ‘now and for ever’.4 The Bendahara undertook to protect the property and machinery and in return Paterson and Simons were to pay a modest duty of 10 per cent on the tin they exported. Peace seemed assured, the miners flocked back to Kuantan in the early months of 1862, and prosperity began to return to Pahang. In the meantime the Governor was absorbed in troubles in Sungei Ujong. In i860 the Dato Kiana, Undang of Sungei Ujong, attempted to levy an impost of 4,000 Spanish dollars on the Chinese community, in addition to the capitation tax and fixed tolls and duties on tin which they normally paid. When the Chinese refused, the Malay chiefs cut off their supplies of food and opium, and this provoked the miners to revolt. During the fighting the houses and shops of the Chinese were destroyed, 200 of them were slaughtered, and the rest fled across the borders to Malacca 1 Singapore Chamber of Commerce to Blundell, 30 Aug. 1858, S.S.R., W 27, item 285. 2 Chamber of Commerce to Governor, 12 July 1861, S.S.R., W 39, item 33; Governor to Chamber of Commerce, 18 July 1861, S.S.R., V 33, 276-8; Cavenagh to India, 7 Aug. 1861, S.S.R., R 39, 219-20. 3 Singapore Free Press, 29 Aug. 1861. 4 Agreement between Tun Koris (son of Bendahara Mutahir) and William Paterson, 5 Nov. 1861, copy in Paterson and Simons to Governor, 23 Oct. 1862, S.S.R., W. 44, item 187.

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and Lukut. The Chinese merchants in Malacca, who financed the Sungei Ujong tin trade, petitioned the Resident Councillor to restore order, and a meeting was held between the British and the Dato Kiana in September i860, when the Malay ruler promised to repay all the advances to the Malacca merchants if the Chinese would return to the mines. He asked for a commercial treaty with the British, under which the latter would guard the Linggi River, which was the main highway from Sungei Ujong to the sea, in return for the right to levy 10 per cent on all tin brought down from the mines. The Straits officials placed little confidence in these assurances,1 and Cavenagh was convinced that full-scale interven­ tion would eventually be necessary. When he visited Malacca shortly afterwards in December i860, some of the Chinese merchants tried to persuade him that the British should annex the neighbouring Malay states. It was not a policy which was likely to find favour with the Government of India, and the Straits officials had to confine their labours to putting pressure upon the Dato Kiana to honour his agreements and keep the peace.2 The Chinese miners returned to work in Sungei Ujong, but their position remained precarious throughout the remaining years of Indian rule in the Straits Settlements. In Perak, too, the Governor became involved in trouble when the Hai San miners expelled their Ghee Hin rivals in 1861. Cavenagh pressed the reluctant sultan to provide compensation for the dis­ possessed miners and imposed a blockade on the Larut River in April 1862 which quickly led to the payment of over 17,000 Spanish dollars to cover compensation for the miners and pay for the expenses of the blockade. Guarantees were given to abide by the rate of export duties laid down in the Anglo-Perak Treaty of September 1825. By the middle of 1862 Cavenagh’s firm policy met with general support from the Singapore merchants and the press, who com­ mended his measures to secure reparations at Larut, his retaliation against the exactions of the Dato Kiana in Sungei Ujong, and his apparent success in curbing the Pahang civil war and in establish­ ing peace between Johore and Pahang through the treaty which was signed in June of that year between the Temenggong and the 1 Cavenagh to India, 6, 13 Oct. i860, S.S.R., R 38, 7-18, 38-43« 2 Cavenagh to India, 15 July 1861, S.S.R., R 39, 167-8; Governor to Dato Kiana, 4 Aug. 1862, S.S.R., V 36.

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Bendahara.1 Cavenagh, however, was only too conscious of the weakness and ambiguity of his position. When the approachable Lord Elgin was appointed Governor-General of India, Cavenagh appealed in May 1862 in a personal letter for guidance on his general policy in the neighbouring states,2 and he repeated the plea officially to India two months later, urging that, in view of the French encroachments in Cochin-China, it was vital to establish peace in the Malay Peninsula and so to discourage foreign inter­ ference.3 But his appeals for general guidance went unanswered, and his specific proposals, such as a request to be allowed to accept the Sultan of Johore’s offer to put Muar under British protection, met with quick rebuffs and warnings not to open negotiations which might lead to extending British territory.4 Cavenagh was left to face a new and more serious threat to the newly restored prosperity and peace of Pahang. After his earlier defeat the rebel Wan Ahmad took refuge in Trengganu, where he was joined in the summer of 1862 by Mahmud, ex-Sultan of Lingga, a reckless and dissolute young man, who had been deposed by the Dutch in 1857 and driven into exile. Mahmud’s expulsion brought him on the Malayan scene at the beginning of the troubles in Pahang, but after some profitless intriguing with both sides, he retreated to a life of profligate luxury in Bangkok. He had a strong following in the Peninsula, since he had a better claim than any other Malay ruler to be regarded as heir to the former JohoreLingga empire, and when he appeared in Trengganu in 1862 as the friend of Wan Ahmad, the indication that the Pahang rebel was now backed by Siam spread despair among the Bendahara’s party. Mutahir warned Paterson that he could not guarantee to protect his property if civil war broke out again and urged him to persuade the Governor of Singapore and the Temenggong to come to his rescue.5 Paterson’s 400 Chinese labourers in Kuantan were so scared that they went on strike, and he was faced with the alterna­ tive of evacuating the coolies and so sacrificing the advances of 1 Singapore Free Press, 1 May, 26 June 1862; Penang Gazette, 12 Apr. 7 June in Singapore Free Press, 1 May, 19 June 1862; Penang Argus, 9 June in Singapore Free Press, 20 June 1862. 2 Cavenagh to Elgin, 25 May 1862, Elgin papers, F 83/25 (deposited in the India Office Library, London). 3 Cavenagh to India, 24 July 1862, S.S.R., R 41, 47. 4 India to Cavenagh, 18 Mar. 1862, S.S.R., S 30, item 48. 5 Bendahara to Paterson, 10 Oct. 1862, copy in Paterson and Simons to Governor, 23 Oct. 1862, S.S.R., W 44, item 187.

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money which he had made to them, or leaving them in Kuantan at the risk of their lives and with the danger of losing the large stores of rice, opium, and other supplies which he had sent to Kuantan to tide them over the coming monsoon season. His appeal for Cavenagh’s help was supported by an independent call for aid from the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the Singapore Chinese merchants, whose property in Pahang was estimated at over 80,000 Spanish dollars.1 During the monsoon season, which usually starts in the second week of November and lasts until the beginning of March, it is impossible for ships to enter the rivers of Pahang and Trengganu, so that Cavenagh had at the most ten days in which to act if he was to thwart any plan which Wan Ahmad and Mahmud had made for invading Pahang. The Governor had no time to consult Calcutta, and no general instructions to guide him. Urged on by the Chamber of Commerce, he took the drastic step of sending a gun­ boat to escort Mahmud back to Bangkok and to bombard the Sultan’s fort if he refused to surrender his guest.2 The ultimatum was ignored, the Trengganu fort was shelled, and Mahmud fled inland. Cavenagh may have been right in claiming that his action demo­ lished further Siamese ambitions in the Malay Peninsula,3 but the bombardment was condemned by Calcutta and the India Office.4 The news was greeted with anger in the House of Commons, as a ‘most disgraceful occurrence to the British name and arms, the most cruel outrage that has taken place in the eastern seas, and as impolitic as it was unjust and cruel’. Sir Charles Wood, the Secre­ tary of State for India, half admitted that Cavenagh was in the wrong.5 It was a painful parliamentary experience which he had no intention of suffering twice. Cavenagh’s intervention did no harm to Wan Ahmad’s cause, 1 Paterson and Simons to Cavenagh, 23 Oct. 1862, S.S.R., W 44, item 187; Singapore Chamber of Commerce to Governor, 31 Oct. 1862, S.S.R., W 44, item 199; Singapore Free Press, 9, 23, 30 Oct. 1862. 2 Cavenagh to Chamber of Commerce, 3 Nov. 1862, S.S.R., V 36; Cavenagh to India, 11 Nov. 1862, S.S.R., R 41, 84-88; Cavenagh, Reminiscences, 303-9. 3 Cavenagh to India, 24 Nov. 1862, S.S.R., R41, 89-93; Cavenagh to Wood, 21 June, 5 Oct. 1864, Halifax papers, uncatalogued letters; Cavenagh, Reminis­ cences, 306. 4 Wood to Governor-General, 2 May 1863, Halifax papers, Letter book 13. 5 Hansard, 10 July 1863, third series, clxxii. 586-93; debate reported in Singapore Free Press, 20 Aug. 1863.

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nor did it help Paterson, Simons, and the other Singapore merchants involved. By the Johore-Pahang treaty of 1862, the Temenggong was at last given the right to help the Bendahara, but he was too late to save his ally, who by his cruelty and irresolute leadership had stirred up the hostility of all the inland chiefs of Pahang. In 1863 they rose in support of Wan Ahmad and under his command routed the combined forces of the Temenggong and the Bendahara. By 1864 the Bendahara and his heir were dead, and Wan Ahmad was in undisputed mastery of the state.1 His victory brought tranquillity to Pahang but did not restore prosperity to the Singapore miners and traders. During the 1863 campaign Wan Ahmad’s men looted Paterson’s and Simons’s warehouses in Kuantan, and after his triumph the new Bendahara repudiated their claim for nearly 50,000 Spanish dollars compen­ sation for damage to property and loss of mining rights. He con­ fiscated the tin himself and shipped it for sale in Singapore with a rival mercantile firm.2 Cavenagh wanted to blockade Wan Ahmad and force him to give compensation to Paterson and Simons,3 but the Supreme Government was not prepared to take any action.4 Wan Ahmad would not deign even to correspond on the subject,5 and Paterson’s and Simons’s efforts to revive their claims after the transfer to the Colonial Office met with no better response.6 The episode marked a resounding defeat for the Temenggong and his party in Singapore, but it did not help the cause of Sultan Ali and his advisers. Ahmad won his victory without Ali’s help and spurned the sultan’s offer to go to Pahang in 1864 to receive his homage.7 The outcome of the struggle revealed how little power the British had in Pahang, for Wan Ahmad succeeded in face of opposition from one group of European merchants and 1 Cavenagh to Wood, 3 Nov. 1864, Halifax papers, uncatalogued letters. 2 Paterson and Simons to Governor, 4 Aug. 1863, S.S.R., W 47, item 103. 3 Cavenagh to India, 15 Aug., 19 Oct., 16 Nov. 1863, S.S.R., R 41, 165-9, 179-80, 190. 4 Cavenagh to India, 31 Dec. 1863, S.S.R., R 41, 211-12. 5 Paterson and Simons to Governor, 20 Apr. 1864, S.S.R., W 50, item 252; Cavenagh to India, 21 Apr. 1864, S.S.R., R 41, 230; India to Cavenagh, 23 May 1864, S.S.R., S 32, item 135. 6 Paterson and Simons to S. of S. for Colonies, 8 May, 20 June, 18 July 1868, in S. of S. to Governor Ord., 9 June, 2 July, 15 Aug. 1868, COD 4, 99, 119, 116. 7 Ali to Cavenagh, 25 June 1864, S.S.R., W 50, item 446; Cavenagh to India, 9 Aug. 1864, S.S.R., R 41, 248-50.

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lawyers and with no help from the rival party. Cavenagh blamed the Calcutta Government for what had happened in Pahang and Johore in allowing commercial firms to meddle instead of appointing a British Adviser.1 He believed that the best guarantee for future peace lay in building up the authority of Abu Bakar and persuading Wan Ahmad to consolidate the treaty made between the previous Bendahara and the Temenggong in 1862. But he feared that the merchants were prepared to overthrow this arrangement and to foment trouble in order to weaken Johore and vie for a monopoly of the Pahang trade.2 Cavenagh by that time was obsessed by the dangers of intrigue among the Singapore mercantile community and exaggerated the part which their rivalry had played in produc­ ing troubles in the past. ‘It is indeed owing to the enmity existing between two European firms [viz. L. A. Johnston & Co. and Pater­ son and Simons] that the dissensions between the Malay states in a great measure have arisen’, he advised India in October 1864.1 and he looked upon official intervention as necessary not so muchr to restore order or protect the lives and property of British subjects as rather to thwart the machinations of the European merchants. He appealed in vain for permission to follow up his action in Trengganu effectively: Without our interference the war may be protracted for months to come. Independent of higher considerations, there is no doubt that the preservation of the tranquillity of the Peninsula is essential to the development of our commerce and equally no doubt that it is at present in our power, with the aid of the naval force in the Straits, to enforce that tranquillity by bringing the weight of our influence into the scale between the two contending parties.3

His plea for specific instructions was repeated three months later in the face of silence from Calcutta : ‘ I trust I may be pardoned in taking this opportunity of earnestly impressing upon the Supreme Government the necessity for adopting some specific line of policy with regard to the native states in the Malay Peninsula.’4 Un­ deterred by the condemnation of his conduct in Trengganu, Cavenagh again urged the Supreme Government later that year 1 2 3 4

Cavenagh Cavenagh Cavenagh Cavenagh

823121

to to to to

Wood, 5 Oct. 1864, Halifax papers, uncatalogued letters. Wood, 4 Aug. 1864, Halifax papers, uncatalogued letters. India, 18 May 1863, S.S.R., R 41, 139. India, 25 Aug. 1863, S.S.R., R 41, 171-2. N

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to extend control over the Malay states, warning Calcutta that she had already incurred responsibilities in the hinterland which she could not throw off. The Governor saw no need to intervene in domestic dissensions. Indeed he thought much of the unruliness of the Malay chiefs would disappear once the European firms with whom they dealt could no longer encourage them into opposi­ tion towards the Governor in the confidence that Calcutta would reverse his policy.1 The Government of India, however, remained unprepared to lay down any principles beyond steering clear of involvement in the Peninsula.2 A personal appeal by Cavenagh to the Secretary of State produced no constructive reply,3 and for the remainder of his administration Cavenagh dared not even issue warnings or reproofs, since he knew they could not be backed by force.4 His pleas to be allowed to negotiate a fresh agreement with Perak to safeguard British trade produced only warnings from Calcutta not to extend British commitments and strict orders to confine investigations to individual cases of wrongs inflicted on British subjects in violation of treaty obligations.5 Even the inquiries Cavenagh instigated in Perak in 1865 were condemned as offensive to the Raja : The Governor General in Council fears that there may be a tendency among the authorities at Penang to push British interference with the neighbouring native states further than is either necessary or desirable... If British subjects choose to live and trade in an uncivilised country like Perak, they must submit to the local customs and practices.6 And the following month Calcutta showed even less enthusiasm about encouraging British subjects to trade in nearby states : It is doubtful how far the British government is justified in interfering to defend even the life and property of the innumerable Asiatic subjects of Her Majesty who for their own private advantage choose to take up their residence in foreign states under an uncivilised or weak ad­ ministration.7 1 Cavenagh to India, 31 Oct., 31 Dec. 1863, S.S.R., R 41, 183-4. 2 India to Cavenagh, 3 Mar. 1864, S.S.R., S 32, item 51; India to S. of S., 8 Apr. 1864, CO 273/6 (Colonial Office records, housed in the Public Record Office). 3 Cavenagh to Wood, 21 June 1864, Halifax papers, uncatalogued letters. 4 Cavenagh to India, 6 Dec. 1864, S.S.R., R 41, 275-6. 5 India to Cavenagh, 16 July 1863; Cavenagh to India, 12 Aug. 1863, S.S.R., R. 41, 162-5. 6 India to Cavenagh, 15 Feb. 1866, S.S.R., S 35, item 30. 7 India to Cavenagh, 12 Mar. 1866, S.S.R., S 35, item 50.

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This was to remain the attitude of the Government of India to the end of its rule in the Straits Settlements. By 1867 its policy towards the Malay states was the most bitterly attacked aspect of the whole administration and was satisfactory neither to the merchants nor to the officials. There was every indication that a glittering future awaited commercial enterprise in the hinterland, and in the last few years before the transfer the painful experiences of firms such as Paterson and Simons in Pahang and the misfortunes of the Chinese miners in the anarchical west-coast states made the reversal of the policy of non-intervention the cardinal aim both of the merchants who were agitating for colonial rule and of the governors. It was not until nearly seven years after the transfer of the Straits Settlements to the colonial régime that the policy of non­ intervention was abandoned. By that time growing European interest in tin mining in the western states induced influential people in London to agitate for a more forceful policy, and the increasing concern over possible foreign encroachment in the Malay states tipped the balance and led to the changing of a policy which had been unrealistic for more than a decade.

X THE COLONIAL OFFICE AND THE PROTECTED MALAY STATES EMILY SADKA

British colonial historians generally begin their accounts by drawing attention to the great diversity of the territories of the colonial empire, the varieties of physical environment, racial type and social structure, and the differences in the processes of acquisi­ tion, constitutional development, and degree of local participation in government. Yet despite these differences between the various territories, British colonial administrations around the world have maintained uniform and distinctive bureaucratic standards, due in large part to the direction and vigilance of the Colonial Office. The Colonial Office exercised a close control over Crown colonies, particularly those in the pre-representative stage of government, and the colonial protectorates which came within the British sphere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though not legally part of the dominions of the Crown, were nevertheless assimilated to the Crown Colony type. Their governments were constituted by Order in Council under the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890, which authorized the Crown to exercise any juris­ diction which it possessed in a foreign country in as ample a manner as if the jurisdiction had been acquired by cession or conquest; and over these territories also, the Colonial Office came to exercise a formal control. But there were a number of protected states in which sovereign authority belonged to local rulers and in which the Crown exercised no jurisdiction ; in these states British influence was preserved by resident officers whose interference in internal administration was generally confined (at any rate in name) to the tendering of advice. The Protected Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang, which came under British control between 1874 and 1889, fell within this category. The authority of the Colonial Office over these states never acquired a statutory basis. They

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admitted British ‘advice’ by local treaty and by permissive letters addressed by the Rulers to the Straits Government, but these instruments gave the Crown no jurisdiction in their territories and none was ever claimed. The instruments differed in their termin­ ology and provisions, but their common purpose was to establish in each state a British Resident whose duty was to supervise the revenues and the general administration of the country. In theory the Resident was there to ‘advise’ the native authority by whom the government of the country was to be carried on; but by 1878 it was clear to those concerned in the government of the states that this was ‘one of those fictions in which we seem to delight’1 and that the Residents were in fact ruling. Subject only to the control of the Governor, they were initiating legislation, framing policy, and carrying on the government in all its branches through State administrations directly under their authority, and manned by British district and departmental officers. It was not possible for the Secretary of State to disclaim responsibility for the Residents’ actions; instances of misgovernment, oppression, official corrup­ tion, and mismanagement of public funds would surely be brought home to him by the British Press and Parliament. The exercise of authority over these territories by the Colonial Office, and the determination of its limits, were matters of difficulty and debate during the whole period between intervention and Federation. There were problems of procedure; the channels of control whereby the Colonial Office supervised the administration of a Crown Colony were not available. There were problems of policy; informal control, often adopted for reasons of expediency, acquired a moral justification and created vested interests whose resistance to metropolitan regulation was the more difficult to overcome because it had a legal and moral basis. The maintenance of administrative standards became a matter of delicate adjustment between ideals of non-interference on the one hand, and administra­ tive order and integrity on the other. To begin with, the Colonial Office was inhibited by self-imposed restraints. In the first few years after intervention it had itself tried to check the assumption of administrative control ; it had prohibited 1 Speech by Sir Frederick Weld, Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, xv (1883-4), 281. See also F. Swettenham, The Real Malay (London, 1899), 22, and speech by Sir William Robinson, Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, xxiii (1891-2), 40.

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annexation, had lectured Residents and Governors and warned them against extensions of responsibility, and had approved of policy statements reminding them that they were administrators and not rulers. To issue directives on matters of internal administra­ tion was inconsistent with this position. There were officials in the Colonial Office who disliked extensions of responsibility and feared to be dragged into Native States’ affairs at the heels of impetuous local officials ; and paradoxically, those in the Colonial Office who wished for expansion also invoked the principle of non-interference, on behalf of strong and self-willed Governors and Residents who wanted a free hand in the states. Thus non-interference, preached at first by those opposed to extensions of responsibility, came to be taken up by the officials most sympathetic to strong, expansionist local administrators and most anxious to see them work un­ hampered by control from London.1 The attempts by the Colonial Office to assert responsibility were also hampered from time to time by the opposition of power­ ful local administrators, jealous of the independence and freedom of action which they enjoyed as a result of their loosely defined authority. The Resident acted under the supervision of the Governor, who interfered with the legislative, judicial, and execu­ tive processes within the states whenever he judged fit.2 Yet the principle of non-interference with native rulers was noisily in­ voked to defend the personal rule of Resident and Governor. Sir 1 Among the permanent officials, the strongest supporter of British expansion in the Peninsula was C. P. Lucas, who drafted most of the dispatches dealing with the Malay States from 1878 onwards. He was a close friend of Swettenham (Resident of Selangor from 1882-9, an(^ of Perak 1889-95) and was his mouth­ piece in the Colonial Office. In nearly every case of maladministration that came before the Secretary of State between 1890 and 1895, Lucas strenuously resisted the attempts of his colleagues to interfere. He was also a strong supporter of the ambitions of Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (Colonial Secretary 1878-85 and Governor from 1887-93) f°r the development of Pahang, though Pahang was financially a disaster, and Lucas’s colleagues were very critical of developments there. Lucas came into endless conflict with the Assistant Under-Secretary, Fairfield, on the general administration of the states, and on Pahang. Fairfield pressed for closer control over the Residents, opposed expansion in Pahang, and aligned himself with Maxwell (Resident of Selangor from 1889-92 and Colonial Secretary 1892-5) and Dickson (Colonial Secretary 1885-92). Maxwell and Dickson were strong supporters of administrative discipline; Swettenham urged the need for flexibility in the states, which meant leaving discipline to the discretion of the Residents. Between Maxwell and Dickson on the one hand, and Swettenham and Smith on the other, there was a rivalry and dislike verging on hatred. 2 See E. Sadka, ‘The State Councils of Perak and Selangor’, in Papers on Malayan Historyt ed. K. G. Tregonning (Singapore, 1962), 106-8.

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Frederick Weld, who had arranged with the Resident the appoint­ ment of a railway engineer to advise the Selangor Government without apparently referring the matter to the Sultan (whose ideas on the matter would have been of little help), became very eloquent on the subject of states’ rights when the Secretary of State vetoed the appointment. Weld’s successor, Smith, who was equally asser­ tive in his relations with the states, objected to interference with certain regulations for the registration and control of prostitutes; he declared that the Colonial Office directive on the subject would constitute ‘so far as I can call to mind, an unprecedented inter­ ference with their affairs’.1 (Legislation on this subject was actually awaiting his sanction when he wrote his dispatch protesting against Colonial Office interference.) The Colonial Office had some idea of the relations between the Governors, the Residents, and the Rulers, -and was not much impressed by constitutional lectures on states’ rights. While he was Resident of Perak, Swettenham wrote in connexion with a proposed curtailment of legalized public gaming, that the Sultan had asked him to convey ‘a very strong protest against what he considered an unwarrantable interference with his rights and privileges and an interpretation of the terms of the Pangkor Engagement which he thought could not be justified or maintained’.2 Fairfield, the Assistant Under-Secretary, thought Swettenham’s letter ‘a bogus piece of impertinence, mainly his (Mr. Swettenham’s) own invention . . .’. He minuted on another paper, ‘Mr. Swettenham and the Sultan form a sort of Spenloe [nc] and Jorkins firm. Mr. Swettenham is always doing his best to get the Sultan more money, and the Sultan is always willing to come up to the scratch and express repugnance to anything proposed by the Secretary of State which Mr. Swettenham does not wish to see done.’3 On one occasion the Resident and the Governor put forward 1 CO 273/176, Smith to Knutsford, 406 of 29 Oct. 1891. * CO 273/198, Swettenham to Colonial Secretary, 5 Oct. 1894, in Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 12 Oct. 1894. The Sultan wrote independently in Sultan to Governor, 20 July 1894, enclosed in Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 30 July 1894, CO 273/196. The Sultan’s letter contains no reference to his rights or privileges or to the Pangkor Engagement but simply discusses the merits of the regulations proposed by the Colonial Office. 3 CO 273/198, minute by Fairfield, 16 Nov. 1894, on Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 12 Oct. 1894, Spenlow and Jorkins, characters in David Copper­ field by Charles Dickens, are a firm of proctors to whom Copperfield is articled. Jorkins is a gentle retiring man who seldom appears, but Spenlow makes his supposedly intractable character the ground for refusing any inconvenient

request.

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contradictory versions of what the Sultan might be supposed to want; in 1882, on the resignation of Captain Douglas as Resident of Selangor, Weld asserted that the Sultan would be pleased to offer him a gratuity, and Swettenham, the next Resident, reported the strong objection of the Sultan to any such extravagance with Selangor funds.1 The Colonial Office was quite prepared to take advantage, when convenient, of the argument that the Native States were indepen­ dently administered; in 1895 the Permanent Under-Secretary thought the Colonial Office might ‘use the fiction that we advise but do not govern as a reply to objections in Parliament’ concerning the continued existence of legalized gambling in the states.2 But although the formal independence of the states might be used as an argument in particular situations, the Pangkor Engagement empowered the Resident to give ‘advice which must be asked and acted upon’ and the Resident was acknowledged to be under the immediate control of the Governor of the Straits Settlements—a representative of the Crown. It was true that the Colonial Office had rejected annexationist policies, and formal direction of the states could not be assumed without a breach of faith. But ultimate responsibility for the Residents’ advice still lay with the Colonial Office, and it accepted the principle of responsibility, and the duty of supervision, without assuming control over the details of govern­ ment. The Colonial Office had no direct communication with the states, and with the exception of Residents’ appointments and large public works, there was no established category of subjects reserved for its consideration, or of material forwarded for its information. The Residents communicated officially with the Colonial Office through the Governor. Their annual estimates, council proceedings, and bills were sent to Singapore for considera­ tion and went no farther;3 before 1896 they had no newspapers which could provide a picture of unofficial opinion. The Colonial Office received the State Gazettes, but these were not issued before 1 CO 273/115, Weld to Derby, Confidential of 24 Aug. 1882; CO 273/119 Weld to Derby, 107 of 17 Mar. 1883, forwarding memorandum from Swetten­ ham. * CO 273/202, minute by Meade, 24 Mar. 1895, on Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 8 Feb. 1895. 3 At the request of the Colonial Office, copies of state legislation began to be sent home in 1894; but they were forwarded for information, not for sanction.

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1888 in Perak and 1890 in Selangor. But there were other channels of information available to the Secretary of State. The Annual Reports were forwarded and provided subjects for inquiry; dis­ gruntled employees of the state administrations petitioned the Secretary of State about their grievances and told tales about local scandals ; there were references to abuses in the states in the Colony Legislative Council. In the 1890’3 the rivalry between local ad­ ministrators brought a number of problems before the arbitration of the Secretary of State ; local conflicts were reflected in the con­ flicts between departmental officials, who were turned by the pressure of controversy into Malayan specialists. The Secretary of State used his authority to maintain standards of integrity in the public service, to keep a check on the expenditure of public funds (particularly expenditure on railways), to remedy injustice, and to bring the social legislation of the Native States as far as possible into harmony with late Victorian morality. His interference was mostly in the form of correction to administrative action taken or contemplated by local authorities; he did not inter­ fere in the formulation of policy or the general administration of the country, though he was kept informed of important develop­ ments. From the first days of intervention the appointments and salaries of the Residents and Assistant Residents in Perak and Selangor1 had been decided by the Secretary of State on the recommenda­ tion of the Governor. The subordinate officers were formally considered to be servants of the Rulers, and their appointments and conditions of service were decided by the Governor without reference to the Secretary of State. The Colonial Office was reluc­ tant to interfere with these subordinate appointments; it did not want to be answerable for a ‘scratch lot’ of officers over whose appointments it had no control. In 1884, when the Governor consulted the Secretary of State about retirement terms for a former Straits officer in the service of Perak, he was told, ‘The whole question ... of gratuities and pensions to the subordinate officers of the Protected States belongs properly, I would observe, to the Governors of the Settlements and the Resident’.2 In the years that followed, however, the Colonial Office was 1 The Assistant Resident in these two states was later replaced by another official, the Secretary to Government. 2 CO 273/123, Derby to Weld, 41 of 18 Feb. 1884.

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The Colonial Office and the Protected Malay States

drawn into an attempt to secure the tenure of the Native States’ officers and regularize their conditions of service. In theory they held office subject to the pleasure of the local authorities and the Governor of the Straits Settlements,1 and while officers on the fixed establishment of the Colony had the right to an inquiry by the Executive Council and confirmation by the Secretary of State before dismissal, the dismissal of officers in the Native States was subject only to the discretion of the Resident and Governor. Arbitrary dismissal was not only contrary to the personal interests of the officers, it was against the interests of the public service. It was a hindrance to the recruitment of good men, and particularly men from other colonies, and, as the Native States developed, the need for men with experience of a regular colonial administration was increasingly felt. The question of securing the pension rights of officers transferred from other colonies or from the Straits Settlements to the Native States arose from time to time and caused some difficulty. Smith, acting as Governor during Weld’s leave, thought that ‘such service should be held to be continuous, as though it were in law, as it is in fact, under one Government’.2 The Secretary of State accordingly recommended that officers in the Native States ‘should be transferred to the service of the Colony and should be paid by and pensioned by the Colony—the Native States contributing a sufficient sum to reimburse the expense . ..’. The proposal was not that the services should be amalgamated but that the Colony should hold itself responsible in the first instance for Native States’ salaries and pensions. The proposal broke down in the face of determined opposition from Weld, who feared that if the Colony were made responsible for the salaries and pensions of these officers, the affairs of the states would come under the scrutiny of the Legislative Council. The Colonial Office did not press the point, but it forced the adoption of a clause in the Straits Pension Regulations making the service of the Colony and the Native States continuous for pension purposes.3 After Weld’s departure, the Colonial Office made another attempt to get the Colony to guarantee the salaries and pensions of officers in the Native States. It accepted the recommendation of Weld’s 1 CO 273/138, Stanley to Weld, 34 of 5 Feb. 1886, reporting interview with Resident of Perak. 2 CO 273/134, Smith to Derby, 219 of 25 May 1885. 3 CO 273/138, Stanley to Weld, 34 of 5 Feb. 1886; Weld to Stanley, 99 of 20 Mar. 1886; Granville to Weld, 117 of 9 Dec. 1886.

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successor, Smith, that only the Residents and Secretaries to Govern­ ment should be so guaranteed. But when the bill came to be dis­ cussed in Executive Council, the Straits officials objected to placing the responsibility for Native States’ pensions on the Colony; and when the Colonial Office insisted that the Residents were not servants of the Native Rulers, but were advisers selected by the British Government and employed by the British Government, the local officials countered strongly with the argument that ‘British’ in this context meant the Imperial and not the Colonial Government. The officials were furious, and Lucas minuted angrily that ‘the colony might for convenience’ sake identify itself to this tiny extent with the empire instead of trying to play the colonial v. Imperial game’. All the same, the Colonial Office refused to shoulder the responsibility, and it was settled that the Residents as well as the subordinate officers must look to the states for the payment of their pensions.1 The Colonial Office had tried, in effect, to smuggle the Native States’ officers on to the establishment of a colony which was not their employer in any sense, and when driven to define the actual status of the Residents, it had avoided committing itself and passed them back to the Native States’ governments. The status of the subordinate officers was clear; they were beyond doubt servants of the states. The status of the Residents typified in its ambiguity the whole relationship between the British Government on the one hand and the Native States on the other. They were styled ‘British Resident’ (in the early years, ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Resident’) and were under the authority of the Governor; many of them— including Low, Swettenham, and Maxwell—had been appointed to the states from the colonial service, kept their status as servants of the Crown, and remained eligible for promotion in the colonies ; yet they, like their colleagues, depended on the Native States for their salaries and pensions. Others had come into the Native States from private life ; they had never been and never became servants of the Crown in any sense, yet as Residents they acknowledged the authority of the Governor. The obscurity surrounding the legal 1 CO 273/157, Knutsfbrd to Smith, 128 of 4 May 1888; CO 273/154, Smith to Knutsford, 305 of 4 July 1888; Knutsford to Smith, 330 of 10 Oct. 1888; CO 273/162, Smith to Knutsford, 572 of 20 Dec. 1889 and enclosures; Knuts­ ford to Smith, 68 of 27 Feb. 1890; CO 273/166, Dickson to Knutsford, 241 of 3 June 1890 and minute by Lucas, 11 July 1890; Knutsford to Smith, 44 of 4 Feb. 1892.

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status of the Residents did not, however, affect administrative practice; the Colonial Office continued to make the final decision on their appointments and salaries, and when they retired, their pensions were paid through the Crown Agents on behalf of the states, after being approved by the Governor and the Secretary of State.1 For the Residents, legal definitions were probably of little importance, but the subordinate officers were burdened by a sense of insecurity. In 1888 the European civil servants of Perak memorial­ ized the Secretary of State, begging to be transferred to the service of the colony, or that the civil service of the State be recog­ nized as a branch of Her Majesty’s service, and saying that they regarded themselves as ‘the servants of Her Majesty, and not of the Native Ruler of the State*.2 The proposal was inconsistent with the recent decision on the subject and was rejected, but the Colonial Office maintained appeals from them on a variety of subjects. A dispatch stated in 1894, ‘. . . it is impossible for the Secretary of State to regard himself as entirely free from respon­ sibility, where the decision, whatever its form, is virtually that of the Resident and Governor, and where it affects the interests of a public servant who is a British subject’.3 The appeals were rare, and the action of the local authorities was usually upheld, but the Colonial Office was prepared to institute thorough inquiries where these appeared to be necessary and did on occasion override the Governor. It awarded pensions and gratuities in response to appeals from European and local Asian staff alike, and on one occasion it upheld the appeal of the Chief Magistrate of Selangor against censure by his Resident, even though the Resident was supported by the acting Governor.4 The Native States* officers were recruited by nomination from a variety of sources; they were subject to general regulations closely assimilated to those in force in the Colony, but the disciplinary 1 The forms used in bureaucratic procedure had a political significance—at least for the Colonial Office. It was only after considerable argument that it was decided that the Secretary of State should ‘approve’ and not merely ‘acknow­ ledge’ pension arrangements. (Minutes on Smith to Ripon, 192 of 16 Mar. 1893 ; Ripon to Smith, 183 of 26 July 1893.) 2 Memorial of European Civil Servants of Perak to Secretary of State, enclosed in Smith to Knutsford, 413 of 15 Sept. 1888. 3 Ripon to Mitchell, Confidential of 11 July 1894. 4 Chamberlain to Mitchell, 411 of 19 Dec. 1895; Ripon to Mitchell, 49 of 9 Feb. 1894.

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effect of these regulations was diluted by distance ; and in pioneering governments, discipline was easier, and idiosyncrasies in adminis­ tration more readily tolerated, than in old-established settlements. The Colonial Office realized that there was wide opportunity for misconduct, and that it would be held responsible in the last instance for the behaviour of officers. Herbert, then Permanent Under-Secretary, minuted on a report of maladministration in Se­ langor, * I would require and not suggest the necessary measures... The fiction that we do not directly control the officers in these States is a very transparent one, and will not shield us when the misgovernment of the country becomes a public scandal.’ Kim­ berley agreed : * We are certainly responsible for the English officers employed in these States and must exercise a control over them.’1 Of the occasional scandals that came to the notice of the Secre­ tary of State, the most embarrassing involved Captain Bloomfield Douglas, Resident of Selangor from 1876 to 1882. His administra­ tion had been a great trial to Colony officials, who were constantly intervening to correct administrative irregularities and mistakes of judgement; finally a more serious lapse than usual was brought to the attention of the Secretary of State by a former officer of the Selangor government, and an inquiry was instituted leading to Douglas’s resignation.2 In the same year the Governor, Weld, for­ warded a report on the Land Department of Selangor which told a story of gross mismanagement and jobbery in which the Resident and the head of the department were involved. (The latter, acting as auctioneer in a sale of town lots, knocked them down to the Resident, who happened to be his father-in-law.) The Secretary 1 Minutes by Herbert, 12 July 1882, and by Kimberley, 14 July 1882 on Weld to Kimberley, 169 of 3 May 1882. 2 Neglecting instructions from Singapore, he had permitted his subordinates to make deductions from the allowance of the old Sultan for goods of European manufacture which he did not want, and which were pressed on him by the European officers. The articles provided included a gold watch and chain, a complete set of wine glassware, a pony and carriage, a gun, pictures of the Royal Family, and a piano. The Resident argued in defence, Tt is absurd to say the Sultan did not wish for table equipage, furniture, wines and those things natives of the higher classes now provide for the entertainment of Euro­ pean visitors*, but according to Innes, the Collector at Langat, the Sultan had declared that ‘he had never fired an English gun in his life, nor wished to fire one; that he preferred walking to driving, and eating with his fingers, according to Malay custom, to the use of forks ; that wine was forbidden by the Koran and that he did not know how to play the piano.* (CO 273/115, Innes to Kimberley, 2 May 1882; Kimberley to Weld, Confidential of 16 May 1882; Weld to Kim­ berley, Confidential of 24 Aug. 1882 and enclosures.)

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of State issued a general prohibition of such transactions, and in 1885 he issued a circular prohibiting a salaried public servant in the Colony or Native States from occupying for profit more than twenty acres of land, or any land more than six miles from his residence.1 The two senior Residents, Low and Swettenham, and the two Governors who successively dealt with the question, illustrated by their different reactions the conflict in the Native States between the standards of the public service on the one hand, and private empire-building on the other. The interest of the contrast is enhanced by the fact that all four had served in Crown Colonies, and though Weld had come into the service from political life, Low, Smith, and Swettenham were career officers and had a common Colonial Service training. Low’s authority in Perak was almost as complete as if he were Governor of a colony; indeed that was his standing in the estimation of the Colonial Office, if not in rank or pay. But despite his authority, or perhaps because of it, he welcomed all instructions on the subject of land speculation without reserve. Swettenham received the 1882 instructions with a long and tendentious letter asking for clarification;2 he thought officers in the states might be permitted to buy land and invest in enterprise in the State, provided that these interests did not inter­ fere with work or get the officer into debt. The real point, that it was undesirable for a public servant to acquire land for profit in a state where he had the power to influence values by decisions on planning and communications, seems to have escaped him. Weld was characteristically unwilling to let any matter be determined by regulation instead of by personal decision by the Resident or him­ self; his supplementary instructions to Swettenham were so full of qualifications that they were quite useless as a restriction on land speculation. Smith had a more rigid attitude on these matters, and in 1888 he wrote to the Colonial Office complaining that existing regulations were inadequate and proposing fresh ones. (These would prohibit any European officer in the Colony or Native States, or any member of his family, from acquiring property other than a house or garden for his own occupation.) Low again approved this without reserve. Swettenham wrote an insubordinate 1 CO 273/115, Derby to Weld, 179 of 25 July 1882; Derby to Weld, Circular of 2 Feb. 1885. 2 CO 273/169, Swettenham to Weld, 6 Jan. 1883, in Smith to Knutsford, 488 of 16 Dec. 1891.

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minute suggesting that if an officer ‘whose services were great, whose ability was undoubted, and whose honesty was unimpeach­ able’ refused to give up his holdings, the Secretary of State might find it hard to dismiss him. Swettenham’s minute was not calcu­ lated to charm the Colonial Office and the ethics of the matter were clear; the Governor was upheld.1 One condition of good administration was the proper conduct of the public works, and the Colonial Office established at an early date its right to be consulted before the State undertook major public works. The question arose in connexion with the construc­ tion of the Selangor railway, a line of twenty-two miles connecting Kuala Lumpur with its port at Klang, involving a total expenditure of more than double the Selangor revenue for 1882, and requiring to be financed by a Colony loan. Weld and Swettenham had already appointed their consultant engineer before putting the scheme up to the Secretary of State, and the first he heard of it was when the engineer appointed wrote to the Crown Agents to say he was ready to sail for the Straits, and to ask for an advance of £100. The Secre­ tary of State cancelled the appointment (which was objectionable on other grounds) and requested that he be informed when it was proposed to construct major public works involving heavy financial liability.2 On technical matters the states were advised by a consultant engineer in London, Sir Charles Hutton Gregory, who was appointed with the approval of the Colonial Office, and through whom it kept in touch with construction. It was also kept informed about state undertakings by the Crown Agents, through whom (on the Secretary of State’s instructions) the Residents were required to order their material. On most of the questions of construction the Colonial Office and the local authorities were not in serious disagreement; both thought in terms of a pan-Malayan system of railway communications, and both accepted uniformity of 1 CO 273/156, Knutsford to Smith, 65 of 28 Feb. 1889. 2 CO 273/119, Derby to Weld, 116 of 10 May 1883. Weld was furious at the action of die Colonial Office in cancelling this appointment, and complained of interference with the Sultan’s government and virtual annexation, but the officials were unimpressed. One of them took the lecture to mean that ‘Mr. Swettenham is aggrieved and that Sir F. Weld sympathises with him . . ? but maintained that the Colonial Office was responsible for ‘mitigating on some points the personal rule and direct inflqence of the Resident & the Governor’. (Minute by de Robeck, 9 Aug. 1883, on Weld to Derby, 280 of 4 July 1883, CO 273/121.)

iç6

The Colonial Office and the Protected Malay States

construction as a desirable principle. But the early lines were lateral lines connecting existing centres of production with the coast; the immediate need was for quick and cheap transport, and Swettenham at first thought that a light, narrow gauge railway would be most suitable for the Klang-Kuala Lumpur line. The influence of the Colonial Office contributed to the decision to adopt a metre gauge and a medium steel rail in Selangor and Perak, and the metre gauge remained the standard for the whole Malayan railway system. The influence of the Colonial Office was also used to prevent the local authorities from pledging the states to lavish railway concessions. The local and metropolitan authorities were at one in preferring construction by the State whenever profits were assured, and the Perak and Selangor railways were made by the State. But in Sungei Ujong, where profits were speculative, a concession with a guarantee of interest was granted to a private company to make and run the line. Weld had forgotten the Secre­ tary of State’s instructions that he should be consulted before the states were committed to large public works, and sanctioned the concession without reference home. The first intimation to the Colonial Office was the dispatch of the completed agreement. It objected to the agreement as unfavourable to the State, cancelled it, and negotiated a new one giving the State much better terms. The Colonial Office signified its interest in the general ad­ ministration of the Native States by a ritual acknowledgement of their annual reports. Before 1888 these were acknowledged in three or four lines expressing a conventional interest; but in that year Lucas began the practice of drafting long minutes (on which the dispatches were based) bringing to the notice of the Secretary of State the progress made by the Residents. These replies, he thought, would give ‘an appearance of taking intelligent interest in these states’, and would encourage the officers in their work. The replies were for the most part conventional echoes of the reports, expressing approval of progress made, regret concerning difficulties, and hope for improvement in the future. The Secre­ tary of State noted with pleasure the rise in the land revenue of Selangor, was glad to learn that the cart road from Jelebu to Sungei Ujong was now open, and observed with satisfaction that the Selangor debt had been liquidated. He gathered that much remained to be done in respect to roadmaking, and attached the greatest

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importance to the spread of agriculture. As time went on Lucas’s drafts grew longer and longer, and the suggestions and requests for information became more and more conscientious, detailed, and irrelevant, until protests began to be heard within the department; in 1891 Fairfield thought it unwise to * echo back’ the optimism of officials, especially about Pahang, where there was already too much dangerous speculation, and in 1895 Meade begged to be spared another marathon dispatch.1 The criticisms in the replies were cast in the form of suggestions which the officials might accept or quietly ignore; and though some of them were sensible enough, they usually referred to needs already noted in the reports and already under consideration. The Secretary of State made one important policy recommendation, which he reiterated year by year ; it was that agriculture be developed, as a balance to mining, by the introduction of Chinese and Indian peasant families. Tn tropical countries, immigration is so constantly synonymous with the supply of indentured labour to planters and employers, or with indiscriminate Chinese immigration, that the possibility of colonisa­ tion with selected families under some state aided system seems to have been rather left out of sight.’2 The Residents favoured such colonization in principle; Swettenham in his 1888 report on Selangor had in fact suggested that Chinese agriculturists be introduced there. But they were too preoccupied with securing Chinese and Indian labour for the mines and estates to spend much time on establishing them as an immigrant peasantry, and they never had anything to report on this head beyond minor experi­ ments and achievements.3 In judicial matters the Colonial Office was able to interfere directly, since the Native States, unlike most Crown Colonies, had no separate judiciary ; the administration of justice was a function of the executive. The final court of appeal was the Sultan in Coun­ cil. No Colony court had any jurisdiction over the Native States, 1 CO 273/173, minute by Fairfield io Oct. 1891, on Smith to Knutsford, 261 of 22 June 1891 ; CO 273/195, minute by Fairfield, 15 Mar. 1895 on Mitchell to Ripon, 185 of 30 June 1894; CO 273/204, minute by Meade, 4 Sept. 1895, on Mitchell to Ripon, 253 of 24 June 1895. 2 CO 273/166, Knutsford to Dickson, 277 of 16 Sept. 1890. 3 These recommendations refer to settlement by Chinese and Indians. There was already extensive settlement by immigrant Malays, some of whom were assisted by government loans, but except in certain districts of Perak, this movement appears to have owed more to Malay initiative than to government

planning. 823121

O

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The Colonial Office and the Protected Malay States

but the Governor sometimes intervened by executive process, ordering a retrial and modification of sentence by instructions to the Resident. The Secretary of State in turn was able to influence judicial decisions by instructing the Governor. The states adopted the penal code of the Colony, and much other Colony legislation and judicial procedure, but the Residents and their subordinates for the most part had little legal training, and serious irregularities in the administration of justice were brought from time to time to the attention of the Secretary of State. In 1891 the Resident of Pahang had convicted a man of murder and sentenced him to death on the basis of uncorroborated evidence from an accomplice who had testified in the hope of improving his own position. The Resident had reported the case to the Governor; the Governor had asked the opinion of the Attorney-General, who had advised that if the prisoner had been tried in the Colony, he would probably have been acquitted. The Governor was content to direct the Pahang State Council to commute the sentence to imprisonment for life, whereupon the brother of the prisoner petitioned the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State called for a report, and finally directed that the Governor take the necessary steps to secure a remission of sentence.1 The Pahang murder case caused the Secretary of State to instruct that until more competent courts were established, British subjects charged with offences punishable by death or a long term of im­ prisonment should be tried either in Singapore or by Colony judges on circuit.2 In 1894 the confidence of the Colonial Office in the administration of justice in the Malay States was further under­ mined by the disclosure of irregularities in two cases, one in Pefak and one in Selangor, which drew attention to the abuses flowing from the executive control of justice. Both cases involved state officers, who memorialized the Secretary of State after they had failed to obtain redress from the Resident and Governor. In both cases the Colonial Office found much to criticize in the procedures adopted and the decisions reached. At the same time, Straits commercial and legal interests were agitating for judicial reform in the states; they were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the 1 CO 273/185, Gurdit Singh to Secretary of State, 17 Aug. 1892; CO 273/184, Smith to Ripon, 487 of 22 Dec. 1892 and enclosures; Ripon to Smith, 42 of 20 Feb. 1893. 2 CO 273/184, Ripon to Smith, Confidential of 20 Feb. 1893.

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executive control of justice, the ban on pleaders in the courts, and the absence of appeal to an independent judicial authority. The agitation in the Straits, combined with its own increasing dissatisfaction with judicial affairs in the states, led the Colonial Office to press for radical changes in the administration of justice. In 1891 the Singapore branch of the Straits Association and the Singapore Chamber of Commerce petitioned the Secretary of State that British subjects be allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court; and the Secretary of State, advised by Swettenham, pro­ posed that appeals should lie to a judge of the Colony Supreme Court, travelling on circuit, and holding a commission from the Sultan in Council while in the State.1 No action was taken on this suggestion, and in June 1894 the Secretary of State complained in a dispatch that his proposal for new appeal procedures, made two years before, had gone unanswered. In September the Governor put forward proposals for judicial reform which went beyond the question of appeals. He suggested the appointment of a single judicial authority for the Native States, a judicial commissioner whose duties would be to organize and control courts of all classes, to inspect them, to hear appeals, and to advise on legislation. The proposal was approved and developed by the Secretary of State, who directed that the necessary authority be conferred by identical laws enacted in the several states; the draft to be prepared by the Attorney-General of the Colony and submitted for the approval of the Secretary of State.2 The arrangements, in the event, became merged in the general reorganization of the State administrations under the Federation scheme of 1895. The Colonial Office was not directly informed, as a rule, about state legislation, but it occasionally gathered information from miscel­ laneous sources, which caused it to intervene in order to assimilate social practices in the states as far as possible to metropolitan standards of morality. As a rule the differences between the Colonial Office and the local authorities were on matters of timing, not principle. In 1875, for example, the Colonial Office picked up from Speedy’s Larut report a reference to the existence of slavery and debt bondage in Perak, and subsequent inquiry showed that the 1 CO 273/176, Smith to Knutsford, 410 of 3 Nov. 1891 and enclosures; Knutsford to Smith, Confidential of 18 Jan. 1892. 2 CO 273/197, Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 4 Sept. 1894; Ripon to Mitchell, Confidential of 1 Nov. 1894.

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The Colonial Office and the Protected Malay States

institution was widespread throughout the Peninsula. The Secre­ tary of State directed that the practice be abated ‘with as little delay as is consistent with the necessary caution which is to be observed in the new relations which exist in Perak’. In 1878 the Secretary of State called for information about the practice in all the states. Action had already been taken in Selangor and Sungei Ujong whereby the value of slave labour was set against the original debt and the debt thereby liquidated; but in Perak the problem was rendered more difficult by the size of the Malay population— and therefore of resistance to change—and by the need to proceed slowly with reforms after the recent disturbances. The Colonial Office accepted the need for caution; but in 1882 it renewed its pressure.1 By that time, however, Low had of his own accord decided that the time had come for action, and had asked the Perak State councillors to come to the next Council meeting pre­ pared to discuss solutions.2 Colonial Office pressure may have advanced emancipation by two or three years, but it was clear that local authorities also were aware that these institutions could not be allowed to exist indefinitely. Again, in 1889, an official noticed a reference in a debate in the Colony legislature to the existence of the death penalty in Perak for those convicted of organizing secret societies. The Secretary of State considered the penalty too severe, and learned on inquiry that the Perak penalty was a dead letter; the Governor had given instructions through the Residents that it should not be imposed except when murder was committed. The Secretary of State held that the law should not prescribe a penalty which would not be executed, and required that the State Govern­ ment be required to amend the law.3 On these matters the Colonial Office and the local authorities were in reasonable accord, but on others they were at odds, and it was necessary to push through reforms in the face of local resistance. Two practices continued to flourish in the Native States after they had been abolished in the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong on the instructions of the Secretary of State. The levy of fees for brothel registration had been abolished in the Straits, but the fees continued to be levied in Perak, and in 1891 the Secretary of State 1 Kimberley to Weld, 4 Mar. 1882. 2 Perak Council Minutes, 15 Mar. 1882, in Papers on Malay Subjects, edited R. J. Wilkinson, series 1, History IV (1909). 3 Knutsford to Smith, 130 of 10 May 1889.

The Colonial Office and the Protected Malay States 201 noted a reference in the Perak Government Gazette of 8 May to the expenditure of revenue from this source on various good works, including an old people’s home in Taiping. The Secretary of State learned further that the Governor had been about to allow a Perak Order in Council for the compulsory examination and treatment of prostitutes suffering from venereal disease; and as such legislation had been repealed in India and the Colonies at the insistence of Parliament, the Secretary of State felt unable to permit the Governor to sanction its introduction into the Native States. He was instruc­ ted to disallow it, and also to bring before the State Council the objection of the Secretary of State to the levy of fees for brothel registration.1 The sympathies of the Governor and the Resident were wholly with the legislation, and the State Council decided unanimously to retain the fees. The Secretary of State directed that an expression of his regret be communicated to the State Council, and in December the Governor reported that the fees had been abolished.2 The Secretary of State also objected to the continuance of licensed public gambling in the Native States after it had been made illegal in the Straits and Hong Kong; but there the idea of abolition aroused overwhelming opposition among the local officials. It was strongly urged, in dispatches and memoranda, that the lease of the gambling monopoly brought in a large revenue, that the experience of the Straits Settlements had shown that gambling among the Chinese did not cease on being made illegal, but simply flourished underground and contributed to the increase of crime, of protection rackets and police corruption; the Governor and four of the five Residents recommended the continuance of the gambling farm and even the Sultan of Perak sent in a strong letter of protest.3 Legalized public gambling survived in the states for another eighteen years, until it was abolished in 1912. The Residents were able, forceful, and independent men, as they needed to be in order to discharge their responsibilities, and they 1 CO 273/176, Knutsford to Smith, 7 of 7 Jan. 1892. The minutes showed how the instructions were to be relayed; ‘Tell the Governor to instruct the Resident to recommend the State Council. . . .’ (Minute by Johnson, 15 Dec. 1891, on Smith to Knutsford, 406 of 29 Oct. 1891, CO 273/176.) 2 CO 273/182, Ripon to Smith, 4 Nov. 1892; CO 273/184, Smith to Ripon,

492 of 18 Dec. 1892. 3 CO 273/202, Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 8 Feb. 1895 and enclosures; CO 273/196, Sultan of Perak to Governor, 20 July 1894, in Mitchell to Ripon, Confidential of 30 July 1894.

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were supported by Governors of similar ability and independence. It is not surprising that Residents and Governors were jealous of their authority and resented the interference of departmental officials in London, or that many of them should consider the rigid discipline of the colonial service inappropriate to pioneering con­ ditions. The Colonial Office and the local authorities were often opposed, but it would be wrong to think of them as facing each other from fixed positions in attitudes of mutual hostility. They had common standards and allegiances which cut across their dis­ agreements in particular situations; they all wished to advance the economic development of the Peninsula and to establish orderly and solvent administrations. Residents and Governors were alike conscious that isolation carried with it the danger of demoraliza­ tion ; they tried to maintain standards by instituting administrative procedures and controls borrowed from colonial general orders. The Colonial Office intervened, not so much to introduce new rules, as to limit the personal discretion which the local officials permitted themselves in their interpretation of their task.

XI MIGRATION AND ASSIMILATION OF

RURAL CHINESE IN TRENGGANU L. A. P. GOSLING

Sir Richard Winstedt in Malaya and its History states that the ‘Chinese words in the Babas’ pidgin Malay support the claim of the Hokkiens from Amoy that they were the earliest immigrants. . . -*1 Local legend in Trengganu also claims that the earliest Chinese immigrants were Hokkien, scattered in rural settle­ ments along the Trengganu River, between Kuala Trengganu and the upstream trading centre of Kuala Brang.2 In an attempt to verify the existence and trace the fate of these early Hokkien settlements, a limited field investigation was carried out among the surviving Baba rural communities in the Trengganu Valley. As is frequently the case, this investigation raised more questions than it answered. The earliest Chinese settlers in Trengganu were Hokkien, reflected in the fact that they are the dominant element in the Trengganu Babas.3 The continuous existence of urban Hokkien communities seems likely, although their date of arrival in Treng­ ganu is unknown. An account of Chinese settlement in Kelantan in the late eighteenth century notes that ‘[t]he people of Fukien lived mostly at the port . . .’,4 and the oral tradition of the 1 R. O Winstedt, Malaya and its History (London, 1958), 19. 2 Kuala Brang may have been the centre from which the Chinese were forced to move into rural settlements when it declined from its importance as a thir­ teenth-century trade centre. Wheatley states: ‘The position as chief emporium of the peninsula had by this time been usurped by the elusive Fo-lo-an, possibly Kuala Brang in Trengganu, which shared the Arab trade with Sri-Vijaya.* Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese (Kuala Lumpur, 1961), 300. 3 The term Baba applies in strict usage to the partially assimilated Chinese community in Malacca, many of whom speak only Malay. The term Baba is not widely known in Trengganu, but is used in this paper in recognition of the popular usage of the term to apply to all Chinese in Malaya displaying a signifi­ cant level of cultural and biological assimilation. 4 From Hsieh Ch’ing-kao’s book Hai Hi, dealing with his voyages in the late eighteenth century, and quoted in Wang Gung Wu, ‘An early visitor to Kelantan*, Malaya in History, vi. 1 (i960), 31-35-

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Migration and Assimilation of

Trengganu Babas claims that there have been Hokkiens in Kuala Trengganu town for more than 400 years. Although grave-markers and family records extend back only 200 years, it is probable that the Hokkiens were already well established in the early eighteenth century, if not before. Among the rural Baba communities, the oldest occupied village was founded little more than a hundred years ago, as the final stage of the migration of Babas inland from established Chinese communities in the coastal towns. Thus they are not the direct descendants in situ of the legendary earliest Hokkien settlers, but possibly represent the latest of repeated waves of Hokkien Baba migration into the rural areas. Based on the history of the most recent group of rural Babas, it is likely that the earlier communities, if they did exist, were completely assimilated into the Malay population of Trengganu. On the basis of this preliminary study, it is tempting to speculate about the pattern of evolution of the Baba community in Treng­ ganu. The first Chinese settlers were probably Hokkien, who created the Baba community through intermarriage with Malays and the adoption of certain aspects of Malay material culture. They differed from many of the Babas of Malacca and the other Straits Settlements in that they retained the use of the Hokkien dialect as their first language. Almost all subsequent Chinese immigrants of other dialect groups were probably assimilated into the Hokkien Baba community, partly because it was the only Chinese community in Trengganu, and partly because the Babas actively sought to marry their daughters to vigorous immigrant Chinese rather than to Babas and Malays. The continuous assimilation of immigrant Chinese, the personal and commercial ties with China, and the solidarity of the large and self-contained Baba community enabled the Hokkien-Babas to maintain their Chinese identity. But when economic factors forced some Babas to move into the Malay hinterland, and establish agricultural communities with few external connexions, they rapidly became assimilated into the Malay population. It is probable that the early Hokkien rural communities of the Trengganu Valley did exist, but that they have been completely assimilated, and have disappeared without a trace. This essay deals with one aspect of this speculative account of the Trengganu Babas’ ecological adaptation : the assimilation of the

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205

rural Baba communities. It is based on a study of the three re­ maining Baba rural settlements in central Trengganu, where the past survives only in their oral traditions. The extensive use of oral history as the basis for some of the conclusions no doubt has perpetuated the heresy of history by hearsay. This study treats comparably two separate groups of Baba Chinese in rural central Trengganu, differentiated on the basis of their origin, route of inland migration, land-use pattern and pattern of assimilation. The best documented and most important group traces its origin to the port town of Marang, and migrated inland along the Marang River to arrive in the upper Trengganu River valley late in the nineteenth century. The other group started from Kuala Trengganu, occupied a series of settlements along the north bank of the Trengganu River, and reached their present main settlement, Pulau Babi, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The two groups came in contact with each other about sixty years ago, and subsequently have mixed considerably through intermarriage and migration of the Kuala Trengganu Babas to the surviving settlements of the Marang group. Both the Kuala Trengganu and Marang Chinese arrived in Malaya in the last half of the eighteenth century. Although both groups speak Hokkien and claim to be Hokkien, their home districts in China are Liu Chou and Kao Chou in southern Kwangtung, opposite the island of Hainan. A few claim their ancestors came from Annam, and drifted across the South China Sea to Treng­ ganu on rafts. The population of the southern Kwangtung coast is generally mixed, with communities of Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka, and others. It is possible that the Trengganu migrants represent groups who had previously moved from Fukien to Liu Chou and Kao Chou in Kwangtung, and to Annam, and who later migrated to Malaya. Another possibility is that the migrants were not Hokkien but Hainanese who have been assimilated into the Hokkien-Baba community since their arrival in Malaya. The Hainan dialect is similar to Hokkien, and Hainanese seem to be amenable to assimilation into other Chinese dialect groups. There is a long history of Hainanese migration to Trengganu, facilitated by the proximity of Hainan to Malaya, and the ease with which boats and rafts can cross the South China Sea on the seasonal winds of the north-east monsoon. The Hainanese comprise only 5.3 per cent of the total Chinese population in Malaya, but form

2o6

Migration and Assimilation of

more than 30 per cent of the Chinese in the coastal districts of central and southern Trengganu, where they attain their greatest concentration in Malaya. Early Hainanese migrants in Trengganu probably found a well-established Hokkien-Baba community, and by marrying Baba girls they would soon be assimilated into Hokkien Baba families. As Hokkiens, they subsequently migrated into the Malay hinterland. According to informants in the Marang Baba villages, Marang was an important trading centre at the end of the eighteenth cen­ tury, although there is nothing in the literature nor in the present condition of Marang Harbour to support this claim. There were eight large godowns, and a large Chinese trading community ruled by two Kapitan China, one located on each side of the estuary. In addition to trade, the Chinese were engaged in subsistence rice agriculture and the commercial cultivation of pepper. There was little land suitable for pepper cultivation among the sandy beach ridges and lagoon swamps of coastal Trengganu. Agricultural development proceeded inland up the Marang River valley where low hills, cleared of their forest cover, provided a suitable environment for pepper. Pepper generally comes into production within six years after planting, and may yield well for more than twenty years, with the peak in productivity occurring between the tenth and fifteenth years. Hill lands in Malaya were seldom farmed for pepper more than thirty years, because of the demanding nature of the crop, which resulted in soil exhaustion and rapid soil erosion in cleared slope areas. Chinese engaged in pepper cultivation were forced periodically to shift their settlements with the exhaustion of one pepper area and the development of another. The Marang Babas shifted their pepper gardens and con­ sequently their location about every twenty years, in a series of long migrations which led them inland up the Màrang River and finally into the central Trengganu River valley where their settle­ ments finally became fixed in location. The first move was in about 1820, twelve miles up the Marang River, where they established Kampong Rawa. The rapid exhaus­ tion of the poor soil here resulted in their movement up a small tributary of the Marang River, the Perah, in about 1840. Here they established two settlements, one at Padang Sira, and the main village at Kampong Peroh. The movement up the Marang River valley does not seem to indicate the operation of the Kangchu

Rural Chinese in Trengganu

207

system, found during this period in Johore.1 The Chinese did not acquire property rights nor operate under a licence, and the sequence of settlements up the Marang River only indicates it was the logical route of progression inland. While at Kampong Peroh, the. Chinese added gambier to their agricultural complex of pepper for sale and rice for subsistence. Gambier became an important source of income and, planted between the rows of pepper vines, it acted as a cover crop and decreased soil erosion. The residue of gambier leaves and twigs, remaining after the gambier was boiled to extract the commercial product, were used as a top dressing for the pepper plants to increase the yields. By reducing soil erosion and exhaustion, the addition of gambier enabled agricultural land to be used for a longer period of time, and decreased the frequency of migration of the Baba settlements. The direction of the next migration may have been influenced by the orientation of trade. Pepper and gambier from Kampong Peroh did not move down the Marang River, but travelled by elephant to the Trengganu River whence it was shipped by river­ boat to Kuala Trengganu. The establishment around i860 of Kampong Tok Setol, only three miles from the Trengganu River, possibly reflects the desire to have easier access to the main trade artery. Location directly on the river was difficult because of a shortage of unused agricultural land and almost continuous Malay settlement along the river bank. Tok Setol was located astride an important trail into the trade centre of Kuala Brang, followed by the present main road, and most commercial contacts of the community were in Kuala Brang. Tok Setol grew rapidly to a settlement of more than sixty house­ holds. Growth beyond this point was limited by a shortage of agricultural land, as Malay shifting cultivation occupied large tracts of hill lands, or had so reduced soil fertility as to make it unsuitable for pepper production. The decline of pepper cultiva­ tion in the last decade of the nineteenth century increased the pressure on the land, as gambier cultivation required a greater acreage to support sixty families than had been the case with the interplanted pepper and gambier combination. Migration away 1 For a description of the operation of the Kangchu system, see A. E. Coope, ‘The Kangchu System in Johore’, JMBRAS xiv. 3, (1936)» 247-63«

2o8

Migration and Assimilation of

from Tok Setol started in the 1880’s and by 1905 the village had been abandoned. Migrants from Tok Setol settled in several smaller communities, and a large number were assimilated into neighbouring Malay settlements. A few moved to Kuala Brang, and others established the short-lived settlement of Kuala Som on the Trengganu River. The majority settled in Kampong Tirok, often called Kampong China, on the south bank of the Trengganu River, and in two adjacent settlements, Kampong Pak Bilis and Batu Besar. The settlement of Kuala Som was started in the 1880’s, but was aban­ doned before 1900. The soils of the area, probably already ex­ hausted from continuous hill rice cultivation, would not support gambier cultivation. Since the Marang Babas abandoned Kuala Som, no other settlement has been attempted in this area and it remains one of the few tracts along the Trengganu River covered with scrub rather than some form of cultivation. The Kuala Som migrants moved on to Tirok. The twin settlements of Pak Bilis and Batu Besar were more successful than Kuala Som. Both were established in the 1890’5, and continued to support themselves with gambier cultivation. By 1920 the Babas appear to have abandoned or sold Pak Bilis to Malays who moved inland from their riverine kampongs seeking land on which to plant rubber as a cash crop. When the Malays settled Pak Bilis and planted rubber, the Babas soon followed their example, and at Batu Besar rubber replaced the less profitable gambier. Batu Besar lands were sold in 1935, when the Babas moved closer to Wakaf Tapai, where they acquired new lands and again planted rubber. This move was occasioned by the opening of the roadway from Kuala Trengganu to Kuala Brang, and the development of Wakaf Tapai as one of the major trading villages along the new road. The growth of Wakaf Tapai also attracted other Baba Chinese, as well as recent Chinese immigrants of several dialect groups engaged in a broad range of entrepreneurial activities. Kampong Tirok was settled in the early 1890’s by Marang Babas from Tok Setol. Gambier and padi cultivation were the main sources of support for the community, but migrants from Pulau Babi, on the north bank of the river, soon introduced Malay-style tree crop and garden agriculture. Permanent tree-crop and garden agriculture proved more profitable in the restricted acreage

Kuala Trengganu Chinese Migration

Rural Chinese in Trengganu

209

available, and as Tirok produced more areca, coconut, sugar-cane, fruit crops, and pigs for sale, they abandoned gambier cultivation. Because of this prior experience with tree crop agriculture, the Babas at Pulau Babi and Tirok were the first to plant rubber—in 1919, about four years before the first plantings at Batu Besar. As soon as the Marang Baba communities accepted rubber and kampong garden agriculture, their five generations of migrations came to an end, and they became fixed in location, relatively stable in occupation, and no longer isolated from close contact with their Malay neighbours. The second group of Baba Chinese started their inland migra­ tion from Kuala Trengganu around 1820, at the same time as the Marang Babas moved up the Marang valley. The motivation for migration in both cases was the desire to develop land for pepper cultivation, but whereas the Marang Babas were able to find ample acreage in the sparsely populated forest lands of the Marang River basin, the Kuala Trengganu Babas were less successful in the densely populated Trengganu River Valley. With little vacant land suit­ able for pepper production, the Baba migrants were forced to adopt the Malay system of kampong-tree crop and garden agri­ culture. The shifting nature of pepper cultivation was largely responsible for the frequent migration and relative isolation of the Marang Baba community. Tree crop and garden cultivation fixed the location of the Kuala Trengganu Babas, and brought them into prolonged contact with strong assimilative forces. The first up-river settlement of the Kuala Trengganu Babas appears to have been established about 1820, at Pulau Manir on the north bank of the Trengganu River. Pepper cultivation was soon abandoned, due to the shortage of suitable land and increasing pressure on the land from the expanding Malay rice-farming communities. Some Babas adopted Malay kampong-tree crop cultivation, and remained at Pulau Manir, while in 1840 others moved up the Nerus River to Padang Ayer, where they established pepper cultivation on hill lands close to the river. Low yields com­ bined with competition for hill lands by the Malay dry-rice culti­ vators forced the abandonment of this community, and the remnants moved to Pulau Babi. Pulau Babi had been established around 1840 by migrants from Pulau Manir, who made no attempt to plant pepper, but cultivated tree and garden crops. The com­ munity specialized in the production of areca, sugar-cane, and

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Migration and Assimilation of

coconuts, and also marketed fruit, padi, and pigs to the growing Chinese population in Kuala Trengganu. There were subsequent attempts to establish Baba communities at Kampong Pa’ Hak or China Hak, Kampong Naga Mengulor, and at Kuala Som in conjunction with the Marang Babas. All these latter settlements were failures, and either were abandoned, as in the case of Kuala Som, or were swamped with Malays who assimilated most of the scattered Chinese settlers. Several factors stimulated the repeated migration of the Kuala Trengganu Babas. When the Babas became fixed in location and in constant contact with the neighbouring Malay communities, they became involved in competition with the Malays. There was competition for land as population increased, and there was direct competition for the limited market as the Chinese adopted and improved the traditional Malay tree-crop and garden-agricultural system. There is no evidence of actual persecution of the Baba community, but informants claimed that at one time the Babas were prohibited from growing sugar-cane, which at the time was one of their main crops. It is also reported that the Babas were often required to contribute very generously to the cost of the Bunga Emas, or golden flower, offered periodically as a sign of tribute to the King of Thailand as overlord of Trengganu. Migra­ tion was one means of avoiding competition and the resultant conflicts, as well as escaping from government interference and taxation. The Babas also migrated to improve their economic base. They were less tied to the land than the Malays, and probably were more sensitive to the decline in the efficiency of their farming operations as population increase reduced the size of their land holdings. The availability of undeveloped land up-river provided the more adven­ turous members of the community with an opportunity to increase their income and to avoid conflict with the Malays. Some Babas may have sought the isolation of new settlements to avoid assimila­ tion into the Malay community and the loss of Chinese identity. But each successive new Baba kampong in the crowded Trengganu Basin was soon subject to the same pressures as the one left behind. Unlike the completely abandoned and deserted kampongs of the Marang pepper farmers, remnant families stayed in each of the suc­ cessive kampongs established by the Kuala Trengganu Babas. The contrast between the pioneering life offered by a new settlement

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and the comforts and productive garden agriculture of the established kampong must have influenced many families to remain in their old village, and, with each successive migration, the Kuala Trengganu Babas left behind a large portion of their community. With the passage of time, most of the Baba farmers who remained in the old villages were assimilated into the Malay community, and only those families engaged in commerce, with external con­ nexions, were able to retain their Chinese identity. The surviving Baba Chinese communities of Tirok, Wakaf Tapai, and Pulau Babi show many signs of both cultural and biological assimilation. At first glance, only the traditional Chinese calligraphy pasted around the doorway of the house, and the pigs rooting or sleeping under the verandah, differentiate the Baba village from a Malay kampong. The house itself is Malay in style, built by Malay carpenters, and oriented towards Mecca. The internal arrangement of rooms is usually the same as in the Malay home, although the use of some rooms may differ. In general the houses are larger, and are occupied by a larger portion of the joint family than is the case in the Malay community. Costume for both sexes is Malay, including the use by many men of a Treng­ ganu style headcloth. The main variations in dress are the adoption of a western skirt and blouse in place of the sarong and baju by older schoolgirls, and the use of a western wedding dress and lounge suit as the standard marriage costume. Food is prepared and cooked in Malay style, even when the meat used is pork. The Babas use comparatively little pork, but their consumption of fish is almost twice that of the Malays in adjacent settlements. Cere­ monial and festive foods are Malay, and nasik kuning, or yellow rice, and ketupat mark the Chinese holidays and are used as temple offerings. The Babas eat with their fingers and cannot manipulate chopsticks. Most of the economic operations of the Baba community are similar to those of the adjacent Malays. The same techniques and tools are used in padi cultivation, including the tuai, or hand knife, for harvesting in order to avoid offending the sëmangat padi or soul force of the padi plant. Most Baba families areas careful as the Malays in their propitiation of the forces of nature, and make use of the Malay pawang, or magician, in the field and harvest cere­ monies. Malays and Chinese borrow money from the same sources, which in several cases result in the interesting inversion of the

2i2

Migration and Assimilation of

Chinese being badly in debt to the Malay landlord-moneylender. Rubber, fruit, areca, copra, and other produce are often sold to a Malay middleman and many of their purchases made from Malay pedlars or from Malay sundry shops. The only visible difference in the pattern of economic activity is that the Baba Chinese raise pigs. The slab-sided, sway-backed, relaxed Chinese sow, with its festoon of piglets, is still a common sight in the Baba kampong, although more common in Tirok than in Pulau Babi and Wakaf Tapai, where there are sensitive Malay neighbours. In general, the Chinese are more wealthy than their Malay neighbours, but this is not basically due to differences in their economic activity or work habits. In the Chinese family, super­ fluous units of labour usually leave the kampong, and add to total family income by remittances from employment in urban areas; it is otherwise in Malay kampongs, where increases in the popula­ tion are absorbed within the economic community. The solidarity of the Chinese family unit as compared with the Malay family results in lower expenditure on divorce and remarriage. Neither are there demands on Baba Chinese capital for the pilgrimage to Mecca, circumcision feasts, elaborate weddings, and other Muslim Malay observances. Physical appearance varies over a wide range, from individuals who look completely Malay and represent an advanced stage of biological assimilation to those who are completely Chinese in appearance, and represent a mutant or the product of marriage with recent immigrants from China. In general, the older genera­ tion appears more Malay, while many of the small children and youths appear more Chinese. This in part represents an increase of what might be called ‘Chinese behaviour’ among the younger members of the community, but the most important factor has been increased marriage with Chinese from both the old Baba communities and recently arrived immigrant groups. Even more striking than Malay physical appearance is the Babas’ general Malay behaviour : hence they not only look like Malays, but they walk, gesticulate, shake hands, eat, chew betel, sit, squat, expec­ torate, defecate, laugh and talk like Malays. The Babas speak perfect Trengganu Malay, and frequently use it in conversation among themselves, even though Hokkien is their principal language. Malay is important for external contacts, and is the language spoken with other Chinese dialect groups, including

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recent Hokkien-speaking immigrants who are unkind in their remarks about the quality of the archaic Hokkien spoken by the Babas. Malay is the language of commerce, and of entertainment. The Babas listen to Malay language programmes on Radio Malaya in preference to Chinese programmes, and attend Malay and Malay-subtitled Indian films in preference to Chinese language films. Malay is the language of education, and in Kampong Tirok the teacher in the Malay school is the son of the Chinese village headman. The common written language is Malay injawi script, and there are no adults literate in Chinese. The lack of literacy in Chinese, combined with isolation in the case of the Marang Babas, effectively severed their ties with the past. There were no Chinese tombstones in any of their settlements until the last few years, and no retention of information about their ancestors, origins, home villages, and movement to and within Malaya, except in oral records which have not been imparted to the two most recent generations. The only concern with written Chinese is for good luck, and family name signs pasted around the doorway of the house each Chinese New Year. Because they cannot write, they must purchase these in town. Often the calli­ graphic pieces are assembled around the doorway in the wrong sequence, so that the characters of the slogan are not arranged in a meaningful order. Most Babas now insist that the various pieces of paper be numbered in sequence, so that they may be mounted in proper order. Sometimes the translation of the inscription is written in jawi script to remind the owner of what the slogan proclaimed. Although there has been considerable assimilation in the visible aspects of life, the structure of the community and most important aspects of the life-cycle remain basically Chinese. The family remains an important and stable unit, with the eldest member held in an honoured position, and the eldest male acting as the heir and manager of the family fortune. Marriages are carefully arranged, and are registered at the Hokkien Association in Kuala Trengganu. The divorce rate is extremely low, and at about 15 per cent it is approximately one-third of the Malay divorce rate in central Trengganu, although twice that of the immigrant Chinese community. Larger groups and external associations are rare, perhaps due to the fear that such organizations might arouse some animosity 823121

P

2i4

Migration and Assimilation of

among their Malay neighbours. Thus there is no village council or council of elders, and the Chinese are careful to seek the advice of the Pènghulu, or local Malay headman, on even minor matters. The ties with the Hokkien Association in Trengganu are weak, and association with any recent immigrants is limited. Chinese religion is retained and practised in a desultory fashion. The first formal temple was established at Tok Setol, and later moved to Tirok. It serves as the main temple for the Baba com­ munities in Pulau Babi and Wakaf Tapai, even though the latter town contains a larger temple established by recent immigrant Chinese. The Babas visit the temple only on Chinese New Year and on the birthday of the temple gods, and the only regular religious observances take place in the home. Most households have a family altar, often flanked by a Coca Cola calendar rather than ancestral tablets or portraits. Some families pray and bum joss-sticks daily at the altar, but most observe only the anniversaries of death of the last three generations of ancestors. There are no ancestral portraits or tablets, and the names of ancestors are frequently forgotten, being remembered only as ‘father’ and ‘great­ grandfather’. The dead are buried in large Chinese-style coffins, and the grave is marked with a mound of earth. Only in the last decade has there been burial in a special plot rather than on the house plot, and only an occasional grave is marked with a tomb­ stone. Other customary observances show considerable Malay in­ fluence. As in the Malay community, the new mother is prohibited from leaving the house for forty-four days after the birth of a child; the child’s head is shaved on the fortieth day after birth; prayers for the dead are held on the third, seventh, fourteenth, forty-fourth, and hundredth days after death. Within the frame­ work of Chinese religion and institutions, many such details of Malay usage and values have become accepted. Because the main areas of assimilation are visible, the first impression is that acculturation is far advanced in the Chinese communities, and that assimilation into the Malay community should be relatively easy. House, dress, food, mannerisms, language, and many customs are already Malay, and a great deal of biological assimilation also has taken place. Areas of little acculturation are those which are less visible. The language used in the family, conditions governing marriage and family life, social order and

Rural Chinese in Trengganu

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religion are still Chinese. The fact that external and visible charac­ teristics display a large amount of acculturation to Malay life has made the Baba community readily acceptable to its Malay neigh­ bours, and has eased the acceptance of any Chinese who in fact wished to be assimilated into the Malay community. But the basic framework of the Baba community has remained Chinese, which explains its survival, and in recent years its partial renaissance, during seven generations in a highly receptive and occasionally somewhat coercive Malay environment. The history of assimilation of the rural Baba communities can be divided conveniently into three periods. During the first period, from 1820 to 1890, the community grew in size, and the process of acculturation and biological assimilation proceeded rapidly. The second period, from 1890 to 1920, is marked by loss in population, with the assimilation of acculturated Babas into the surrounding Malay communities. The third period, from 1920 to the present, is characterized by a sharp decrease in assimilation into the Malay communities, and the stabilization of the Trengganu Babas as a group which is neither Malay nor Chinese, but Malayan in identity. There is some suggestion that this period of stabilization is at an end, and that the Babas may presently be involved in the reassimilation into the larger Chinese community. The original Chinese community in Marang contained only a few Chinese women, and the majority of males were forced to seek wives in the Malay community. During the generations passed in Marang before migrating inland, the process of biological assimilation was already well under way among the Marang Babas. It is probable that intermarriage with Malays increased as the migrating Baba Chinese formed rural communities, remote from the direct influence of the relatively large Chinese community in Marang and the indirect influence of their home villages in China. Once established in isolated, inland villages, most Babas apparently ceased to plan on a quick return to China and sought to establish normal family relations by taking local wives. Malay marriage partners were not difficult to obtain. The details of Islamic law were not well known to the rural Malays, and the prohibition on marriage between Muslim Malay women and pagan Baba Chinese males does not seem to have been strictly applied. Many Babas displayed a high level of acculturation in costume and general behaviour, and some were already ‘Malay’ in physical

2i6

Migration and Assimilation of

appearance, reflecting intermarriage in previous generations. Those Chinese who displayed little biological assimilation were often acceptable because of the premium placed on marriage partners of a relatively lighter skin colour. In addition to such voluntary unions, it was possible for the Baba community to purchase Malay girls who were debt slaves or to marry those who were partial out­ casts because of their social behaviour. The first rural settlement of the Marang Babas, Kampong Rawa, is reported to have had ten households, many of which may have consisted of unmarried males. Within three generations the com­ munity grew to more than sixty households, reported for Tok Setol. This rapid growth includes some addition from other scattered Chinese communities. There was also a gradual break­ down of the joint family households into an increased number of separate households, under the pressure of Malay brides for a separate dwelling and the disruptive effect of frequent migration of the community to a new location. The major element in the increase was the addition of Malay marriage partners ; at first women for Chinese males, and later marriage partners of both sexes to fill the needs of the subsequent generations of Babas. (A wild estimate would indicate that about forty Malays were assimilated into the Baba community in the seventy-year period of migration from Marang to Tok Setol.) As the Baba community grew by assimilating Malays, there was also a much smaller reverse flow of Babas being assimilated into the scattered Malay communities. Male and female Babas joined the Malay community for a variety of reasons, ranging from the adventurous younger son who married a property-rich Malay girl, to the attractive Baba girl who was married into the local Pënghulu family to facilitate political relations. The migrations of the Baba community were sporadic, and as one area declined in productivity, individuals would move on to develop new areas for pepper cultivation. Failure of some of the pioneer developments forced unsuccessful cultivators to join Malay communities for sustenance. The residue in the old settlements of those reluctant to pioneer in new lands might also be absorbed into the Malay communities which often subsequently occupied abandoned Chinese sites. But in general the migratory nature of the Baba settlements, periodically shifting into uncleared forest areas for new pepper lands, prevented close and continuous contact with the

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scattered Malay settlements. This periodically renewed isolation of the Baba community was probably a far more important factor in retarding their assimilation into the Malay community than any determination on the part of the Baba Chinese to maintain their own identity and culture. A period of loss in total Baba population started with the decline of Tok Setol in the 1890’5, and continued until the end of the First World War. During this period it dropped from the sixty households of Tok Setol to an estimated thirty households in the several Marang Baba communities in existence in 1920. One element in this population loss was the out-migration of Babas to Kuala Trengganu and other urban areas which became accessible once the Marang Babas escaped from the isolation of the upper Marang River. In addition, the failure of pepper and gambier as the mainstay of their economy and the failure of some of their settlements, such as Kuala Som, stimulated the urban migration. However, the major element in the loss of population was the increased assimilation of Babas into the Malay community. The movement of the Babas from the isolation of sparsely populated forest hinterland into the relatively densely populated area of the Trengganu River basin, placed them in more frequent and intense contact with their Malay neighbours. The adoption of rubber- and kampong-tree crop agriculture fixed the location of the Baba villages, and in the densely populated Trengganu valley, Malay settlements were already situated or were quickly established close by. The failure of gambier and pepper, as well as the failure of several of the Baba settlements, encouraged displaced Babas to seek the stability afforded by the tree-crop-garden-padi economy of the neighbouring Malay village, particularly in the interim period before the Baba communities achieved a similar stability with rubber and kampong produce. The Babas were readily accepted into the Malay villages because in physical* appearance, language, costume, and behaviour they were already ‘Malay’. The power of Muslim orthodoxy was growing with the increased dissemination of knowledge of Islam, but the Babas could still become Muslim with a simple profession of faith. The Babas had been out of touch with Chinese values and usage for over three generations, and this was a low point in their self-identification as Chinese. The genial and general acceptance of the Babas by the Malays eased the transfer of identity, while the

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Migration and Assimilation of

possibility of a somewhat more relaxed existence and stable economy must have proved very attractive to those Babas caught in the collapse of their pepper-gambier economy. After the First World War, a period of relative stability and gradual growth commenced for the Baba communities. The introduction of rubber provided a stable economic base where good rubber land was available, and Batu Besar and Tirok prospered. At the same time, improved communications with Kuala Trengganu and other urban centres permitted the Babas to select their marriage partners from previously inaccessible groups of other Babas and recently arrived Chinese immigrants. The increased immigration of Chinese after the extension of British rule to Trengganu, and the initial shortage of women in the large immigrant group, provided a reservoir of potential husbands for the Baba Chinese. Marriage with recent immigrants resulted in a marked infusion of Chinese blood and culture, and the biological and cultural assimilation which had contributed to the decline of the Baba communities in the previous thirty years was reversed. The increasing power of Muslim orthodoxy in the Malay com­ munities resulted in greater stress on the strict observance of Muslim law and usage and less tolerance for mixed Malay-Baba Chinese marriages. Interpretation became so strict that even though the Baba would profess the faith of Islam and undertake a pro­ gramme of religious training, his entry into the Muslim faith was denied because he had not been circumcised; a requirement which is not in fact obligatory for Muslims. The beginnings of Malay nationalism also introduced a new and unfortunate note in rela­ tions with the Babas. The combination of Malay rejection and increased immigrant Chinese influence seems to have stimulated a concern with Chinese culture, leading to the establishment of the temple at Tirok, and the renewed use of the family ancestral altar and calligraphy around the doorways of their homes. Although these changes arrested the assimilation of the Babas, they did not result in much growth. In i960 there were only thirty-eight households in the Marang Baba communities, com­ pared with approximately thirty households in 1920. As communi­ cations improved, individuals left the rural communities for more favourable employment in towns. The restriction on marriage with Malays resulted in marriage alliances with communities distributed throughout Trengganu, and an additional scattering

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of the Babas. As more Chinese women migrated to Trengganu, the sex ratio improved among the recent immigrant Chinese communities, and it has become increasingly difficult to induce urban Chinese to join a rural Baba community. The present practice for Baba girls who marry urban Chinese is to join their husbands in town. In addition there is a steady loss by continued assimilation into the Malay community. On the average, one Baba each year professes the Muslim religion, and satisfies the require­ ments of the Malay community sufficiently to be accepted. This loss occurs among the Babas who are already the most biologically and culturally assimilated, and removes from the Baba community those individuals who are the least ‘Chinese’. This contributes to the renaissance of the Chinese element in the community and increases the differentiation of the Baba community from its Malay neighbours. The Baba communities from Kuala Trengganu who settled along the north bank of the Trengganu River have a different history of assimilation. Because of the shortage of land, the Baba settlers were soon forced to abandon pepper cultivation and adopt a Malay garden economy. The Baba communities were fixed in location, and surrounded by Malay settlements. There was an initial period of growth of the Baba community with the addition of Malay marriage partners, but subsequent assimilation proceeded rapidly because of constant contact with the Malay communities. As population grew, there was increasing economic, social, and quasi­ political pressure on the Baba community, and the subsequent movement of Babas to new upstream settlements seems to be a partial response to this pressure. Only those Babas engaged in trade down-river with Kuala Trengganu were able to maintain their identity. Their contacts with the Chinese community in Kuala Trengganu gave them a source of marriage partners and insulated them from the major forces inducing assimilation in the remainder of the Baba community. The shortage of Chinese women in Kuala Trengganu, combined with the reluctance of the urban Chinese to join a declining rural community, sharply limited the supply of Chinese marriage partners, and the traders were the only members of the Baba community who had close connexions with Kuala Trengganu and sufficient funds to induce marriage partners to forsake the city. Therefore, while the majority of the Babas were assimilated into the Malay community at a rapid rate,

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Migration and Assimilation of

there were several households in each successive settlement who, through external marriage connexions, became more Chinese and more differentiated from other Babas. In each of the villages there are relatively pure Baba Chinese households : four in Padang Ayer, six in Manir, and one in China Hak, who have been able to main­ tain their identity and position because of their external con­ nexions. With the exception of these surviving traders, the history of the remaining Kuala Trengganu Babas has been one of steady decline, slowed but not reversed in recent years by the same factors which terminated the decline of the Marang Baba communities. The main settlement, Pulau Babi, which claimed twenty households at the end of the First World War, had thirteen households in 1955, eleven in i960, and four in 1962 after the disrupting effect of recent land acquisition for an irrigation project. Migration to Marang Baba and other Chinese communities combined with a prolonged period of contact and assimilation has eliminated all but scattered remnants of the Kuala Trengganu Baba communities. In the surviving Baba communities, developments of the last forty years have renewed contact with the larger Chinese com­ munity. This does not necessarily mean that the Babas will be reassimilated into the Chinese community, but may maintain their own distinctive and satisfying Baba culture—a true Malayan culture which would seem to have some advantages in a Malay dominated nation. The infusion of Chinese blood and values carried by immigrant Chinese partners declined with the arrival of more women immigrants and the equalization of the sex ratio in urban areas. The Babas prefer to marry within the Baba group, and improved internal communications in Trengganu enabled them to conclude marriage arrangements with the scattered Baba com­ munities in Dungun, Paka, Kemaman, and Setiu previously in­ accessible to them. In Wakaf Tapai, Babas live in the same community as recent Chinese immigrants, but are located in a mixed Malay-Baba settlement on the west side of the town and do not have immigrant Chinese as neighbours. Their major social and economic relationships are with the Malay community, and rela­ tions with the immigrant Chinese are relatively unimportant. In Wakaf Tapai, the major impact of the immigrant Chinese community on the Babas has been through the Chinese school. Of the eight Baba children in school, five attend the Chinese school

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and are learning to read and write Chinese in addition to English and Malay. For the first time in seven generations there are Babas who are literate in Chinese, and exposed to intensive contact with their Chinese classmates. But the reason given for the selection of the Chinese school for their children’s education reflects Baba values. The parents have no great interest in the study of the Chinese language, and complain that it is time-constiming and of little value. The main advantage of the Chinese school is that it gives longer and more complete instruction in the English language, which is recognized as the key to the best possible employment. This attitude summarizes one general impression of the Baba community; they are a separate community, not anxious to change except to improve their economic position. The Chinese school is important to them for its contribution to economic improvement rather than its connexion with traditional Chinese culture. On the other hand, the effect of Chinese education on the children may bring profound changes to the Baba community far beyond the limited economic advantages of literacy in English. But if the current trend is not towards the re-establishment of Chinese culture, neither is it towards further assimilation into the Malay community. The permissive Malay attitude towards assimi­ lation of the Babas, already curbed by the rise of Muslim orthodoxy, has been further stiffened by the rise of Malay nationalism. Political developments in an independent Malaya, such as the extreme nationalism of the Pan Malayan Islamic Party in Trengganu, may force the Baba community into a closer relationship with the immigrant Chinese as a matter of self-preservation. The stated aim of Malay leadership is a partial assimilation of all communities, but the ironic effect of post-independence political developments may well be to bring the Marang Baba Chinese full cycle, re-estab­ lishing them as another sector of a distinctive and separate Chinese community rather than as Malayans.

XII HIK AYAT RAJA-RAJA PAS AI AND SEJARAH MELAYU A. TEEUW

As Sir Richard Winstedt has repeatedly, and rightly, pointed out, certain parts of the Sejarah Melayu and of the Hikayat Raja-Raja Posai show striking resemblances, both in subject-matter and wording.1 Sir Richard explained these similarities by showing that the author of the SM had imitated, paraphrased and copied from the ÆP, and even went so far as to call him a plagiarist.2 In his opinion, then, the RP is the older of the two texts, a view which he supported with a number of other arguments. Professor R. Roolvink has since argued that it is not so simple a matter to determine the relationship between the two texts and that it ‘may well be possible that the author of the SM made use of another text [of the RF\ than that known to us, for there are considerable differences between them in names as well as in various other details’.3 He was of the opinion that a much more detailed comparison of the texts was called for. Earlier, Moquette4 had compared the two texts superficially, but he was concerned mainly with the identity and genealogy of the rulers of Pasai whose names he had come across on Pasai tomb­ stones. The literary problems he left mainly out of account. In this essay I propose to compare the texts in .detail and thus bring a little closer to solution the problem of their relationship. If I reach conclusions which do not wholly agree with Sir Richard’s 1 R. O. Winstedt, ‘The Chronicles of Pasai*, JMBRAS xvi. 2 (1938), 24-26; ‘The Malay Annals or Sejarah Melayu’, ibid. xvi. 3 (1938), esp. 28; ‘A history of Malay literature’, ibid. xvii. 3 (1940), 105-6; in Historians of South East Asia, (ed.) D. G. È. Hall (London, 1961), 24-26. 3 Winstedt, JMBRAS xvii. 105. 3 R. Roolvink, ‘Hikajat Radja-Radja Pasai’, Bahasa dan Budaja, ii. 3 (Djakarta Pebr., 1954), 3-17» esp. 3. 4 J. P. Moquette, ‘De eerste vorsten van Samoedra-Pasè (Noord Sumatra)’, Rapporten van den Oudheidkundigen Dienst in Nederlandsch-Indië (1913), 1-12.

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rather broader statements, I am certain that he will regard this criticism as proof of gratitude for the foundations he laid for more detailed research both in literature and literary history in his comprehensive pioneer study of these and other Malay texts. If any book is a rich source of knowledge as well as a stimulation to further research, then it is his ‘History of Malay Literature’. The portions of the two texts that are directly comparable are to be found in Mead’s edition of the RP,1 pp. 5-26, and in Winstedt’s edition of the SM,2 chapter vi, pp. 70-79, (corresponding with stories 7, 8, and 9 of the older editions).3 Since the variations in the different versions of the SM are slight, they need not be considered here, and we refer only to Winstedt’s edition. For easier reference I have divided the material into three sections. (i) In the SM, Merah Silau,4 one of two brothers living near Pasangan (RP Beruana), becomes miraculously rich when some sort of worms (gelang-gelang), which he has caught in his fish trap, upon boiling, turn into gold. His brother’s envy forces him to flee to Rimba Jerun (RP Jerau). One day, while he is out hunting with his hound Si Pasai, the hound barks on some high ground (tanah tinggi). An ant that was as big as a cat was the cause. Merah Silau ate the ant and founded the palace (istana) Semudera (glossed as semut raya, great ant). The texts do not contrast clearly in this episode, but they are not completely identical either. Although they show some striking points of agreement, even in word choice, the RP is more circum­ stantial. There, two whole pages are devoted to various of Merah Silau’s merits, such as his superiority to Barus, which the SM does not even mention. The RP also gives a different reason for his departure and mentions that Merah Silau is made a king at this point in the episode, where the SM does not. The SM then continues that the Prophet foretells the foundation 1 J. P. Mead, ‘A romanized version of the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai*, JSBRAS Ixvi (1914), 1-55 (abbr. as RP). See note i, p. 233 of the present essay. 2 Supra, note 1, p. 222, abbr. as SM. 3 ‘Sejarah Melayu or the Malay Annals’, Malay Literature Series, No. 9, Chetak yang ketiga (Singapore, 1948), (ed.) Shellabear; Sedjarah Melaju. Menurut terbitan Abdullah (ibn Abdulkadir Munsji)... oleh T. D. Situmorang dan A. Teeuw (Djakarta-Amsterdam, 1952). 4 I accept Roolvink’s correction of Mead’s reading Silu.

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and subsequent conversion to Islam of the kingdom of Semudera. This is followed immediately by the story of the ruler of Mecca ordering Shaikh Ismail to sail for Semudera, after calling at Ma’abri1 on the way. In the RP the account of the prophecy pre­ cedes that of the foundation of Semudera. Next, both texts give identical descriptions of the ship’s visit to Ma’abri (although the RP is again more circumstantial in its account of ceremonies) and relate that Sultan Muhammad of Ma’abri joins the ship as a fakir. The SM then continues that Nakhoda Ismail and the fakir first come to Fansuri, then to Lamuri and then to Haru, introducing Islam to each of these places, in none of which was anybody able to read the Koran. In Haru the fakir asks where Semudera is, and learns that they have sailed past it, so they turn back. They make a land-fall at Perlak, which they convert to Islam. Then they reach Semudera where they meet Merah Silau looking for shells on the beach. The fakir admits him to the Faith of Islam. Merah Silau returns to his house and the fakir to his ship. That night Merah Silau dreams that the Apostle of God appeared to him and spat into his open mouth. The following morning Merah Silau is able to read the Koran. This is the sign for Shaikh Ismail that this is the place where the Prophet’s words will be fulfilled. And he installs Merah Silau as ruler under the name of Malik as-Saleh. The account of this episode in the RP differs markedly from that in the SM with regard both to the events themselves and to their sequence. The RP relates in great detail how, immediately after the ship’s departure from Mengiri, Merah Silau in a dream meets the Prophet, who spits into his mouth, gives him the name Malik as-Saleh, tells him to pronounce the confession of faith, forbids him to eat animals that have not been ritually slaughtered, and foretells that after forty days a ship will arrive from Mecca. He must observe the teaching he will receive from those on board. When, at the Prophet’s command, he bends down when he wakes up, he sees that he has been circumcised. Then he pronounces the confession of faith and recites the whole Koran ‘without having learned it from anybody’ (tiada dengan dipelajarinya lagi pada 1 Winstedt (in Hall, Historians of South East Asia, 26) rightly identifies this as Ma'bar or Maabar, a well known name for the Coromandel Coast. Cf. Hobson-Jobson, s.v. Mabar. The younger SM version corrupted this name into Mutabar. The RP reading Mengiri (also in Dulaurier’s edition of the text) is an obvious misreading or miswriting of Ma'abri.

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seorang juapuri). His subjects, of course, do not understand his words.1 After some time Shaikh Ismail’s ship does arrive at Semudera (no visits to other places are mentioned at all). Shaikh Ismail discovers that the ruler is already known to his subjects by his new Muslim name, and knows the confession of faith and the Koran. The only task left to the foreigners is to convert his subjects to Islam. Semudera becomes properly part of the World of Islam {Dar ul-Islam\ the ruler is consecrated and receives the insignia (alat kerajaan) from Mecca. Both texts then introduce the two ministers who are known after conversion as Ghiyath ad-Din and Husam ad-Din (this name is apparently corrupt). Shaikh Ismail leaves (the RP account of his leave taking is again more circumstantial); the fakir remains as a teacher of religion. The RP relates that the Gayo are people from Semudera who refused to accept Islam and who fled to the upper reaches of the Pasangan River. There then follows, in both texts, the account of the search for a wife for Malik as-Saleh in Perlak. In the SM this account is short, and great emphasis is placed on how Ghiyath ad-Din is deceived : the daughter of a secondary wife of the ruler is placed on a seat raised above those of the real princesses and wears finer clothes. Unwittingly Ghiyath ad-Din chooses the lesser of the three and, laughing merrily, the ruler of Perlak gives his consent. Tun Perpatih Pandak then escorts her to Semudera and the marriage takes place in the customary manner. The account in the RP is much longer (some three pages as against only a half page in the SM) although here too there are some striking similarities between both texts. But in this story the RP not only gives a much fuller description of all the formalities, but it also differs in its account of the course of events. One dif­ ference of detail is that in the RP the emissary’s name is not men­ tioned. What is more important, however, is that in the RP there is no question of the ruler’s emissary being deceived. Indeed, the 1 The story of the conversion of Raja Tengah (or Raja Kechil Besar) in the SM (p. 83 = Sh. story n. 5) agrees with that in the RP in that the meeting in the dream with the Prophet and the conversion and circumcision take place before the arrival of the ship from Arabia. The texts vary in that, in the RPt the salat is not mentioned as a curiosity attracting attention, and that the arrival of the foreign ship is not regarded as a proof that the sultan, who is behaving oddly, is not possessed by the devil but has indeed met God. On the other hand, the Koran does not play the same role in the SM story as it does in the conversion story in the RP.

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daughter of the secondary wife (anakgundityis here also presented seated higher than those of the queen, but this is openly admitted. The emissary does not himself choose, but reports his findings to his king, advising him that this daughter of the secondary wife is, in the opinion of all, the most suitable candidate. The soothsayers •are consulted and they confirm the choice. Only then is the emissary instructed to go to Perlak to ask for her hand in marriage. There is no question of mockery or contempt. On the contrary, the ruler of Perlak says farewell to his daughter weeping and lets her go with full marks of honour. The RP then gives a story which is not known from the SM at all. It relates how, thanks to a merchant from Kalinga, the king finds rich gold deposits in his country. In the SM (pp. 73 ff.) the ruler then begets two sons, Malik az-Zahir and Malik al-Mansur (in Winstedt’s edition these two sons grow up in Perlak, in the other version no such particulars are given).1 Perlak having been defeated in war by an enemy from across the water, the people betake themselves to Semudera. The ruler conceives the idea of building a settlement for his son. He goes hunting. His dog Si Pasai barks on a site which the ruler finds very suitable for a palace; he founds a place which he calls Pasai. He makes Malik az-Zahir its ruler, and Ghiyath ad-Din his chief minister (mangkubumi), and gives him half of his subjects and possessions. After a while the old king feels that he is going to die, so he summons his sons, admonishes them and their ministers, and they pledge their loyalty to him. Three days afterwards the ruler dies and Malik al-Mansur succeeds him in Semudera. In this episode there are again some differences between the two texts. In the RP the dog does not bark on a piece of high ground (tanah tinggi) but at a barking deer (pelanduk) standing on the high ground, with which it then has a fight.2 The ruler ascribes the courage of the barking deer to the special force of the high ground 1 C. C. Brown considered that the words dinegeri Perlak in the SM were ‘evidently inserted in error’ (in his translation of the SM in JMBRAS xxv. 2 and 3 (1953), 215, n« m). It is, however, not only quite possible that the princes grew up in the place of their mother’s origin (traces of matrilocation?), but only this detail gives relevancy, in this connexion, to the information that the people of Perlak come to live in Pasai after the defeat of their state. 2 The barking deer (pelanduk) also appears in the similar story in the SM of the foundation of Malacca (p. 82 = Sh. story 11. 2), in which the ‘high ground* (tanah tinggi) and, of course, the dog’s name, do not occur.

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and for this reason builds his palace on top of it. There is no question in the RP of the suitability of location mentioned in the SM: ‘as though it had been banked up by hand (seperti ditambak rupanydj. The RP, on the other hand, mentions, that when the palace is finished, the dog dies and is buried on the site. A further striking difference is that between the genealogies. In the RP Malik asSaleh has but one son, Malik az-Zahir, who becomes the ruler of Pasai. He in his turn has two sons, Malik-al-Mahmud and Malik al-Mansur. When the father dies the two sons are educated by their grandfather. When Malik al-Mahmud reaches manhood, he be­ comes the ruler of Pasai, and when the old ruler dies, he makes his other grandson ruler of Semudera. The more religious tenor of the old ruler’s last speeches in the RP is in marked contrast with the comparable passage in the SM.

(Ü) Subsequently, the texts both tell about Pasai and Siam, but apart from this, they do not agree either in broad trends or in details. The SM relates that the king of Siam, who is obviously envious, as well as afraid of the prosperity of Pasai, orders one of his war-chiefs, called Awi Dichu, to capture the ruler of Pasai (the Winstedt edition of the SM calls him now the ruler of Semudera, then of Pasai, in this story; the Abdullah-Sheilabear version, however, constantly has Semudera). Awi Dichu carries his orders out without a fight. He has a number of war-chiefs (hulubalang) conveyed into the ruler’s immediate presence in chests which are described as presents to the ruler. The ruler is ordered to tend the palace fowls in Siam. Ghiyath ad-Din, however, frees his lord. He sails to Siam, disguised as an Arab merchant and presents the king of Siam with such fine gifts that he promises to grant him any favour. The minister of Pasai asks only for the man who tends the royal fowls ‘because he is a Muslim’. In this way the king of Pasai returns to his country after what must have been a considerable length of time, for his grandson has meanwhile grown up. The Siam story is entirely different in the RP. There the king of Siam is said to have heard of the ruler of Pasai’s great might and sends a large army to Pasai under the command of Talak Sembang to demand ‘voluntary’ tribute or alternately to subject Pasai. Pasai refuses and after a long, fierce battle between the two armies, the

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Siamese army is finally defeated by the personal intervention of the ruler of Pasai. The description of the fighting is wholly conven­ tional and lacks any personal or anecdotal distinctions. (iii) In their accounts of the next episode the two texts largely agree (SM, pp. 77-79 = RP, pp. 21-25). In the SM the ruler of Semu­ dera goes, against his minister’s advice, on a visit to Pasai while his brother there is absent. (Moquette and, later, Hooykaas1 interpret the text in such a way that this visit coincides with his brother’s absence in captivity in Siam. The texts do not say so explicitly, but the assumption is likely.) He conceives a passion for one of the women attendants in his brother’s palace and carries her off. He soon realizes that he has done wrong. His brother shows that he feels insulted by asking him to welcome him at Jambu Ayer and then not arriving there himself. The chief minister of Pasai Ghiyath ad-Din retires and is succeeded by Perpatih Tulus Segara Tukan. The ruler of Pasai consults him on how to punish his brother. On his minister’s advice the occasion of the proposed circumcision of Prince Ahmad is seized upon as an opportunity to get hold of the ruler of Semudera. When the latter with his ministers arrives for the festivities, they are taken. The ruler of Semudera is exiled to Manjung, the minister is to remain in Pasai or have his head cut off; he chooses the second alternative. The head is thrown into the sea, but is fished up by the ruler of Semudera on his way to Manjung and buried by him at Padang Maya. After three years, the Sultan of Pasai repents that he had punished his brother so heavily for such a trifle, and gives orders to bring him back again. The ruler of Semudera, on his way back from exile, stops by the grave of Husam ad-Din, his old minister, who calls him to stay, whereupon he dies. His mourning brother buries him on the spot. Sultan Malik az-Zahir makes his son Sultan of Pasai, and when he feels his death approaching gives him his last injunc­ tions. Here ends in the SM the story of the Sultan of Pasai. Pasai is indeed frequently mentioned afterwards, but only incidentally, and the SM contains no further continuous description of the history of that state. The corresponding story in the RP is very similar even in its 1 C. Hooykaas, Over Maleische Literatuur (Leiden, 1937), 258.

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details ; the few differences are of a subsidiary nature. The ruler of Pasai is travelling around the country (for in this text there can, of course, be no question of his absence in captivity in Siam). Then, the ruler of Semudera, again contrary to his minister’s advice, sets out on a journey and on his way home sees, outside the Pasai palace (which he has not, therefore, visited), a lady-in-waiting, whom he carries off. The second difference is that the vain trip undertaken by the Sultan of Semudera at his brother’s request, as described in the SMt is not mentioned in the RP. The anger of the Sultan of Pasai is directed explicitly, and right from the start, against his brother’s minister: T shall not be content until I have killed him’. The RP also gives more details of the capture and the subsequent course of events, but these variations are not significant. It should be noted, however, that the two texts vary in their etymologies of the name Padang Maya: in the SM, maya is explained as the interrogative (= apa\ in the question ‘which plain is this?’. In the RP, maya is apparently derived from mayat, ‘corpse’. Finally, in the RP) the Sultan of Semudera is buried in Pasai. (iv) This brings us to the end of the directly comparable passages. All in all, there appears to be a possibility of paraphrase, as such, in only one of the three sections, namely the third. The fact that the RP is far more circumstantial regarding this period of history which directly concerns Pasai, as compared with the SMy in which it is no more than peripheral, is not really suprising. The in­ significant differences in this third section are of a kind that could easily occur in paraphrasing one text from the other. In section (ii), on the other hand, the two texts are completely at variance. In view of the fact that not only in this episode, but elsewhere aç well, the two texts have a completely distinct content, it could, of course, be argued that this difference is of no particular significance. On the other hand, it is difficult to explain as a co­ incidence the fact that in the same context in both texts a story is included about the relationship between Pasai and Siam. The account in the RP of the glorious victory of the Sultan of Pasai over the invading forces from Siam, is conventional and typical of such accounts in hikayat literature, whereas the story in the SM of the humiliating captivity of the Sultan of Pasai and his degrading 823121

Q

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'Hikayat Raja-Raja Posai' and 'Sejarah Melayu'

task of tending chickens in the land of unbelievers, is related in a lively and personal manner. One would be inclined to assume rather a conscious opposition between the two texts. The passages discussed in section (i) seem to contain conflicting as well as closely corresponding elements. Although in general there is a high degree of similarity between the two texts, apart from the greater detail in the RP, there are three points of conflict which are too significant to be ascribed to accidental alterations during paraphrasing: (a) the story of the conversion to Islam of Pasai; (b) the quest for a bride in Perlak; (c) the genealogies of the rulers of Pasai and of Semudera. In the SM story of the conversion to Islam, Pasai is converted only after several other places in north Sumatra, and this conversion is brought about by men from across the seas. Not until after this event does the Prophet appear to Merah Silau in his dream and enable him to read the Koran. In the RP, on the other hand, nothing is said about the conversion of other places prior to that of Pasai, and Merah Silau receives the faith, with all the necessary knowledge and requisites, directly from the Prophet. The foreigners’ arrival here serves only to the greater glory of his miraculous conversion. As for the story of the quest for a bride, in the SM the Sultan of Pasai is made a fool of, and the daughter of a secondary wife, obviously regarded as inferior, is paired off with him. The ÆP, however, takes great pains to give full splendour to the princess and the fact that she is chosen is represented as an honour and a result of destiny. With regard to the genealogies, there is the material difference of an additional name and generation in the RPy but one can perhaps also surmise a difference in appreciation in the two versions. In the SM the ruler of Semudera is a direct descendant of the founder of Semudera and therefore of higher rank than the ruler of Pasai. In the RP, on the other hand, the ruler of Semudera is a younger son of the former ruler of Pasai, and thus ranks lower than his brother in Pasai. The evidence from the Pasai tombstones, however, led Moquette to the conclusion that the SM genealogy, rather than that in the RP, was the right one. To sum up, the two texts show a number of striking similarities, even in such matters as word choice. The greater detail in the RP can be ascribed to the greater relevance of the events to Pasai. The RP, however, on four occasions gives accounts which are untrue, or confer credit or honour on Pasai, where the versions in the SM

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are historically nearer the truth and/or confer less honour, or evert discredit, on Pasai. In my opinion these differences are too great to call either text a paraphrase of the other. There is a relation of opposition rather than of paraphrasing. But how can these differences be explained ? One might, at first sight, ascribe them to intentional alterations by an author of the SM on the Pasai model, for, indeed, elsewhere in the SM its successive authors did not scorn such drastic editing of their material, as Winstedt has clearly demonstrated. I doubt, nevertheless, whether in this instance it was the author(s) of the SM who distorted the tradition. One is then at once faced with the question of their motive for depreciating Pasai. When the SM, or at any rate this part of the text, was being written, Malacca was in its hey-day and Pasai had declined. In fact, the SM appears in many places to have been written in a spirit of appreciation of Pasai : on p. 96 (Sh. story 13. 8) Pasai is mentioned as one of the three major cities of its time, after Majapahit but before Malacca, and on p. 124 (Sh. 18. 2) Pasai and Haru are called Malacca’s equals (in Sh. 18. 3, in a story not in Winstedt’s edition, the chess-player of Pasai is called invincible). On pp. 126-7 we see that Pasai assists Malacca against Macassarese pirates, and the commander of the Pasai fleet is called a braver man than his Malacca counterpart (Sh. 19). On pp. 127 ff. (Sh. story 20. 3) and on pp. 178 ff. (Sh. story 32, 11) the Sultan of Malacca asks Pasai for answers to theo­ logical problems. Nor is there any evidence of disparagement of Pasai elsewhere in the SM, although it does contain some traces of irritation at the pride of this kingdom, which always expects homage (sembah) and will not accept ‘greetings’ (salam) from anybody (cf. p. 178 (Sh. 32. 11) and p. 133 (Sh. 22. 6)). Whatever the case may be, it is difficult to see why the author of the SM should have gone to such lengths to deprive these stories about Pasai of their glory. On the basis of the internal evidence of the passages discussed above, it does not seem likely either that the RP was composed prior to the SM, The SM story is plausible and far from laboured, told with the sense of humour so characteristic of this text, whereas in the RP the stories in question are obviously written for the greater glory of Pasai. If either of these texts was derived directly from the other, the RP would seem rather to be a painstakingly chastened and embellished version of an original SM, than the SM an inten­ tionally derogatory version of the latter.

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Is it possible now to relate this conclusion, based on the textual comparison, to the facts of history and literary history? At first sight this appears difficult. Winstedt has argued that the terminus ante quem of the RP must be 1524, the year of the definitive conquest of Pasai by Achin. With regard to the SM, on the other hand, he demonstrated that the SM edited by him, the oldest known version, continues until 1535, that is to say, long after the conquest of Malacca by the Portuguese. He also indicated re­ peatedly, however, that the author of the SM must have known personally the life at the court of Malacca and suggests that the original draft was made in 1482, a date mentioned in a London manuscript in connexion with the Sejarah Melayu,1 even if the text was not fully written down until 1535 or shortly after. One might surmise that Sultan Muzaffar Shah, who ruled in Malacca around 1450, and whom Winstedt on good grounds thinks to have been the promoter of the first version of the Hukum Kanun, the Malay code of law/ also extended his interest to history, and that in his time, some form of Malay history was composed. One can certainly assume that long before 1535 traditions about the Malay states in north Sumatra and the other sides of the straits, including Pasai, were circulating, probably in varying forms. They must have comprised material not wholly creditable to Pasai which the author of the SM embodied in his text. It is under­ standable, however, that a Pasai chronicler would think it necessary to remove certain highlights, or to prefer the more creditable stories. How far he also used his imagination or was able to draw on parallel traditions, is probably not possible to determine now. In short, I feel unable to agree with Winstedt that the fragment of the RP, discussed above, as this text is known to us, was a model for the author of the SM, but rather think that the RP is a version, specially fashioned for Pasai consumption, of traditions which have also been preserved in different, possibly more general or older (and more authentic?) form in the SM. The instances quoted by Winstedt3 of direct influence of the RP on the SM and later Malay histories, are in fact no more than instances of parallel versions, and it is not possible now to determine which version was prior 1 Winstedt, JMBRAS xvii. 107. 2 R. O. Winstedt, *The date of the Malacca Legal Code’, JRAS (1953), 31-33. 3 Winstedt, JMBRAS xvi. 26.

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in date to the other. They certainly do not support the argument for a prior date of the RP. There are additional reasons why direct influence of either text on the other is most unlikely. If the author of the SM had indeed had access to the version of the RP as we know it, surely he would have made more use of the material as, for instance, in the case of the story about Tun Beraim Bapa, or of the history of Majapahit, in which the author was very interested, judging from other passages about this subject in his text. If the opposite had been the case, it seems strange that the RP does not mention even the name Malacca, nor any of the early ‘Malay’ history, not even Iskandar. In fact, these two histories cover different fields. They embody two different historical traditions which converge incidentally at certain points where they may both ultimately derive from one common source. But here, too, in spite of all their similarities they clearly represent different versions. One question which arises at this point is how far the RP as a whole is a typical Pasai Book of Kings, written at the court of, and for the rulers of, Pasai. I cannot enter into this question at length here and it is better to wait until A. H. Hill’s new edition of the RP is available.1 Roolvink, however, rightly pointed out in the article mentioned above, that from this point of view the text is apparently heterogeneous. It can be divided into three parts. The first tells of the foundation, the rise and hey-day of Pasai and its dynasty, i.e. these passages, more or less, discussed in this essay. Then follows the section which tells of King Ahmad of Pasai’s misconduct as a father to his children, boys as well as girls, and, as a sort of welldeserved punishment, the conquest of Pasai by Majapahit. The third, shortest section, does not mention Pasai again, but deals with the conquest of Majapahit in the archipelago, ending with the well-known story about the unsuccessful conquest of Menangkabau because in a. fight between two buffaloes, that of Menangkabau wins. The text proper is followed by the copyist’s blessing, the date of the manuscript, &c., and a list of the place-names mentioned in the text, which number fifteen, and also a list of the names of all the rulers subjected to Majapahit at the time of the fall of Pasai. These 1 [Since the writing of this essay, the late A. H. Hill’s revised romanized version and English translation of Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai has been published in JMBRAS xxxiii. 2 (i960). As it appeared only in 1962, Professor Teeuw has been unable to make use of the new edition here. Editors* note.]

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lists really are a sort of (relatively reliable) index to the text, and their position in the manuscript conveys the impression that they were compiled for Raffles, who had this manuscript copied. Cer­ tainly no new names or facts are added in these lists : Banjermasin, for instance, is mentioned both in the appendix and in the main body of the text.1 All in all, this text is only in some respects a Book of the Kings of Pasai. The last part certainly would not have been written in its present form to the honour of one of their number. Should one surmise that this part is an appendix which originally did not belong to the text, although, on the other hand, it is now no longer to be distinguished from the rest either by language or otherwise? But is the (temporary) decline of Pasai, as a result of the conquest by Majapahit, a satisfactory end for such a text? Or should one surmise that the text, as it has been handed down to us, is only a fragment of a larger whole, which also described, or intended to describe, the later re-emergence of Pasai from the domination of Majapahit? Or is the text known to us no more than a rhapsody of traditions, stories, and legends, compiled in this form later and on the basis of divergent traditions and manuscripts? And is its specifically Pasai character not real but only apparent, or at any rate fortuitous, and should one consider the possibility that the text in this form was compiled later than 1524 after all? It will, at any rate, be clear now that a comprehensive study of the nature, func­ tion, and significance of Malay historical literature is necessary if one wishes to be able to deal with such questions as the RP poses, with any chance of success. With the detailed study above I hope to have contributed a little to further research in this difficult but interesting matter. 1 Cf. Winstedt, JMBRAS xvi. 105, who suggests the opposite.

XIII THE CHARACTER OF THE MALA Y ANNALS P. E. DE JOSSELIN DE JONG

The history of Malay studies is marked by slow and cautious progress rather than by moments of sudden advance due to spectacular discoveries: no unexpected archaeological finds, no deciphering of an unknown script mark its course. There is an exception, however: Sir Richard Winstedt’s recognition of the Raffles MS. No. 18 in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society as an earlier version of the Sejarah Melayu (the Malay Annals). This was undeniably an event which all at once cast an entirely new light on this work, so essential for our knowledge of the fifteenth-century Malacca Sultanate. A full study of the differences between Winstedt’s ‘discovery’— the 1536 version—and the long-familiar 1612 version is still to be made, but some assessment of the differences, and of the way the editor of 1612 approached the 1536 prototype, will be necessary for every study that concerns itself with the period of Malay ascen­ dancy. It certainly plays a part in the questions to be raised, and tentatively answered, in this essay : What was the point of view, and what was the aim of the author of the Malay Annals ? It is well known that the Malay Annals incorporate the most diverse materials. These are not used merely as literary ornamenta­ tion, but as an integral part of the contents. The author himself acknowledges his debt to the Hikayat Iskandar\ but besides literary works, he makes use of tales and legends, and by no means local legends only. Dr. A. A. Cense has observed that the sword­ fishes’ attack on Singapura has its counterpart in the Hikayat Hang Tuah, where it is an attack on Indrapura; in Bataviaas Genootschap MS. No. 162, as an attack on Tarusan, and in the Salasilah Berau, as an attack on Pantai. He then makes the memorable remark: ‘So one should never rashly conclude that a particular tale is a local legend, out of which certain historical events can be distilled.’1 1 A. Cense, De Kroniek van Bandjarmasin (Santpoort, 1928), 175.

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This not only means that we must regretfully reject the attemp­ ted interpretation of the swordfish episode as referring to an attack from southern India by soldiers bearing a carving of their sword­ fish totem as a standard. Of more importance for our purpose is the realization that the Malay Annals use non-local material for building up the history of Singapura and Malacca. This single example may serve to illustrate a conclusion to which one is led on reading the Malay Annals : for the author, Malacca was the centre of his universe. As a superior country, with a dynasty of perfect legitimacy and antiquity, all happenings in the surround­ ing world had to have their focus there. He does not record these happenings as mere embellishments, nor does he annex them out of an exaggerated sense of Malacca’s importance, but because of his view of the world. ‘History’, says Burckhardt, ‘is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another’, and for the author of the Sejarah Melayu what is ‘worthy of note’ is what concerns Malacca. Can we go a step farther and try to understand the Malay Annals not only on the basis of its author’s outlook, but also of his aims and purpose? The orientalist who has never failed to stress the importance of this question of aim and purpose for the study of South-east Asian historiography is C. C. Berg. For Javanese history, he develops the following point of view: The king is the container of a supernatural force, the life-force of his realm. Des­ cribing earlier kings means resurrecting them through the magic of language, so that their beneficent power may be revived; and eulogizing the king is a means of strengthening his supernatural power and energy by this same ‘linguistic magic’. The practitioners of this magic are the pujanggay the court chroniclers, who are also astrologers. (The occurrence of language taboos is another mani­ festation of the belief in the magit of spoken and written language.) The aim of a Javanese chronicler—say, of the author of the fourteenth-century Nâgarakrtâgama—is therefore to achieve a maximum of supernatural effect, not to combine flattery with a maximum of factual information. For that reason historical data are so rare in Javanese historiography and what data there are must be embedded in eulogistic phrases.1 1 C. C. Berg, ‘De evolutie der Javaansche geschiedsschrijving’, in F. W. Stapel (ed.), Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië (Amsterdam, 1938), ii.14 ff. Cf. D. G. E. Hall (ed.), Historians of South East Asia (London, 1961), 4.

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Now leaving out of consideration the question of the applicability of this theory to Java (and the Nâgarakrtâgama in particular)— how far can it help us to understand the Sejarah Melayu ? Berg’s scheme is relevant to quite a number of features of Malay life and letters. The Malay ruler, like the Javanese, bears within himself the force that ensures the well-being of his realm. In Malay, too, there are language taboos and literary magic : take the wonder-working effect of spells, and of the texts of certain wayang tales. One even wonders whether the famous passage in the Sejarah Melayu which describes the Malay heroes reading the Hikayat Amir Hamzah on the eve of the Portuguese attack should not be understood as a description of a rite of literary magic; the warriors acquire the supernatural force and courage of the legendary Islamic heroes whose exploits are recited. Then, we know that in the Malay world there are historical texts which have a supernatural function as preservers of the state myth used in the state ritual: the Salasilah Kutai is such a book.1 In spite of all this, I do not think Berg’s hypothesis on the character of (a large part of) Javanese historiography can serve to elucidate the purpose and character of the Malay Annals', the differences are too great. The Annalist does not go to extremes in eulogizing Malacca’s sultans : a cliche or two serves him for paying his respects to their ‘justice’ or their activity in ‘protecting their subjects’, and some are not even awarded this off-hand compli­ ment: ‘Sultan Ala’u ’d-Din is merely credited with great physical strength’, as C. C. Brown remarks in the introduction to his translation of the Malay Annals. There is no lack of fairy-tale happenings in the Sejarah Melayu, yet the whole atmosphere is realistic, even matter-of-fact. Nor do we find in the culture of Malacca a figure to parallel the pujangga, the annalist-astrologer, of the Javanese courts. Such pujangga may have been employed at the court of Sri Vijaya, and again their tradition may have persisted long enough to reach fifteenth-century Malacca, as Situmorang and Teeuw very cautious­ ly suggest as a possibility.2 But (a) nothing whatever is known about pujangga at Sri Vijaya,3 and (b) the Malacca sultanate does 1

C. Hooykaas, ‘A Critical Stage in the Study of Indonesia’s Past’, Hall,

Historians of South East Asia, 323-4. 2 Sedjarah Melayu (Djakarta/Amsterdam, 1952), p. xi. 3 ‘Literary magic’ in Sri Vijaya is attested, however, by the minatory formulas in the inscriptions of Karang Brahi and Kota Kapur.

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not even know the name of Sri Vijaya, let alone enjoy a ‘cultural heritage’ of that earlier kingdom. What is there in the culture of Malacca that can possibly be said to derive from Sri Vijaya ? Still, the Malay Annals were not created e nihilo. If there is no evidence for pujangga influence, what about its predecessors in the field of Malay national, or court, histories ? We know one, at least, the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, The influence this Sumatran chronicle has had on its Malayan counterpart has rightly been noted—if perhaps overestimated. Yet, in spite of its undeniable influence, it is all in all a quite different kind of work. Were it not for a few phrases here and there like: ‘He is known to the present day as Marhum Semudra’, and were it not for external evidence that a Malik as-Salih and Malik az-Zahir really did exist, the Pasai Chronicles could just as well have been a collection of purely legen­ dary tales : they are so formal, so conventionalized, so completely divorced from reality. The major part of the Malay Annals, by contrast, obviously depicts real persons, with their foibles and idiosyncrasies, and by means of genealogies the Annalist links up the historical personages with his contemporaries. It is worth noting that the editor of the 1612 version went to great lengths in bringing these genealogies up to date, and thus enabled the Malay Annals to retain their character of being a link between the present and the past. In other words, the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai was almost certainly a predecessor of, and probably a general model for, the Sejarah Melayu, but it is not a work that can shed much light on the charac­ ter of the Malay Annals. For this, we have to turn to present-day Malaya. The Malay courts, and many of the more considerable Malay families, to this day keep two kinds of work which, I believe, were the essential materials with which the Malay Annals were con­ structed. In the first place, diaries of significant events, either of a personal or of a political nature, sometimes with notes on the concurrent happenings in nature. Secondly, genealogical trees of the family or dynasty concerned; as it were, patents of nobility and legitimacy. These writings—together with oral information and personal observation—would account for a vast portion of the Annalist’s data, on the historical (that is, the later Malacca) period covered by the Sejarah Melayu. I note in passing that this corre­ sponds fairly closely with the views of Drewes, who considers

The Character of the ‘Malay Annals9

239

‘personal memorabilia’ to be important building-stones for the non-magical part of Javanese historiography.1 Now the character of these works can help us to understand the character of the Sejarah Melayu as a whole, with its concern over the grandeur of the Malay nobility (and especially of the Benda­ hara) and the legitimacy par excellence of Malacca’s sultans. Just as the private families’ genealogical tables are these families’ charters of nobility and greatness, and the diaries also serve in a sense as minute papers which can guide future generations to choose their course of action, so too the Malay Annals can serve these purposes for the rulers and the more influential subjects in the realm as a whole. We are now, I think, approaching an answer to the question: what purpose were the Malay Annals meant to serve? To get a more precise answer, it may be useful to turn back once more to the Pasai Chronicles. The basic ideology or, as we might call it, the political ethic, of the Pasai Chronicles is the same as that of the Malay Annals : the subject’s unquestioning loyalty and submission to his king, and his avoidance at all costs of the unforgivable sin of derhaka: in­ subordination or treason. This means that within the realm there is no force able or entitled to curb a ruler’s excesses. Both the Sumatran and the Malayan chronicle resolve this impossible situation by resorting to the theme of an avenging justice from without : in the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai the Javanese conquer Pasai after Sultan Ahmad’s tyranny has assumed the intolerable form of the murder of the Sultan’s own two sons; in the Sejarah Melayu Singapura is sacked by the Javanese after Sultan Iskandar not only put to death but wantonly shamed the daughter of Sang Ranjuna Tapa, and Malacca is captured by the Portuguese after Sultan Mahmud’s brutal assassination of the Bendahara and his family. But besides this similarity we note that the Sejarah Melayu adds an element of nobility and dignity to this simple theme. The rela­ tionship between ruler and realm is no longer dominated by the crude mechanism of submission and revenge, but is regulated by a contract into which both parties freely entered at the dawn of Malay history: the compact between Sri Tri Buana—the first ruler—and Demang Lebar Daun—the ancestor of the Malay commoners. . . . Both of them took a solemn oath to the effect that whoever 1 G. W. J. Drewes, ‘Over werkelijke en vermeende geschiedsschrijving’, Djawa, xix (1939), 249.

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departed from the terms of the pact, let his house be overturned by Almighty God so that its roof be laid on the ground and its pillars be inverted. And that is why it has been granted by Almighty God to Malay rulers that they shall never put their subjects to shame, and that those subjects however gravely they offend shall never be bound or hanged or disgraced with evil words. If any ruler puts a single one of his subjects to shame, that shall be a sign that his kingdom will be destroyed by Almighty God. Similarly it has been granted by Almighty God to Malay subjects that they shall never be disloyal or treacherous to their rulers, even if their rulers behave evilly or inflict injustice upon them.1 This undertaking not only lends a note of human dignity to the contacts between king and commoner, but it also gives the Malay Annals a dominant theme and an enduring relevance and actuality. The theme is of a succession of sultans, by no means ideal figures ; on the contrary, they are ‘human, all too human*. But the whole is more than the sum of the parts, and the power of the dynasty is greater than that of the individual rulers. It is the daulat of the supremely legitimate dynasty that makes Malacca the great centre it is depicted as being, able to withstand Java, Siam, and China. This royal daulat is enhanced by the loyalty—despite the individual sultans* failings—of the subjects, with the Bendahara as their grandest representatives. Now, thanks to the motif of the solemn compact, the Sejarah Melayu is given not only a dominant theme for the recording of events of the past, but also a relevance for the needs of the present, for the ancient covenant still (in 1536 and 1612) holds good. This, I think, allows us to assess the purpose of the Malay Annals. Besides being a charter, staking a claim to legitimacy and greatness, and a chronicle, to instruct and divert, it is also a guide for the present : as long as the age-old contract is respected by both parties, ta' 'kan Melayu hilang didunia, and the daulat of the dynasty and the realm will reassert itself in the future. This last phrase, ‘in the future’, may seem out of place. We think of the Malay Annals being written at a pathetic little court, harried by Portuguese and Achinese, and forced to exchange the splendours of Malacca for a site at a squalid backwater. We know that the Malacca sultanate had no future, and we see the forces of d’Albuquerque as the vanguard of a new age, that was to increase 1 C. C. Brown’s translation of the Malay Annals in JMBRAS xxv (1952), 27.

The Character of the 4Malay Annals'

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its ascendancy over Malay culture for several centuries, until at last a reaction set in, in our time. However, this has not much relevance for the situation in 1536 and 1612. Not only that the authors of the Malay Annals, of course, could not foresee the developments of future centuries, but, of greater importance : in their time the Portuguese position was not one of complete dominance. We may tend to overestimate that position because we see, as it were, all the power of other western invaders coming in its wake. But as J. C. van Leur has shown, when the Portuguese came to South-east Asia in the early sixteenth century they had a certain military superiority, but by no means dominated the scene in that area.1 Events prove this: in 1551 the Malays only just failed to re­ capture Malacca, and for the Annalist of 1612 not Portugal, but Achin was the principal enemy; and there was of course no reason for the Malays to consider this power as belonging to a new, and inherently stronger, order. Dr. C. Hooykaas has already suggested in 1937 that the 1612 version of the Malay Annals (the only version then known) might have been, as it were, a Malay response to Achin’s Tâjus-Salâtîn, which had been completed a few years earlier.2 If this is so, it might in part explain the enthusiasm with which the Johore court greeted the ‘history brought from Goa’, that is, the 1536 version of the Malay Annals, and their decision to bring it up to date. But even if we do not see the revision of the Malay Annals as a move in a Battle of the Books—and this situation naturally can not apply to the earlier and essential version of the Sejarah Melayu— I think we may conclude that the aim of the Annalist was not merely to draw up a court chronicle. A more fundamental purpose was to vindicate a claim to greatness : of the dynasty, the Bendahara, and the realm as a whole ; and, most important, to provide a myth­ ically based, a truly sacral, code of political conduct by which this greatness could be retained or restored. 1 J. C. van Leur, Asian Trade and Society (The Hague-Bandung, 1955)» 118. 2 He points out that the very title of the Malay Annals, Sulâlatu's-Salden, sounds as an echo of the Achinese Tdju's-Salatin (Over Maleische Literatuur [Leiden 1937], 201). The account of the Malay Annals in the second edition of Hooykaas’s book of 1947 is the same as that of the first, that, is, it does not take into account Winstedt’s discovery of 1938.

XIV TWO NEW ‘OLD’ MALAY MANUSCRIPTS R. ROOLVINK

(0

The Third Book of the Bustänu'l-Salätin As late as 1955 Dr. P. Voorhoeve, when giving a list of the writings of Rânïrï,1 could still write about the third book of the Bustänu'lSalätin'. ‘No copy or manuscript of this book is known to exist; apparently it is lost or the author did not complete this part.’ However, the Library of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lümpur possesses a manuscript of the Bustänu l-Salât in containing the first five bäbs. It is a manuscript of 787 pages, 20 X 15I cm., 19 lines per page, and well written. The Arabic quotations are in violet, as is the case with the first word or words of new paragraphs. Mr. Muhammad Yunus Maris, Lecturer in the Language Institute, Kuala Lumpur, is at present working for his Doctor of Philosophy degree on the third book of this text, and therefore the present writer will refrain from going into details. However, the following data on the manuscript may be of interest : Bäb I, pp. 1-103; bäb II (11 fasals), pp. 104-291; bäb III, pp. 292-576; bäb IV, pp. 578-689; bäb V, pp. 690-787. The first two bäbs do not mention any date at the end, bäbs 3-5 give the year 1231 (= 1815) as the year of copying. Thus at the time there existed at least one other copy. The third bäb has, as indicated by Rânïrï in his introduction, six fasals. They are : Page 292: Fasal yang pertama pada menjadikan raja dan mengikut dia dengan segala sharat. Page 306: Fasal yang kedua pada menyatakan kelakuan segala khalifah dan segala raja yang dahulu kala dan segala qissah mereka itu supaya mengambil 'ibarat dan insaf segala yang budiman pada menengar dia. 1 BKI cxi

(1955), 154.

Two New 'Old' Malay Manuscripts

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Page 498: Fasal yang ketiga pada menyatakan menjadikan qadi yang menghukumkan dengan hukum sarâ'. Page 505 : Fasal yang keempat pada menyatakan peri menjadikan wazir dan huhibalang serta dengan segala sharat mereka itu. Page 564: Fasal yang kelima pada menyatakan peri utusan dan segala sharat mereka itu. Page 572 : Fasal yang keenam pada menyatakan peri kâtib dan segala perintahnya. Bäb III concludes: Tamma al-bâbu ’1-thâlithu bi hamdi ’llâhi wa 'aunihi fï shahri Rabî'i ’1-âkhîr sanat 1231 fï ardi Ashï dâri ’1-saläm. It would seem to the present writer that this manuscript is not the manuscript used by R. J. Wilkinson for his edition. For that there are too many—albeit often minor—differences in spelling and in the wording of the text.

(“)

A Commentary by Shamsu’l-Dîn on the Shair Ikan Tongkoi of Hamzah Fansürî In 1951 Professor G. W. J. Drewes1 raised the question of the Sharh Rubai Hamzah al-Fansürî, the commentary by Shamsu ’1-Dîn on the mystical poems of Hamzah Fansürî, of which Van der Tuuk once saw a manuscript copy at Padang, Sumatra. Van der Tuuk was unable to acquire this manuscript, and ever since this lost manuscript ‘has haunted the students of Malay letters’, to quote Drewes, who thought it not unlikely that the Asräru 'I-Arifin—ascribed to Hamzah Fansürî himself—or a fragment of this text, was perhaps the commentary seen by Van der Tuuk at Padang, and he tried to argue that the Asräru 'I- Arifin, a commen­ tary on a mystical poem of Hamzah, had not been written by Hamzah himself, but by his pupil Shamsu ’1-Dîn. According to Voorhoeve2 the arguments in favour of Shamsu ’1-Dîn’s authorship of this text were rather weak, also because the authorship of Hamzah was explicitly stated by Rânîrî. He thought it more likely that the Padang manuscript of a Sharh Rubä'i Hamzah al-Fansüri was not the Asräru 'I-Arifin but that it con­ tained a lost commentary by Shamsu ’1-Dîn. 1 2

BKI cvii (1951), 31-41, where also details. Voorhoeve, BKI cvii. 361-4.

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Two New 'Old9 Malay Manuscripts

A few years later, when the present writer was Keeper of Manu­ scripts in the Museum, Djakarta, Malay manuscript No. 458 belonging to this collection was found to contain a commentary by Shamsu ’1-Din on a poem of Hamzah Fansürî. Originally this manuscript was in the Ethnological Collection of the Museum (no. 19714) but later was transferred to the manuscript collection. Having a number higher than 413 it is not described in the Catalogus der Maleische Handschriften in het Museum van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Künsten en Wetenschappen by Van Ronkel.1 The contents of this manuscript are miscellaneous, consisting of several short religious and mystical treatises and fragments. The commentary by Shamsu ’l-Dïn is found on pages 59-78. It is a commentary on Hamzah Fansüri’s Shair Ikan Tongkoi, the text of which is found in Doorenbos’s dissertation2 on pages 57-58. The commentary has no title, which may well support Drewes’s supposition that the words Sharh Rubai Hamzah al-Fansüri as mentioned by Van der Tuuk did not constitute a title but merely indicated the contents and the character of the text seen by him. The text gives the impression of being complete, however, with one exception at least, where, in any case, an answer is missing; but it is far from perfect and therefore sometimes difficult to understand. There are dittographies and lacunae. Moreover, the writing is in several places almost illegible, and one can only guess as to what must have been intended. Whether we have here in our text the (lost) Sharh Rubai Hamzah al-Fansüri or simply a Sharh Rubai Hamzah al-Fansüri out of a hypothetical many is a question difficult to answer. It would not seem unlikely that in the past there existed more commentaries of this kind. If one sha'ir of Hamzah Fansürî is explained in a special commentary, then the possibility that also other sha'irs of this mystic were commented upon and interpreted in the same way should not be ruled out. The text follows here in transcription. Words or parts of words in square brackets are found in the text, but should be deleted; parentheses indicate additions not found in the text ; the figures in parentheses indicate the pages of the manuscript, of which there is a microfilm copy and a photostat copy in the University Library, Leiden. The text of Doorenbos—with the spelling adapted—is 1 2

VBG Ivii (1909). J. Doorenbos, De Geschriften van Hamzah Pansoeri (diss. Leiden, 1933).

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given in an appendix for easy reference. Comparison will show that, apart from other minor differences, our text has two lines not found in Doorenbos, while on the other hand Doorenbos’s text has four lines which are missing in the commentary. Text of Manuscript KBG 458 Ml., pages 59-78. Bismillâhi ’l-rahmäni ’l-rahim. Al-hamdu li ’llâhi alladhï hadänä tarïqa ’1-imän, “segala puji-pujian bagi Allah yang menu(n)juk kami jalan iman”, wa arshadanä wajha ’1-islämi wa ’l-ihsäni1 wa 'allamanä bi ’l-fadli wa ’l-'atiyah, “dan yang memeri karunia akan kami dengan anugerahanya dan [di]karunianya”,wa,arrafanâ*alâ dînin huwa dînu khayri ’l-barlyah, “dan yang memeri karunia akan kami ma'rifat atas agama yang ia agama (60) bagi se-baik22 manusia”, wa ’l-salätu wa ’l-salämu *alä sayyidinä wa maulânâ Muhammadin sallä ’llähu 'alaihi wa sallam afdali ’l-anbiyä’i wa ’l-mursalin, “dan rahmat Allah dan salam Allah atas penghulu kami dan petuanan kami nabi Muhammad s-l-’a-l-m yang terlebih daripada segala nabi dan daripada segala mursal”, wa 'alä älihi wa sahbihi3 ajma'ïn, “dan atas segala keluarganya dan atas segala sahabatnya sekalian”.4 Ammä ba'du: Adapun kemudian dari itu maka inilah shaykh Shamsu ’l-Din menyuraikan5 surat harakat ma'rifat ini supaya memeri tahu kepada yang belum tahu akan ma'rifat dan kepada segala yang sudah tahu inshä ’lläh ta'älä supaya bertambah2 ingatnya. Sha'ir Ikan Tongkol bernama fädil Dengan air dä’im ia wäsil,

maka dimithalkan6 dengan ikan tongkol ia’itu nur Muhammad itu sentiasa (61) wäsil dengan Allah ta'älä. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya betapa dikata shaykh nur Muhammad itu jua wäsil dikata? Jawab: Adapun shaykh berkata demikian itu supaya diketahui oleh yang ada baginya bermata hati akan dia itu wäsil dengan Tuhannya ya'ni muräd wäsil itu lupalah ia daripada segala ta'ayyun ini dan akan dirinyapun lupalah ia sebab ingat ia 1 3 4 5 tion 6

The Malay translation is missing here. 2 Text: s-a~b~k2. Text: frh-a-b-h/t, perhaps under influence of Malay sahabat.

Text: sekali. From churai; menyuraikan = menchuraikan, to explain ; this form of nasaliza­ is not uncommon in northern Sumatra and in Malaya. The text has something like d-m-th-k-n.

823121

R

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Two New 'Old9 Malay Manuscripts

akan wujud dirinya itu dhât Allah yang mutlak, tetapi manangkala ingatnya itu sudah tahu jadi lupalah ia pulang. Itulah yang sampai kepada kunhi dhât Allah ta'âlâ, tetapi dhât Allah itu tiada lain daripada dirinya jua. Lainnya itu daripada segala ta'ayyun dengan kepada 'ibaratnya, maka se-benar2 kata wäsil pun tiada, tiada wäsil pun tiada, karena wäsil itu menghendaki dua shay’, maka pekerjaan yang demikian itu membawa kepada salah jua sekali2. Kata shaykh 'Ashiqmu dâ’im terla(lu) kâmil Didalam laut tiada bersâhil,

artinya akan laut yang tiada bertepi itu hendaklah kita sempurnakan ma'rifat kita karena berahi kita akan mahbûb kita yang upama laut yang tiada bertepi ini memeri kesempurnaan bagi kita jua. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya betapa perinya kita berahi akan mahbûb kita ini ? Jawab : Apabila fanalah segala yang lain daripada itu ia’itu dinamai berahi, tetapi kepada tahqîqnya fanapun tiada ada. Yang fana itu berkehendak kepada ithbât dahulunya kepada orang yang tahqîqnya ithbât yang lain daripada Allah ta'âlâ tiada sekali2. Kata shaykh Ikan tongkoi itu terlalu *ali Bangshanya num ’l-Rahmâni,

artinya nur Muhammad itulah martabatnya terlalu tinggi karena ia bangsha daripada Allah ta'älä. So’al: JikaSeorang (63) bertanya nur Muhammad itu jua akan bangsha chahaya Allah, yang lain ini bukankah daripada chahaya itu jua? Jawab: Adapun shaykh berkata demikian itu hendak mengatakan nur Muhammad terlalu tinggi daripada lainnya, jikalau ada sekalipun yang lain daripadanya, tetapi martabatnya kurang daripada nu(r) Muhammad itu. Daripada fihak itulah maka dikata yang demikian itu, karena nur Muhammad itu 'ilmu Allah, ya'ni martabatnya Huwa jua adanya. Kata shaykh Angganya rupa insân(î) Dâ’im bermain dilaut bâqï. Adapun insân itu manusia se-benar2, manusia itu wâhidïyah, ya'ni Allah ta'älä, artinya tubuh ikan tongkoi itu manusia, tetapi ia sentiasa dalam 'azamat Tuhan yang bâqî itu jua.

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So’al: Jika seorang bertanya, jikalau seperti kata shaykh itu selaku nur Muhammad jua berkekalan1 dalam 'azamat Tuhan, yang lain tiadakah jua? Jawab: Adapun kehendak shaykh berkata (64) demikian itu supaya diketahui yang memichara daripada segala perkataan ini itupun dalam 'azamat Tuhan yang mahabesar itu jua. Kata shaykh Bismillâh akan namanya Ruh Allah akan nyawanya, ma'nä bismillâh itu nama Allah, dan ma'nä rüh Allah itu kekasih Allah, artinya yang tersebut itu beroleh nama daripada Allah ta'älä dan beroleh nyawapun daripadanya, ya'ni jika tiada dengan iradat Allah ta'älä nischaya tiada ia bernyawa. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya, betapa kata shaykh nur Muhammad beroleh nama dan nyawa daripada[nya jua karena daripada sekalian]2 Allah ta'älä, yang lain itu betapa halnya? Jawab: Sungguhpun yang lain beroleh nama dan nyawa daripadanya jua, karena daripada sekalian ini ia asal dan karena itulah maka ia berkata demikian. Kata shaykh Wajhu ’lläh akan mukanya Zähir dan (bä)tin dä’im sertanya. Adapun ma'nä (65) wajhu ’lläh itu keadaan Allah itu, zähir bätin itu nyata dan terbunyi, artinya nur Muhammad itu, betapa nyata keadaan Allah maka zähir dan bätin tiada cherai dengan dia, tetapi tahqîqnya zähirnya zähir Allah ta'älä, bät(in)nya itupun bät(in)nya jua. So’al: Jika seorang bertanyajika seperti kata shaykh itu singga3nur Muhammad itu jua dengan keadaan Allah ta'älä, yang Iain ini [tiada] tiadakah? Jawab: Adapun shaykh berkata demikian hendak mezähirkan nyata yang Iain itupun dengan Allah ta'älä jua. Kata shaykh Nüru ’lläh nama bapainya Khalqu ’lläh nama sakainya. Adapun ma'nä nüru ’lläh chahaya Allah, ma'nä khalqu ’lläh itu segala yang dijadikan, artinya nur Muhammad, tetapi tahqîqnya segala yang ada ini asalnya nur Allah jua. 1 2 3

Text: b-r-k-a-l-n. Dittography of what follows in the next two lines. So? text: s-ng-k/g-, = singga = sehinggal

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So’al: Jika seorang bertanya apa maksud shaykh berkata demikian itu bahwa asal (66) nur Muhammad itu nur Allah dan segala makhluk asalnya nur Muhammad ? Jawab : Adapun shaykh berkata demikian itu supaya nyata kepada yang memacha huruf ini artinya hadith khalaqtu al-ashya a li-ajlika wa khalaqtuka li-ajli, “kujadikan segala perkara ini karenamu yä Muhammad, engkau jadi karenaku”, artinya kujadikan ya'ni zähir segala perkara ini karenamu, engkau [engkau] zähir karenaku. Kata shaykh Raja Sulaymän akan pawainya Dä’im berbunyi dalam1 balainya., artinya kerjaan2 nabi Allah Sulayman itu menyatakan kebesarannya dan sentiasa ia berbunyi kepada zähir. So’al : Jika seorang (bertanya) apa maksud shaykh berkata demikian itu? (Jawab: Adapun shaykh berkata demikian itu) supaya nyata kepada (yang) memicharakan kata ini bahwa raja itu menyatakan kebesarannya jua hanya. Kata shaykh Empat bangsha akan ibunya Summun bukmun akan tipunya. Adapun (67) ma'nä daripada kata yang empat bangsha itu artinya bahwa nur Muhammad [Muhammad] itu zähir terbit daripada empat bangsha, bumi, air, angin, api. Ma'nä summun itu tuli dan bukmun itu kelu, bahasanya artinya tuli dan kelu itupun menya­ takan kebesarannya jua. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya jika seperti ini bahwa tuli dan kelu itu jua akan bahasanya yang lain pulang itu terlebih pulang. . . .3 Kata shaykh Kerjaan Allah yang ditirunya Mengenal Allah dengan 'ilmunya.

Adapun segala pekerjaan yang dikerjakannya itu tiada berlainan dengan pekerjaan Allah ta'älä, bahwasanya ialah mengenal Allah ta'älä [yang ditirunya itu adakah akan Allah ta'älä]4 dengan sempurna pengenal. 1 Text: daim. 2 Text: k-r-j-a-n. 3 The text of the whole passage beginning from : So'al: Jika seorang (bertanya) . . ., is clearly defective. Moreover, the answer on the second question is missing, while menyatakan kebesarannya, which features three times in this passage, is perhaps at least once a dittography. 4 Again a dittography of what follows two lines later.

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So’al : Jika seorang bertanya betapa kerja Allah ta'âlâ yang ditirunya itu, adakah akan Allah ta'âlâ bekeija? Jawab: Adapun katanya demikian itu hendak menyatakan (68) bahawa kerja yang dikerjakannya itu tiada berlainan dengan yang telah nyata kepada 'ilmu Allah kepada tahqiqnya demikian lagi akan lainnya pun sekaliannya. Kata shaykh Fanâ’ fî ’llâh (akan) suchinya Innî anâ ’llâh akan (bunyinya).1 Adapun ma'nâ fanâ’ fî ’llâh itu melennyapkan diri dalam Allah, arti innî anâ ’llâh itu serta (a)kulah Allah, artinya apabila fanalah daripada diri itu maka jadi ithbâtlah dalam ada Allah, maka pekerjaan itu amatsuchi kepada orang tahqïqnya dan perkataannya bahwasanya akulah Allah itu menyatakan tiada ada suatupun hanya ada Allah ta'âlâ jua. So’al: Jika bertanya seorang betapa perinya melennyapkan diri dalam Allah itu? (Jawab:) Meniadakan segala yang lain daripada Allah. Apabila tiadalah yang (lain) daripada (di)rinya itulah yang dikata fanâ’ fî ’llâh, ya'ni lennyap dalam Allah karena yang ada Allah ta'âlâ jua, yang lain daripadanya tiada ada. Kata shaykh Memakai (dunia)2 akan ruginya Râdî (69) akan mati akan pujinya. Adapun ma'nâ râdî itu berkat,3 ya'ni memakai akan kesempurnaan kita jua râdî akan mati pujinya jua. So’al : Jika4 seorang bertanya apa arti kenyataan Allah ? Jawabfku] : Se-kira2 tiada nyata dunia ini tiada seperti bâtinnya itu.5 Kata shaykh Tark(u ’l-)dunyâ akan labanya Menuntut dunia akan maranya. Adapun ma'nâ tarku ’1-dunyâ itu meninggalkan dunia, artinya jika ditinggalkan pe(ke)rjaan menuntut dunia ini nischaya adalah selesai kita dari waswas dunia, maka itulah laba kita, dan kita 1 The words between brackets have been added according to Doorenbos’s text. 2 dunia not in the text, but added according to Doorenbos’s text. 3 So the text, which seems a mistake. One would expect suka, sudi, or some

other word of this meaning. 4 Text: jua. 5 Also here the text seems defective.

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kerjakan pekerjaan menuntut dunia nischaya sampai kepada kita waswas (du)nia itu, maka waswas itulah akan merugi kita. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya apa hasil daripada perkataan ini akan kita ? Jawab : Adapun kehendak shaykh berkata demikian itu supaya jangan lagi orang (70) menuntut Allah ta’âlâ itu menyertai dia waswas. Betapa kepada tahqiqnya waswas itupun tiada baginya diperoleh sekali2. Katanya dunia ini kepada orang tahqiqnya zâhirnya jua. Kata shaykh cAbdu ’l-Wâhid asal namanya Dä’im anä ’l-Haqq akan katanya.

Adapun ma’nä eAbdu ’l-Wähid itu hamba yang mengesakan. Bermula dâ’im itu sentiasa dan anâ ’l-Haqq ini akulah yang sebenamya, arti hamba yang mengesakan Tuhannya itu sentiasa ia berkata “akulah sebenarnya”, karena penglihatnya tiada ada lain hanya Allah jua. Maka tatkala ia melihat kepada zâhir dirinya itupun tiada ada lain terlihat olehnya hanya Allah ada Tuhannya jua. Sebab itulah ia berkata “anâ ’l-Haqq”. So’al : Siapa yang dinamai. 'Abdu ’1-Wahid ? Jawab : Yang bemama 'Abdu ’l-Wâhid itu barangsiapa adalah akan dia ma*rifat yang sempurna diperolehnyalah jalan (71) wäsil, orang itulah yang bernama *Abdu ’l-Wähid. Kata shaykh Kerja[n]nya mabuk dan 'äshiq 'Ilmunya sempurna tinggi fa’iq.1 Ma’nä artinya kerja yang dikerjakan hamba yang mengesakan Tuhannya itu sentiasa berahi dan mabuk itu sempurna pengetahuannya ya'ni kepada wujudnya itu wujud Allah yang mutlak. So’al: Apa berahi dan mabuk itu? Jawab: Adapun berahi dan mabuk, apabila tiadalah ada kepadanya perbedzaannya suatu seperti baik dan jahat, mulia dan hina, artinya wujudnya wujud Allah itu, tiada lagi bedza kepadanya, karena zâhirnya jua. Nama wujud Allah itu wujud mumkin, ya’ni wujud kita haqiqatnya wujud Allah, ya’ni yang bernama manusia [itupun Haqq ta'âlâ jua sanya]2 yang se-benar2 manusia itupun Haqq ta’âlâ jua, itulah yang bernama berahi dan mabuk. 1 The text has: 'ilmunya sempurna fä'iq tinggi. However, tinggi may simply be an explanation of faiq. In that case it should be deleted. 2 itupun Haqq ta'âlâ is a dittography from the next line. But sanya ?

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Kata (72) shaykh Menchari Tuhan terlalu siddiq1 (Didalam laut bernama khäliq), arti hamba yang mengesakan Tuhannya, ya'ni wujudnya itu wujud Allah ta'âlâ, artinya yang se-benar2 manusia Allah ta'älä, maka adalah ia menchari mahbübnya itupun dalam laut mahbûbnya itu jua. So’al: Apa2 maksud kata shaykh menchari Tuhan didalam laut khäliq? Jawab : Adapun shaykh berkata demikian itu karena orang tahqiqnya 'alamnya zähir itupun dalam laut khäliq jua, tiada kara daripadanya. Kata shaykh Ikan itulah terlalu zähir Olehnya dä’im dilaut ayir.3 Adapun nur Muhammad yang (di)tamthilkan dengan ikan tongkoi itu terlalu nyata kepada penglihat orang yang sempurna kepada ma'rifatnya, karena sentiasa serta dengan laut cazamat Allah itu, artinya dalam kebesaran Allah ta*älä. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya betapa maka dikata nur Muhammad (73) itu terlalu zähir? Jawab: Adapun zähir nur Muhammad itu tiada suatu juapun mendindingi dia karena ia lengkap kepa(da) seme(s)ta sekalian. Kata shaykh Sungguhpun ia terlalu hanyir Wäsilnya dilaut sakir,4 artinya sungguhpun nur Muhammad itu dipersifatnya sifat hamba, tetapi wäsil dengan sifat Tuhannya. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya apa maksud shaykh berkata ini? Jawab : Maksud shaykh berkata demikian itu hendak menyatakan bahwa nur Muhammad itu ada akan dia daripada fihak dengan Haqq tacälä. Kata shaykh Ikan ahmaq ber-suku2 Menchari air kedalam batu.5 1 So the text. However, çâdiq is to be preferred in view of the rhyme of the preceding lines. The second line, didalam laut bernama khäliq, is missing in our text, but is supplemented from Doorenbos. 2 Text: adapun. 3 I prefer here this transliteration for the rhyme. Compare the Malayan ayer. 4 Text: r-jfe-r-; hamba in the next line is apparently a miswriting for the hanyir of the shair. 5 Text Doorenbos : bubu, which may be the better reading.

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Adapun ma'nä ahmaq itu tiada berbudi, artinya segala yang tiada beroleh ma*rifat yang sempurna, ya’itu bahwa ia mencha(ri) mahbûbnya itu lain daripada dirinya jua, ya*ni binasalah charinya itu seperti se-olah ikan (74) menchari air kedalam batu, dimanakan diperolehnya air dalam batu itu? Kepada tahqïqnya tiada jua. Sia2-lahI pekerjaan itu karena batu dengan yang lainnya itu sama jua dan tempat nyatanya. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya apa arti tamthil shaykh itu? Jawab: Adapun yang menchari mahbûbnya itu terlalu hampir kepada menchari budi. Adapun jikalau dichari kepada yang jau(h) menjadi salah charinya itu, tetapi kepada tahqïqnya tiada lain daripada wujudnya itu wujud Allah, ya*ni 'alam ini satu wujud dengan Allah ta'âlâ, ya’itu daripada fihak wujud karena wujud kita ini sekali wujud Allah. Kata shaykh Olehnya taqsïr menchari guru Tiada ia tahu akan jalan mütû,2 ma'nânya daripada fihak lupa lalai kita bertanya kepada guru yang bijaksana menyatakan mütü, artinya jalan menafikan3 (75) zâhir diri itu, tiadalah kita ketahui demikian itu. So’al: Jika seorang bertanya betapa perinya menafikan zâhir [ini] diri ini? Jawab: Adapun barangsiapa ada kepadanya zâhir diri itu upama bayang2 jua kepada bâtin dirinya itu nischaya ialah yang beroleh jalan fana dan tetaplah ia kepada tempat yang baka itu, karena yang zâhir diri itu dan tempa(t)nya daripadanya jua hanya, ya*ni zâhirnya makhluk itu haqîqat, makhluk itu Haqq ta'âlâ, ya'ni zâhirnya hamba sebenarnya, makhluk itu Tuhan yang esa sekali2, jangan lagi shak, dan kembalinya pun kepadanya jua tiada, pada tahqïqïnya4 datang pun tiada karena sharat daripada datang dan kembali itu daripada fihak dua5 wujud, karena kita dengan Allah ta'âlâ esajua wujud, manakan diperoleh kembali dan datang? Kata (shaykh) Tinggalkan ibu dan bapai6 Supaya dapat air kaurasai. 1 Text: se-olah2. 2 Text: m-w-t-. 3 The text has mengenakan or perhaps : mefanakan, but there is no doubt that the question which follows has the correct reading. 4 So the text. 5 So? text: A-r-w-. 6 The writing in the text is illegible here. Both lines are missing in Doorenbos’s text. The first line is according to a conjecture made by Dr. Voorhoeve. This line is also found in another sha'ir of Hamzah, see Doorenbos, op. cit.,

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(76) Kata shaykh Jalan mütü terlalu *âlï Itulah 'ilmu ikan sultânî. Adapun ma'nânya sampai tinggalkan oleh kita segala sangkutan zâhir ini supaya dapat kita sampai kepada mahbüb kita itu. So’al : Apa peri kita ini meninggalkan segala sangkutan zâhir ini ? Jawab: Adapun meninggalkan segala sangkutan artinya segala yang nyata ini, nischaya sampailah kita maksud itu, tetapi kepada tahqîqnya hapus pun tiada, karena hapus itu menghendaki ada dahulunya, jika demikian membawa kepada salah kepada jalan wahdat. Kata shaykh Hamzah sha'ir nûrî1 sungguh hina Tiada ia râdï akan Tür Sînâ,2 ya*ni menyuruh meninggalkan segala sangkutan zâhir ini, mudahan2* kepada segala yang menyangka seperti kata itu baik bukit Tur Sina akan tempat demikian itu, bukit (77) Tur Sina dan lain pun sama jua kepada keadaan sangkutan itu. So’al: Apa kehendak shaykh berkata itu, tiada ia râdî akan bukit Tur Sina itu? Jawab: Adapun kehendak shaykh berkata demikian itu supaya menolakkan kata yang berkata bahwa bukit Tur Sina itu suatu kesempana(a)n lagi karena kepada orang tahqîqnya segala yang lain daripada Allah ta'âlâ itu tiada berguna adanya suatupun. Kata shaykh Diamnya dä’im dilaut China Ber-main2 dengan gajah mina, artinya tatkala dipermulia3 oleh shaykh ma'rifat yang sempurna itu dan perkataan yang sejahtera ini maka tahulah ia akan dirinya sentiasa dalam laut yang tiada baginya hingga itu, ya’itu kebesaran Allah ta'älä dan adalah ia dalam kebesaran itu. So’al: Apa arti shaykh diamnya dilaut China itu? (78) Jawab: Adapun (arti) perkataan ini bahwa ia hendak meninggalkan yang memperoleh ma’rifat yang sempurna itu jua sentiasa didalam kebesaran Allah ta’âlâ jua, tetapi kepada tahqîqnya yang tiada p. 36, line 17 from top. These lines must have been part of the original sha'ir, and perhaps are to be inserted on the dotted lines of Doorenbos’s text {Appendix). 1 So the text. Variant reading given by Doorenbos : Shaharnawi. 2 Text: ‘J'ur Sina. Further on also spelt: Tur Sina and Tür Sind. 3

Text: d-p-r-m-ny-a-l-h.

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beroleh ma'rifat pun demikian jua, sehingganya diketahuinya akan kebesara(n)nya itu dan tiada dirasainya chita-rasa kemuliaan itu, ya’itu haqîqatnya Allah ta'âlâ. Kalam shaykh Shamsu ’l-Dïn tammat.

APPENDIX Text Doorenbos: Ikan tunggal bemama fâdhil dengan air dâ’im ia wâsil 'ishqinya terlalu kâmil di dalam laut tiada bersâhil

ikan itu terlalu 'ali bangsanya nür ar rahmäni angganya rupa insânï dâ’im bermain di laut bâqî "Bi smi llâhi’ akan namanya rûh Allah akan nyawanya wajh Allah akan mukanya zâhir dan bâtin sertanya ‘nür Allah’ nama bapainya khalaqat Allah akan sakainya raja Sulaiman akan pawainya dâ’im berbunyi dalam balainya

empat bangsa akan ibunya summun bukmun akan tipunya kerja Allah yang ditirunya mengenal Allah dengan bisunya (fäna fï llâhi) akan suchinya (innî anâ llâhu) akan bunyinya memakai dunia akan ruginya râdhîkan mati dâ’im pujinya

tark ad dunyä akan labanya menuntut dunia akan maranya “ 'Abd al Wâhid” asal namanya dâ’im (anâ 1 Haqq) akan katanya

Two New 'Old' Malay Manuscripts •kerjanya mabuk dan 'âshiq ‘ilmunya sampuma fä’iq menchari air terlalu sädiq di dalam laut bernama “Khâliq”

ikan itu terlalu zâhir olehnya dä’im di dalam air sungguhpun ia terlalu hanyir wäsilnya dä’im di laut halir ikan ahmaq, bersuku-suku menchari air ke dalam bubu olehnya taqsïr menchari guru tiada ia tahu akan jalan (mütü) jalan (mütü) terlalu ’all itulah 'ilmu ikan sultânî jangan kau ghäfil jauh menchari wäsilmu dä’im di laut sâfî

jalan (mütü) yogya kaupakai akan air jangan kaulalai Hamzah Pansuri sungguhpun hina tiada ia rädhi akan Tür Sinä diamnya dä’im di laut China bermain-main dengan gajahmina

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XV A MALAY SCRIPTORIUM P. VOORHOEVE

The author of A History of Malay Literature often had to refer to manuscript sources in the absence of printed editions. The amount of work done by Sir Richard Winstedt in editing, outlining, and translating Malay manuscripts is very great, as may be seen from the bibliography in the present volume. But even this indefatigable scholar cannot do everything, and so manuscripts are still an in­ dispensable source for every serious student of Malay literature. If he turns to the English collections, he will often find that Sir Stamford Raffles preserved these treasures for later generations either himself or by inspiring others to co-operate in this field of studies. Raffles’s example may have stimulated Dutch activity in the early nineteenth century. During the first half of that century there was a regular Malay scriptorium in the General Secretariat of the Dutch Government at Batavia. It produced copies of manu­ scripts for the instruction of Government officials in the Malay language. A number of these copies were sent to Holland, where a training centre for the East Indies civil service was organized at Delft in 1843. These copies were the nucleus of the collection of Indonesian manuscripts that is now in the Leiden University Library. Copies of Malay manuscripts made in the General Secretariat also found their way to other continental collections, such as the Berlin collection (now in Tübingen), the National Library in Paris, the Royal Library in Brussels, and the library of the Royal Institute at The Hague. A list of Malay and other Oriental manuscripts in the estate of Isaak de St. Martin (1696) was published in 1900 by F. de Haan. In the eighteenth century these manuscripts were kept in the Castle at Batavia. Ina supplement to De Haan’s article, Van Ronkel has discussed the question whether there is any continuity in the Batavia collection from the time of the Dutch East Indies Company

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to the nineteenth century. His conclusion is in the negative. From the similarity of some titles of rare Malay works in De Haan’s list to those of manuscripts in the Raffles collection belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society in London, Van Ronkel concluded that Raffles confiscated the old manuscript collection of the Dutch East Indies Company and sent it to England. The three titles on which Van Ronkel based his hypothesis are : Hikayat Charang Kulina, Hikayat Badt al-Zaman, and the text of the contract between Speelman and the King of Gowa. However, the Hikayat Charang Kulina in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society (Raffles MS. 14) was copied in a.h. 1235 (a.d. 1819) on English paper with the date 1812 as a watermark. The watermarks in the paper of Raffles MS. 34, which contains, among other pieces, a copy of Speelman’s contract, have the year 1800, and the paper of another copy, Raffles MS. 10, is dated 1813. The Hikayat Badi' al-Zamän (Raffles MS. 56) is written on Italian and Dutch paper; it may be somewhat older than Raffles’s time, but scarcely as old as 1696. Most of the manuscripts in the London collection are copies that were made for Raffles while he was Lieutenant-Governor in Java (1811-16) or shortly afterwards, and some were collected by him during this time. The unique copy of the Hikayat Raja-Raja Posai (R. 67) was presented to Raffles by the Regent of Demak, according to a note in Javanese at the back of the volume. One of the copies of Râniris Bustân al-salâtin (R. 42, perhaps the original of the other copy R. 8) was acquired in 1812 by the English Resi­ dent at Pontianak in Borneo. Therefore Van Ronkel’s conclusion is clearly wrong. No original seventeenth-century Malay manu­ script is now in the Raffles collection in London. The statement, in the Encyclopaedic van Nederlandsch-Indië, that the papers of the Dutch orientalist Herbert de Jager, mentioned in the old inventory list, are now in London, is only another over-hasty conclusion from Van Ronkel’s unfortunate hypothesis. There remains, of course, the possibility that some of the Royal Asiatic Society manuscripts were copied for Raffles from the old Batavia collection. In that case, the question arises what became of the originals. So far I have found only one indication that an original which was copied for Raffles remained in Batavia after his departure. This is the famous old version of the Sèjarah Mëlayu that was published by C. O. Blàgden and Sir Richard Winstedt from MS. RAS R. 18. An incomplete copy of this text, apparently

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from the same original as Raffles’s complete copy, was afterwards made in the General Secretariat at Batavia, and is now in Leiden (Cod. Or. 1704). Still, the second part of Van Ronkel’s conclusion remains valid : no original manuscript from Isaak de St. Martin’s collection has been traced in the nineteenth-century collections at Batavia. If some of the originals were taken by Raffles, they probably perished in the fire on the ship Fame on 2 February 1824. But it is equally possible that the collection gradually went to pieces through the influence of the tropical climate and lack of care from the Dutch authorities in the course of the eighteenth century. We shall see that a similar fate befell the new collection assembled at the General Secretariat after 1816. After the restoration of the Dutch Government in the East Indies, the High Commissioner (1816-19) and first GovernorGeneral (1819-26), G. A. G. P. Baron van der Capellen, sponsored the study of languages and ethnology, and the Secretary-General, J. C. Baud, shared his interest in these subjects. In 1820 a Depart­ ment of Native Affairs was formed. Its head, C. P. J. Elout, published Dutch and French translations of Marsden’s Malay Grammar and Dictionary. At this department there was a translator, C. van Angelbeek, mentioned as ‘surohan Gëbërnor-Jëndëral van der Capellen’ in the Tuhfat al-Nafis (Winstedt, Kësusastéraan Mélayu, Rampai-rampai, i. 88), who re-edited Werndly’s grammar. There were three ‘élèves’ : P. P. Roorda van Eysinga (mentioned as ‘juru-bahasa’ in the Tuhfat al-Nafis, loc. cit. 89), J. H. Hofmeijer and J. E. de Sturler (R. A. Kern in BKI100 [1941], 284). Among these, Roorda van Eysinga was an assiduous Malay student. In one of his works he mentions that Elout ordered a search for native chronicles and old writings and had them translated. This may refer to the commission given to Abdullah’s father Abdulkadir. According to the Hikayat Abdullah, Abdulkadir was ordered by ‘tuan sëkërtaris gubërmen’ at Batavia to collect Malay books in Riau and Lingga, Pahang, Trengganu and Kelantan. The ‘raja Malaka’, Timmerman Thijssen, and the ‘raja muda’, that is Adriaan Koek, gave him letters of introduction and money, and he brought together a collection of sixty or seventy volumes. We know from Van der Tuuk’s notes that there were in the library of the General Secretariat at least two manuscripts copied by ‘Jurutulis Tambi Abdulkadir’ for Adriaan Koek. In 1821 the kraton of

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Palembang was taken by the Dutch, and many manuscripts belonging to the sultan and members of his family were transferred to the General Secretariat at Batavia. In this manner a new government collection of Oriental manu­ scripts was assembled. It contained a majority of Malay texts, some in Arabic and a few in Javanese. It is from this collection that many of the neat copies now found in European libraries were made. After the time of Van der Capellen the copying of manuscripts at the General Secretariat went on, but important new collections— such as the library of the kraton of Bantam, bought by the Govern­ ment after 1830—were entrusted to the care of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences. We have three lists of the General Secretariat’s manuscript collection. The first is in H. N. van der Tuuk’s bequest to the Leiden University Library. It was made by a scribe, and was used by Van der Tuuk when he made a rapid survey of the collection during his visit to Batavia in 1850-1. Van der Tuuk was then on his way from Holland to Sumatra to study the Batak language in the field. During his short stay in Batavia he found time to make notes on thirty-two out of the ninety-one manuscripts mentioned in the list. In some cases these notes, now in the Leiden University Library, are all that remains of a manuscript that was lost after Van der Tuuk’s time. The Batavia Society repeatedly asked for the transference of the manuscripts to its library, and in 1867 it obtained a new list of the contents of the collection, which was printed in its Notulen (v, 41 ff.). In this list the number of volumes had dwindled down to fiftynine, but still the bureaucrats at the Secretariat refused to part with their neglected treasures. At last, in 1880, a sad remainder of twenty-six codices, i.e. eight in Arabic, seventeen in Malay, and one in Javanese, was given to the Batavia Society. Most of these were in bad condition. They were catalogued by L. W. C. van den Berg in Notulen, xviii, bijlage ii. There were also some loose covers and small fragments. In the archives of the University Library at Leiden I found a list of ‘original letters in Malay, Javanese and other languages of the Indian Archipelago, and some Malay manuscripts, collected at the Bureau of Native Affairs at the General Secretariat in Batavia by order (of the Governor General ) d.d. 9th June 1843 No. 25, which could be sent to the Colonial Office for the Academy at Delft’.

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This list mentions three collections of letters from the Archives at Batavia dated 1790-1806, and sixteen Malay manuscripts. Accord­ ing to a note at the end of the list, the manuscripts were copies made at the Bureau of Native Affairs during the course of several years. The originals were kept in the Bureau, and it would be possible to make accurate copies of other manuscripts in that collection and to send them to the Colonial Office in The Hague. The names of several scribes who worked at the Bureau of Native Affairs are mentioned in the catalogues of Malay manu­ scripts in European collections. Their handwriting was all more or less similar, very neat and regular. There is a great deal of uniformity among the ‘Secretariat copies’ in outward appearance, format, and paper, so that one soon learns to recognize them. An editor of Malay texts who has to use these ‘Secretariat copies’ as his sources should always realize how they were made. It is therefore a useful experiment to compare some copies made at the General Secretariat with their original. This is, of course, only possible in the comparatively few cases where the original has been preserved. In other cases we have only Van der Tuuk’s notes on the originals or nothing at all. One of the scribes most frequently mentioned in the copies was named Muhammad Ching Sa'idullah. From the dates of the copies made by him it appears that he worked at the Bureau for quite a long time. When I examined the various manuscripts of the anthology known as Bunga Rampai, I found his name written in Latin characters in the margin of the oldest manuscript as Luitnant Tjing Saiedoellah Mohd. Edries. The Government Almanac for 1822 mentions Captain ‘Omar Talib as ‘Inlandsche Ceremoniemeester’. According to the Tuhfat al-Nafis this dignitary looked after the needs of the embassy from Riau (Winstedt, op. cit. 87). We may surmise that ‘Luitnant Tjing’ was a subordinate head of a group of the Indonesian population of Batavia. From 1820-7 the Almanac mentions Mochamad Tjieng Naim Baktie Naija Widjaija as ‘Kommandant der Wester Javanen*. Though I cannot explain the difference in the second part of the names, it seems extremely unlikely that there were two ‘Lieutenants’ Muhammad Ching at the same time. So probably ‘Luitnant’ Muhammad Ching Sa'idullah was a man from western Java, head of the western Javanese at Batavia until 1827 and at the same time occupied as a copyist of Malay manuscripts at the Bureau of Native Affairs.

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After he had lost his position as ‘Kommandant’, owing to a re­ organization of the corps of native officers in 1827, he continued his work at the Bureau. The Bunga Rampai is an anthology of Malay tales, all of them, one excepted, of foreign origin, without the framework of a main story. From this collection Van Ronkel selected his twelve Maleische verhalen ten dienste van het onderwijs (Malay tales edited for use in schools), the most popular Jawi anthology in Indonesia in the first half of this century. All the available manuscripts of this anthology are ‘Secretariat copies’ except the oldest one (dated 1763), and this old copy betrays its connexion with the Secretariat by Muhammad Ching’s name written in the margin. The title Boenga Rampai is no. 83 in Van der Tuuk’s list. There are no notes by Van der Tuuk on this copy and it is not mentioned in the later lists of 1867 and 1880. After comparing the manuscripts of the Bunga Rampai, I found that they may be divided into three groups, and that all these groups have their origin in the old copy dated 1763. The first group is faithfully copied from the original. The second group has the tales in a different order and differs in style from the original. The third group comprises short copies of a few tales only. Most interesting from the point of view of the history of Malay literature is the second group. It reminds me of one of my first experiences as a young linguist at the Bureau of Popular Literature (Balai Pustaka). A manuscript of a Malay novel had been sub­ mitted for publication by an Achinese schoolteacher. It had been prepared for the press by a Minangkabau editor of the Balai Pustaka staff. With my European ideas of copyright I was some­ what upset by the metamorphosis the novel had undergone under the editor’s treatment, but nothing could be done about that, and the book went to the press in its revised form. One of the first copies was sent to the author and I awaited his reactions with some misgivings. To my relief, there came a letter full of thanks and praise : the book was now so fine that the author had scarcely recog­ nized his own work. It became a great success, especially in Achin, and the story was performed on the stage under the author’s guidance. When a twentieth-century Malay editor felt absolutely free to revise the work of an individual author in accordance with his own standards of literary taste, it is only natural that a 823121

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nineteenth-century copyist would take the same liberty with an anonymous old text. Some Western scholars have remarked that every Malay copyist is a joint author, but this is certainly not a general rule. Copyists of Malay religious treatises have done their work as meticulously as their Arabic teachers. The stories in the long Hikayat Bakhtiar that were taken from the Bustän al-salätin have been copied fairly accurately, and the differences are subject to the normal rules of philological criticism. Some literary works have been consciously revised in the course of their transmittance, for example, to adapt the text to the copyist’s dialect. Real freedom of the copyist is usually found in the kind of literature that is also orally transmitted. Scribes who copied popular hikayat in order to lend them for hire tried of course to embellish the text as well as they could in accordance with the taste of their public. The old manuscript of the Bunga Rampai is an instance of such a popular text, compiled with great freedom from various literary sources. The second group of copies made from the old manu­ script represents a conscious effort on the part of one of the copyists at the Bureau of Native Affairs to correct and embellish this popular text for the use of the Dutch officials who were to study it. As an illustration of this method I give the text of the tale of the cut-off nose from the old manuscript, side by side with the revised version made at the General Secretariat. A: MS. KLINKERT 67b, ff. 72v-73v

B: COD. OR. 8486, pp. 162-5

Maka kata raja kërah:1 Bërapa përkara tuah, hai handai-ki ?

Maka kata raja këra: Bërapa përkara tuha itu, hëndak-lah tuanhamba chëritërakan. Maka sahut raja kura2 : Ya handaiku, ada pun nama tuha itu ëmpat përkara, përtama tuha dato’, kadua sunto’, ka-tiga bongko’, kaëmpat kutok, ya-itu yang akan pëduli atas pëkërjaan orang lain. Tiada-kah tuan-hamba mënëngar riwayat istëri kita pëmbasoh kain ?

Maka kata raja kura2: Ya handaiku, përtama tuah dato’, ka-dua tuah sunto, ka-tiga tuah bongko, ka-ëmpat tuah kuto’ yang akan pëduli akan pëkërjaan orang. Tiada-kah handai-ku mëndëngar riwayat istëri kusta2 pëmbasoh kain ?

1 In A we find the confusion between final -a and -ah that is common in Batavian MSS. : kërah, for këra, tuah (spelt t-w-alif-h) for tua (in B t-w-A, which may be read tuah or tuha), muka for mukah, and mudah for muda, 2 In the Hikayat Kalila dan Domina: kapasgar, a shoemaker. A spells k-s-t,

A Malay Scriptorium Maka kata raja kërah: Tiada, handai-ku, bërkhabar-lah handaiku, hamba dëngar. Maka kata raja kura2 : Ada pun istëri kusta ada bërmuka dëngan sa-orang2 mudah. Ada pun akan orang muda itu bersahabat baik dëngan bini tukang chukor itu. Bërmula akan bini kusta itu bërjanji ia dëngan muka-nya pada malam itu ia akan datang mëndapatkan muka-nya itu. Shahadan maka kusta itu datang sërta dëngan mabok-nya lalu diikat-nya bini-nya sampai siang sëbab ia tëlah tahu2 mëndëngar khabar3 tëman-nya akan istërinya ada bërmuka itu. Hatta hari pun malam, maka muka-nya pun tërnanti2, tiada datang. Maka orang muda itu përgi-lah ia ka-pada përëmpuan tukang chukor minta tolong mëmanggil bini kusta pada malam itu. Maka ia përgi-lah.

Sa-tëlah sampai, di-lihat-nya tiada pëlita, gëlap di-luar tëmpat bini kusta di-ikat oleh laki-nya itu. Maka kata bini tukang chukor: Mëngapa tuan-hamba bërjanji dëngan orang' muda itu tiada datang ? la tëmanti2.

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Maka kata raja këra: Katakan kira-nya bëtapa përi-nya, hamba hëndak mënëngar. Maka mulaï raja kura2 itu bërchëritëra : Ada pun istëri kita itu bërmukah dëngan sa-orang muda, hal orang muda itu bërsahabat baik dëngan bini juru chukor.

Bërmula bini kita itu bërjanji ia dëngan mukah-nya pada malam itu dia akan datang mëndapatkan mukah-nya. Shahadan maka kita datang sërta dëngan mabok lalu di-ikat-nya bini itu sampai siang hari sëbab tahu tëlah mënëngar tëman-nya akan istëri-nya ada bërmukah itu.1 Hatta hari pun malam-lah, maka mukah-nya bërnanti2, tiada juga datang. Maka orang muda itu përgi-lah ka-pada përëmpuan dari juru chukor minta tolong mëmanggil bini kita pada malam itu. Maka bini tukang chukor itu përgi-lah ia. Sa-tëlah sampai pada tëmpat përëmpuan ya'ni bini kita, pëlita pun tiada, gëlap lagi di-luar tempat-nya tërikat itu. Maka kata bini tukang chukor : Mëngapa tuan-hamba bërjanji dëngan orang muda itu, di-nanti2nya tiada mau datang.

which can only be kusta, a leper, though even in this popular text one would expect orang kusta. B probably thought that the moral of the story was weakened by making the culprit’s husband a leper, and wrote kita. This makes the un­ faithful woman a consort of the Tortoise King who tells the story. 1 B forgot to change this sentence in accordance with his reading kita. 2 tahu for përnah is Batavian dialect. 3 B’s omitting the word khabar is probably a scribal error.

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Maka kata bini kusta: Tuanhamba lihat-lah hal hamba ini di-ikat-nya oleh si-binasa ini. Jikalau ada kasih tuan-hamba, buka-lah ikat hamba ini, ganti hamba, sa-këtika juga hamba këmbali apabila hamba suda bërtëmu dëngan dia.

Maka bini tukang chukor itu mëm-bu(ka)kan bini kusta lalu ia menggantika-nya [für] (di-)ikat itu. Maka bini kusta pun përgi-lah ia mëndapatkan muka-nya itu. Ada pun kusta itu (bangun) dëngan mabok-nya maka ia këluar sëraya mëmbawa pisau. Kata-nya: Ini-lah hidong yang mënchium muka-mu itu. Lalu di-iris-nya hidong bini tukang chukor, di-katakan-nya juga istëri-nya. Maka hidong-nya itu di-tarohnya pada tangan-nya bini tukang chukor itu. Maka kusta pun tidor-lah dëngan mabok-nya itu. Shahadan sa-tëlah bini kusta itu suda bërtëmu- dëngan muka-nya itu maka ia pun këmbali karumah-nya. Maka kata bini tukang chukor: Apa (ha)l-ku ini ! Sëbab pëkërjaan tuan-hamba-lah maka hamba mëndapat yang sa-kian ini.

Maka kata bini kita: Lihat-lah oleh tuan-hamba hal hamba ini di-ikat oleh si-binasa itu. Jikalau ada kasih dan shafakat1 tuan-hamba, buka-lah ikatan hamba ini barang sa-këtika jua pun. Sa-bëntar hamba balek, dan tuan-hamba jadi ganti dari hamba tërikat di-sini, sëmëntara si-binasa pun bëlum tërbangun hamba hëndak bërtëmu sa-këjap dëngan orang muda itu. Maka di-bënarkan-lah orang përëmpuan jura chukor itu mëmbukakan bini kita itu daripada ikatan-nya lalu ia mëngganti tërikat pada tëmpat bini kita itu. Maka përgi-lah bini kita mënda­ patkan mukah-nya. Shahadan maka bangun-lah kita këtika itu dëngan mabok sërta mëmbawa kita akan pisau, dan kata kita : Ini-lah hidong yang biasa mënchium mukah-nya. Sërta lalu di-iris-nya hidong bini tukang chukor itu, di-kira-nya hidong bini-ku juga. Maka hidong bini jura chukor itu di-tarohkan-nya di-atas ba’unya.2 Maka kita pun këmbali tidor dëngan mabok jua ada-nya. Shahadan apabila bini kita itu sudah bërtëmu dëngan mukahnya maka ia pun këmbali karamah-nya. Maka kata bini tukang chukor : Apa hal-ku sëkarang ini ! Sëbab përbuatan-mu aku mëndapat salaku ini.

1 This addition of an Arabie word is typical for B. 2 For bahu-nya, her shoulder. Apparently B found this a more convenient place tö put the cut-off nose than the bound woman’s hand.

A Malay Scriptorium Maka kata bini kusta itu : Hamba hëndak kata, jikalau këmudian hari hamba-lah tolong pula tuan-hamba. Maka bini tukang chukor pulanglah dëngan tiada bërhidong itu. Dëmikian-lah, ya handai-ku, orang yang mahu pëdulikan pëkërjaan orang itu.

265

Maka kata bini kita : Apa-tah aku hëndak bërkata, jikalau ada këmudian hari hal-mu yang sëpërti dëmikian ini këlak aku mënolong kapada-mu. Maka bini tukang chukor itu pun pulang dëngan tiada bërhidong. Dëmikian-lah, ya sahabat kita raja këra, sa-orang yang suka pëduli pëkërjaan orang lain.

The tale of the nose cut off as punishment for adultery (Stith Thompson, Motif-index of Folk-literature, rev. ed., v (1957), 231 : Q 451.5.1) is found in the Malay Hikayat Kalila dan Damina (Gonggrijp’s 2nd ed., pp. 49 ff.). ‘[A] shoemaker, who returning drunk one night found a youth at his door and so beat his wife and tied her to a house-pillar. His wife persuaded her friend and gobetween, the wife of a barber, to untie her and take her place, so that she might meet her lover. But the shoemaker woke and getting no answer from his wife when he shouted for water mistook the wife of the barber for her and slit her nose. His own wife returning condoled with her friend and was again tied up by her. She then cried, “If I have committed adultery, may my nose never heal up.” Her husband lighting a lamp saw her nose whole and knelt for pardon.* (Outlined by Winstedt, A History of Malay Literature, 219.) In the Bunga Rampai the tale is much shorter, the style is more popular and the Persian word kapasgar, shoemaker, is replaced by kusta, and the story is told by the Tortoise King to the Monkey King as a warning against his old busybody of a vizier. The story of the monkey and the turtle is also from the Hikayat Kalila dan Damina, but there it is not connected with the story of the cut-off nose (Winstedt, op. cit. 224). The copyist at the General Secretariat who made the revised version followed his original sentence by sentence, but almost in every sentence he made some grammatical correction or showed off his literary taste and his knowledge of foreign words. The whole text of the Bunga Rampai ms embellished by him in this manner. Van Ronkel wrote about the origin of the Bunga Rampai (TBG xli [1899], 57): ‘We may be sure that tales about people living in India, who sometimes speak Hindustani, go back to a Hindustani original, but to prove this with absolute certainty it would be

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necessary to compare the Malay text with its (Hindustani) original.’ This remark obviously refers to some Hindustani phrases found in certain Secretariat copies of the Bunga Rampai, However, we need not take the trouble to compare these tales with a Hindustani version, for the Hindustani phrases are not in the old manuscript. They were inserted by the scribe at the Secretariat to add some couleur locale to the story and to show his knowledge of Hindustani. Students of Malay literature owe a debt of thankfulness to the patient labour of Muhammad Ching and his colleagues. Some valu­ able Malay works are now only known from the copies made by them, and for many Malay texts their copies are important sources for a critical edition. In using these copies, however, one should always remember that they were written in a government scrip­ torium in the first half of the nineteenth century and so reflect the literary taste of that period.

POSTSCRIPT Just before reading the page-proofs of this essay I found in the Royal Institute, The Hague, a portfolio from Professor Reinwardt’s estate. It contains, among other papers, a ‘List of Arabic and Malay MSS. which were taken from the archives on the order of Mr. Raffles, and transferred to the (Batavian) Society? (Kon. Inst. MS. Or. 233). The number of titles in the list is 78. About 30 of these can be identi­ fied with reasonable certainty as MSS. from the estate of Isaac de St. Martin. Probably almost all these MSS. were lost during the period of decay of the Batavian Society in the first half of the 19th century.

XVI THE BALINESE SENGGUHU-PRIEST, A SHAMAN, BUT NOT A SUFI,

A SAIVA, AND A VAISNAVA C. HOOYKAAS

Bh atara Guru took the form of a bhujangga of the Saiva-paksa, by the name of Mpu Palyat and made his hermitage on a burialground. He followed the bhairava-paksa by eating human corpses at midnight. After twelve years the king heard of him from rumours and wanted him to co-operate in an important religious ceremony. However, immediately on seeing him, the king had to vomit. He then sent two servants out to go and kill Mpu Palyat. They tied him to a huge boulder and threw him into the water, yet he did not drown. Even though they burned him to ashes, the next day he sat practising yoga again, in obvious good health. They became his disciples and accompanied him to his island, where he was wel­ comed by 180 followers, previously corpses which he had devoured. The two most recent disciples were initiated by Mpu Palyat and on their return to court became the king’s two closest spiritual leaders. Mpu Palyat also returned to Java and divided his body and in this way there came to be a Saiva and a Saugata (Bodha). They estab­ lished their hermitage at Girah (which is known as the dwelling­ place of the witch Chalon Arang). The above is a drastically condensed account of a story from the Tantu Panggëlaran, which is a most important source for knowledge of pre-Islamic religion in Java. According to Dr. Th. Pigeaud, who edited, translated, and annotated this text, the Tantu Panggëlaran may have been written between the years approximately 1500 and 1635. A few pages farther on in the Tantu Panggëlaran this story is told once more with a few variations ; I restrict myself here to the mere mentioning. Balinese sëngguhus, exorcist priests, like to be known and addres­ sed as rësi bhujangga. It will appear from this article that there

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would have been enough cause to have given it the title : Bhujangga, bhairava and burial-ground. In order to illustrate that point I will give a résumé of a story of which three very similar versions exist in palmleaf manuscripts at the library of palmleaf manuscripts called Gëdong Kirtya (Singaradja, Bali). These briefly narrated versions bear the same name Asu-Asa, and were collected from different parts of Bali. Together they form quite a comprehensive unity and are obviously of brahman origin.

Asu-Asa,

about the origin of the sëngguhu's

A vidyâdhara, or heavenly musician, was punished for his mis­ conduct by transformation into a yaksa, having to remain on a sétra, burial-ground, and having to eat the passers-by. For twelve years he does so, but then one day he finds it impossible to eat one man, whom he understands to be a Brahman. He asks for forgive­ ness for his attempt to murder and begs for lukat, cleansing of his curse and defilement. The Brahman refuses, but orders the yaksa to become a tapa, ascetic, and to practise samadhi, thought concentration, on a moun­ tain slope. After his doing so during another twelve years the God Siva appears before the yaksa and commands him to go to Vilvatikta (Maja-pahit). There he will be given lukat by a Brahman Siddhi-mantra (‘whose formulae have magic powers’)—or it may be a proper name. This Brahman does in fact deliver him from his frightening appearance and makes of him an ordinary human being, takes him into his service and gives him the name Guto (Bhuta? cf. gumif bhûmi = earth), belonging to the vangsa këlik, the race of the kalas. Guto listens in on the Brahman’s teachings by hiding himself under his balé and behind a mat hanging down from the balé. When he is found out he gives the excuse of having chased tafift-birds, this being a play on words. The Brahman is of the opinion (sëngguh) that his follower has overheard the essentials of his teachings and therefore calls him Sëngguhu. He retains him in his service and gives him a wife. He initiates both, just as he would an ulaka (brahman disciple) and his wife. The Brahman points out to Sëngguhu that he and his descen­ dants will be the younger brothers of the Brahman and his descen­ dants. They will be allowed to bring offerings at cross-roads, cemeteries and everywhere where misfortune has happened or

IDe Ao. Aiwin. Guto listening in

Gentorag. From Tyra de Kleen, Mudräs

but not a Sufi, a Saiva, and a Vaisnava

269

must be expected. It will be his task to exorcise devils with the Purva Bhumi as mantra; his cult-instruments will be the ghanta urag and the sangkha or sungu (conch-shell). The sëngguhu must officiate close to the ground before the offerings which lie spread out on the ground. He may lead death-ceremonies only for mem­ bers of his own group, and take only sëngguhu as his disciples. To break these rules would be considered as ‘theft* and punished severely. Whenever the king or one of the paladins orders cere­ monies to be held for the welfare of the country, held in co­ operation by the padanda Siva and Buddha and sëngguhu, then he is allowed to take part, going behind the Siva-priest. This is the account of the p-anugraha-n, Charter, bestowed by the Brahman, i.e. padanda Siva, on Sëngguhu and his descendants. The representation of matters as outlined above may seem to be a caricature, nevertheless it is a correct one. To my knowledge the padanda has excluded the sëngguhu priesthood from care for the dead. Sëngguhu do take part in several ceremonies, but of the three types of officiating priests they are the lowest in rank and concern themselves with demons. Even though they do not belong to one of the highest castes, they receive their learning from a Saivite priest, just as an ulaka, an uninitiated brahman, does, and they are granted initiation and a new name just like the ulaka. So they are allowed to make holy water as the first part of their rite, just as do the Siva-priests, yet they must not reveal this rite to others. Their rite is followed by the recital of the mantra Purva Bhumi, accompanied by their specific cult-instruments. With these they call up the demons and banish them. In their own writ­ ings they make it clear that their hermitage has from of old been at the burial ground of Gandhamayu. However, they think rather more highly of themselves, as becomes apparent from the following extract from one of their manuscripts : The king of Bali differentiates between the following five social ranks : the satriya—noblemen, knights, patih—regent, brahmana— Siva-priest, bodha—Buddha-priest, and bhujangga, i.e. sëngguhu. By keeping to this division his reign is successful. At a royal audience Ida Sang Bhujangga Aji, the arch-^Äw/ang^a, declares that all three types of priest are descendants of Visnu Êning (the pure one). Seven generations later Ida Bhujangga Adi-guru, descendant of Ida Sang Bhujangga Aji, feels himself compelled to point out to

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The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman,

His Majesty that he concerned himself too much with women. The king remains silent and the bhujangga takes leave without asking permission. Having returned home he has a last talk with his son, who is to follow him as guru ning guru, supreme teacher, and as anak Bhatara Guru, son of God The Teacher (i.e. Siva), and subsequently dies. Treta-yuga, Dvapara-yuga, and Kali-yuga now reign in Bali and rule its frivolous population. A bhujangga could have cleansed the country of its impurities and guarded it against disasters through the use of his ôajra-instruments and through the recital of the Purva Bhumi-, the Siva- and Buddha-priests have no power to do this. Tht padanda Vahu Ravuh then comes from Java, and introduces the four-caste system of the ksatriya, brahmana, vaisya, and sudra. The Padanda Bodha too brings about changes in the old order, so that chaos in Bali increases. ' When the situation becomes too serious even for the king, he asks for advice which is sought from Mangku Koténu, an old ser­ vant of Ida Bagus Alit, the bhujangga who no longer comes to court and has his hermitage at the Durga-sanctuary on the burialground Gandhamayu. The servant begins by pointing out that the four-caste system as introduced by Padanda Vahu Ravuh has done great harm, this statement leaving the Siva-priest very concerned. In addition he shows how everything had gone wrong since the disagreement between the king and the rêng£uÂu-priest, but he ends by saying that all these matters could be remedied by Ida Sang Bhujangga Alit. With full approval of all padanda, offerings are brought every­ where to bhuta and kala. Then the village elders set off to the sétra Gandhamayu to invite Ida Bagus Alit to conduct an exorcist ceremony. The latter weeps unremittingly, conscious of his own insignificance and lack of knowledge. In spite of that he is brought home by the elders and confronted with the offerings. Mangku Koténu (takes charge of the Siva-service and) makes sure that all the sanjata, so-called ‘weapons’, are all there ready for the specific séngguhu-ceremony ; they are by name the bajra padma, bajra utèr, bajra katipluk, and the bajra sangkha. Ida Bagus Alit, however, bent over the holy water-vessel where Mangku Koténu kept him beside himself (ngembari), and never stopped weeping, so that his tears mixed with the holy water.

but not a Sufi, a Saiva, and a Vaisnava

271

There Mangku Koténu witnessed how Ida Sang Bhujangga Aji’s spirit embodied itself in his descendant Ida Bagus Alit. Bells were heard to ring everywhere, although there was no one ringing them. The air was filled with the roaring of the conch-shell, yet no one was blowing it. The bajra utër, not worked by anybody, caused an earthquake and hurricane with its buzzing; there was no end to the thunder and lightning and there appeared a brilliant rainbow. The waters and oceans underwent a state of upheaval and the earth became weary. On hearing all the sounds from his instruments Ida Bagus Alit ceased to weep. He was quite put at ease and knew what he wanted ; he proceeded to conduct the ceremony. There was not a single syllable he did not know. That indeed was a veritable rest bhujangga ! Everybody, young and old, man and woman, even babies, too many to count, received holy water and were cleansed from all impurities and protected from misfortune. Having witnessed the miracle the King summons to his presence every possible dance-, stage-, and musical company. He assembles all his distinguished men around him, first and foremost Saiva, Bodha, and Bhujangga Bagus Alit. The festivities lasted over a period of forty-two days. After the festival the old Mangku Koténu thoroughly enlightened the king. He, Mangku Koténu, was Mangku Tantri a-brata krti ring Vidhi—words which I should like to find in yet another manu­ script, as in this one they suggest Tantrism. The gama of the bhujangga—thus he proceeded to explain—is quite identical with his own and so it follows that the bhujangga is in a position to conduct services at the burial-ground and in Pura Dalëm (always translated by ‘Temple of Death’, but Dalém is ‘Majesty’, namely Durga/Kala, so that the translation ‘Temple of The Evil One’ might be considered). It is his specific task to purify Bali and guard it against disaster. The existing order of society is not to be altered. Priests are not subject to taxation or penal legislation as ordained for an ordinary man. Siva-priests purify heaven, Buddha-priests purify seas and lakes, and both of them are assisted by bhujangga. The bhujangga are equipped with their five ‘weapons’ and the litanies Purva Bhumi Tua and Purva Bhumi Ka-mula-n. Mangku Koténu eventually stoops to discuss the privileges and responsibilities of arya—noblemen; smiths (Mpu Lumbang), panuru (for irrigation), and village-chiefs.

2.^2.

The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman,

At the request of the eager King, Mangku Koténu repeats in a varied version the many instructions. These were followed up and Bali became prosperous. To make sure, the king dictates every­ thing and subsequently dies. From this account, considered from the point of view of the • bhujangga, it becomes clear that they are exorcist priests, that they accept a division of priestly activities between Saivas, Bodhas, and sëngguhu, and that they ascribe misfortune in Bali to polygamy committed by the king, lack of co-operation between the king and his hhujangga, and modernisms as introduced by Padanda Vahu Ravuh. Those innovations were supposed to consist of the fact that the Padanda laid the emphasis on the theoretical caste system, thus automatically reducing the position of the sëngguhu to that of the great mass of sudra. They see themselves as consorting with kings and brahman priests, above any other official or group of the population. When the padanda Bodha recognizes about eight, even nine or ten, different ranks above the mass of the population, namely the farmers, the sëngguhu is little pleased with these dif­ ferences in level. He finds it necessary to prove his superiority to one group in particular, that of ihepandévësi, the irorismiths, here mentioned as Mpu Lumbang. Included in the sëngguhu's writings is a story from which it is to become apparent that the smiths owe their lives to the sëngguhus and therefore have to treat them as their saviours and superiors. Although I only read of this matter in one sëngguhu manuscript, I found an illustration of this amongst a group of artists who in no way have any interest in the strife for recognition between the two genealogical groups, which are both ancient and which should, according to orthodox caste theory, be ordinary sudra. There is no genealogical group in Bali which has such marked places of worship of their deified forefather in the ancestor-sanctuary Bësakih on Gunung Agung as the very group of smiths. There is also no group which has circulated a comparable number of writings about itself and its ramifications as the smiths. With the pasëk they were the only ones to record their charter in book form, as I discovered during my last visit to Bali in 1959. They are not allowed to accept holy water from a Brahman priest and consequently they provide their own. After their death mem­ bers of their group are entitled to honour and distinction. It was well worth while for the sëngguhu to place themselves above the pandé. The following tale illustrates it effectively :

Sengguhu rescuing Smith

but not a Sufi, a Saiva, and a Vaisnava

273

All was well in Bali providing the king consulted brahmana, bodha, and bhujangga and providing he upheld the institution of catur-janma. But whereas bodha and bhujangga practised continence, the brahmana had three wives and the king even nine. This set the world in stir and commotion, caused anarchy and chaos. When the king asked of his three most eminent priests what might be the cause of all the trouble, the Siva-priest advised him to have Mpu Gandring and Mpu Lumbang executed. In spite of the fact that these two were descendants of the godly Visva-karman (the Indian Hephaistos), they still saw fit to offer weapons for sale at the market. After the advice was followed harmony reigned on earth once more. When, however, the King wished to hold an offering festival there were no chopping- or kitchen-knives to be found, essential for the preparation of the offerings. At their wits’ end the servants reported to the king, who showed himself displeased with his Siva-priest in particular, but also, in general, with his three court­ priests. These three retired from the court, the bhujangga to sétra Gandhamayu, brahmana and bodha to their griya (priest-dwelling). While they were on their way, there was such a downpour of rain that the river flooded, washing away the^rrya and landing it on the sétra Gandhamayu, ‘where the bhujangga had resided as from the beginning’. Ida Bagus Alit took pity on his Buddhist colleague and the Saivite brahman with his three wives and five children. The three colleagues discussed what should be their course of action now they were in disfavour with their king. The gods residing on the Gunung Bësakih, whence they could see the whole of Bali, became aware that the harmony in Bali had been disturbed. They realized it was caused by Mpu Gandring no longer being there. The Creator decided therefore that the bhujangga should raise Mpu Gandring from the dead, and approached him with the following words: ‘Sang Guru Bhujangga, verily thou art the son of Bhatara Guru. I, your Creator, hereby endow you with the anugraha (privilege, right, duty) to call Mpu Gandring back to existence, Mpu Gandring who is the most eminent of His Majesty’s subjects and who has the power to carry out the works of God Visva-karman.’ Sang Guru Bhujangga responded to his mission and raised Mpu Gandring from the dead. The latter arose at once from the

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The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman,

saptapatala, the world’s seven lower regions, dressed as a viku, holy man (in just two white cloths). Sang Guru Bhujangga placed his feet on Mpu Gandring’s head, tapak, granted him the twofold anugraha of being allowed to forge and of being entitled to entas, deliver his forefathers’ spirits. The gods forbade Mpu Gandring and any of his descendants ever to ask for holy water outside their own genealogical group and furthermore notified him that Sang Guru Bhujangga was to be their teacher; and were they to ignore these instructions, the most dreadful punishment would ensue. From that day Mpu Gandring practised his trade on the Sétra Gandhamayu, guarded over by the three priests, in so doing causing His Majesty’s content and the country’s prosperity. At this stage I wish to refer to the title of this article and account for it. Much use is made of sang guru, and along with Goris and Gonda I consider it possible that it is the origin of sëngguhu ; the well-known word bëras is met with as bahas in Balinese, just to mention another example of the intervocal r being dropped in Balinese. The fact that time and again the sengguhu gives himself the title bhujangga escaped the attention of all who dealt with this word and is a reminder of the fact that many more texts should be published. No one will deny the fact that he is a priest and shaman; nobody will consider him to be a sufi. As he receives his learning and initiation from a Siva-priest and precedes his own specific ritual by that of a Siva-priest, he cannot be denied the rank of Saiva. But what about Vaisnava ? Well, he calls himself that. Their scripture, devoted to the fortunes of several generations and ramifications of the sengguhu alias rësi bhujangga, is entitled : Resi Vesnava. I thus hope to have shown the justification of this article’s title. The preceding résumés from Balinese prose writings will now be followed firstly by a description of exorcist ritual as I myself wit­ nessed it and secondly by a slightly abbreviated account of the litany Purva Bhumi Kamulan as used to accompany this ritual. The first time I saw a sengguhu officiating, the ritual took place in a private courtyard at Blahbatu (Gyanyar). The sengguhu was squatting down on a low platform, only one foot or one foot and a few inches above the ground. His way of officiating was exactly like that of the Saivitic padanda. I had been introduced and was accompanied by Ida Bagus Gëdé, the eldest son of the late

Sengguhu officiating. From Tyra de Kleen, Mudräs

Sengguhu’s helpers. From Tyra de Kleen, Mudrâs

but not a Sufi, a Saiva, and a Vaisnava

27s

Siva-priest of Griya Sadava, Gyanyar. He told me that this sëng­ guhu, now living in the neighbouring sëngguhv-an of the village ’Bon Byu (plantation of bananas), had been his father’s pupil, that he had received the same teaching as an ùlaka and that the same initiation had been granted to him. On top of that he had had a second teacher (nabé, guru), viz. a rësi bhujangga. Only after this second teacher had bestowed a second ordination upon him, was he entitled to officiate. Since the sëngguhu was occupied during the first hour with the Saivitic rite, which I had witnessed frequently, I was free to ob­ serve another priest officiating in that courtyard. At the same time a dalang was operating the vayang lëmah, the (shadow) play per­ formed with flat polychromed leathern puppets. Those puppets now, during daytime (lëmah), do not cast their shadow (vayang) on a screen (këlir) ; instead they are leant against a thread, stretched between two upright branches of the dapdap-Xxet. A performance of the vayang lëmah only lasts as long as the preparation of holy water by a padanda or a sëngguhu, about an hour. Only some strol­ ling children pay incidental attention to it—but then it does not direct itself towards human beings, but towards The Invisible Ones. When the sëngguhu was nearing the conclusion of his first rite, the dalang finished his performance, broke the thread between the two JapJap-branches before him, and began putting his puppets back into their large wooden chest (kotak). The courtyard became more animated with the arrival of more people as well as with their greater activity. In all corners they made fires and put two-feet long pieces of bamboo over them ; after a short time the pieces were so heated that they exploded, one after the other, with a loud bang. No need to exhort the young people to shout; they did it whole­ heartedly, and the enclosed courtyard was dense with explosions, shouting, fire, and smoke from all sides, continuously. In the meantime, the sëngguhu incessantly tinkled his bell, accom­ panying his litany. One of his helpers behind him produced a low­ ing sound from a conch-shell as big as a man’s head ; another was shaking the heavy fivefold bell, a third was gyrating the hand-drum with its ruffling sounds. There was no possibility of catching one single syllable of the litany during the infernal noise; only much later and after many palavers this same sëngguhu was prepared to give it to me. But now the sëngguhu had finished ; the noises stopped, the offerings for the bhuta and kala were swept aside, for the

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The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman,

bhuta and kala themselves were supposed to be satisfied and to have vanished. Shortly afterwards I rode home on my bicycle through the sleepy villages during the hottest hour of the afternoon, for the Evil One is always exorcised immediately after noon, after the sun’s highest altitude. The second time I witnessed the officiating of a sëngguhu, the scene of his activities was not a private courtyard, but a piece of uncultivated land in a village near Gyanyar. The road GyanyarKlungkung there crossed a rivulet, so that a kind of cross-roads was formed at the spot, the meeting-place of evil spirits and the operating scene for an exorcist priest. Some serious calamities had hit the village, a drowning and a suicide, and now the village had planned an elaborate exorcistic rite, to be held in this very place. There was no dalang here; a brahman priest was officiating, a very old female padanda who officiated on a bamboo platform several yards above the surroundings. In the usual way no atten­ tion whatsoever was given to her rite, nor to that of the sëngguhu, officiating at the same time, but squatting down at the most one foot above the ground. Both of them had their faces turned towards the east, and the sëngguhu was not behind the padanda, as he should have been, but to her right. Moreover, when he pro­ duced his mitre, this proved to be red, just like that of padanda worshipping Siva to the east, whereas it should have been black (colour of Visnu, north). The padanda istri was facing the celestial offerings displayed at her height; the sëngguhu faced the offerings to the kala and bhuta at his feet on a coarse mat on the ground. Between the innumerable offerings we observed the head of a dog, neatly put down so that the neck was not to be seen. But when here too fire and smoke dimmed the scene, when the pieces of bamboo exploded and the people shouted, so that the steady bell-tinkling and litany-singing of the sëngguhu and his helpers with bajra sungu, bajra katipluk and bajra gëntorag were shouted down, there came a man completely clad in black except for a fiery red head-scarf. He approached the centre of the offerings spread over a dozen if not a score of square yards. In the left hand he held a young, black, uncastrated boar, in the right a large butcher’s knife. In one stroke in mid-air he cut the boar’s head off and scattered the drops of blood on all sides over the offerings. Female helpers continually shed tuwak, palm-wine. The noise was infernal, for the villagers had

but not a Sufi, a Saiva, and a Vaisnava

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not only paid for much bamboo and were shouting in great numbers, but on top of that the village orchestra (gong, largely composed of percussion instruments) was now rolling fortissimo. At once silence set in: the incantation had finished and the offerings were swept away; kala and bhuta had been bribed with the offerings and chased away by the noise. Now everybody knelt down and received holy water from the sëngguhu s helpers. Three times they sipped audibly and three times they anointed their hair with it, and then there were the well-known words: ka Surya rihin, i.e. begin with the adoration of Siva in His mani­ festation as the sun, Sivaditya. Before concluding this paper with the last item, Purva Bhumi Kamulan, two remarks should be added to the preceding descrip­ tion. In the second case I witnessed, further bloodshed was occa­ sioned by holding a cock-fight. And the bajra utèr, apparently the usual priest’s bell, was emitting a buzzing sound as a result of continued stroking along the opening with a piece of wood ; I have heard this as part of a demonstration given by the sëngguhu of ’Bon Byu, but not during a rite; I suppose that it is only used on special occasions. For, just like the brahman priests, the sëngguhu distinguish uttama, madhya, and nista rites in which they officiate : superior, ordinary, and cheap ones. We now take leave of the sëngguhu's rite and ritual instruments and finally focus our attention on his most important incantation : Purva Bhumi Kamulan, which deals with the Creation of the Universe and the Beginnings of the World. As to the language of this longest of any incantation of any rite in Bali, it is composed in Old Javanese, in contradistinction to the preceding Siva-ritual, which is held in Sanskrit. The recitation cannot be heard, even if one approaches the sëngguhu's mouth at a foot’s distance, because of the deafening noise, but the manuscripts show that the litany consists of at least 300 eight-syllable verses. In the six manuscripts available to me the size varies between 340-320-300(2 X )-20O-i50 lines, therewith pointing to a disquieting state of preservation. Though often superfluous words have been inserted, or longer words substituted for a shorter one (e.g. bhatara for deva), com­ parison of manuscripts is very helpful for restoring the original octo-syllabic verses. Only exceptionally has a single word been lost, usually a whole eight-syllable verse is missing. This principle of octo-syllabic verses is nothing unusual for Bali. The pamangku, 823121

T

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The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman,

temple priest, uses this form when addressing the gods ; it is called saha. In Dr. H. N. van der Tuuk’s Kawi-Balineesch-Woordenboek, iii. 5, s.v. saha, we find the rather defective, but still recognizable saha ascribed to Sangkul Putih. Most passages of the sëngguhu s saha give the impression that four of such eight-syllable verses should be taken together, thus forming a ‘quatrain’. That is what the dalang, priest for agricultural ceremonies, among the Baduys of West Java actually does when singing his incantation to avert pest and plague. Here I cannot go further into this subject, and my manuscripts of Purva Bhumi Kamulan, moreover, are not always perfectly clear. In my effort to present a translation, which is bound to bear a provisional character, I have been consistent in making eight-syllable verses and fourline stanzas. I have left out tens of devils, as after the first dozen or so, instead of making a frightening impression, for us they become tedious and are more of an anticlimax. The Balinese know of them all, and every verse, mentioning another devil, was meant first to frighten them, and then to arouse their awe and respect for the sëngguhu, for he knew how to placate them. I left out the dis­ connected line tan Hang takonakëna, found twice or three times, and which turns up in other Balinese works also, an exclamatory phrase, apparently, which I could not translate. It is my intention to deal at length with the sëngguhu in the next few years. The following translation is certainly inferior to the original saha, but it is better than each of my manuscripts. So here follows

Purva Bhumi Kamulan This world came into its being when the Goddess Uma appeared, from the ankles of Bhatara Sang Hyang Guru, God of all Gods. Goddess Uma, at the outset, was a spouse to this God of Gods ; Bhatara then performed penance, Bhatari then performed penance. From these two took their origin the gods called The Five Anchorites : Korsika, Garga, and Métri, Kurusya and Pratanjala.

Now Korsika sprang from the skin; Garga’s origin was in the flesh, while Métri sprang from the sinews ; and from the bones came Kurusya. Pratanjala came from the marrow. The Upper God then had cursed them. Korsika jumped off to the East, became a demon, called dëngën. And Garga jumped off to the South, incarnated as a tiger;

but not a Sufi, a Sawa, and a Vaisnava and Métri jumped off to the West, his incarnation was a snake. Kurusya jumped off to the North, embodied in a crocodile ; Pratanjala sprang Middle-wards, in order to create the world.

Now Pratanjala descended ; there was yet nothing to be seen, there was yet nothing to be heard. Uma, her thinking concentrated,

Swiftly created the whole world, together with Pratanjala. From the Goddess’s strong penance the sweat dripped down, into Gangga.

The sea came from the salty sweat; earth rose from Bhatari’s body; the sky a canopy above it— the creation was completed. The Upper God then did penance : hence the Sungod, the MoonGoddess, the host of stars and the planets, shedding their light unto the world. Now The Four Elements appeared : to wit: Water, Light, Wind, and Sky; Life on the Egg that was the World had become firm and organized. Looking, Bhatari Uma saw: the East was white, the South was red, the West yellow, and black the North, while multi-hued was the Centre.

Looking then upon Her Own Self, the Upper Goddess was wrathful; She took shape as angry Durga and began to devour mankind.

279

Her teeth were long and sharp like tusks, Her eyes : as Sun and Moon so bright; Her nostrils : deep and cavernlike; Her hair was curled, red and matted.

Her body was misshapen, huge, reached high up into the sky— There then was Bhatari Durga, so the world called The High Goddess. Servants of The Highest Goddess, saw Her and began their penance ; their heads became of ugly shape, and each received a special name. Bhuta, Bhuti, Yaksa, Yaksi, goblins, imps, devils, and satans were granted by Her permission to have the feast of Galungan.

Now once more Bhatari Durga performed Her penance ; thereupon She jumped into the sea, and there went on performing Her penance. From the sea came frightful monsters, fishes of every kind and shape : seacows and sharks and sawfishes, gigantic eels and swellfishes. When Durga performed Her penance, She could be seen by the whole world, and upwards to the highest spheres, when Durga performed Her penance.

Even so Bhatari Durga— the name She bore when in this state— performed Her penance, together with Her servants, male and female.

28o

The Balinese Sengguhu-priest, a Shaman,

But then the Bhatara Guru descended from the Highest Heaven, taking the shape of God Kala, the name He bore from now onward.

Savagely He devoured mankind ; His teeth were long and sharp like tusks ; His eyes : as Sun and Moon so bright; His nostrils : deep and cavernlike. His hair was curled, red and matted ; His body: monstrous, without end, reddish, reaching upward to the sky, for Guru had become Kala. Thereupon the Goddess Durga— the name She bore when in this state— performed penance with Her servants ; there were females and there were males. Bhuta, Bhuti, Yaksa, Yaksi, Pisachas waited upon them ; goblins, imps, devils, and satans, some of them small and others big.

Sang Hyang Kala performed penance ; after performing His penance, with the name of God Sangkara, did He range there in the mountains.

Bhuta Banaspati-Raja rages in the trees, the forests ; Ksiti-Kala rages on Earth; Kala Visésa in the sky.

In the door is Dora-Kala, in the kitchen : Devil Eating, in sleeping mat : Devil Curl-up, in the cushion: Devil Nodding.

The Darkish Imp governs by night, the Scarlet Red governs by day, Imp Way-layer waits on the roads, Spying Devils sit on the fence. The Drunken Imps are in the wine, Dancing Devils at séances, Monkeys in the infants’ grave­ yard, Insane Imps are on the highways. Devil Mirror is in the well, Devil Flesh is in the graveyard, Devil Slug: in the morasses, Devil Kali: at dice-playing. Now Goddess Durga could be seen, when She rose out of the ocean, and went to Bhatara Kala; of what kind was Her appearance ? Garlanded She with human skulls, and draped She was with intestines ; She wore a scarf of red and black ; attended by Her retinue. Followers and their relatives in the graveyards of the infants and of men, in uncanny trees, këpuh and randu, everywhere. Those followers now chased mankind, ensnaring men and chasing them, in every place devouring them, during the day, during the night. Which people now did they devour ? the people bom on the wrong day, on the day called vuku charik, on the day called vuku vayang. Brother and sister as sole off­ spring, brothers five without one sister, female children, only bom— they were eaten, both day and night.

but not a Sufi, a Saivay and a Vaisnava Now The Supreme God was angered, descended for a space of time, resided in The Lower Spheres, making places of devotion. Then He created The Three Gods: Brahma, Visnu, and Isvara; Brahma became the Brahmin Priest, God Visnu became Bhujangga; God Isvara became Rësi ; Saiva, Bodha, and Bhujangga were authorized, from now onward, to exorcise Man’s Ten Evils. Bhatara Kala had to eat (so too had Bhatari Durga) : rice, flesh, and fermented liquor; plenty was their food and varied. Bhatara Kala and Durga, standing upon the flower-stalks, waited upon by followers, rejoice in looking on their feasts. The God Kala, Goddess Durga, are called by prayers and formulas, by the beating of the priest’s bell, by the ringing of gëntorag. The conch is blown with no surcease ; its sound reaches The Upper Spheres ; flowers are thrown in all directions, together with yellow rice-grains. Sandalwood and frankincense too rise upwards to the Highest Spheres, Alling the Sky with their fragrance, reaching unto Visnu’s Heaven. The origin of worship was that Mankind in The Middle Sphere

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was eaten by Sang Hyang Kala, and by Bhatari Durga too. But since Man offers on the days of Full and New Moon, no longer is he cursed by Sang Hyang Kala, is he cursed by Sang Hyang Durga,

is not devoured by God Kala, is not devoured by The Goddess ; he is freed from The Ten Evils, by the word of The Highest God.

Kala is changed back to Guru, Durga is changed back to Uma, they return to Siva’s heaven, by the word of The Highest God. The two of them are exorcised, and The Five Gods are exorcised ; each returns to his own Heaven, being followed by attendants. Sang Korsika goes to the East, becoming there God Isvara; and Sang Garga goes to the South, becoming there the God Brahma;

and Sang Métri goes to the West, becoming there Maha-Deva; Sang Kurusya goes to the North, becoming there the God Visnu ; Pratanjala goes to the Centre, becoming there the God Siva; servants of Kala and Durga now become celestial beings. All return to Heaven-Abodes, form the retinue of their Lords ; the High Gods to Siva’s Heaven, by the word of The Highest God.

Praise and honour be to Siva, His exalted threefold aspect; honour must also be given to God Kala, Goddess Durga.

XVII ‘INTERNAL CONVERSION’ IN CONTEMPORARY BALI CLIFFORD GEERTZ * Every race has its lumber-room of magical beliefs and practices,

and many such survivals are gracious and beautiful and main­ tain the continuity of a civilization. It is to be hoped that modern materialist ideas will not obliterate them entirely and leave Malay culture jejune.' The Malay Magician

W e hear much these days about political and economic moderni­ zation in the new states of Asia and Africa, but little about reli­ gious modernization. When not ignored entirely, religion tends to be viewed either as a rigidly archaic obstacle to needed progress or a beleaguered conservator of precious cultural values threatened by the corrosive powers of rapid change. Little attention is paid to re­ ligious development in and of itself, to regularities of transforma­ tion which occur in the ritual and belief systems of societies undergoing comprehensive social revolutions. At best, we get studies of the role that established religious commitments and identifications play in political or economic processes. But our view of Asian and African religions as such is oddly static. We expect them to prosper or decline; we do not expect them to change. With respect to Bali, perhaps the most richly stocked lumber­ room of gracious and beautiful magical beliefs and practices in South-east Asia, such an approach is virtually universal, and the dilemma of choosing between a quixotic cultural antiquarianism and a barren cultural materialism seems, therefore, to be an es­ pecially cruel one. In this essay, I want to suggest that this dilemma is, in all likelihood, a false one, that the continuity of Balinese civilization can be maintained though the fundamental nature of its religious life be totally transformed. And further, I want to point to a few faint, uncertain signs that such a transformation is in fact already under way.

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The concept of religious rationalization In his great work on comparative religion, the German sociolo­ gist Max Weber set forth a distinction between two idealized polar types of religions in world history, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘ration­ alized’, which, if it is over-generalized and incompletely formu­ lated, is yet a useful starting-point for a discussion of the process of genuinely religious change.1 The axis of this contrast turns upon a difference in the relation­ ship between religious concepts and social forms. Traditional religious concepts (Weber also calls them magical) rigidly stereo­ type established social practices. Inextricably bound up with secular custom in an almost point-for-point manner, they draw ‘all branches of human activity... into the circle of symbolic magic’ and so insure that the stream of everyday existence continues to flow steadily within a fixed and firmly outlined course.2 Rational­ ized concepts, however, are not so thoroughly intertwined with the concrete details of ordinary life. They are ‘apart’, ‘above’, or ‘outside’ of them, and the relations of the systems of ritual and belief in which they are embodied to secular society are not intimate and unexamined but distant and problematic. A ration­ alized religion is, to the degree that it is rationalized, self-conscious and worldly-wise. Its attitude to secular life may be various, from the resigned acceptance of genteel Confucianism to the active mastery of ascetic Protestantism; but it is never naïve.3 With this difference in relationship between the religious realm and the secular goes a difference also in the structure of the re­ ligious realm itself. Traditional religions consist of a multitude of very concretely defined and only loosely ordered sacred entities, an untidy collection of fussy ritual acts and vivid animistic images which are able to involve themselves in an independent, seg­ mental, and immediate manner with almost any sort of actual event. Such systems (for, despite their lack of formal regularity, I.

1 Weber’s main theoretical discussion of religion is contained in a still untrans­ lated section of his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Mohr, 1925), 225-356, but appli­ cation of his approach can be found in the translations of his Religionssoziologie issued as The Religion of China (Free Press, 1958), Ancient Judaism (Free Press, 1952), The Religion of India (Free Press, 1958), and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Scribner’s, 1958). The best discussions of Weber’s work in English are T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Free Press, 1949), and R. Bendix, Max Weber: an Intellectual Portrait (Doubleday, i960). 2 Quoted in Parsons, Social Action, 566. 3 Weber, Religion of China, 226-49.

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they are systems) meet the perennial concerns of religion, what Weber called the ‘problems of meaning’—evil, suffering, frustra­ tion, bafflement, &c.—piecemeal. They attack them opportun­ istically as they arise in each particular instance—each death, each crop failure, each untoward natural or social occurrence—employ­ ing one or another weapon chosen, on grounds of symbolic appro­ priateness, from their cluttered arsenal of myth and magic. (With respect to the less-defensive activities of religion—the celebration of human continuity, prosperity, and solidarity—the same stra­ tegy is employed.) As the approach to fundamental spiritual issues which traditional religions take is discrete and irregular, so also is their characteristic form. Rationalized religions, on the other hand, are more abstract, more logically coherent, and more generally phrased. The prob­ lems of meaning, which in traditional systems are expressed only implicitly and fragmentarily here get inclusive formulations and evoke comprehensive attitudes. They become conceptualized as universal and inherent qualities of human existence as such, rather than being seen as inseparable aspects of this or that speci­ fic event. The question is no longer put merely in such terms as, to use a classic example from the British anthropologist EvansPritchard, ‘why has the granary fallen on my brother and not on someone else’s brother?’ but rather, ‘why do the good die young and the evil flourish as the green bay tree?’1 Or, to escape from the conventions of Christian theodicy, not, ‘by what means can I dis­ cover who practised witchcraft against my brother, thereby causing the granary to fall on him?’ but, ‘how can one know the truth?’ Not, ‘what specific actions must I perform in order to wreak vengeance upon the witch ?’ but, ‘what are the bases upon which punishment of evildoers can be justified?’ The narrower, concrete questions, of course, remain; but they are subsumed under the broader ones, whose more radically disquieting suggestions they therefore bring forward. And with this raising of the broader ones in a stark and general form arises also the need to answer them in an equally sweeping, universal, and conclusive manner. The so-called ‘world-religions’ developed, Weber argued, as responses to the appearance in an acute form ofjust this sort of need. Judaism, Confucianism, Philosophical Brahmanism, and, though 1 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford, 1932).

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on the surface it might not seem to be a religion at all, Greek Ration­ alism, each emerged out of a myriad of parochial cults, folk mythologies and ad hoc by-beliefs whose power had begun to fail for certain crucial groups in the societies concerned.1 This sense, on the part, largely, of religious intellectuals, that the traditional conglomerate of rituals and beliefs was no longer adequate, and the rise to consciousness of the problems of meaning in an explicit form, seems to have been part, in each case, of a much wider disloca­ tion in the pattern of traditional life. The details of such disloca­ tions (or of those amidst which later world-religions, descended from these first four, appeared) need not detain us. What is im­ portant is that the process of religious rationalization seems every­ where to have been provoked by a thorough shaking of the foundations of social order. Provoked, but not determined. For, aside from the fact that profound social crisis has not always produced profound religious creativity (or any creativity at all), the lines along which such creativity has moved when it has appeared have been most varied. Weber’s whole grand comparison of the religions of China, India, Israel, and the West rested on the notion that they represented variant directions of rationalization, contrastive choices among a finite set of possible developments away from magical realism. What these diverse systems had in common was not the specific content of their message, which deepened in its particularity as it expanded in its scope, but the formal pattern, the generic mode, in which it was cast. In all of them, the sense of sacredness was gathered up, like so many scattered rays of light brought to focus in a lens, from the countless tree spirits and garden spells through which it was vaguely diffused, and was concentrated in a nucleate (though not necessarily monotheistic) concept of the divine. The world was, in Weber’s famous phrase, disenchanted : the locus of sacredness was removed from the rooftrees, graveyards, and road-crossings of everyday life and put, in some sense, into another realm where dwelt Jahweh, Logos, Tao, or Brahman.2 With this tremendous increase in ‘distance’, so to speak, between 1 For a discussion of Weber’s analysis of the role of status groups in religious change, see Bendix, Max Weber, 103-11. My formulation here and elsewhere in this discussion owes much to an unpublished paper by Robert Bellah, 'Religion in the Process of Cultural Differentiation’; see also his Tokugawa Religion (Free

Press, 1957). 2 Bellah, ‘Differentiation’.

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man and the sacred goes the necessity of sustaining the ties between them in a much more deliberate and critical manner. As the divine can no longer be apprehended en passant through numberless concrete, almost reflexive ritual gestures strategically interspersed throughout the general round of life, the establish­ ment of a more general and comprehensive relationship to it becomes, unless one is to abandon concern with it altogether, imperative. Weber saw two main ways in which this can be brought about. One is through the construction of a consciously systema­ tized, formal, legal-moral code consisting of ethical commands conceived to have been given to man by the divine, through prophets, holy writings, miraculous indications, and so on. The other is through direct, individual experiential contact with the divine via mysticism, insight, aesthetic intuition, &c., often with the assistance of various sorts of highly organized spiritual and intellectual disciplines, such as yoga. The first approach is, of course, typically, though not exclusively, mid-Eastem; the second typically, though also not exclusively, East Asian. But whether, as seems unlikely, these are the only two possibilities, or not, they both do bridge the enormously widened gap, or attempt to bridge it, between the profane and the sacred in a self-conscious, methodical, explicitly coherent manner. They maintain, for those who are committed to them, a sense of a meaningful tie between man and the removed divine. As with all Weber’s polar contrasts, however, that between tra­ ditional and rational (the opposite of which is not irrational, but unrationalized) is as thoroughly blurred in fact as it is sharply drawn in theory. In particular, it must not be assumed that the religions of non-literate peoples are wholly lacking in rationalized elements and those of literate ones rationalized through and through. Not only do many so-called ‘primitive’ religions show the results of significant amounts of self-conscious criticism, but a popular religiosity of a traditional sort persists with great strength in societies where religious thought has attained its highest reaches of philosophical sophistication.1 Yet, in relative terms, it is hardly to be doubted that the world-religions show greater conceptual generalization, tighter formal integration, and a more explicit sense 1 On rationalized elements in ‘primitive’ religions see P. Radin, Primitive Man as a Philosopher (Dover, 1957). On popular religion in developed civiliza­ tions, Bendix, Weber, 112-16.

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of doctrine than do the ‘little’ ones of clan, tribe, village or folk. Religious rationalization is not an all-or-none, an irreversible, or an inevitable process. But, empirically, it is a real one. 11.

Traditional Balinese religion

As the Balinese are, in a broad sense, Hindus, one might expect that a significant part, at least, of their religious life would be rela­ tively well rationalized, that over and above the usual torrent of popular religiosity there would exist a developed system of either ethical or mystical theology. Yet this is not the case. A number of over-intellectualized descriptions of it to the contrary notwith­ standing, Balinese religion, even among the priests, is concrete, action-centred, thoroughly interwoven with the details of everyday life and touched with little, if any, of the philosophical sophistica­ tion or generalized concern of classical Brahmanism or its Buddhist offshoot.1 Its approach to the problems of meaning remains im­ plicit, circumscribed and segmental. The world is still enchanted and (some recent stirrings aside for the moment) the tangled net of magical realism is almost completely intact, broken only here and there by individual qualms and reflections. How far this absence of a developed body of doctrine is a result of the persistence of the indigenous (i.e., pre-Hindu) element, of the relative isolation of Bali from the outside world after the fifteenth century or so and the consequent parochialization of its culture, or of the rather unusual degree to which Balinese social structure has been able to maintain a solidly traditional form, is a moot question. In Java, where the pressure of external influences has been relentless, and where traditional social structure has lost much of its resilience, not just one but several relatively wellrationalized systems of belief and worship have developed, giving a conscious sense of religious diversity, conflict, and perplexity still quite foreign to Bali.2 Thus, if one comes, as I did, to Bali after having worked in Java, it is the near total absence of either doubt or dogmatism, the metaphysical nonchalance, that almost immediately strikes one. That, and the astounding proliferation of ceremonial activity. The Balinese, perpetually weaving intricate 1 The very partial nature of the one slight exception to this can be seen from the brief description of a priest’s intellectual training in V. E. Korn, ‘The Consecration of a Priest’, in J. L. Swellengrebel et al., Bali: Studies in Life, Thought and Ritual (Van Hoeve, i960), 133-53« 2 On Java, see C. Geertz, The Religion of Java (Free Press, i960).

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palm-leaf offerings, preparing elaborate ritual meals, decorating all sorts of temples, marching in massive processions, and falling into sudden trances, seem much too busy practising their religion to think (or worry) very much about it. Yet, again, to say that Balinese religion is not methodically ordered is not to say that it is not ordered at all. Not only is it pervaded with a consistent, highly distinctive tone (a kind of sedu­ lous theatricalism which only extended description could evoke), but the elements which comprise it cluster into a number of relatively well-defined ritual complexes which exhibit, in turn, a definite approach to properly religious issues no less reasonable for being implicit. Of these, three are of perhaps greatest im­ portance: (i) the temple system; (2) the sanctification of social inequality; and (3) the cult of death and witches. As the relevant ethnographic details are readily available in the literature, my description of these complexes can be cursory.1 (i.) The temple system is a type example of the wholesale fashion in which the diverse strands of a traditional religion twine them­ selves through the social structure within which they are set. Though all the temples, of which there are literally thousands, are built on a generally similar open court plan, each is entirely focused on one or another of a number of quite specifically defined concerns : death, neighbourhood patriotism, kin-group solidarity, agricultural fertility, caste pride, political loyalty, &c. Every Bali­ nese belongs to from two or three to a dozen such temples; and, as the congregation of each is composed of those families who happen to use the same graveyard, live in the same neighbourhood, farm the same fields, or have other links, such memberships and the heavy ritual obligations they involve buttress rather directly the sort of social relationships out of which Balinese daily life is built. The religious forms associated with the various temples, like the architecture broadly similar from temple to temple, are almost wholly ceremonial in nature. Beyond a minimal level, there is almost no interest in doctrine, or generalized interpretation of what is going on, at all. The stress is on orthopraxy, not orthodoxy— what is crucial is that each ritual detail should be correct and in place. If one is not, a member of the congregation will fall, involuntarily, into a trance, becoming thereby the chosen messenger of the gods, and will refuse to revive until the error, announced in his ravings, 1

For a general survey see M. Covarrubias, Island of Bali (Knopf, 1956).

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has been corrected. But the conceptual side is of much less moment : the worshippers usually don’t even know who the gods in the temples are, are uninterested in the meaning of the rich symbolism, and indifferent to what others may or may not believe. You can believe virtually anything you want to actually, including that the whole thing is rather a bore, and even say so. But if you do not perform the ritual duties for which you are responsible you will be totally ostracized, not just from the temple congregation, but from the community as a whole. Even the execution of ceremonies has an oddly externalized air about it. The main such ceremony occurs on each temple’s ‘birth­ day’, every 210 days, at which time the Gods descend from their home atop the great volcano in the centre of the island, enter iconic figurines placed on an altar in the temple, remain three days, and then return. On the day of their arrival the congregation forms a gay parade, advancing to meet them at the edge of the village, wel­ coming them with music and dance, and escorting them to the temple where they are further entertained; on the day of their departure they are set off with a similar, though sadder, more restrained procession. But most of the ritual between the first and last day is performed by the temple priest alone, the congregation’s main obligation being to construct tremendously complex offerings and bring them to the temple. There is, on the first day, an impor­ tant collective ritual at which holy water is sprinkled on members of the congregation as, palms to forehead, they make the classic Hindu obeisance gesture to the Gods. But even in this seemingly sacramental ceremony only one member of the household need participate, and it is usually a woman or an adolescent who is so delegated, the men being generally unconcerned so long as a few drops of the charmed water falls protectively upon some repre­ sentative of their family. ( 2) The sanctification of social inequality centres on the one hand around the Brahmana priesthood and on the other around the enormous ceremonies which the dozens of kings, princes, and lordlings of Bali give to express and reinforce their ascendency. In Bàli, the symbolization of social inequality, of rank, has always been the linchpin of supra-village political organization. From the very earliest stages, the primary moving forces in the process of state formation have been more stratificatory than political, have been concerned more with status than with statecraft. It was not a

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drive toward higher levels of administrative, fiscal, or even military efficiency that acted as the fundamental dynamic element in the shaping of the Balinese polity, but rather an intense emphasis on the ceremonial expression of delicately graduated distinctions in social standing. Governmental authority was made to rest, secon­ darily and quite precariously, on more highly valued prestige differences between social strata; and the actual mechanisms of political control through which an authoritarian oligarchy exercises its power were much less elaborately developed than were those through which a traditional cultural élite demonstrates its spiritual superiority—i.e. state ritual, court art and patrician etiquette. Thus, where the temples are primarily associated with egalita­ rian village groups—perhaps the fundamental structural principle around which they are organized is that within the temple context all differences in social rank between members of the congregation are irrelevant—the priesthood and the spectacular ceremonies of the upper caste tie gentry and peasantry together into relation­ ships which are frankly asymmetrical. While any male member of the Brahmana caste is eligible to become a priest, only a minority undertake the extended period of training and purification which is prerequisite to actual practice in the role.1 Though it has no organization as such, each priest operating independently, the priesthood as a whole is very closely identified with the nobility. The ruler and the priest are said to stand side by side as ‘full brothers’. Each without the other would fall, the first for lack of charismatic potency, the second for lack of armed protection. Even today, each noble house has a symbiotic tie with a particular priestly house which is considered to be its spiritual counterpart, and in the pre-colonial period not only were the royal courts largely manned by priests, but no priest could be consecrated without permission of the local ruler and no ruler legi­ timately installed except by a priest. On the commoner or lower-caste side each priest ‘owns’ a number of followers, allotted to his house at one point or another by this or that noble house and subsequently inherited from generation to generation. These followers are scattered, if not altogether randomly, at least very widely—say three in one village, four in the next, several more in a third, &c. The reason for this 1 A priest usually must have a Brahmana wife in order to be consecrated, and his wife may fill his role after his death as a full-fledged priest.

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practice evidently being a wish on the part of the nobility to keep the priesthood politically weak. Thus, in any one village a man and his neighbour will ordinarily be dependent upon different priests for their religious needs, the most important of which is the obtaining of holy water, an element essential not just for temple ceremonies but for virtually all important rituals. Only a Brahmana priest can address the Gods directly in order to sanctify water, as only he has, as the result of his ascetic regimen and his caste purity, the spiritual strength to traffic safely with the tremendous magical power involved. The priests are thus more professional magicians than true priests : they do not serve the divine nor elucidate it, but, through the agency of ill-understood sanskritic chants and beauti­ fully stylized sacred gestures, they utilize it. A priest’s followers refer to him as their siwa, after the god by whom he is possessed during the entranced portions of his rite, and he refers to them as his sisija, roughly ‘clients’; and in such a way the hierarchical social differentiation into upper and lower castes is symbolically assimilated to the spiritual contrast between priests and ordinary men. The other means through which rank is given religious expression and support, the prodigious ceremonies of the nobility, employs an institution of political rather than ritual clientage—corvée—to underscore the legitimacy of radical social inequality. Here, it is not the content of the ceremonial activity which is important, but the fact that one is in a position to mobilize the human resources to produce such an extravaganza at all. Usually focused around life-cycle events (tooth-filing, crema­ tion), these ceremonies involve the collective efforts of great masses of subjects, dependants, &c., over a considerable stretch of time, and form, therefore, not just the symbol but the very substance of political loyalty and integration. In pre-colonial times the pre­ paration and performance of such grand spectacles seem to have consumed more time and energy than all other state activities, in­ cluding warfare, put together, and so, in a sense, the political system can be said to have existed to support the ritual system, rather than the other way round. And, despite colonialism, occupation, war and independence, the pattern in great part persists—the gentry is still, in Cora Du Bois’s fine phrase, ‘the symbolic expression of the peasantry’s greatness’, and the peasantry, still the lifeblood of the gentry’s pretentions.1 1 C. Du Bois, Social Forces in Southeast Asia (Harvard, 1959), 31.

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(3) The cult of death and witches is the ‘dark’ side of Balinese religion, and, though it penetrates into virtually every corner of daily life, adding an anxious note to the otherwise equable tenor of existence, it finds its most direct and vivid expression in the ecstatic ritual combat of those two strange mythological figures: Rangda and Barong. In Rangda, monstrous queen of the witches, ancient widow, used-up prostitute, child-murdering incarnation of the goddess of death and, if Margaret Mead is correct, symbolic projection of the rejecting mother, the Balinese have fashioned a powerful image of unqualified evil.1 In Barong, a vaguely benign, and slightly ludicrous deity, who looks and acts like a cross be­ tween a clumsy bear, a foolish puppy, and a strutting Chinese dragon, they have constructed an almost parodic representation of human strength and weakness. That in their headlong encounters these two demons, each saturated with that mana-like power the Balinese call sakti, arrive inevitably at an exact stand-off is there­ fore not without a certain ultimate significance for all its magical concreteness. The actual enactments of the battle between Rangda and Barong usually, though not inevitably, take place during a death temple’s ‘birthday’ ceremony. One villager (a man) dances Rangda, donning the fierce mask and repulsive costume; two others, arranged fore and aft as in a vaudeville horse, dance the elegant Barong. Both entranced, the hag and dragon advance warily from opposite sides of the temple yard amid curses, threats, and growing tension. At first Barong fights alone, but soon members of the audience begin falling involuntarily into trance, seizing krises and rushing to his aid. Rangda advances toward Barong and his helpers, waving her magical cloth. She is hideous and terrifying and, although they hate her with a terrible rage and want to destroy her, they fall back. When she, held at bay by Barong’s sakti, then turns away, she suddenly becomes irresistibly attractive (at least so my informants reported) and they advance on her eagerly from the rear, some­ times even trying to mount her from behind; but, with a turn of her head and a touch of her cloth, they fafl helpless into a coma. Finally she withdraws from the scene, undefeated, but at least checked, and Barong’s desperately frustrated assistants burst into wild self-destructive rages, turning their krises (ineffectively, 1 G. Bateson and M. Mead, Balinese Character; a Photographic Analysis (N. Y. Academy of Sciences, 1942).

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because they are in trance) against their chests, desperately hurling themselves about, devouring live chicks, &c. From the long moment of tremulous expectancy which precedes the initial ap­ pearance of Rangda to this final dissolution into an orgy of futile violence and degradation, the whole performance has a most un­ comfortable air of being about to descend at any moment into sheer panic and wild destruction. Evidently it never does, but the alarm­ ing sense of touch-and-go, with the diminishing band of the entranced desperately attempting to keep the situation minimally in hand, is altogether overwhelming, even for a mere observer. The razor-thin dimensions of the line dividing reason from un­ reason, eros from thanatos, or the divine from the demonic, could hardly be more effectively dramatized. in. The rationalization of Balinese religion Except for a few odd sports of limited consequence such as Bahai or Mormonism (and leaving aside, as equivocal cases, the so-called ‘political religions’ such as Communism and Fascism), no new rationalized world religions have arisen since Muhammad. Conse­ quently, almost all of the tribal and peasant peoples of the world who have shed, to whatever degree, the husk of their traditional faiths since that time, have done so through conversion to one or another of the great missionary religions—Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. For Bali, however, such a course seems precluded. Christian missionaries have never made much progress on the island and, connected as they are with the discredited colonial régime, their chances would now seem poorer than ever. Nor are the Balinese likely to become Muslims in large numbers, despite the general Islamism of Indonesia. They are, as a people, intensely conscious and painfully proud of being a Hindu island in a Muslim sea, and their attitude toward Islam is that of the duchess to the bug. To become either Christian or Muslim would be tantamount, in their eyes, to ceasing to be Balinese, and, indeed, an occasional individual who is converted is still considered, even by the most tolerant and sophisticated, to have abandoned not just Balinese religion but Bali, and perhaps reason, itself. Both Chris­ tianity and Islam may influence further religious developments on the island; but they have virtually no chance of controlling them.1 1 For a similar judgement by a missionary linguist see J. L. Swellengrebel, Introduction in Swellengrebel et al., Bali, 68-76. As the present paper was 823121

U

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Yet, that a comprehensive shaking of the foundations of the Balinese social order is, if not already begun, in the very immediate offing, is apparent on all sides. The emergence of the unitary Re­ public and the enclosure of Bali as a component within it has brought modern education, modern governmental forms, and modern political consciousness to the island. Radically improved communications have brought increased awareness of, and contact with, the outside world, and provided novel criteria against which to measure the worth both of their own culture and that of others. And inexorable internal changes—increased urbanization, growing population pressure, &c.—have made maintenance of traditional systems of social organization in unchanged form progressively more difficult. What happened in Greece or China after the fifth century b.c.—the disenchantment of the world—seems about to happen, in an altogether different historical context and with an altogether different historical meaning, in mid-twentieth-century Bali. Unless, as is of course a real possibility, events move too fast for them to maintain their cultural heritage at all, the Balinese seem likely to rationalize their religious system through a process of ‘internal conversion’. Following, generally and not uncritically, the guide lines of the Indian religions to which they have been so long nominally affiliated, but from whose doctrinal spirit they have been almost wholly cut off, they seem on the verge of producing a self-conscious ‘Bali-ism’ which, in its philosophical dimensions, will approach the world-religions both in the generality of the ques­ tions it asks and in the comprehensiveness of the answers it gives. The questions, at least, are already being asked ; particularly by the youth. Among the educated or semi-educated young men of eight­ een to thirty who formed the ideological vanguard of the Revolu­ tion, there have appeared scattered but distinct signs of a conscious interest in spiritual issues of a sort which still seem largely meaning­ less to their elders or their less engagé contemporaries. For example, one night, at a funeral in the village where I was living, a full-scale philosophical discussion of such issues broke out among eight or ten young men squatted around the courtyard ‘guarding’ the corpse. As the other aspects of traditional Balinese drafted in the field before Swellengrebel’s appeared, the convergence of some of the material he presents with mine serves as something of an independent support for the reality of the process outlined here.

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religion which I have described, funeral ceremonies consist largely of a host of detailed little busy-work routines, and whatever concern with first and last things death may stimulate is well submerged in a bustling ritualism. But these young men, who involved them­ selves but minimally in all this, the necessary observances being mostly performed by their elders, fell spontaneously into a search­ ing discussion of the nature of religion as such. At first they addressed themselves to a problem which has haunted the religious and the students of religion alike : how can you tell where secular custom leaves off and religion, the truly sacred, begins ? Are all the items in the detailed funeral rite really necessary homage to the gods, genuinely sacred matters? Or are many simply human customs performed out of blind habit and tradition ? And, if so, how can you differentiate the one from the other ? One man offered the notion that practices which were clearly connected with grouping people together, strengthening their bonds with one another—for example, the communal construction of the corpse litter by the village as a whole, or the kin-group’s preparation of the body—were custom, and so not sacred, while those connected directly with the gods—the family obeisance to the spirit of the deceased, the purification of the body with holy water, &c.—were properly religious. Another argued that those elements which appeared generally in ritual observances, which you find virtually everywhere, from birth to death, in the temples and at the Rangda plays (again, holy water is a good example) were religious, but those which occurred only here and there, or were limited to one or two rites, were not. Then the discussion veered, as such discussions will, to the grounds of validity for religion as such. One man, somewhat Marxist-influenced, propounded social relativism : when in Rome do as the Romans do, a phrase he quoted in its Indonesian form. Religion is a human product. Man thought up God and then named him. Religion is useful and valuable, but it has no super­ natural validity. One man’s faith is another man’s superstition. At bottom, everything comes down to mere custom. This was greeted with universal disagreement, disapproval, and dismay. In response, the son of the village head offered a simple, non-rational belief position. Intellectual arguments are totally irrelevant. He knows in his heart that the gods exist. Faith is first,

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thought secondary. The truly religious person, such as himself, just knows that the gods truly come into the temples—he can feel their presence. Another man, more intellectually inclined, erected, more or less on the spot, a complex allegorical symbology to solve the problem. Tooth-filing symbolizes man becoming more like the gods and less like the animals, who have fangs, This rite means this, that, that; this colour stands for justice, that for courage, &c. What seems meaningless is full of hidden meaning, if only you have the key. A Balinese cabalist. Yet another man, more agnostic, though not a disbeliever, produced the golden mean for us. You can’t really think about these things because they don’t lie within human comprehension. We just don’t know. The best policy is a conservative one—believe just about half of everything you hear. That way you won’t go overboard. And so it went through a good part of the night. Clearly these young men, all of whom (save the village chief’s son who was a government clerk in a nearby town) were peasants and smiths, were better Weberians than they knew. They were concerned on the one hand with segregating religion from social life in general, and on the other with trying to close the gap between this world and the other, between secular and sacred, which was thus opened up, by means of some sort of deliberately systematic attitude, some general com­ mitment. Here is the crisis of faith, the breaking of the myths, the shaking of the foundations in a pretty unvarnished form. The same sort of new seriousness is beginning to appear, here and there, in liturgical contexts as well. In a number of the temple ceremonies—particularly those at which, as is increasingly the case, a Brahmana priest officiates directly rather than, as has been customary, merely providing holy water for the use of the low-caste temple priest—there is appearing an almost pietistic fervour on the part of some of the young male (and a few of the young female) members of the congregation. Rather than permitting but one member of their family to participate for all in the genuflexion to the gods, they all join in, crowding toward the priest so as to have more holy water sprinkled on them. Rather than the usual context of screaming children and idly chatting adults within which this sacrament usually takes place, they demand, and get, a hushed and reverent atmosphere. They talk, afterward, about the holy water not in magical but emotionalist terms, saying that their inward unease and uncertainty is ‘cooled’ by the water as it falls upon them,

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and they too speak of feeling the gods’ presence directly and immediately. Of all this, the older and the more traditional can make little ; they look on it, as they themselves say, like a cow look­ ing at a gamelan orchestra—with an uncomprehending, bemused (but in no way hostile) astonishment. Such rationalizing developments on the more personal level demand, however, a comparable sort of rationalization at the level of dogma and creed if they are to be sustained. And this is in fact occurring, to a limited extent, through the agency of several recently established publishing firms which are attempting to put scholarly order into the classical palm-leaf literature upon which the Brahmana priesthoods’ claim to learning rests, to translate it into modern Balinese or Indonesian, to interpret it in moral-symbolic terms, and to issue it in cheap editions for the increasingly literate masses. These firms are also publishing translations of Indian works, both Hindu and Buddhist, are importing theosophical books from Java, and have even issued several original works by Balinese writers on the history and significance of their religion.1 It is, again, the young educated men who for the most part buy these books, but they often read them aloud at home to their families. The interest in them, especially in the old Balinese manuscripts, is very great, even on the part of quite traditional people. When I bought some books of this sort and left them around our house in the village our front porch became a literary centre where groups of villagers would come and sit for hours on end and read them to one another, commenting now and then on their meaning, and almost invariably remarking that it was only since the Revolution that they had been permitted to see such writings, that in the colonial period the upper castes prevented their dissemination altogether. This whole process represents, thus, a spreading of religious literacy beyond the traditional priestly castes, for whom the writings were in any case more magical esoterica than canonical scriptures, to the masses, a vulgarization, in the root sense, of religious knowledge and theory. For the first time, at least a few ordinary Balinese are coming to feel that they can get some understanding of what their religion is all about; and more important, that they have a need for and a right to such understanding. 1 See Swellengrebel, op. cit., Introduction, 70-71, for descriptions of some of this literature.

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Against such a background, it might seem paradoxical that the main force behind this religious literacy and philosophical-moral interpretation movement is the nobility, or part of it, that it is cer­ tain, again generally younger, members of the aristocracy who are collating and translating the manuscripts and founding the firms to publish and distribute them. But the paradox is only an apparent one. As I have noted, much of the nobility’s traditional status rested on ceremonial grounds ; a great part of the traditional ceremonial activity was designed so as to produce an almost reflexive acceptance of their eminence and right to rule. But today this simple assumption of eminence is becoming increasingly difficult. It is being undermined by the economic and political changes of Republican Indonesia and by the radically populist ideology which has accompanied these changes. Though a good deal of large-scale ceremonialism still persists on Bali, and though the ruling class continues to express its claim to superiority in terms of ritual extravagance, the day of the colossal cremation and the titanic tooth-filing seems to be drawing to a close. To the more perceptive of the aristocracy the handwriting on the wall is thus quite clear : if they persist in basing their right to rule on wholly traditional grounds they will soon lose it. Authority now demands more than court ceremonialism to justify it; it demands ‘reasons*—i.e. doctrine. And it is doctrine that they are attempting to provide through reinterpreting classical Balinese literature and re-establishing intellectual contact with India. What used to rest on ritual habit is now to rest on rationalized dogmatic belief. The main concerns upon which the content of the ‘new* literature focuses—the reconciliation of polytheism and monotheism, the weighing of the relative importance of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Balinese’ elements in ‘Hindu-Balinese’ religion, the relation of outward form to inward content in worship, the tracing of the historico-mythological origins of caste rank­ ings, &c.—all serve to set the traditional hierarchical social system in an explicitly intellectual context. The aristocracy (or part of it) has cast itself in the role of the leaders of the new Bali-ism so as to maintain its more general position of social dominance. To see in all this a mere Machiavellianism, however, would be to give the young nobles both too much credit and too little. Not

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only are they at best partially conscious of what they are doing, but, like my village theologians, they too are at least in part religiously rather than politically motivated. The transformations which the ‘new Indonesia’ has brought have hit the old élite as hard as any other group in Balinese society by questioning the foundations of their belief in their own vocation and thus their view of the very nature of reality in which they conceive that vocation to be rooted. Their threatened displacement from power appears to them as not just a social but a spiritual issue. Their sudden concern with dogma is, therefore, in part a concern to justify themselves morally and metaphysically, not only in the eyes of the mass of the population but in their own, and to main­ tain at least the essentials of the established Balinese world-view and value-system in a radically changed social setting. Like so many other religious innovators, they are simultaneously reformists and restorationists. Aside from the intensification of religious concern and the systematization of doctrine, there is a third side to this process of rationalization—the social-organizational. If a new ‘Bali-ism’ is to flourish, it needs not only a popular change of heart and an explicit codification but a more formally organized institutional structure in which it can be socially embodied. This need, es­ sentially an ecclesiastical one, is coming to revolve around the problem of the relation of Balinese religion to the national state, in particular around its place—or lack thereof—in the Republican Ministry of Religion. The Ministry, which is headed by a full cabinet member, is centred in Djakarta, but has offices scattered over much of the country. It is entirely dominated by Muslims, and its main activi­ ties are building mosques, publishing Indonesian translations of the Koran and commentaries, appointing Moslem marriage­ closers, supporting Koranic schools, disseminating information about Islam, &c. It has an elaborate bureaucracy, in which there are special sections for Protestants and Catholics (who largely boy­ cott it anyway on separatist grounds) as distinct religions. But Balinese religion is thrown into the general residual category perhaps best translated as ‘wild’—i.e. pagan, heathen, primitive, &c.—the members of which have no genuine rights in, or aid from, the Ministry. These ‘wild’ religions are considered, in the classical Moslem distinction between ‘peoples of the Book’ and ‘religions of

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ignorance’, as threats to true piety and fair game for conversion.1 The Balinese naturally take a dim view of this and have con­ stantly petitioned Djakarta for equal recognition with Protestant­ ism, Catholicism, and Islam as a fourth major religion. President Sukarno, himself half-Balinese, and many other national leaders sympathize, but they cannot, as yet, afford to alienate the politically powerful orthodox Muslims and so have vacillated, giving little effective support. The Muslims say that the adherents of Balinese Hinduism are all in one place, unlike the Christians who are scattered all over Indonesia; the Balinese point out that there are Balinese communities in Djakarta and elsewhere in Java, as well as in south Sumatra (transmigrants), and instance the recent erec­ tion of Balinese temples in east Java. The Muslims say, you have no Book, how can you be a world religion? The Balinese reply, we have manuscripts and inscriptions dating from before Muham­ mad. The Muslims say, you believe in many gods and worship stones; the Balinese say, God is One but has many names and the ‘stone’ is the vehicle of God, not God himself. A few of the more sophisticated Balinese even claim that the real reason why the Muslims are unwilling to admit them to the Ministry is the fear that if ‘Bali-ism’ were to become an officially recognized religion, many Javanese, who are Islamic in name only and still very HinduBuddhist in spirit, would convert, and ‘Bali-ism’ would grow rapidly at the expense of Islam. In any case, there is an impasse. And, as a result, the Balinese have set up their own independent, locally financed ‘Ministry of Religion’, and are attempting through it to reorganize some of their most central religious institutions. The main effort, so far, has been concentrated (with largely indifferent results) upon regulariz­ ing the qualifications for Brahmana priests. Instead of resting the priestly role mainly on its hereditary aspect, which in itself they, of course, do not question, or on the ritual virtuosity involved, the ‘Ministry’ wishes to rest it on religious knowledge and wisdom. It wants to insure that the priests know what the scriptures mean and can relate them to contemporary life, are of good moral character, have attained at least some degree of genuine scholarship, &c. Our young men will no longer follow a man just because he is a Brahmana any more, the officials say ; we must make him a figure 1 See Swellengrebel, op. cit., Introduction, 72-73, for some parliamentary exchanges on this issue.

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of moral and intellectual respect, a true spiritual guide. And to this end they are attempting to exercise some control over ordination, even to the point of setting qualifying examinations, and to make the priesthood à more corporate body by holding meetings of all the priests in an area, &c. The representatives of the ‘Ministry’ also tour the villages giving educational speeches on the moral signifi­ cance of Balinese religion, on the virtues of monotheism and the dangers of idol worship, &c. They are even attempting to put some order into the temple system, to establish a systematic classifica­ tion of temples, and perhaps eventually to elevate one kind, most likely the village origin-temple, to pre-eminence in a universalistic pattern comparable to that of a mosque or a church. All this is, however, still largely in the paper-planning stage, and it cannot be claimed that very much actual reorganization of the institutional structure of Balinese religion has in fact taken place. But there is an office of the ‘Ministry’ in each Balinese regency now, headed by a salaried Brahmana priest (a regularly paid ‘ official’ priest­ hood being in itself something of a revolution), assisted by three or four clerks, most of them also members of the Brahmana caste. A religious school, independent of the ‘Ministry* but encouraged by it, has been established, and even a small religious political party centred around a ranking noble and dedicated to forwarding these changes has been founded, so that at least the faint beginnings of religious bureaucratization are manifest. What will come of all this—the intensified religious questioning, the spread of religious literacy, and the attempt to reorganize religious institutions—remains simply to be seen. In many ways, the whole drift of the modern world would seem to be against the sort of movement toward religious rationalization which these develop­ ments portend, and perhaps Balinese culture will, in the end, be swamped and left jejune by just the sort of ‘modern materialist ideas’ which Sir Richard Winstedt fears. But not only do such overall drifts—when they do not turn out to be mirages altogether— often pass over deeply-rooted cultural configurations with rather less effect upon them than we would have thought possible, but, for all its present weakness, the regenerative potential of a triangu­ lar alliance of troubled youth, threatened aristocrats, and aroused priests should not be underestimated. Today in Bali some of the same social and intellectual processes which gave rise to the funda­ mental religious transformations of world history seem to be at

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least well begun, and whatever their vicissitudes or eventual out­ come, their career can hardly help but be an instructive one. By looking closely at what happens on this peculiar little island over the next several decades we may gain insights into the dynamics of religious change of a specificity and an immediacy that history, having already happened, can never give us.

XVIII AMIR HAMZAH: MALAY PRINCE,

INDONESIAN POET A. H. JOHNS

Sir Richard Winstedt, by his numerous contributions to the study of Malay Literature, has put all later scholars in his debt. It is therefore almost an obligation to honour this aspect of his work by an essay on more recent developments in the Malayo-Indonesian literary field. One of the most absorbing and fruitful points of departure for the study of a literature is to follow the work of a poet throughout the course of his career—to note the uncertainties and inadequacies of his early attempts at poetic expression, his gradual mastery of technique, and growing independence and boldness as he develops his own distinctive manner of expression. One can note those influences which were significant to him, and which he made his own in his encounters with reality, and thus appreciate the slow and tortuous path from adolescence to the fullness of maturity, when his themes and style are clearly established, and his characteristic attitudes are at their most fertile and intriguing. Amir Hamzah (1911-46) is worthy of such a study on many counts. He was the finest poet to appear in the Malaysian world during the pre-war years, and the first to exploit to the full the potentialities of Bahasa Indonesia as a medium for modern poetic expression. By descent, Hamzah was a Malay of royal lineage. He was born at Bindjai in north Sumatra, and brought up amid the traditions of the Malay court at Langkat. His father had a lively interest in Malay literature, and frequently held recitations of old Malay sjair and hikajat. Thus Hamzah, from his earliest years, was exposed to, and delighted in, traditional Malay literature. It is commonly said of him that his genius as a poet lay in his remarkable ability to resurrect the burnt-out embers of Malay poetry, and to infuse into the forms and rich vocabulary of traditional Malay, an unexpected

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and vivid freshness and life. Further, it is added, he was through and through a Malay, and his later verse reflects a deep and sincere religious faith. Professor A. Teeuw could even say of him that his death at the hands of the revolutionaries in north Sumatra in 1946 could be interpreted symbolically as signifying that the past he had temporarily brought back to life was dead, never to return.1 Now this is certainly all true, to a point. Ethnically Hamzah was a Malay ; he was brought up saturated in Malay literary tradition ; by religion, he was a devout Muslim ; in attitudes, he was conserv­ ative. He was all these things, but he was also much more. He left home to study in Java when he was fourteen, in 1925, and did not return until 1937. Thus he passed the major part of his formative years, and wrote all of his significant poetry, away from a Malay environment. In Djakarta he attended a Christian Junior High School. There he not only received a Dutch education, but absorbed something of Christian concepts and values. In 1929 he went to Senior High School in Solo, one of the two principal centres of Javanese culture. He specialized in oriental literature, and was highly competent in Javanese. In 1932 he returned to Djakarta to study in the law school, and remained there until summoned back to Sumatra to marry in 1937. Both in Solo and later, after his return to Djakarta, he was in personal contact with the leading figures of the Indonesian literary revival. In 1933, together with Takdir Alisjahbana and Armijn Pané, he was one of the founders of the cultural periodical Pudjangga Baru. He was a writer among writers, a poet among poets, and at the law school in Djakarta, during the crucial years of the early 1930’3, could not have been ignorant of the strong underswell of political national­ ism. He had, in fact, as catholic an education as was open to an Indonesian during this period. A strong element of sadness pervaded Hamzah’s mental make­ up, and this was intensified by a forlorn love-affair in the com­ parative freedom of Java, which he had to surrender when ordered to return home, marry, and take a place in the feudal court of Deli. It is clear that a bitter mental conflict preceded, and much bitter­ ness and regret followed, his decision to obey the summons to return. If many of his earlier poems reflect the pining and sensuality of adolescence, his later verse in large measure reflects his attempts 1 A. Teeuw, Pokok dan Tokoh ddlam kesusastraan Indonesia Baru (Pembangunan, Djakarta 1953), 83.

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to find solace in religion for the agonizing sense of loss that family loyalty and his aristocratic heritage had caused him. The poems he wrote in Java, principally for the periodical Pu­ djangga Baru, subsequently appeared in two slim volumes, Buah Rindu (The Fruit of Love), and Njanji Sunji (Songs of Solitude).1 He also made, through the medium of Dutch, translations into Bahasa Indonesia of Japanese, Persian, and Sanskrit poetry, includ­ ing the Bhagavad Gita, but these are not our primary concern here. Hamzah himself was responsible for the arrangement of the poems in his two volumes of original verse. In general, the poems may well appear in print in chronological order, but this is not altogether certain. Bohang, quoted by Jassin, suggests that the poems in the volume Buah Rindu, from Tjempaka (Frangipanni) to Teluk Djajakatera (The Bay of Djakarta) were written before he left Djakarta for Solo; Hang Tuah to Malam (Night) were written at Solo,2 and the remainder of the poems in that volume, and those of Njanji Sunji, were written after his return to Djakarta to study law. This is a useful division, although a closer study of Hamzah’s style and diction, together with what is known of his life, may entail certain modifications. A characteristic of Hamzah’s early poems is his fondness for the traditional quatrain and conventional flower imagery of Malay verse. Although pantun and seloka rhyme-schemes are freely varied in one and the same poem ; although the poem is clearly the work of an individual reacting to a particular situation, yet there is here nothing to suggest the striking individuality and intensity of his later work. Not only much of the imagery, but even couplets can be traced to the pantun literature. Kusangka (I thought,) for example, where the poet compares the beloved to a flower, at first sight spotless, but which has in fact been ravished many times by a bee, is characteristically pantun. The lines from the poem Buah Rindu II (which begins sombrely enough : Come to me, O Death, Free me from all my sorrow) : i. Bonda, hadjat hati memeluk gunung, Apatah daja, tangan tak sampai. 1 Njanji Sunji first appeared as a collection in Pudjangga Baru, v. 5 (1937)» Buah Rindu in Pudjangga Baru, viii. 12 (1941). It is Buah Rindu, however, which contains his earlier poetry. Both volumes have gone through several reprints in

Pustaka Rakjat, Djakarta. 2 H. B. Jassin ‘Amir Hamzah, Penjair Buah Rindu’, Bahasa dan Budaja, 8th year, no. 5/6, 5, 6.

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in the Winstedt collection of pantun occur as :

2. Rasa hati memeluk gtiming, Apa daja, tangan tak sampai.1 A perusal of the two major collections of pantun in print reveals many instances of lines and attitudes of traditional verse absorbed into his original work. Not all of these early poems are successful technically. Tinggallah (Farewell), in which Hamzah bids farewell to his island, Sumatra, and to his mother, shows many signs of an imperfect mastery of even the simple quatrain form. Lines such as :

3. Djauh hatipun konon datang meliput

and 4. Menjampaikan pesan 'kataan hati

display all the awkwardness of a poet still unsure of his technique. However, if Tinggallah was written at the time of the -event it describes—Hamzah’s departure from home—the author could not have been older than fifteen. Senjum hatiku, Senjum (Smile my heart, smile) also in sja'ir form, has similar weaknesses, and one line is startlingly unsuccessful : 5. Tetapi, engkau, aduhai fakir, dikenang orang sekalipun tidak. These poems most clearly belong to Hamzah’s earliest work. Others, although still melancholy, and still clearly based on traditional models, show more polish and balance. The poem we referred to earlier, Buah Rindu II, develops a motif which is clearly derivative, but retold in Hamzah’s words is fresh and moving: the lover looks at the clouds drifting overhead, asking them to halt for a while :

6. Tuan aduhai méga berarak Jang meliputi déwangga raja, Berhentilah tuan diatas teratak Anak Langkat musjafir lata. For he wishes to entrust them with a message to his beloved. Not only is there hère something of the technical mastery we have the right to expect from a poet, but we can note the first beginnings of 1 R. J. Wilkinson and R. O. Winstedt, Pantun Mëlayu (Malaya Publishing House, Singapore 1955). The second collection referred to is Pantun Melayu (Balai Pustaka, Djakarta 1952).

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that matchless verbal music which is so characteristic of Hamzah’s best work. Teluk Djajakatera (The Bay of Djakarta) should, according to Bohang’s classification, belong to the earliest period of Hamzah’s productivity, before he went to Solo. The scene of the poem is the bay of Djakarta, and Hamzah looks out to sea, and then back at the swaying palms on the shore, recalling his beloved, and the times when their kisses united them. From this, Jassin deduces that Hamzah’s beloved must have been in Sumatra.1 But the language of the poem would lead one to suspect otherwise. He uses Javanese terms in reference to her, addressing her asjaji, and Tédjaningsun. It is at least probable that this poem was written at a time when Hamzah was forced to contemplate his return to Sumatra, and, as he did so, memories of his Javanese beloved welled up within him. On the whole, the poems in the second half of the volume, from Hang Tuah on, are of a higher standard than those in the first. Bohang allocates the majority of these poems to a so-called Solo period.1 By any standards Hang Tuah is a remarkable poem. The theme is simple: Malacca, awaiting the Portuguese attack, is in confusion. As a last resort, Hang Tuah is summoned from his sickbed, but his efforts are in vain. He and his ship are destroyed by the Portu­ guese cannonade, and Malacca falls to the enemy. The poem consists of rhyming couplets, but is quite unique in the history of Malay literature. Despite the historical theme, the poem is completely modern. True, Hamzah uses archaic words for various types of warship, such as pendjadjab and pusta, but to take advantage of their acoustic properties and atmosphere, not to denote specific types of vessel. The internal assonance within the lines and the highly wrought alliteration is consistently and through­ out far more sophisticated than anything to occur in the pantun, and clearly points to the influence of Hamzah’s studies in Javanese literature. The first couplet clearly and decisively sets the pace and tone of the poem :

7. Baju berpuput, alun digulung Banju direbut, buih dibubung. Not only does this complex, involuted assonance illustrate the 1

Jassin, Bahasa dan Budaja, 25.

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influence of Javanese matjapat verse which we referred to above, but we find Hamzah increasingly drawing on words at least as com­ mon in Javanese literature as in classical Malay, such as baju, alun, segara, and even words never absorbed into Malay, such as banju.1 In general each line is divided by one strongly marked caesura, but there is sufficient variety of movement and rhythmic stress to prevent monotony. If the caesura normally occurs in the centre of the line, there are several examples of its appearance elsewhere. For example: 8. Melaka ! Laksana kehilangan bapa Randa / Sibuk mentjari tjendera mata ! Further variety is achieved by occasional use of a double caesura in one line, contrasting with a single caesura in the following : 9. Ldksamana, tjahaja Malaka, bunga Pahlawan, Kemala setia, maralah Tuan. The plasticity of the verse is such that it can express dialogue, narrative, and dramatic effect without any strain or forcing. Not least, the story is told with a rigorous economy of diction and senti­ ment. The story unfolds inexorably, and reaches its conclusion without any comment. Hang Tuah meets his death: 10. Peluru terbang menudju bahtera Laksamana didjulang kedalam segara . . .

and the story is done. We have noted the growing influence of Javanese diction and choice of words in Hamzah’s poetry. Javanese religious attitudes likewise soon leave their mark on his work. In Ragu (Doubt), he utters a prayer to an image of Çiwa, possibly the one at Prambanan : 11. Permaisurimu Uma, sudah kupudja, Serodja putih béta sembahkan; Sekarang ini, wahai Çiwa, Padà tuanku béta paparkan. There are a few poems of sheer romantic delight in the re­ mainder of the volume. Among the best of them is Kenangkenangan (Memories) which ends with that lightness and delicacy 1 Achdiat Karta Mihardja (in Tjatatan-tjatatan tentang Amir Hamzah [P. P. K. Jogjakarta, 1955], 119) has perhaps been the only critic to note the freedom with which Hamzah introduced Javanese, Kawi, and Sanskrit words into his poems, adducing such examples as dewangga, dewata, sura, prawira, èstri, ningsùn, padma, tjendera, daksina, and many others.

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of wit which is so characteristic of the pantun, Hamzah indulges his memories of an evening under the stars with his beloved in his arms, listening to the Javanese melody Mas kumambang borne through the night air. 12. Dinda berbisik rapat ditelinga Lengan melengkung memangku kepala Putus-putus sekata dua: ‘Kunang-kunang mengintai kita\ But a crisis that was to destroy his happiness was already developing: the realization he would have to make a choice be­ tween love and duty. In Bonda I, he imagines his home calling him, almost unheard through the surge of the Malacca Strait, while he plucks a white flower at the foot of Mount Wilis. Which loyalty was to weigh most with him, love, or, as he understood it, duty? At some point, not clear from the arrange­ ment of the poems in Buah Rindu, Hamzah decided that he could not be disloyal to his family traditions, that he could not marry a Javanese girl. But this act of renunciation left him with a deep sense of loss and regret from which he never recovered. In Berlagu Hatiku (My heart sings), a poem memorable for its subtlety and variety of movement, he tells how he thought he had at last found his true love. Eagerly, he would build a palace for her in his heart, lay a carpet of flowers at her feet. Alas, it was not to be : 13. Tetapi engkau orang biasa Merana sahadja tiada berguna; Malu bertalu karena aku Gandjil terpentjil berpaut kedahulu.

He looked desperately around him for consolation, and attemp­ ted to return to the past, as in the beautifully evocative Sunji (Solitude). 14. Kuketuk pintu masaku muda hendak masuk rasa kembali; taman terkuntji dibelan pula tinggallah aku sunji sendiri. In despair he turned to God for solace, but with little success, and Hamzah’s struggle for relief from his acute misery is the principal theme of the volume of later verse, Njanji Sunji (Songs of Solitude). And these poems perhaps explain his lack of success, for 823121

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they reveal that Hamzah did not possess that transcendent faith which can make a great sacrifice, and resolutely accept the con­ sequences. Time and again one gets the impression that Hamzah regrets his decision, and would go back on it if he could. His religious faith wavers in the darkness of despair. He revolts against God, as if to blame Him for his predicament. The word he most often uses to address God is kekasihku, my Beloved, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is often a projection of his own sense of loss. But this should not be understood as a qualification of the poetic value of Njanji Sunji. Rather, many of the poems in this volume do achieve a true, timeless greatness just because Hamzah is so honest in his expressions of grief, doubt, and loss. Perhaps the finest and most perfectly controlled poem in the volume is Padamu djua (To You alone). It is a flawless specimen of free verse. Every word is a perfect opal in the line, inevitable, and irreplaceable. Each phase of the poem manifests that remarkable discipline of expression we noted in Hang Tuah. Hamzah, having turned away from his beloved, faces God, The Beloved, whom he addresses : 15. Kaulah kandil kemerlap Pelita djendéla dimalam gelap Melambai pulang perlahan Sabar, setia selalu. But God appears to him under a variety of aspects, conditioned by Hamzah’s own moods. Hamzah is human, he longs for satis­ faction of his sense of touch, sense of sight—in vain, for God can only be known through His words in the Quran. Hamzah resents God: 16. Engkau tjemburu Engkau ganas Mangsa aku dalam tjakarmu Bertukar tangkap dengan lepas.

For God, as it were, plays cat and mouse with him, arousing yearnings that He will not satisfy. Hamzah becomes frenzied in his anguish, and then accepts his desolation, and the poem ends with a remarkable serenity and resignation :

17. Lalu waktu, bukan giliranku Mati hari — bukan kawanku . . .

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But Hamzah could not accept this silence indefinitely. God’s ways are beyond him. In Permainanmu (Your plaything) he attempts to unravel the meaning of God’s dealings with Pharaoh. God himself hardened Pharaoh’s heart, yet Pharaoh had to bear the scourges of God’s wrath for his treatment of the Israelites. What does this mean ? And he asks God : 18. Bertanja aku, kekasihku, Permainan engkau permainkan? And in questioning God’s dealings with Pharaoh, he is expres­ sing resentment at his own fate : sacrificing his own will, turning to God, and gaining nothing in return. No wonder he felt torn between two worlds, the Divine and the human. In Turun kembali (Returning earthwards) he describes his attempt to scale Jacob’s ladder, but on catching sight of the world and its delights gleaming like a candle below him, he swiftly descends again. In Kurnia (A Gift) he describes the two qualities fused within him struggling for supremacy, the good attempting to bear him heavenward, the evil binding him to the earth. On the whole, Javanese influence is more strongly marked in Njanji Sunji than in Buah Rindu. Consistently Hamzah uses the Javanese form swarga rather than the Malay sjurga, and there are numerous Javanese words and expressions occurring throughout the poems in addition to those already mentioned, such as alit purba, radja dévia, sviara suwarni, and riviarni, to mention only a very few. There are likewise traces of Javanese morphological influence, for example nipis instead of menipis. (In Mabuk [Buah Rindu] are such characteristically Javanese forms as rangkairinangkai and rangkum rinangkum.) It is further clear, moreover, that his stay in Java considerably tempered his Islamic faith. Not that he became any the less a Muslim, but he developed attitudes to religion more to be associated with the remarkable tolerance of the ethnic Javanese than with the traditional Islam of the Malay world. In Hanja satu (One alone), Hamzah compares Christianity and Islam to two shafts of light from the one jewel Abraham, and adds: what value are our quarrels when the Jeweller Himself throughout the centuries does not judge the rival claims. As for Hamzah: 19. Padaku semua tiada berguna Hanja satu kutunggu hasrat,

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Amir Hamzah: Malay Prince, Indonesian Poet Merasa dikau dekat rapat Serupa musa dipuntjak tursina.

Barangkali (Perhaps) appears to show the influence of Javanese theosophy : 20. Engkau jang léna dalam hatiku Akasa swarga nipis tipis ; Jang besar terangkum dunia Ketjil terlindungi alis. It is true that the doctrine of divine immanence within the human heart is not exclusively Javanese; but the whole flavour of this stanza is clearly Javanese, and the idea expressed in the final couplet is well known in Javanese literature. In any case Hamzah could hardly have been familiar with such concepts at the age of fourteen when he left Sumatra. Further he shows a truly Javanese capacity for syncretism in the names he uses to refer to the Divinity. In Buah Rindu III, Dewata and Maulana occur in successive lines. In Buah Rindu IV Hamzah addresses his prayers to the duli Dewata Mulia Raja. At the end of Naik-Naik (Ascend, ascend), he prays to be : 2i. Djauh Dunia disisi Dewa.

Another poem in Njanji Sunji, Sebab dikau (Because of you), shows how deep an impression the Javanese shadow play made on him : the shadows appearing and acting out their parts on the white screen at the bidding of the dalang, to disappear and be replaced as one set of puppets is returned to the box and another brought out for a new performance. And he concludes : 22. Aku boneka, engkau boneka Penghibur dalang mengatur tembang ; Dilajar kembang bertukar pandang Hanja selagu, sepandjang déndang. Golek gemilang ditukarnja pula Aku engkau dikotak terletak ; Aku boneka engkau boneka Penjenang dalang mengarak sadjak.

A comparison of Hamzah’s work with that of his best contem­ poraries shows how outstanding and how individual his genius was. As far as technical ability is concerned, consider only the

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description of a storm, by his near contemporary Rustam Effendi (b. 1903), and that of the Flood in Hamzah’s Hanja Satu, Both are written in the same form—quatrains, with alternate rhymes. Rustam’s verse : 23. Bersabung kilat diudjung langit, gemuruh guruh, ber-djawab2an; Bertangkai hudjan, ditjurah avian, mengabut kabut, sebagai dibanghit.1 And Hamzah’s : 24. Teriak riuh redam terbelam Dalam gagap gempita guruh ; Kilau kilat membelah gelap Lidah api mendjulang tinggi.

Rustam’s verse is competent, but there is a masculinity and vigour, an immediacy and concentration of sound and sense in that of Hamzah, which puts it in a different class. Note, for example, how the contrast between the velar stops and high front vowels of kilau kilat and the heavier bilabial and lower vowel sounds of membelah gelap intensifies our visualization of the brilliance of lightning cutting through the blackness of the stormy night sky. The majority of Hamzah’s contemporaries were inspired by the poets of the Dutch romantic revival of the 1880’s. This movement was based on a devotion to beauty which at times expressed itself in forms not far removed from blasphemy, as in the poem of Perk : ‘Oh, beauty, Thou whose name be hallowed ; Thy will be done, Thy kingdom come’; and in the famous line of Kloos, T am a god within my innermost thoughts’. The writers of this generation were particularly fond of the sonnet, and much of their work was characterized by melancholy. Their general ideas were taken over by the Indonesian poets of the thirties, who developed their aesthetic concepts from them. In an essay published in the first number of Pudjangga Baru, in July 1933, Armijn Pané declared that the artist is the servant of his spirit, and that the artist must follow the promptings of his psyche in all he has to express. The poet Tatengkeng (b. 1907) declared: ‘Art is a movement of the spirit’ and both writers implied that the artist’s spirit must respond to inspiration as and whenever it comes to him from the manifold world about him. 1

Takdir Alisjahbana, Puisi Baru (Pustaka Rakjat, Djakarta 1951), 75-

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These ideas are clearly manifest in the poems of Sanusi Pané and Tatengkeng, no matter how different they were in other respects. These two authors were by no means the only other poets writing during the thirties, but, Hamzah excepted, they were the most outstanding. Sanusi Pané found much of his inspiration in India and ancient Java, and in a carefully chosen poetic language, wrote poems with such titles as Tadj Mahal, Krisjhna, Ardjuna, and Tjandi Mendut, many of them in sonnet form and melancholy in the extreme. The following lines from Tjandi Mendut are in many respects typical of his work. He gazes on the edifice, and sighs :

25. Diam hatiku, djangan bertjita, Djangan kau lagt mengandung rasa, Mengharap bahagia dunia Maja.1

Tatengkeng, on the other hand, was a Christian from the Celebes. Much of his verse springs from a crystal-clear faith in God and joy in creation. In Rindu Dendam (Deepest Yearning) he delights in the beauty of a dewdrop resting on a petal in the early morning, and concludes his poem : 26. O, Tuhanku, Biarlah aku mendjadi embunmu, Memantjarkan terangmu Sampai aku hilang lenjap olèhnja . . . Soli Deo Gloria.2 Nevertheless he shared the current aesthetic concept of in­ spiration. In Perasaan seni (The Experience of Art),2 he compares the coming of inspiration to fill the poet’s spirit to a flood, to a tempest, to the sweetness of the dew, and to the melody of the singing wind, moving him to write in various moods. None of this prevailing current of ideas had any discernible effect on Hamzah. He never wrote in sonnet form. He addressed no poems to inspiration or to his muse, neither did he look for inspiration in the world around him. Almost everything he wrote was a direct communication of his joys, sorrows, bewilderments and frustrations. Although in his early poems he reflects much of the Malay literary tradition, in his maturer works he is far more concerned with a compact expression of what he has to communicate 1 Sanusi Pané, Maddh Kelana (Balai Pustaka, 1957), 43. 2 Alisjahbana, Puisi, 58-59.

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than with the conventional beauties of poetic diction. Rigorous economy of expression is, as we have said, one of the most striking characteristics of his best work. In a sense it is unfortunate that he is known as the poet of Buah Rindu, since the associations of this title blur his essential virility, and give him no credit for the steel­ like strength and integrity of his later verse. He was not, in the ordinary sense of the words, a religious poet. Rather he was a poet of faith and doubt. Tatengkeng could write, on the death of his newly born child : 27. Anak kami Tuhan berikan Anak kami Tuhan panggilkan, Hati kami Tuhan hiburkan Nama Tuhan kami pudjikan.1

with perfect serenity and acceptance, echoing the words of Job : ‘The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away,. . . blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Hamzah, at times, in a poem such as Didalam kelam (In Dark­ ness), can only pray in his darkness : 28. Meminta aku, kekasihku sajang: Turunkan hudjan embun rahmatmu Biar padam api membelam Semoga pulih pokok pertjajaku. It should now be clear that the conventional picture of Amir Hamzah needs considerable modification. He was not merely the poet who gave a temporary new life to the traditional forms and diction of Malay verse. One might say that the more he wrote, the less Malay, the more Indonesian, he became. For the Malay influence, so clearly manifest in his early work, is scarcely in evidence in that of his maturity, where very little trace of traditional diction remains. True, there are quatrains in Njanji Sunji, but one can hardly point to any direct relation between these and the traditional Malay quatrain. In any case, the quatrain as a verse form is so ubiquitous that its use, in itself, is of minor significance. It is true he never showed any overt foreign influence in his writing, but he was exposed to and absorbed a variety of cultural influences which enriched his personality and his work. However, at least two of his poems show a knowledge of the Old Testament, and in 1 Alisjahbana, Puisi, 54, 55.

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one number of Pudjangga Baru he translated some verses of the Song of Solomon.1 There is no trace of political nationalism in his poetry, but he was closely associated with several of the nation­ alist élite, and his years at the law school must have brought him into close contact with the developing nationalist movement. It is not surprising then that he dedicated his first volume of poetry (Buah Rindu) to Indonesia, Queen and Mother. We have already referred to the rich Javanese influence in his later work which would sometimes result in obscurity to a reader not familiar with Javanese. This is true even of the motto of Njanji Sunji, which concludes : 29. Sunji itu lampus. Few readers outside of Java would realize that lampus is a kromo inggil word meaning death or extinction. Amir Hamzah may have been a conservative in many things, but he was not, on the whole, in his poetry, his fondness for oriental rather than Western literature notwithstanding. Both in form and content he was far more of a revolutionary than any of his contemporaries. In his mature verse he shows clearly that he has no further need to rely on any traditional verse form. The intensity of his theme fashions its own form, and his mastery of word choice and construction of phrase is magnificent. And a poem of the disciplined vigour and modulated intensity of Padamu djua not only pointed the way for Chairil Anwar, but even provided for him a point of departure. Compare only Hamzah’s— 30. Kaulah kandil kemerlap Pelita djendela dimalam gelap. with the lines in Chairil’s early poem Doa (Prayer)— 31. tjajaMu panas sutji tinggal kerdip Ulin dikelam sunji.2 Hamzah died at the hands of revolutionaries in Sumatra in 1946. His effective life as a poet, however, had ended ten years earlier, for after his return to Deli he had little contact with his colleagues of Pudjangga Baru. But in his six years of creative life, he left poems that represent an absolute, not a relative, excellence in the development of Bahasa Indonesia. If we wish to characterize his 1 2

Jassin, Bahasa dan Budaja, 24. Chairil Anwar, Deru Tjampur Debu (Pembangunan, Djakarta, 1953), 14.

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distinctive genius and outlook as opposed to that of the majority of his contemporaries, we can best refer to an essay in which Auden describes two types of poetry, two types of poet, the one regarding poetry as a magical means of inducing desirable emotions and repelling undesirable ones, the other regarding it as a game of knowledge, a bringing to consciousness, by naming them, of emotions and their hidden relationships.1 If Sanusi Pané, Takdir Alisjahbana, and the majority of their contemporaries belong to the former group, Amir Hamzah unquestionably belongs to the latter.

Translations of quotations in Bahasa Indonesia (These renderings have no pretensions as poetry) i. Mother, my desire is to embrace a mountain, but how, it is beyond my arms’ reach. 2. My desire is to embrace a mountain, but how, it is beyond my arms’ reach. 3. (Which though) the heart be far, still covers us. 4. (To) deliver a message from my heart. 5. But you, oh luckless one, are not even remembered. 6. O clouds, moving in procession to fill the firmament of heaven, Halt you a moment above the dwelling of the son of Langkat, a pining wanderer. 7. The wind blows, the rollers are curled, the spray is seized, spume is flung. 8. Melaka, as though it has lost its father Forlorn as a widower, seeking his beloved. 9. O, Laksamana, Light of Malaka, Flower of warriors, Faithful and precious, come forward. 10. The bullet speeds towards the ship The Laksamana is hurled into the sea . . . 11. To your spouse Uma, I have uttered praise and offered a white lotus ; and now, O Çiwa, to you I tell my tale. ’ Quoted in D. Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature (London, 1959),

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Amir Hamzah: Malay Prince, Indonesian Poet 12. You whisper close to my ear while your arm cradles my head, softly word by word : ‘The fireflies are peeping at us’. 13. But you are just an ordinary person pining away in vain with only embarrassment (and sorrow) from me, awkward, isolated, fettered to the past. 14. I knock at the door of my youth wishing to enter it again ; but the garden is locked, barred too, And I remain desolate alone. 15. You are a gleaming candle The light in the window on a dark night beckoning home, gently, patient and ever faithful. 16. You are jealous You are ferocious, I am prey in your claws as You seize, let go, and seize again. 17. The time has passed, it was not my turn the day is dead—it held nothing for me . . . 18. And I ask, my Beloved, is it a game You are playing ? 19. To me this is all without use for I have only one desire, to feel You close beside me as did Moses on the peak of Sinai. 20. You, who slumber within my heart subtle beyond the firmament of heaven, Who in Your greatness enfold the world Yet tiny, lie hidden beneath an eyebrow. 21. Far from the world at the side of God. 22. I am a puppet, you are a puppet, we delight the dalang as he sings his song Upon the screen we may exchange glances for the length of a melody, a song. Then he changes the gleaming puppets, you and I are laid in the box; I a puppet, you a puppet, to please the dalang, to accompany his song.

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23. The lightning flashes in the distance the thunder rolls echoing in answer, the rain streams, poured down by the clouds the mist thick, as though made to be so. 24. There is uproar, destruction, annihilation amid the fury and resonance of the storm; the gleam of lightning splits the darkness (like) a tongue of fire streaking upwards. 25. Be still, my heart, excise ambition, lay aside forever any hope of joy in this illusory world. 26. My Lord, Let me become Your dew reflecting Your radiance until it consumes me . . . Soli Deo Gloria. 27. Our child, Lord, you gave Our child, Lord, you called away ; Our hearts, Lord, console, Your name, Lord, we praise. 28. I beg You, my Beloved pour down the dew of Your mercy extinguish the blackening flame that my faith in You be restored. 29. Solitude is extinction. 30. You are a gleaming candle The light in the window on a dark night. 31. Your light, pure and burning, still remains, like a candle flickering in silent darkness.

XIX SUMBANGAN SIR RICHARD WINSTEDT DALAM PËNYËLIDEKAN PËNGAJIAN MËLAYU ZAINAL-'ABIDIN BIN AHMAD

(*) Orang Inggëris atau British dari sëmënjak mëreka mulaï mëndapat këdudokan di-kawasan Tanah Mëlayu ini dan këmudian bëramahtamah dëngan nëgëri2 Mëlayu dan orang Mëlayu hingga sampai kapada tarikh Tanah Mëlayu mërdeka dalam tahun 1957, ada bëbërapa orang yang tëlah tërtarek gëmar bërusaha mënyëlidek dan mëngkaji dëngan chara mëndalam akan bahasa Mëlayu dan përsuratan-nya sërta përkara2 yang tërchawang daripada itu. Maka dî-antara mëreka itu Sir Richard Winstedt ada-lah yang tërkëmudian sa-kali, dan barangkali ia-lah juga yang tërbësar dan tërkëmuka sa-kali oleh sëbab lëbeh banyak buah usaha-nya dalam medan ini daripada pënyëlidek2 Inggëris yang lain2 itu, dan pada bëbërapa pehak-nya lëbeh luas dan mëndalam juga. Untok latar-bëlakang boleh-lah di-sëbutkan dëngan ringkas pënyëlidek2 Inggëris yang tërdahulu daripada-nya dalam jurusan bahasa dan sastëra Mëlayu mulaï dari William Marsden yang tëlah mënërbitkan * ‘Kitab Tlmu Nahu dan Saraf Bahasa Mëlayu”-nya (A Grammar of the Malayan Language) di-London dalam tahun 1812. Marsden juga tëlah mëngarang dan mënërbitkan sa-buah “Kamus Mëlayu-Inggëris” (A Dictionary of The Malayan Lan­ guage) , dan sa-buah buku “Tawarikh Sumatra” (A History of Sumatra). la nampak-nya tëlah mëngambilbanyak daripada bahan2 pënyëlidekan-nya dari bahasa Mëlayu dan surat2-nya yang tërkënal di-Sumatra. Nama Marsden ini ada tërsëbut pada përmulaan “Hikayat Abdullah” yang mënyatakan ia ada bëlajar bahasa Mëlayu kapada bapa Abdullah di-Mëlaka sa-lama sa-tahun dëlapan bulan. Nama2 yang lain ada juga sapërti Dr. John Leyden dan Col. James Low, tëtapi mëreka tidaklah mëmbuat pënyëlidekan dalam

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bahasa Mëlayu dan përsuratan Mëlayu, tidak ada mënulis kamus dan sa-bagai-nya. Këmudian sa-tëlah bërsëlang lëbeh sa-tëngah abad sa-sudah Marsden baharu-lah tërdapat suata nama Inggëris yang lain ia-itu William Maxwell, yang këmudian bërgëlar Sir William Maxwell, la tëlah mëngarangkan “Buku Këchil Pëlajaran Bahasa Mëlayu” (A Manual of the Malay Language) yang di-tërbitkan di-London dalam tahun 1881 dan tëlah di-ulang chetak sa-puloh kali hingga buku itu di-gantikan oleh buku2 bahasa Mëlayu Sir Richard Winstedt dalam tahun 1914 hingga sëkarang. Maxwell banyak juga tëlah mënulis karangan2 pendek mëngënaï bahasa dan surat2 Mëlayu dan juga mëngënaï hal2 *adat dan këpërchayaan Mëlayu, di-siarkan dalam “Journal” (Majallah tëbal) Royal Asiatic Society Chawangan Nëgëri2 Sëlat dan dalam lampiran So’al Jawab-nya dari tahun 1879 tahun 1891. Suatu “Hikayat Sëri Rama Mëlayu” chara “pënglipor lara” (yang tëlah tërubah bëntok-nya dan nama2 dalam chërita-nya) tëlah juga di-pungut-nya daripada mulut pënchërita di-Perak dalam tahun 1886 dan di-siarkan dalam salah satu Journal Society tërsëbut tadi (Journal SBRAS) dalam tahun itu juga. Këmudian sadikit daripada Sir William tiada bërapa tahun kita dapati pula nama Frank Swettenham dan Hugh Clifford yang këdua2-nya bërgëlar “Sir” juga pada akhir-nya. Swettenham tëlah mëngarang dua buah kamus pendek, satu Mëlayu-Inggëris dan satu lagi Inggëris-Mëlayu ; dan bërsama2 dëngan Hugh Clifford ia tëlah mëmulakan mëmbuat sa-buah Kamus Bësar Mëlayu-Inggëris (A Dictionary of the Malay Language) yang lanjut huraian2 ma* ana nya dan këtërangan-nya; tëtapi Kamus itu tiada tamat, hanya siap dari huruf A hingga G sahaja dan tëlah di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1894-1902. Clifford sëndiri tëlah mëngumpul dan mëntafsirkan sëgala bidal2 dan përumpamaan Mëlayu yang sampai kapada-nya, di-tërbitkan dalam sa-buah daripada Journal2 tërsëbut tadi dalam tahun 1891. Tëtapi këdua2-nya Swettenham dan Clifford ini lëbeh banyak mëngarangkan buku2 chërita dan hal2 sëjarah mëngënaï nëgëri Mëlayu dan orang Mëlayu daripada buku2 pënyëlidekan hal bahasa dan sastëra Mëlayu. Lëpas daripada Swettenham dan Clifford ini baharu-lah bërikut nama R. J. Wilkinson, ia-itu pënyelidek Inggëris yang lëbeh bësar daripada mëreka këdua itu dalam pënyëlidekan bahasa dan halahwal Mëlayu, dan ia-lah yang tëlah mëmbukakan jalan lëbeh luas

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bagi pëngajian Mëlayu. Bahkan ia-lah nama yang lëbeh utama sa-bëlum Sir Richard Winstedt dan ia-lah juga yang tëlah mëmbëri banyak dorongan, galakan dan arahan dalam usaha pënyëlidekan Sir Richard Winstedt sëndiri pada mula2-nya. Wilkinson tëlah mëngarangkan Kamus Bësar Mëlayu-Inggëris (A Malay-English Dictionary) yang di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1901-3; dan tiga puloh tahun këmudian tatkala ia tiada lagi di-Tanah Mëlayu Kamus itu tëlah siap di-baiki dan di-luaskan-nya lalu di-chetak baharu dalam dua jilid tëbal dalam tahun 1932. Kamus këchil-nya yang tëlah diringkaskan daripada Kamus Bësar itu tëlah di-tërbitkan mula2 dalam tahun 1908, dan tëlah banyak kali di-chetak sa-mula hingga sëkarang dëngan tambahan2 daripada orang lain. Dalam tahun 1899-1900 ia tëlah dapat mënchetak dua pënggal daripada kitab sëjarah Bustanu "I-Salatin yang mashhor itu —tiap2 sa-pënggalnya kadar 130 muka potong panjang dalam huruf Jawi yang sëdang.1 Dan lagi Tuan Wilkinson-lah juga, bërsama2 dëngan ahli2 jawatankuasa-nya, yang tëlah mënëtapkan ka'edah ejaan Rumi Mëlayu chara Tanah Mëlayu sapërti yang tërpakai di-sëkolah2 hingga sëkarang. Kërja mënëtapkan ejaan ini tëlah di-përbuat-nya dalam tahun. 1902 tatkala ia sëdang mënyusun Kamus Bësar-nya chetak yang përtama itu. la tëlah juga mëngarangkan sa-buah buku “Sëjarah Orang Mëlayu Sëmënanjong” (A History of Peninsular Malays) yang tëlah di-baiki daripada karangan2-nya dahulu dari­ pada itu dan di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1920. Sa-bëlum itu ia tëlah banyak mënulis di-atas hal sëjarah orang Mëlayu (1906-15?) dan juga di-atas hal eadat, këpërchayaan dan chara2 hidup orang Mëlayu, di-tërbitkan jadi bëbërapa risalat dalam rangkaian “Risalat2 Mëngënaï Përkara Mëlayu” (Papers on Malay Subjects), yang Sir Richard Winstedt pun tëlah mëmbëri banyak bahagian di-dalam-nya daripada buah pënyëlidekan-nya sën,diri. Wilkinson juga tëlah mënulis sa-buah buku bërnama “ Këpërchayaan Mëlayu” (Malay Beliefs) di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1906 ; dan sa-lain daripada itu ia banyak tëlah mënulis karangan2 dalam hal pëngajian Mëlayu, këbanyakan-nya panjang2, di-siarkan dalam salah satu Journal SBRAS dan MBRAS yang tërsëbut di-atas tadi. Lëbeh kurang sa-masa dëngan Wilkinson ini ada-lah pula Padëri W. G. Shellabear dari Amerika, ia-itu pun mashhor juga kërana gëmar-nya, usaha-nya dan sumbangan2-nya yang tërkënal 1 Tinggal lagi lima pënggal maseh dalam tulis-tangan bëlum pëmah bërchetak hingga sëkarang pun.

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dalam pëngajian bahasa dan sastëra Mëlayu. la tëlah mëngarangkan sa-buah “Buku Kata Mëlayu-Inggëris” (An English-Malay Vocabulary) di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1902 (di-chetak balek tahun 1912 dan 1925); tëlah mëngumpul bidal2 dan përumpamaan2 Mëlayu dëngan mëmbëri ërti dan tafsiran-nya dalam bahasa Mëlayu dan di-tërbitkan dalam huruf Jawi dëngan nama “Kiliran Budi” (= The Whetting of Understanding) dalam tahun 1906, dan tëlah di-chetak këmbali bëbërapa kali. la tëlah mënulis “Buku Latehan Nahu Mëlayu” (A Practical Malay Grammar) tahun 1912( ?), dan sa-buah “ Kamus Bësar Inggëris-Mëlayu” (An EnglishMalay Dictionary) tahun 1916. la juga tëlah mënghîdangkan buku “Hikayat Sëri Rama” (tahun 1915) dari naskhah tulis-tangan yang di-dapati dalam përpustakaan Bodleian di-Universiti Oxford. Tëtapi ia ganjil sadikit dalam ejaan Rumi yang di-pakai-nya dalam Kamus2-nya, ia-itu pada bëbërapa përkara ia mëmbuat ka'edahnya sëndiri bërlainan daripada Wilkinson (dan juga bërlainan daripada ka'edah Rumi Bëlanda yang tëlah di-tëtapkan oleh van Ophuijsen bëbërapa tahun dahulu daripada Wilkinson). Mithalnya Shellabear tidak mëmakai apa2 huruf saksi pada tëmpat yang di-pakai ë oleh Wilkinson ; dan pada huruf ng dan ny di-satukannya huruf n itu dëngan g atau y jadi dëmikian rg dan ry. Sëbab itu kurang-lah laku buku2 bahasa-nya itu kapada pehak pëmbëli yang lëbeh ramai—pehak Jabatan Pëlajaran dan orang2 yang lëbeh suka atau biasa mëmakai “Ejaan Sëkolah” yang tëlah di-ator dan di-tëtapkan ka'edah-nya oleh Wilkinson itu. Tëtapi dalam pënërbitan hikayat2 Mëlayu yang di-sajikan-nya dalam “Rangkaian Buku2 Sastëra Mëlayu” (Malay Literature Series) ia-itu Kitab Gëmala Hikmat (MLS 1), Hikayat Hang Tuah (MLS 3), Hikayat Abdullah (MLS 4), Sëjarah Mëlayu (MLS 9) ia mëmakai “Ejaan Sëkolah” pula mënurut ka'edah yang tëlah di-atorkan oleh Wil­ kinson itu.

(“) Sir Richard sëlalu mënyëbut dalam tulisan2-nya yang mëngënaï kamus dan bahasa Mëlayu bahawa ia banyak mëndapat dorongan dan galakan daripada sahabat lama-nya Tuan Wilkinson pada mula2 kërja-nya dalam chawangan itu; dan dalam kërja2-nya yang këmudian ia banyak tërhutang budi kapada Wilkinson, sa-bagaimana juga ia banyak tërhutang budi kapada Tuan C.O. Blagden iaitu sa-orang lagi ahli bahasa Mëlayu tëtapi tëlah mëmalingkan

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usaha-nya kapada chawangan pëngajian lain daripada bahasa dan sastëra Mëlayu. Sa-bënar-nya-lah Winstedt tëlah mëndapat dan mënërima sadikit sa-banyak bahan2 dan fikiran daripada këdua orang ini, sabagaimana juga ia tëlah mëngambil daripada pënyëlidek2 Bëlanda yang tërdahulu daripada-nya atau yang sa-masa dëngan dia mënjalankan pënyëlidekan dan kajian mëreka dalam hal2 bahasa Mëlayu di-'alam këpulauan jajahan mëreka masa itu yang sëkarang di-kënal dëngan nama “Indonesia”. Ini memang di-akuï oleh Sir Richard sëndiri dalam buku2-nya. Hanya sëmua-nya itu bukanlah di-tërima-nya bulat2, mëlainkan di-timbang dan di-uji-nya dëngan pëndapat-nya sëndiri dan mana yang tiada bërsëtuju kapada-nya di-tolak-nya dan di-bëri-nya pëndapat-nya sëndiri pula. Tëtapi sa-tëlah ch-kata dan di-bënarkan sakalian itu, këmudian di-banding sumbangan2 yang tëlah di-buat oleh Sir Richard dëngan sumbangan2 yang tëlah di-bëri oleh pënyëlidek2 Inggëris yang lain itu, maka nyata-lah këlihatan bahawa dia-lah yang lëbeh tërkëmuka dan tërutama banyak bahagian-nya daripada mëreka itu masing2. Bahkan di-antara dia dëngan Wilkinson (sunggoh pun mëmbanding2 antara sa-orang dëngan sa-orang itu kurang manis) barangkali boleh di-hitong sama sa-taraf pada banyak hal ; tëtapi oleh sëbab ia tëlah bërtëtap lëbeh lama di-Tanah Mëlayu sa-hingga akhir jawatan-nya dan lëbeh lanjut pula usia këmudian daripada itu, maka ia tëlah dapat mëlanjutkan kërja2-nya dan mëmbëri sumbangan-nya lëbeh banyak dan lëbeh luas. Bahagian yang di-masoki-nya dalam kërja mëmbongkar dan mëmbukakan pëngajian Mëlayu bukan-lah tërhad kapada satu dua chawangan, malahan boleh di-kata hampir2 mëliputi sëgala chawangan këbudayaan dan përadaban Mëlayu, dari bahasa dan sastëra hingga kapada këpërchayaan, 'adat rësam, susunan masharakat, chara2 hidup, ekonomi, përtukangan, pëkërjaan, përusahaan, përmainan, dan sëjarah orang Mëlayu di-Tanah Mëlayu. Pënyëlidekan bërkënaan dëngan pokok2, binatang2, isi bumi, dan lain2 sa-umpama itu bukan-lah sa-bahagian daripada përadaban atau këbudayaan Mëlayu dan bukan daripada jënis *ilmu pëngëtahuan yang di-sëbut pëngajian Mëlayu; sëbab itu tidak-lah tërmasok dalam bidang pënyëlidekan-nya. Tëtapi saka­ lian yang di-hitong sa-bahagian dalam jumlah këbudayaan Mëlayu maka hampir sëmua-nya tëlah di-sëlami bëlaka sadikit sa-banyaknya oleh Sir Richard, këchuali agak-nya tëntang nyanyian, tarian

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dan bunyi2an Mëlayu. Maka sudah tëntu-lah sakalian chawangan2 tërsëbut itu tidak akan dapat di-sëlam dëngan sëmpurna jika tidak tërlëbeh dahulu di-sëlami bahasa dan përsuratan Mëlayu barang rupa-nya, sapërti yang ia tëlah bërbuat. Sëgala chawangan2 pëngajian Mëlayu yang Sir Richard tëlah mënulis dan mëmbëri sumbangan di-dalam-nya itu boleh-lah di-bahagikan kapada ëmpat bahagian bësar, ia-itu bahagian bahasa sa-mata2 tërmasok buku2 kamus, buku2 nahu, dan buku2 bachaan; bahagian sastëra atau përsuratan; bahagian *adat rësam, chara2 këhidupan, dan këpërchayaan ; bahagian tawarikh atau sëjarah.

Bahagian Bahasa: Kamus, Buku Bachaan, Buku Nahu Kamus2 bahasa, istimewa antara bahasa Inggëris dëngan Mëlayu, yang tëlah di-tulis dan di-tërbitkan-nya dari mula2 dahulu hingga sëkarang bukan hanya sa-buah dua tëtapi banyak :

INGGËRis-MËLayu (An English-Malay Diction­ ary): 524 muka potong panjang; di-tërbitkan përtama kali pada tahun I9i3(?), tëlah di-ulang chetak tiga kali sëkarang dëngan di-tambah dan di-baiki—chetak këdua 1920, chetak këtiga 1949, di-chap balek 1951, 1952. Kitab loghat mëlayu: 138 muka potong bësar, di-chetak dalam tahun 1921—sa-buah kamus Mëlayu-Mëlayu di-karangnya bërsama2 dëngan Ënche Ibrahim bin Dato Muda Linggi yang bëkërja sa-bagai kërani Mëlayu-nya dalam Pëjabat Pënguasa Pëlajaran di-Singapura masa itu, untok përgunaan anak2 sëkolah dan guru2 Mëlayu. Tidak përnah di-chetak këmbali. KAMUS BAHASA përchakapan mëlayu (A Dictionary of Col­ loquial Malay): lëbeh 180 muka potong pendek, mëngandongi bahagian Mëlayu-Inggëris dan Inggëris-Mëlayu. Përkataan2 yang di-masokkan di-pileh mana yang biasa tërpakai dalam përchakapan hari2 sahaja. Mula2 di-chetak tahun I9i4(?). kamus bësar

KAMUS MODERN INGGËRIS-MËLAYU YANG MUDAHDI-PAKAI

(A Practical Modern English-Malay Dictionary): hampir 400 muka potong sëdang. Përkataan Inggëris yang di-kamuskan itu di-pileh yang biasa tërpakai dalam bahasa hari2 sëkarang sahaja. Mula2 di-tërbitkan tahun 1952. KAMUS MODERN MÊLAYU—INGGËRIS YANG MUDAH DI-PAKAI

(A Practical Modern Malay-English Dictionary) : lëbeh 200 muka potong sëdang, dan jika bërsama2 daftar ejaan Jawi-nya jadi 823121

Y

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430 muka. Përkataan Mëlayu yang di-kamuskan itu këbanyakan di-pileh yang biasa tërdëngar atau tërjumpa dalam përbahasaan dan surat2 Mëlayu hari ini sahaja. Chetak përtama tahun 1952. KAMUS MËLAYU-INGGÊRIS YANG TIDAK DI-RINGKASKAN

(An Unabridged Malay-English Dictionary) : 375 muka potong panjang. Përkataan Mëlayu-nya yang di-kamuskan itu tërmasoklah juga kata2 yang jarang2 di-dëngar dan bëbërapa banyak kata2 yang baharu masok dari Indonesia. Chetak yang këdua tahun 1957. KAMUS INGGÊRIS—MËLAYU YANG TIDAK DI-RINGKASKAN

(An Unabridged English-Malay Dictionary)'. 398 muka potong panjang. Përkataan Inggëris-nya yang di-masokkan tidak kurang daripada kamus2-nya yang tërdahulu, dan banyak pula ditambahkan dalam pëngërtian Mëlayu-nya përkataan2 yang baharu masok dari Indonesia. Chetak yang këdua 1958. KAMUS Bahasa mëlayu: (ia-itu Mëlayu-Mëlayu) 338 muka

potong panjang. Kata2 yang di-kamuskan itu ia-lah kata2 bahasa Mëlayu dan pënërangan ërti-nya pun dalam bahasa Mëlayu. Chetak përtama baharu tërbit dalam tahun i960. Ada pun buku2 bachaan untok mënambah kumpulan përkataan Mëlayu bagi orang yang baharu bëlajar bahasa Mëlayu, atau untok mëngënalkan mëreka dëngan chontoh2 përsuratan Mëlayu, ada dua buah: BUKU BACHAAN MËLAYU YANG MUDAH (A Simple Malay Reader) : mëngandongi pëtekan2 pendek rampai2 daripada buku2 dan surat2 Mëlayu yang tidak bërapa susah, di-sërtakan dëngan tërjëmah Inggëris-nya. Chetak përtama 1944, di-chap balek 1944, 1945; chetak këdua 1952, di-chap balek 1959. Tëbal-nya 138 muka potong sëdang. BUKU BACHAAN mëlayu (A Malay Reader): 196 muka potong

sëdang, mëngandongi pëtekan2 rampaian yang di-pileh daripada pustaka Mëlayu lama sapërti chërita2 tua, hikayat2, sha’er2, pantun, gurindam. Di-sabëlah hujong-nya ada chatetan2 mëmbëri ërti2 dan këtërangan. Kumpulan ini di-buat oleh Sir Richard bërsama2 dëngan Tuan C. O. Blagden dan tëlah dichetak di-Oxford dalam tahun 1917, di-chetak balek 1930.

Buku2 nahu atau ka'edah bahasa Mëlayu pula yang tëlah tërbit dari pena Sir Richard ada bëbërapa buah, mulaï dari tahun 1913, ia-itu :

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(Malay Grammar): 205 muka potong sëdang. Chetak mula2 tahun 1913, di-chetak kali yang këdua dëngan dibaiki tahun 1927, dan di-ulang chetak tahun 1939. Sa-buah buku yang mëmëreksa dan mëmbahathkan ka'edah nahu bahasa Mëlayu dëngan chara tinggi dan mëndalam, dan ia-lah buku yang utama tëlah mënjadikan pëngarang-nya tërkënal di-'alam ahli2 pënyëlidek bahasa dan tëlah bërhasil dëngan mëmbërikan ijazah Doktor Sastëra (D.Litt.) kapada-nya dari Universiti-nya, Oxford.

nahu mèlayu

BAHASA MÈLAYU

PÈRCHAKAPAN:

NAHU DAN CHONTOH

(ColloquialMalay: Grammar and Conversations): chetak përtama tahun 1916 mëngandongi 148 muka potong sëdang. Tëlah di-ulang chetak dëngan di-baiki bëbërapa kali; chetak baharu-nya 1957 mëngandongi 159 muka potong sëdang. BAHASA MÈLAYU yang mud ah (Simple Malay) : 80 muka potong sëdang: mënërangkan ka'edah yang sënang2 tetapi pënting dalam nahu Mëlayu; pada tiap2 satu pëlajaran-nya di-bëri përkataan2 yang biasa dan mudah sërta chontoh2 ayat-nya mënurut jalan bahasa yang bëtul. Tëlah di-chetak kali yang këlima-nya tahun 1952. nahu mëlayu yang mudah (A Simple Malay Grammar): 50 muka potong sëdang, mënërangkan ka'edah bahasa Mëlayu dëngan chara mudah. Mula tërbit( ?). Tidak di-përoleh naskhahnya. PÈLITA bahasa INGGÈRIS (Lights on Learning English): 120 muka potong panjang, ia-itu baharu tërbit dalam tahun 1959. Di-tulis dalam bahasa Mëlayu untok mënolong pëlajar2 Mëlayu bëlajar bahasa Inggëris. bérchakap2

Bahagian Sastëra Atau Përsuratan Dalam bahagian ini usaha Sir Richard tërmasok-lah mëmungut, mënyusun dan mënghidangkan jadi buku bëbërapa daripada chërita2 lama Mëlayu yang ta’ përnah bërtulis dari dahulu kala; mënyajikan bëbërapa daripada hikayat2 lama Mëlayu yang didapati dalam tulis-tangan dan bëlum përnah di-chetak (kalau ada pun di-chetak dëngan “chap batu” sahaja); mënulis bahathan2 sa-chara këritis di-atas bëbërapa hikayat lama Mëlayu tëntang usul-asal-nya, tarikh-nya tërkarang, siapa pëngarang-nya, atau tëntang nilai isi-nya ; mëngumpul dan mëmbukukan pantun Mëlayu

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sërta mëngkaji sifat2-nya; mëngkaji bidal2 dan përumpamaan2 Mëlayu. Pada usaha jënis yang përtama itu dapat di-sëbut di-antara chërita2 mulut yang tëlah di-pungut-nya dan di-ikhtiarkan-nya mënjadikan bahasa surat dan këmudian mënërbitkan-nya jadi buku ada-lah : chèrita awang sulong merah muda: di-usahakan-nya bërsama2 Tuan A. J. Sturrock (sa-orang Inggëris lain yang gëmar juga dalam kërja2 përsuratan Mëlayu sapërti ini), dan këmudian di-tërbitkan bërsama2 ringkasan chërita-nya di-buatkan-nya dalam Inggëris, jadi buku No. 5 dalam rangkaian buku2 Malay Literature Series (Rangkaian Buku2 Sastëra Mëlayu). Chetak përtama-nya dalam tahun I9o8(?), di-chetak kali yang këtiga tahun 1957. Tëbal-nya 150 muka potong panjang. chèrita jènaka: di-usahakan-nya bërsama2 A. J. Sturrock juga, dan di-tërbitkan përtama kali (dëngan suatu ringkasan Inggëris bagi tiap2 chërita-nya) dalam tahun 1908 jadi buku No. 6 dalam rangkaian MLS tadi. Sëkarang tëlah di-ulang chetak bëbërapa kali; chetak-nya yang paling akhir tahun i960; tëbal-nya 110 muka potong panjang. HIKAYAT MALIM dewa: di-tërbitkan jadi buku No. 7 dalam MLS, Chetak përtama tahun (?), chetak baharu-nya i960; tëbal-nya 160 muka potong panjang.* HIKAYAT malim deman: di-usahakan bërsama2 A. J. Sturrock

dan di-tërbitkan jadi buku No. 8 dalam MLS, Chetak përtama tahun(?), di-chetak balek 1937, chetak yang baharu sa-kali 1954. Tëbal-nya 112 muka potong panjang. HIKAYAT raja muda: di-tërbitkanjadi buku No. 10dalamMLS\

chetak përtama tahun (?), chetak baharu i960; tëbal-nya 164 muka potong panjang. HIKAYAT angguN che’tunggal: di-tërbitkan jadi buku No.

ii dalam MLS\ chetak përtama tahun ( ?), chetak baharu i960; tëbal-nya 171 muka potong panjang. Lain2 lagi mungkin barangkali ada tëtapi tidak sampai ka-tangan pënulis ini, atau pun tidak di-përoleh naskhah-nya hëndak dilihat. Ada pun pada jënis usaha yang këdua ia-itu mënyusun dan mënghidangkan hikayat2 lama Mëlayu yang tëlah sëdia dalam

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tulis-tangan tëtapi bëlum përnah di-chetak, ada lima buah buku yang dapat di-tëntukan : sa-buah buku riwayat sëjarah mënchëritakan kesah bëbërapa orang raja2 nëgëri Perak dalam kurun Masehi yang këdëlapan bêlas. Di-tërbitkan dëngan di-buatkan-nya Pëndahuluan dan ringkasan isi-nya dalam bahasa Inggëris jadi buku MLS No. 15 dalam tahun 1919. Tëbal-nya 157 muka potong panjang. Di-chetak këmbali dalam tahun 1962.

misa mëlayu:

HIKAYAT BAYAN BUDIMAN(atau CHÈRITA KHOJAH MAIMüN):

sa-buah hikayat Mëlayu mëngandongi sa-kumpulan chërita2 dari burong nuri, yang bërasal dari India mënërusi Farsi. Ditërbitkan dëngan di-bëri Pëndahuluan yang mëndalam sërta rangka ringkas chërita2-nya dalam bahasa Inggëris, jadi buku No. 16 dalam MLS. Chetak përtama-nya tahun i92i( ?); chetak yang akhir 1957. Tëbal-nya 228 muka potong panjang. asal-nya chërita mulutsahaja; këmudian tëlah di-tuliskan jadi buku oleh sa-orang pënulis Mëlayu (Pënglima Mudin bin Pënglima Hasan) untok sa-orang Eropah lain. Akhir-nya di-sampaikan kapada Sir Richard lalu di-tërbitkan-nya dalam huruf Jawi mënurut naskhah asal itu dëngan di-buatkan-nya ringkasan chërita-nya dalam bahasa Inggëris. Tërbit dalam tahun 1927 jadi sa-buah daripada Journal MBRAS Pënggal 3 dalam Jilid V. Tëbal-nya 220 muka potong panjang.

hikayat têrong pipit:

sa-buah buku sëjarah nëgëri Riau dan Johor karangan Raja Ali Haji bin Raja Ahmad Riau. Di-tërbitkan dëngan huruf Jawi mëngikut naskhah asal-nya yang bërtulis tangan, jadi sa-buah daripada Journal MBRAS Pënggal2 dalam Jilid X (bulan Ogos 1932). Bërsama2-nya di-buatkan-nya suatu Pëndahuluan yang lanjut dan chërmat dalam bahasa Inggëris mëmbahathkan isi-nya, sërta di-buatkan juga bëbërapa pëta2 salasilah raja2 yang tërsebut di-dalam-nya. Tëbal-nya buku itu 322 muka potong panjang.

tuhfat al-nafis:

daripada naskhah tulis-tangan yang tërtua (No. 18 dalam kumpulan Tuan Raffles di-London). Di-tërbitkan dalam huruf Rumi dëngan di-bëri Pëndahuluan dan ring­ kasan isi-nya, di-bandingkan dëngan isi naskhah yang tëlah sëdia di-sajikan oleh Shellabear. Bërsama2 itu di-sërtakan pula suatu bahathan yang mëndalam mëngënaï tarikh tërkarang-nya,

sëjarah mëlayu:

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Sumbangan Sir Richard Winstedt

siapa pëngarang-nya dan yang mana naskhah gubalan asal daripada Sëjarah Melayu itu pada mula2 tërkarang-nya. Ditërbitkan sa-bagai sa-buah Journal MBRAS Pënggal 3 Jilid XVI bulan Dësembar 1938; tëbal-nya 230 muka potong panjang. Tëntang mënulis bahathan2 dan pëmëreksaan sa-chara këritis di-atas hikayat2 lama Mëlayu, sa-lain daripada Pëndahuluan dan kupasan yang di-bëri-nya pada përmulaan buku2 sajian-nya yang tëlah di-sëbutkan itu, maka boleh di-dapati bëbërapa banyak karangan-nya mëngënaï hikayat2 lama Mëlayu yang lain2 di-siarkan dalam Journal SBRAS dan MBRAS. Di-antara-nya ada-lah bahathan2-nya bërkënaan kitab Bustanu "I-Salatin—bila tërkarangnya dan siapa pëngarang-nya ; dan bërkënaan Hikayat Abu Nawas, Hikayat Hang Tuah, Hikayat Indëra Putëra, Hikayat Indera Bangsawan, Hikayat Jaya Langkara, Hikayat Nakhoda Muda, Hikayat Parang Puting, Hikayat Puspa Wiraja, Hikayat Putëra Jaya Pati, Hikayat Sëri Rama (Pënglipor Lara), Hikayat SiMiskin atau Mara Karma, Hikayat Sang Kanchil, Chërita Musang Bërjanggut, Kitab Taju'I-Salatin. Sëmua-nya itu ia-lah dalam Journal SBRAS. Maka dalam Journal MBRAS pula ada-lah pëmëreksaan-nya bërkënaan Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim, Chërita Tërong Pipit (rangka përmulaan), bahathan-nya bërkënaan dëngan tarikh tërkarang, siapa pëngarang dan bagaimana isi-nya Hikayat Iskandar Dzu 'l-Karnain, bërkënaan Hikayat Raja2 Posai, bërkënaan Sëjarah Këdah, bërkënaan Sëjarah Mëlayu (naskhah Raffles), bërkënaan Chërita2 Panji, dan barangkali ada yang lain2 tërchichir dari daftar ini. Lain daripada itu ia tëlah mënulis Pënggal II daripada buku “Kësusastëraan Mëlayu” (Malay Literature) dalam rangkaian “Risalat2 Mëngënaï Përkara Mëlayu” (Papers on Malay Subjects). Di-situ di-përeksa-nya kësusastëraan chërita2 mulut orang Mëlayu, përmulaan kësusastëraan Mëlayu, chërita2 kiasan untok pëngajaran, chërita2 gila pënggëli hati, chërita2 *ajaib dan ’ashekma'shok kayangan. Tëbal-nya 73 muka potong panjang; tërbit pada tahun 1923.1 Ada pun tëntang mëngumpul dan mëmbukukan pantun maka 1 Pënggal I-nya oleh Wilkinson* mëmbicharakan chërita2 'ajaib dan ‘ashekma’shok dewa2, buku2 sëjarah dan pantun sha'er; Pënggal III-nya oleh Wilkin­ son juga darihal bidal2 dan përumpamaan Mëlayu yang mënunjokkan tabi'at përangai orang Mëlayu, dan darihal mënulis surat kiriman Mëlayu chara lama.

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ia tëlah mënërbitkan sa-buah kumpulan Pantun Mëlayu yang di-usahakan-nya bërsama2 Tuan Wilkinson, atau sa-bagai mënambah dan mënyudahkan kërja yang tëlah di-mulakan mëngumpulnya lëbeh dahulu oleh Tuan Wilkinson. Buku ini di-tërbitkan dëngan suatu Pëndahuluan yang lanjut dan mëndalam daripada Sir Richard sëndiri bërkënaan sifat2 dan këganjilan bëntok pantun Mëlayu, asal-usul-nya dan bandingan-nya dëngan karangan2 bërangkap yang sa-akan2 itu dalam bahasa lain—ia-itu di-tërbitkan jadi buku No. 12 dalam MLS. Chetak përtama-nya tahun (?), chetak këdua 1923, dan chetak këtiga 1957. Tëbal-nya 210 muka potong panjang. Akhir-nya dalam bahagian sastëra Mëlayu ini ia tëlah mënulis sa-buah buku këchil mënchontohkan “Bidal2 dan Përumpamaan Mëlayu” (Malay Proverbs), di-tërbitkan dalam “Rangkaian Buku2 Mutiara Fikiran Timor” (The Wisdom of the East Series) dalam tahun 1950; tëbal-nya hanya 85 muka potong kechil. Di-dalamnya di-kaji bidal2 Mëlayu itu dëngan mëngagak2kan asal-nya dan mënunjokkan bandingan-nya mana yang dapat dari bidal2 dan përumpamaan bangsa lain sërta mënampakkan mutu-nya bërbanding dëngan këbijaksanaan bangsa2 lain itu. Dalam pënimbangan itu di-sërtakan suatu pëmandangan yang tajam dari pënulis-nya di-atas sifat2 përangai dan këhidupan orang Mëlayu di-përhatikan dari bidalan2 itu. Oleh itu sunggoh pun buku ini këchil tëtapi bësar ërti-nya dalam bidang përhatian ahli2 fikiran sëluroh dunia, kërana isi-nya bukan sa-kadar bidal2 itu di-kumpul dan di-ërtikan sahaja tëtapi di-pileh dan di-nilai dari sëgi halus budi dan këbijak­ sanaan dunia Timor sa-umum-nya. Bahkan këdudokan-nya bërsaing dëngan bërpuloh2 buku këchil lain dalam Rangkaian itu yang mënchontohkan falsafah dan buntat2 fikiran bërbagai2 bangsa Timor chukup-lah untok mënëntukan tinggi mutu-nya.

Bahagian Chara Hidup, 'Adat Rësam, dan Këpërchayaan Mëlayu: Dalam bahagian ini Sir Richard tëlah mënulis suatu risalat panjang dalam rangkaian “Risalat2 Mëngënaï Përkara Mëlayu” (Papers on Malay Subjects), dan bëbërapa banyak maqalah pendek yang di-siarkan dalam Journal pënyëlidekan pëngëtahuan SBRAS dan MBRAS\ dan juga sa-buah buku yang bërsëndiri mënchëritakan këpërchayaan pawang2 Mëlayu dan ramalan2 mëreka itu. Tulisan-nya yang përtama itu ia-lah risalat yang këdua (atau Pënggal II) daripada risalat2 yang mëmbicharakan “Chara Hidup

332

Sumbangan Sir Richard Winstedt

dan cAdat” orang Mëlayu (Life and Customs). Di-dalam-nya dikhaskan-nya mënchëritakan “Hal-ahwal Këhidupan Mëlayu” (The Circumstances of Malay Life) ia-itu këadaan kampong, rumahtangga, përkakas rumah dan makanan mëreka. Risalat ini di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1925.1 Buku yang bërsëndiri itu mula2 di-bëri-nya nama “Pawang, Pëmuja Shiwa dan Sufi” (Shaman, Saiva, and Sufi), di-tërbitkan dalam tahun 1925, tëbal-nya 191 muka potong panjang. Isi-nya mënchëritakan këadaan pawang2 Mëlayu mëmëgang këpërchayaan yang tërchampor daripada tiga lapis 'anasir—këpërchayaan sëmangat ia-itu pësaka dari zaman asli-nya tatkala bëlum bëmgama, këpërchayaan dari Hindu yang mëmuja Dewa Shiwa, dan këpër­ chayaan tasawwuf yang mëlampau (bërasaskan kësatuan jiwa dëngan Tuhan). Këmudian buku itu tëlah di-baiki dan di-tulis sa-mula pada këbanyakan-nya lalu di-tërbitkan dëngan nama baharu “Pawang Mëlayu” (The Malay Magician) dalam tahun 1951. Tëbal-nya 161 muka potong panjang dan mëmakai huruf halus daripada dahulu. Maka lain daripada itu ada-lah bërpuloh2 maqalah pendek sapërti yang tëlah -di-katakan tadi di-atas bërbagai2 hal këpër­ chayaan, 'adat rësam dan këhidupan orang Mëlayu, di-tulis-nya dalam Journal SBRAS dan MBRAS. Bahagian Tawarikh Atau Sëjarah Dalam bahagian ini Sir Richard tëlah mënulis sëjarah nëgëri2 di-Sëmënanjong Tanah Mëlayu, sëjarah përsuratan Mëlayu, sëjarah këbudayaan Mëlayu, dan sëjarah këdatangan dan këdudokan ugama Islam di-Tanah Mëlayu. Elok juga di-ingat bahawa bërthabit dëngan yang akhir itu ia ada mënyëbut dalam salah satu surat-nya kapada pënulis ini kira2 dalam tahun 1920 atau 1921 bahawa ia bërchadang akan mënulis sa-buah buku “Sëjarah Përkëmbangan Fikiran Islam pada Orang Mëlayu” (A History of the Development of Muhammadan Thought among Malays). Ini nampak-nya tiada jadi atau bëlum jadi; tëtapi dari sëmënjak masa itu sampai sëkarang ia tëlah banyak mënulis dan mënërbitkan buku2 sëjarah pada chawangan2 yang lain mëngënaï orang Mëlayu dan 1 Risalat pënggal I dan III-nya di-tulis bicharakan hal2 *adat yang tërjadi dalam *adat bëranak, mëngaji, pinang-mëminang, dan darihal jënis2 përmainan dan hiboran orang Mëlayu.

oleh Tuan Wilkinson, ia-itu mëmkëhidupan orang Mëlayu—sapërti nikah kahwin, sakit pëning, mati— mënyukakan hati dalam këhidupan

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nëgëri Mëlayu. Maka di-antara-nya yang mula2 sa-kali tërbit daripada pena-nya dalam jënis ini ia-lah : tawarikh mèlayu (Malay History): sa-buah buku këchil yang di-tulis dalam bahasa Mëlayu untok përgunaan di-sëkolah2 Mëlayu, di-tërbitkan përtama kali-nya dalam tahun 1918. Chetak këtiga di-baiki 1921, dan chetak këëmpat tahun 1925. Tëbalnya 150 muka potong panjang. Buku ini ia-lah buku yang mula2 mëngënalkan pëlajaran sëjarah yang sa-bënar kapada orang Mëlayu, dan sa-lain daripada itu përkataan “Tawarikh”1 itu pun baharu itu-lah mula2 di-pakai dalam bahasa Mëlayu dan di-gëmarkan kapada orang Mëlayu bagi mënggantikan përkataan 4‘Hikayat” dan “Sëjarah”.2 tanahmêlayu (Malaya) : tërbit dalam tahun 1922 dan tiada përnah di-chetak këmbali. Tëtapi ini bukan-lah buku sëjarah sa-mata2, malahan tërkumpul di-dalam-nya bërbagai2 ma'alumat yang bërguna darihal Tanah Mëlayu masa itu sapërti 'ilmu 'alam, pokok2 dan binatang2, isi bumi, bangsa2 pëndudok, pëmërentahan, hasil-mahsul, përniagaan, përusahaan, përikanan, dan lain2, di-tulis oleh bërlain2 pënulis yang ahli dalam masing2 përkara itu. Bahagian yang di-tulis oleh Sir Richard sëndiri ialah sëgala bab yang mëngënaï bangsa2 asli, bahasa, përsuratan, këpërchayaan, përtukangan, sëjarah, bëkas2 lama, pëntadbiran dan dua tiga hal lain. Sa-lain daripada itu ia hanya-lah jadi pënyusun. Tëbal-nya buku ini 283 muka potong panjang. Maka këmudian daripada buku dua buah itu baharu-lah bërikut 1 Përkataan “tawarikh” ini (daripada ’Arab tarikh, ërti-nya hari-bulan atau tahun tërjadi-nya sa-suatu hal) di-pakai dëngan ma’an? chërita këjadian2 yang bënar pada masa tëlah lalu chukup dëngan këtërangan dan bukti2-nya yang sah daripada surat2 përingatan dan sa-bagai-nya sërta di-këtahuï tarikh dan tahunnya yang tëntu, dan mënasabah pula chërita-nya pada ’akal. 2 Sa-bëlum tërbit buku Tawarikh Mèlayu ini tidak-lah ada përkataan dalam bahasa Mëlayu yang tëpat mëmbawa ma’ana “tawarikh”. Biasa-nya sëmua chërita2 yang bërsurat baik chërita bënar atau tidak, kalau tërsurat dëngan chara karangan lurus, di-sëbut “hikayat”. Chërita2 zaman dahulu yang bërsangkut dëngan orang2 dan tëmpat2 yang tërkënal sërta ada mënyëbutkan zaman tërjadi-nya dëngan agak2 lëbeh kurang, istimewa kalau bërsurat, di-sëbut “sëjarah”; tëtapi kërapkali banyak juga tërchampor dongeng pëlek2 yang tiada di-tërima oleh ’akal. Jikalau khabar2 yang di-chëritakan orang sëmënjak bëbërapa lama dari mulut ka-mulut sahaja dëngan tiada këtëntuan bënar atau tidak-nya, di-sëbut “riwayat”. Tiap2 satu itu biasa di-pakai dëngan longgar dan tidak ada satu yang tëgas dan chukup mëmbawa ma’ana sapërti yang di-këhëndaki. Tëtapi sëkarang përkataan “sëjarah” itu tëlah hidup sa-mula dëngan pëngërtian yang lëbeh këtat dan dëkat kapada pëngërtian tawarikh, dan përkataan “tawarikh” tidak bërapa di-gëmari lagi !

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Sumbangan Sir Richard Winstedt

buku2 sëjarah di-bawah ini yang bërtunda2 këluar-nya sa-tëlah bërsëlang kira2 sa-puloh tahun lëpas tahun 1922, ia-itu mulaï dari bëbërapatahunsahajasa-bëlum sampai masa ia bërsara dari Tanah Mëlayu. Di-sini di-daftarkan buku2 itu mëngikut tarikh tërbit-nya : SËJARAH NËGÈRI JOHOR (A History of Johore)', tërbit dalam

tahun 1932jadi Journal pënggal 3 dalam Jilid X. Tëbalnya 172 muka potong panjang dan bërgambar.

Perak (A History of Perak): di-usahakan bërsama2 Tuan Wilkinson. Tërbit dalam tahun 1934 jadi Journal MBRAS pënggal 1 dalam Jilid XII. Tëbal-nya 186 muka potong panjang, bërgambar.

sëjarah nëgèri

(A History of Selangor)'. tërbit dalam tahun 1934 dalam Journal MBRAS pënggal 3 Jilid XII. Tëbal-nya 34 muka potong panjang, bërgambar.

sëjarah nëgèri sélangor

SËJARAH NËGÈRI SÈMBILAN (A History of Negeri Sembilan):

tërbit dalam tahun 1934 dalam Journal MBRAS pënggal 3 Jilid XII juga. Tëbal-nya 78 muka potong panjang, bërgambar. SËJARAH TANAH mèlayu (A History of Malaya)', tërbit dalam

tahun 1935 jadi Journal MBRAS pënggal 1 dalam Jilid XIII. Tëbal-nya 270 muka potong panjang, bërgambar. Sëkarang tëlah di-tërbitkan baharu jadi buku yang bërsëndiri (1962) dëngan di-baiki isi-nya dan atoran-nya. CHATETAN DI-ATAS SËJARAH NËGÈRI KËDAH (Notes On the

History of Kedah)', tërbit dalam tahun 1936 dalam Journal MBRAS pënggal 3 Jilid XIV; 36 muka potong panjang. SËJARAH përsuratan mèlayu (A History of Malay Litera­

ture)'. tahun 1939, jadi Journal MBRAS pënggal 3 Jilid XVII. Tëbal-nya 249 muka potong panjang. Ini-lah awal përtama buku jënis ini di-tulis dëngan lëngkap-nya bagi përsuratan Mëlayu di-Tanah Mëlayu. Sëkarang tëlah di-tërbitkan baharu (pada akhir tahun 1961) jadi Journal MBRAS No. 183—atau Pënggal 3 bagi Jilid XXXI untok tahun 1958: isi-nya banyak di-baiki dan nama-nya di-pinda kapada A History of Classical Malay Literature ( = Sëjarah Kësusastëraan Lama Mëlayu). UGAMA ISLAM Di-NÈGÈRi2,ALAMMÈLAYu(Z5ZammAfaZaywa):

satu bab dalam sa-buah buku bërnama Islam To-day (Ugama Islam Hari Ini), susunan A. J. Arberry dan Rom Landau;

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335

tërbit dalam tahun 1943—panjang-nya 16 muka sahaja, potong panjang. ORANG mëlayu: sëjarah këbudayaan (TheMalays: A Cul­

tural History)', sa-buah buku yang bërsëndiri, mula2 tërbit 1947, chetak yang këdua 1950, yang këlima 1958. Tëbal-nya 206 muka potong panjang. TANAH MËLAYU dëngan SËJARAH-NYA (Malaya and its His­

tory) : sa-buah buku bërsëndiri, tërbit dalam tahun 1948. Tëbalnya 158 muka potong sëdang. Lain daripada itu ada pula lagi dua buah buku karangan-nya yang tidak tërmasok dalam bahagian sëjarah dan tidak pula dalam salah satu bahagian yang tërdahulu itu, bahkan di-luar daripada bidang pëngajian Mëlayu. Ini ia-lah: KÈNANGAN2 di-tanah mëlayu (Malayan Memories): tidak

di-përoleh naskhah-nya sëkarang hëndak di-lihat. Tëtapi sah di-këtahuï buku ini tëlah tërchetak dalam tahun 1916. BËTUL BËRFIKIR BÈTUL KËHIDUPAN atau BËTUL HATI BËTUL kèlakuan (Right Thinking and Right Living): tërbit dalam tahun 1933—sa-buah buku bachaan tambahan untok murid2 darjah ënam atau tujoh di-sëkolah2 Inggëris. Isi-nya chërita2 pendek dan sa-bagai-nya yang mëmbawa përkara2 didekan budipëkërti dan këhidupan bërmasharakat untok latehan anak2 disëkolah. Buku ini di-tërbitkan jadi buku No. 6 dalam rangkaian “Buku2 Bachaan Tamba” yang di-tulis oleh guru2 Inggëris dan Këtua2 Pëlajaran di-Tanah Mëlayu masa itu di-bawah urusan Pënyusun Bësar-nya mëndiang Tuan H. R. Cheeseman.

(*«) Sakian-lah kërja2 mëluaskan pintu pëngajian Mëlayu yang tëlah di-sëmpurnakan oleh Sir Richard Winstedt sa-hingga ini. Maka sunggoh pun hampir2 sëmua buku dan tulisan-nya mëmbinchang dan mëmbëntangkan përkara2 yang di-bicharakan-nya itu ditulis-nya dalam bahasa Inggëris tëtapi itu tidak-lah mënjadikan përbedzaan apa2 kapada orang2 Mëlayu yang gëmarkan pëngëtahuan dan yang suka mëngambil tahu dan bërusaha dalam lapangan ini. Rënchana ini di-tulis tidak lëbeh ambilan-nya daripada mëndaftarkan buku2 dan tulisan2 Sir Richard yang tërpënting,

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Sumbangan Sir Richard Winstedt

dëngan maksud hanya untok mënunjokkan pënghargaan kapada usaha dan jasa-nya yang bësar kapada pëngajian Mëlayu itu dari sa-orang Mëlayu sa-kurang2-nya. Maka tidak-lah di-hajatkan hëndak mëngada2 mënchoba mëmbëri nilaian burok baik-nya buku2 itu atau hëndak mëmpërkatakan apa2 chachat-nya dan këlëbehan-nya. Bahkan jikalau ada tëmpat2 yang pënulis ini mërasa diri-nya boleh bërbuat dëmikian pun tëtapi sëmpadan yang tëlah di-hadkan bagi karangan ini mësti sakîan2 panjang sahaja tërpaksa di-hormati. Orang akan bërkata, “Nampak-nya suka dan bërkënan sahaja yang di-nyatakan sa-jauh ini, tidak ada këritik apa2 !”—Bënar-lah bagitu. Tëtapi itu bukan-lah ërti-nya tidak ada di-dapati apa2 yang hëndak di-këritik atau di-chachat dalam buku2 Sir Richard itu, atau sëmua-nya bëtul, sëmua-nya chukup baik dan sëmua-nya di-sëtujuï bëlaka! Bukan-lah bagitu. Samemang-nya banyak ada tëntang yang boleh di-tunjokkan tiada chukup bëtul atau tiada dapat di-sëtujuï, umpama-nya dalam bahagian bahasa, tërjëmahan, mëngërtikan kata2 dan satëngah2 bidalan. Tëtapi bukan-lah itu tujuan di-tulis maqalah ini. Kërja mëmbuat përnilaian di-atas buku2 itu, mënchachat-nya di-mana2 yang di-dapati këkurangan-nya dan mëmbërikan pëndapat yang lëbeh bëtul pada mana2 yang di-rasa kurang bëtul, tiada shak tëntu akan di-buat oleh pënyëlidek2 yang akan datang këmudian këlak yang ahli pada masing2 bahagian itu. Di-sini yang kita maksud hanya mënyatakan pënghargaan kërana kërja yang bagitu banyak tëlah di-buat oleh Sir Richard Winstedt dalam lapangan pëngajian ini dan mëmbayangkan rasa gëmar dan tërchëngang mëlihatkan sifat2-nya yang luar biasa tëntang rajin-nya, usahanya, tëtap tëkun-nya, chëkap tënaga-nya, dan këbolehan-nya bëkërja banyak dan pantas, walau pun sudah bërumor lëbeh. Itulah hal2 yang utama hëndak di-përlihatkan di-sini, istimewa kapada pënyëlidek2 Mëlayu yang akan datang apabila mëreka mëngkaji buku2 dan tulisan2-nya itu pada suatu masa këlak. Chachatan2 sa-chara umum yang dengkat dan dëngkal dari orang2 yang agak mërasa chëmburu dan iri hati boleh juga disëbut sambil lalu ini: Bërkënaan dëngan buku nahu-nya yang përtama dan utama (Malay Grammar) banyak di-dëngar orang bërsungut bahawa mithalan2 yang di-bëri di-situ untok mënchontohkan ka'edah bahasa hampir sëmua-nya bahasa surat dan dari hikayat2 Mëlayu lama sahaja, bukan bahasa yang maseh tërpakai hari2 masa sëkarang. Dan lagi dalam daftar këpala2 surat (muka

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184-5 buku itu), kësilapan Wilkinson mënyalin përkataan2 'Arab yang di-tulis tiada bëtul tëlah di-këkalkan-nya, tidak di-ganti dëngan yang bëtul ia-itu

—

^3 L — L . . . Bërhubong dëngan buku ini juga suatu kesah këchil ada di-chëritakan orang, ia-itu tatkala buku itu mula2 tërbit sa-orang kërabat raja Mëlayu yang tërnama, sahabat kapada Sir Richard, tëlah bërkata dëngan bërsëloroh kapada-nya sa-chara mëngusek atau bërgurau2: “Tuhan tëlah mëmbëri bahasa kapada orang Mëlayu, dan Tuan Winstedt tëlah mëmbëri mëreka Grammar!” . . . Tëntang buku2 Kamus-nya pula banyak orang tëlah mëngharapkan lëbeh daripada sa-orang sarjana sapërti taraf Tuan Winstedt; kata mëreka sa-patut-nya Kamus2 Winstedt yang lanjut itu lëbeh bësar dan lëngkap, lëbeh luas dan lëbeh halus pënërangan-nya daripada Kamus Bësar Wilkinson, baik pun yang Mëlayu-Inggëris-nya apa lagi-lah yang Inggëris-Mëlayunya. . . . Tëntang buku2 sastëra Mëlayu yang di-susun dan di-sajikan-nya orang bërkata ia-itu ta’ chukup chatetan— daftar kata2 yang susah-nya dëngan mëmbëri ma'ana tidak dibuatkan, panduan2 untok mënolong pëlajar2 mëmëchahkan këpayahan tidak ada di-bëri !... Buku-nya tëntang këpërchayaan Mëlayu pula tërlampau pendek, jauh kurang daripada yang tëlah di-buat orang dahulu daripada-nya, saperti buku Malay Magic (Amalan Seher Mëlayu) karangan W. W. Skeat; lagi pun ta’ banyak ada tambahan2 baharu . . . Buku2 sëjarah-nya—atorannya kurang këmas, bahasa-nya kurang sëdap, kurang mënarek; kata salah sa-orang pëngkëritik-nya dalam surat-khabar ia-itu orang Inggëris juga, “Mëngantok orang mëmbacha buku2 sëjarah-nya itu !” Përhatian ini rasa-nya bëtul juga. Pada orbing Mëlayu pula buku2 sëjarah-nya itu tërasa bënar tëlah di-tulis dari sëgi pemandangan Inggëris—“mënërusi kacha mata bangsa yang mënjajah”. Bagaimana pun kërja mënchachat mëmang selalu lëbeh mudah daripada mëmbuat sëndiri: bërapa bërat pun mata mëmandang lëbeh bërat juga bahu mëmikul. Choba-lah lihat apa2 këlëbehan dan elok-nya pula. Satu daripada-nya ia-lah bahasa karangan-nya dalam sëgala buku2 dan tulisan-nya sëlalu ringkas dan padat. Pandai mënulis dëngan bahasa ringkas dan padat itu ada-lah suatu këlëbehan Sir Richard mëngarang: kadang2 tërlampau

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Sumbangan Sir Richard Winstedt

ringkas hingga susah hëndak di-fahamkan kërana gëlap maksudnya. Satu lagi ia tiada gëmar mëmakai bahasa yang bërbunga2 dalam karangan-nya : tambahan pula tulisan2-nya sëmua mëmbicharakan përkara2 ‘ilmiah. la sëlalu lëbeh mëmëntingkan buah dan isi daripada bunga2 dan përhiasan kosong. Dalam pada itu walau pun chukup bagus atau tiada chukup bagus buku2-nya itu, tëtapi ia sudah juga mëngumpulkan bagitu banyak bahan dari tëmpat2 yang bërtabor dan bërsepah2. Yang dëmikian ada-lah mënyënangkan kapada orang2 këmudian mëmëreksa dan mënggunakan bahan2 itu—mënimbang, mënapis, mënolâk, mëngësahkan, mënyalahkan mana yang salah dan mëmbëtulkan mana yang kurang bëtul. Buku2 Sir Richard itu dan tulisan2-nya yang lain juga ada-lah sa-olah2 lombong përbëndaharaan: gali-lah dan ambil-lah isi-nya, tukangi-lah dan bunga2kan-lah sa-bagaimana chantek yang di-këhëndaki. Barang mëntah-nya sudah tërkumpul; masak-lah sahaja sa-bagaimana masakan yang di-fikirkan sëdap kapada tëkak masing2. Jikalau ada di-dapati tambahan barang2 baharu tambahkan-lah sahaja, dan kalau ada yang sudah usang atau tidak tërpakai lagi daripada bahan2 yang tëlah di-kumpul-nya itu tinggalkan sahaja-lah, kalau tidak di-buang langsong. Satu hal yang amat di-kësalkan oleh Sir Richard ia-lah bahasa Mëlayu sëkarang mënjadi rosak oleh pënulis2 yang suka mëniru atau yangtërtiru bëntok bahasa2bukan Mëlayu. Ini ada-lah bërasal dari pëntërjëmah2 yang tiada pandai mëntërjëmah dan dari pënulis2 Mëlayu yang tiada dapat mëngelakkan diri daripada bëntok bahasa asing yang di-këtahuï-nya. Dëmikian juga rosak oleh pëngaroh bahasa Mëlayu Indonesia yang tiada baik tërbit daripada mëniru bëntok bahasa Bëlanda. Kësalan-nya ini sangat bënar. Hanya di-harap mudah2an dëngan kësëdaran yang baharu këlak pënulis2 Mëlayu yang akan datang akan'këmbali kapada bëntok bahasa mëreka sëndiri yang sa-jati dan sa-mula jadi. Pada kësëlurohan-nya Sir Richard ada-lah bërhak mëndapat tërima kaseh daripada sakalian orang Mëlayu yang mëngambil bërat dalam hal pëngajian Mëlayu; dan moga2 chontoh kuat bëkëija yang di-tunjokkan-nya pada diri-nya itu akan dapat jadi tauladan kapada sarjana2 Mëlayu sëndiri yang akan datang, istimewa tëntang chara2 bagaimana mënyëlideki hal2 pëngajian bahasa dan këbudayaan bangsa mëreka sëndiri pada masa yang ka-hadapan.

Dalam Pënyëlidekan Pëngajian Mëlayu Pisang ëmas di-bawa bëlayar, Masak sa-biji di-atas pëti; Hutang ëmas boleh di-bayar, Hutang budi di-bawa mati. Orang yang banyak mëninggal jasa— Kitab, pëngëtahuan, suratan bahasa, Nama-nya hidup sa-panjang masa : Salah dan silap boleh di-përeksa.

339

INDEX In this Index have been entered (i) names of persons; (2) geographical names (both in roman) ; (3) the more important names (titles) of texts (in italics) ; and (4) a few items which seemed of special interest (also in roman), e.g. trade. (s) after a name indicates that it is the name of a vessel. With regard to the differences of spelling found in Arabic names, it should be noted that these names when relating to Arabs and Persians proper have the usual diacritic marks and signs indicating vowel-length, but when relating to Malays are spelt according to the system of spelling current for the Malay language, e.g. MuhammadMuhammad.

’Abd Alläh al-Sâwi, 35. ’Abdu’l-Hamid, Daing, bin Tengku Muhammad Salleh, 7. ’Abdu’l-Jalil, Sultan, Shah III of Johore, 113, 115. ’Abdulkadir, 258. ’Abdullah, Munshi, 227, 258, 320. ’Abdullah, Sultan of Johore, no. ’Abdullah Mukarram Shah, Sultan of Kedah, 147, 148, 157. ’Abdullah, brother of Juma’at the Riau Bugis, 170. ’Abdul Samad, 170. Abraham, 311. Abreu, Pedro de, 119. Abu Bakar, Temenggong of Johore, 173-5; 177-81 ; see Temenggong. Abû Dulaf, 51, 52, 68, 69. Abü’l-Fadl Ja’far, 72. Abü’l-Fidä*, 68, 69, 83. Abû Zaid, 68, 69, 83. Academy, British, 8. Achdiat Karta Mihardja, 308. Achem, see Achin. Achin, 108, 122-4; 127-30; 134-5; 232; 241; 243; 261; Achinese, no, 119, 120, 240; Achinese attack on Malacca in 1629, IO5 sqq. ; King of Achin, 109, no, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120,'127, 128, 130. Ackermans, A., 123. Acton, Lord, 152. Africa, 282. Agni Puräna, 50. Ahmad, Prince (King, Sultan) of Pasai, 228, 233, 239. Ahmad Tajuddin Halim Shah, Sultan of Kedah, 157, 159, 161. Ahmad, Wan, 175-81. Akhbâr aç-$ïn wa'l-Hind, 62, 68. ’Ala’u’d-din, Sultan of Malacca, 237. *Ala*u’d-din Muhammad Shah, Sultan of Athin, 135. 823121

d’Albuquerque, 66, 240. Alexander (the Great), 57; see Iskandar. ’Ali, Bendahara of Pahang, 175. ’Ali, Raja, Haji bin Raja Ahmad Riau, 137, 138, 139, 329’Ali, Sultan of Johore, 171, 172, 180. Alisjahbana, see Takdir Alisjahbana. Alor Star, 140, 147, 148, 163. Alvarez, Antonio, 106. Amerika (= America), 322. Amir Hamzah, 303-17. Amoy, 203. Ana, Pawang, 3. Anchorites, The Five, 278. Andamans, Andaman Islands, 46, 134, 135Anderson, J., 66. Anderson, J., 147, 148. Angelbeek, C. van, 258. Angkor, 70, 71, 72, 78. Angkor Borei, 30;= Naravanagara. Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, 170. Anglo-Dutch War, Fourth, 132, 133. Anglo-French War(s), 124, 134. Anglo-Malay Alliance, 127. Anglo-Perak Treaty, 177. Ankor, see Angkor. Ankor Thom, 70. Annam, 89, 91, 102, 103, 265. Anom, Tengku, 159, 161, 162, 164. -ân sjak, 44 ; = Arsak. Anson, 129. Anuson Siththikam, 158, 160, 163. Arabia, 225 ; Arabs, 44. Arakan, 139. Arberry, A. J., 334Arquivo Histörico do Estado da India, 105, 106, 107, 108. Arquivo Histörico Ultramarino, 108. Arsacid dynasty, 44. Arsak, 44. Ashburnham (s), 129.

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Index

Ashem, see Achin. Ashi, see Achin. Asia, 113, 282; central, 47; eastern, 45 ; south-east, see under South-east Asia. Asia Foundation, 76. Asräru’l-Arifin, 243. Astrological numbers: preoccupation with, 72. Asu-asa, 268. Asura, 56. Attopeu, 32. Auden, 317. Austin, Captain, 123. Awang Sulong, 3. Awi Dichu, 227. Aymonier, E., 32, 55. Baba (= Chinese in Trengganu), 203-21. Badlishah, Sultan of Kedah: Genea­ logical Tree, Appendix C. Baduys, 278. Bagrow, L., 36. Bagus Alit, Ida (Bhujangga), 270, 271, 273Bagus Gedé, Ida, 274. Bahai, 293. Baker, George, 123. Balai Pustaka, 261. Balambangan, 134. Bali: religion in, 267-302; Balinese demons, 278-80. Banaspati-Raja, 280. Banda Malacca, 115; = Bunga Raya. Bandar Ilhir, 71. Bandon, Gulf of, 81. Bangka, 32, 133, 137. Bangkok, 156-9; 162, 164, 178, 179; Treaty of, 164. Ban Hua Hin, 67. Banjermasin, 234. Ban Nah, 74. Bantam, 259. Barbosa, Duarte, 66, 71. Ba-ria, province, 32. Barong, 292. Barros, de, 66. Barus, 97, 223. Basham, A. L., 57. Basset, D. K., 122, 144. Bastian, A., 32. Bastin, J., 1, 141, 144. Basto, Fr. Pedro de, S.J., 107. Batavia, 123, 124, 131, 133, 139, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260; see Djakarta. Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences, 259Bateson, G., 292. Battuta, Ibn, 61.

Batu Bara, 123. Batu Besar, 208, 209, 218. Batu Sawar, no. Baud, J. C., 258. Baudhäyana Dharmasütra, 46. Baytär, Ibn al-, 68, 72. Beasley, W. G., 88. Begbie, P. J., 168. Bejapûrî, 60. Bellah, Robert, 285. Bellin, 37. Bencoolen, 134; civil service, 135; government, 127; variety of pepper, 135Benda, H. J., 150, 152. Bendaharas of Pahang, 170-81 ; (1) Ali ; (2) Mutahir; (3) Wan Ahmad. Bendix, R., 283, 285, 286. Bengal, 91, 125, 131, 137, 138, 147; Bay of, 69,81,124; remittance from, 133Beraim Bapa, Tun, 233. Berang, 61 ; see Kuala Brang. Berg, C. C., 37, 38, 60, 236, 237. Berg, L. W. C. van den, 259. Berlin,. 256. Beruana, 223. Besakih, 272, 273. Besunga, 49; Besungitae, 49. Betsy (s), 138. Bhagadatta, 54. Bhagavad Gita, 305. Bhairava: Buddhist monks, 60. Bhatara: Guru, 267, 270, 273, 280; Sapg Hyang Guru, 278; Kala, 280, 281 ; see also Kala. Bhatari, 278, 279, 281. bhujangga, 267 sqq. ; Sang Guru Bhujangga, 273, 274; Ida, Adiguru, 269; Ida Sang, Aji, 269, 270; Ida Sang, Alit, 270. Billiton, 97. Bindjai, 303. Birch, J. W. W., 3. Bîrûnï, 68. Blagden, C. O., 9, 61, 113, 257, 323, 326. Blahbatu, 274. Blundell, 166, 171, 172, 175, 176. Bodha, 271, 272, 273, 281; Padanda, 270, 272. Bodleian Library, 1, 323. Bohang, 305, 307. Bolts, Wüliam, 134, 135. Bombay, 124. ‘Bon Byu, 275, 277. Bonham, 160, 161. Boni, Raja of, 145. Boodberg, P., 54. Boorman, H. L., 152.

Index Borneo, 86, 137, 257. Borralho, Miguel Pereira, 117. Bosch, F. D. K., 37. Botelho, Nuno Alvares, 105, 108, 109, 112, 120, 121. Botelho de Sousa, Alfredo, 107. Botham, Henry, 135. Bottoms, J. C., 151. Boxer, R. O., 105, 108. Braam, J. P. van, 139, 140. Bracey, Captain, 133. Braddell, Dato* Sir Roland, 33, 36, 50, 86. Brahma, 281. Brahman, 285. Brahmanism, 284, 287. Brandes, J., 71. Brhatkathä-Manjari, 50. Brihadiswara temple, 58. Britain, 132; see also British. British, 125, 133, 139, 140, 145, 157; Academy, 7; Overseas Service of the, Broadcasting Service, 8; com­ mercial and strategic interests in Malaya, 122-40; country trade(rs), 123, 137; Order of the, Empire, 7; fleet, 124, 132; merchants, 123; Museum, 82 ; settlement, 124; ships, 123Brito, Dom Fr. Luis de, 109, 112. Brockeimann, C., 35. Brown, C. C., 58, 59, 226, 237, 240. Brownrigg, C. E., 1. Brunei, 91, 97, 98, 101. Brussels, 256. Buckley, C. B., 171. Buddha, 56, 73, 269, 270, 271. Buddhism, 293. Bugis, 123, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 133, 138, 146, 147, 148, 149, 175; chieftains, 58; emigration, 145; in­ fluence in the Malay world, 145-7; dynasty (Sultan, Yamtuan) of Selan­ gor, 137, 146; settlements, 145; warriors, 145. Bukit China, in, 116, 133. Bunga Emas, 210. Bunga Rampai, .260, 261, 262, 265, 266. Bunga Raya, 115. Burckhardt, 236. Burial Customs, 57. Burma, 46, 70, 72, 74, 131; Lower, 49; Burmese, 149; Burmese history,

U9- , rr, Burney, Captain, 159; —s Treaty with Siam, 170. Bustänu'l-Saläfin, 242, 257, 262, 322, 330. Butang Islands, 115. 823121

Z2

343

Buzurg, 39. C'aiya, 60 ; Bay, 51 ; district, 50 ; see also Chaia. Calcutta (often meaning: Indian Government^ 123, 135-40; 166, 167, 173, 174, 179, 181, 182. Calicut, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104. Cambodia, 30, 73, 74, 78, 91, 92, 97, 102; Angkorian, 31. Cambodia, Dain, 128. Cambridge, 88. Campa, 44, 59, 67; see Champa. Candrabhânu, Dharmarâja, 60. Canton, 44, 98, 122, 124, 132, 133, *34, *37, 138 ; remittance, 125, 132; Cantonese, 205, 206. Capacia, 69. Capellen, G. A. G. P. Baron van der, 258, 259. Capuchin Friars, 116. Careri, 66. Carnatic, 125, 134. Carreiro, Roque, 114. Carroll, T. D., 47. Carvalho, Antonio, 120. Casparis, J. G. de, 27, 28, 37, 65. Castell, S., i. Catholicism, 300. Cavaignac, M. E., 33. Cavenagh, Colonel Orfeur, 166, 167, 169, 172-82. Celebes, 86, 145, 314. Cense, A. A., 235. Ceylon, 40, 47, 60, 117, 132. Chaia, 131 ; see C’aiya. Chairil Anwar, 316. Chalon Arang, 267. Chamberlain, 192. Champa, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97, 102. Ch'ang-an, dialect, 35. Ch’ang-chiin, 40. Chang-Fu, 89. Chang-Hai, 43, 67. Chao Ju-kua, 40, 59, 60, 61, 62, 72, 73, 85. Chau Phaya, Si Thammasokarat ( = Rajah Ligore), 156, 157, 158, 159, 163, 164; Phra* Khlang, 158. Chavannes, E., 28, 34, 48. Cheduba, 139. Cheeseman, H. R., 1, 5, 9, 335* Chekiang, 97. Chelak, Daing, 147. Che-li-fo-che, 28. Chelliah, D. D., 1, 5, 6. Chendriang, 3. Cheng-Ch*ien, 48.

344

Index

Chêng Ho, 87, 88, 89, 96, 97, 99, 100, 103, 104. Chen-la, 55, 74; = Cambodia. Chhabra, B. C., 25, 32. Chien-wên, 91, 99. Ch'ih-fu, 54, 56, 71. Ch*i-la-ni, 94. China, 28, 40, 59, 80, 82, 84, 96, 101, 102, 103, 104, 108, 119, 124, 125, 129,131,132,137,138,152,204,205, 215, 240, 285, 294; ships of, 83; market, 124; south, 74; south coast of, 98 ; sea(s), 44, 82, 84, 85 ; South, Sea, 134, 205; relations between, and Malacca, 87-104; Chinese re­ lations with SE. Asia, 87, 92, 94; sailing routes between, and India, 40; Chinese, 72, 73, 104, 167, 203 sqq. ; migration and assimilation of rural Chinese in Trengganu, 20321; Chinese immigrants, 168, 169; Chinese mining community at Kuantan, 170; Chinese voyages to the Indian Ocean, 93 ; Chinese language, 221 ; Chinese school, 221. China, Kampong, 208 ; = Kampong Tirok. China Hak, Kampong, 210, 220; = Kampong Pa' Hak. Chin-lin, 64; the Great Bay of, 48, 68. Chin Shu, 67. Chiu-chih, 44, 48. Chiu T'ang Shu, 51. Chola, 58, 59, 60, 80, 91, 92, 94, 95; = Cola, Cô}a. Chou Ch'ii-fei, 40. Christianity, 293. Christie, A., 40. Chrusè Chersonèsos, 36. Ch’üan-chou, 61, 80. Ch’uan Han-sheng, 62. Chu Chan-fan, 53. Chu-fan-chih, 40, 60, 72, 73. Chulan, Raja, 4. Chii-li, 49. Chulias, 129. Chii-li/ya, 48. Chung Kei-won, 88. Ch’ii-tu-k'un, 44, 48. Çiwa, see Siva. Clarendon Press, 3. Clementi, Sir C., 8. Clifford, Sir Hugh, 142, 321. Clodd, H. P., 127, 139, 148. Cochin, 93, 95, 98, 100, 101, 102, 109; -China, 134, 178. Coe, 72. Cœdès, G., 24, 25, 31, 32, 33, 48, 50, 55» 56, 58, 59, 60, 70, 71, 80.

Co-hong, 138. Coimbra, 109. Cola, Côja, see Chola. College: of Medicine, 6; Raffles, 6; Sultan Idris Training College, 4; Teachers’ training colleges, 4. Collingwood, R. G., 150, 151. Colombo, 121. Colonial Office, 167, 170, 184-202. Company: Dutch (East Indies), 126, 138, 140, 256, 257; (English, British) East India, 80, 124-40, 144, 148, 166, 170, 171; ships of the E.I., 122; E.I., Marine, 135; Imperial, of Trieste, 134, 135. Conference of South-east Asian His­ torians, 142, 143, 144. Confucianism, 283, 284. Conrad, 2. Conti, Nicolö di, 66. Coomaraswamy, A. K., 47. Coope, A. E., 207. Copperfield, D., 187. Cornish (s), 123. Cornish tin, 137. Coromandel (Coast), 40,114,115,123, 124, 126, 132, 135, 136, 224. Correa, Gaspar, 66. Cortesäo, A., 87, 95, 96. Council: (at Calcutta), 136; Straits Settlements Legislative, 6 ; Federal, of the Federated Malay States, 6. Count de (of) Linhares, see Noronha. Coupland, R., 8. Covarrubias, M., 288. Craesbeeck, Pedro, 106, 114. Crans, Jan, 128. Crawûird, 171. Crescent (s), 138. Çrivijaya, see Sri Vijaya. Crown Agents, 192, 195. Cuddalore, 130, 148. Cunha, Dorn Lourenço da, 112. Cunha Rivara, J. H. da, 105, 106, 07, 114. Daiches, D., 317. Daily Telegraph, 8. Dalgado, S. R., no, 117. Damais, L. C., 25, 27, 28. Danes, 125, 129. Danvers, F. C., 107. Dato’ Kiana, Undang of Sungei Ujong, 168, 169, 176, 177. Delft, 256*, 259. Deli, no, 304, 316. ‘Delta’, pseudonym of W. H. Read, 171. Demak, regent of, 257.

Index Derby, 188, 189, 190, 194, 195. Desvoeux, Ch., 124, 126, 127, 128, 134Dhanaérî-dvîpa, 67. Dickens, Charles, 187. Dickson, 186, 191, 197. Diemen, Anthony van, 71, 120. Dimashqi, 44, 68. Din, Tengku, 157. Dinding, 59. Diya*u*d-din, Sultan of Kedah, 157. Djakarta, 244, 299, 300, 304, 305, 307; see also Batavia. Dodwell, H., 122. Donato, Ernesto, 106. Dong So’n, 75. Dôn-suén, 66. Doorenbos, J., 244, 245, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254. Dora-Kala, 280. Douglas, Captain Bloomfield, 188, 193Douglas, F. W., 36. Draupadi Rath a, 78. Drewes, G. W. J., 238, 239, 243, 244Du Bois, Cora, 291. Dulaurier, 224. Dungun, 220. Dupleix, 125. Dupont, P., 55. Durga, 270, 271, 279, 280, 281; Sang Hyang, 281. Durkheim, 71. Dutch, 112, 115, 122, 123, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 133, 134, 138, X39, 140, 143, 145, 146, 178, 256, 258, 259; factory at Tanjong Putus, 132; garrison at Malacca, 133. Duyon, 115, 117. Duyvendak, J. J. L., 87, 88, 89, 93, 94. Dvaparayuga, 270. Dvâravatï, 51, 56. Earl, G. W., 169. East Indies, Dutch, 258. Eberhard, 44. Education (in Malaya and Singapore), 4, 5, 6; Colonial Advisory Com­ mittee on, 6; Educational Con­ ferences, 5. Ehrlich, R. I., 35. Eitel, 67, Elgin, Lord, 178. Elout, C. P. J., 258. Embassies, visiting the Chinese court, 71 ; see Envoys. Emerson, R., 141. England, 136, 174, 257.

345

English, 112, 123, 126,131, 158; Eng­ lish (language), 221. Envoys: Chinese, 55, 57, 71; sending of, 89-104; Sui envoy, 57. Eredia, Godinho de, 37, 71. Esther (s), 136. Europe, 152. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 284. Eyre Coote, Sir, 134.

Fa-Hsien, 40. Fairfield, 186, 187, 197. Fâlî Krâ, 69. Fame (s), 258. ‘Famous Seven*, the, 62. Fan-li, 89. Fan Shih-man, 43, 49, 50. Fan-su-er, 97. Fansu ri, 224. Faqih, Ibn al-, 68. Far East, 82. Far Eastern University (Manilla), 142. Faria, Manuel Severim de, 106. Faria e Sousa, Manuel de, 107. Farid dud in Haji bin Tunku Mansor, Tunku, 146. Farrar, Dean, 1. Farsi, 329; see also Persia. Fatimi, S. Q., 36, 66, 68, 69. Fedrici, Cesare dei, 66. Fei Hsin, 63, 87, 88, 95. Feng Ch’eng-Chiin, 40. Fernando, Francesco, 66. Ferrand, G., 24, 25, 28, 30, 33, 35, 44, 55, 69, 72Filipinos, 143. Fitch, Ralph, 66. Flanders, 109. Flatt Point, 140. Fo-kuo Chi, 40. Fo-lo-an, 60, 61, 62, 73, 203. Fonseca, Antönio Pinto da, 106, 109, in, 115, 120. Fonseca, Diogo Lopez daK 116. Fonseca, Gonçalo Pinto da, 112. Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890, 185. Forrest, Thomas, 66, 135-40. Foster, W., 108, 122. France, 132; see also French. Franke, W., 88. Frazer, 6. French, 124; 134, 136, 178; French privateer, 138. Fukien, 97, 102, 203, 205. Fu-nan, 43, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53. Furber, H., 135. Gadjah Mada University, 143. Galungan, 279. Galway, Viscount, 125.

346

Index

gambling, licensed public, 201. Gandhamayu, 269, 270, 273, 274. Gandring, Mpu, 273, 274. Gangadhara, group of sculptures, 79. Gangga, 279. Gangga (Shah) Nagara, 59. Garga, Sang, 278, 281. Garnier, F., 32. Garuda Puräna, 50. Gautama, 54. Gayo, 225. Gedong Kirtya, 268. Geertz, C., 42, 45, 282, 287. Gemelli Careri, 71. Generous Friend (s), 138. Geography (of Ptolemy), 36. George III, 134. Georgetown, 169. Gerini, G. E., 36, 40. Gerth, H. H., 47. Ghee Hin (miners), 169, 177. Ghiyath ad-Din, 225, 226, 227, 228. Gibson-Hill, C. A., 2, 37, 67, in, 133. Girah, 267. Goa, 37, 105, 106, 107, 109, 112, 114, 120, 121, 241. Golden Khersonese, 37 ; = Chrusè Chersonèsos. Goloubew, V., 70. Gonda, J., 274. Gonggrijp, 265. Goodwin, 3. Gopeng, 3. Goris, 274. Goshen, 160. Gosling, L. A. P., 75, 203. Gowa, 257. Grahi, 63, 64. Granville, 190. Gray, B., 82. Gray, Charles, 167. Greece, 294. Griya Sadava, 274. Groeneveldt, W. P., 33, 34, 87, 89, 90, 91, 100, 101. Groslier, B. P., 69, 72. Gunong Banang,- 39. Gunung Agung, 272. Gunung Besakih, 273 ; see Besakih. Gurdit Singh, 198. Guto, 268. Gyanyar, 274, 276. Haan, F. de, 256, 257. Hainan, 44, 205; Hainanese, 205. Hai San (miners), 169, 177. Haji, Raja, see 'Ali, Raja, Haji bin Raja Ahmad Riau. Haji: the Muslim, 94; the Muslim, Ma-ha-mo Ch'i-ni, 94.

Hakka, 205. Hale, G. A., 74. Hall, D. G. E., 37, 65, 124, 141, 142, 222, 224, 236, 237. Hallward, N. L., 135. Hamilton, Alexander, 123. Hamzah, see Amir Hamzah. Hamzah Fançürî, 243, 244, 252. Han, 47, 50. Hang-chou, 61. Hang Tuah, 307, 308. Hanlin Academy, 88. Harlow, V. T., 134. Harrison, B., 126, 128, 141. Harrison, T., 39. Harrop, Gowan, 123. Haru, 224, 231. Hasan, Tengku, 159, 161, 162, 164. Hassan bin Muhammad Arshad, 146. Hastings, Warren, 125, 126, 130, 131, 132, 135-40Hastings Rashdall, 2. Hecq, Gijsbert, 108. Heekeren, H. R. van, 74. Heeres, J. E., 108, 120. Heine-Geldem, R. von, 71, 73. Henderson, A. M., 42. Henning, W., 57. Hephaistos, 273. Herbert, 193. Heylyn, Peter, 66. Hien-heng period, 28. Hikayaf. 'Abdullah, 258, 320, 323; Amir Hamzah, 237 Î Badi' al-Zamän, 257 ; Bakhtiar, 262 ; Charang Kulina, 257; Hang Tuah, 235, 323; Iskandar, 235; Kalila dan Domina, 262, 265 ; Raja-raja Posai, 222 sqq., 238, 239, 257; Seri Rama, 321, 323. Hill, A. H., 233. Hillsborough, Lord, 134. historiography: Javanese, 236-7; 239; South-east Asian, 236. Hmannan Yazawin, 74. Hmawza, 74. Hobson-Jobson, no, 224. Hofmeijer, J. H., 258. Hokkien(s), 203-6, 212, 213; Hokkien Association, 213, 214. Ho-ling, 43. Holland, 256, 259. Holloway, Giles, 127. Hong merchants, 138. Hong Kong, 200, 201. Hooykaas, C., 228, 237, 241, 267. Horsburgh, J., 39. House of Commons, 179. Howard, R. C., 152. Hsia Yuan-chi, 89. Hsieh Ch'ing-kao, 203.

Index Hsing ch'a Shêng-lan, 63, 87; Chiaochu, 95. Hsing-tsai, 61 ; = Hang-chou. Hsin T'ang Shu, 28, 40, 43, 51, 52, 54, 57, 69, 72. Hsiung-Nu, 47. Hsiu-tsuan-kuan, 89. Hsi-yang, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98; = Indian Ocean, 95. Hsi-yang Ku-li, 94, 97, 98. Hsi-yang La-ni, 94, 95. Hsi-yang So-li, 94, 95. Hsü Yün-ts‘iao, 51, 72. hu, meaning of, 47-48. Huber, E., 67. Hughes, 125. Hui-t*ung kuan, 97, 98, 103. Hukum Kanun, 232. Hullu, J. de, 137. Hultzsch, E., 58. Hung Lu, 49; clerks, 69; officials, 71. Hung-wu, 89, 91, 93, 99. Hung-wu Shih-lu, 90, 91. Hunter, Robert, 159. Hu Pen-Ts'ao, 48. Husam ad-Din, 225, 228. Hutton Gregory, Sir Charles, 195. Hu Wei-yung, 91. Hyacinth (s), 158, 160. Hyder Ali, 134. jang liët zjep, 54. jang tak mju Ijän, 54. Ibrahim, Enche, bin Dato’ Muda Linggi, 325Ibrahim, Temenggong of Johore, 170-3, 175I-Ching, 28, 38, 39, 40, 72; his transcriptions of Peninsular names, 38. Idrisi, 68, 69. Ilanun chieftains, 58. Iliad, 3. Immigration (of Chinese and Indian peasant families), 197. Imtiyäz ‘Alî, Maulânâ, ‘Arshi, 35. India, 47, 54, 82, 92, 93, 96, 98, 99, 100, 103, 114, 115, 117, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 142, 178, 201, 285, 314, 329; (= Government of), 166, 167, 173-83; Portuguese, 105, 109; south(em), 95, 96, 99, 236; South Indian inscriptions, 80; South Indian merchant guild, 80; sailing routes between China and, 40; Office, 166, 167, 179; Indian Archipelago, 259; Indian mer­ chants, 123; Indian Ocean, 82, 84, 85, 89, 112. Indian Trader (s), 123.

347

Indo-China, 62; land mass, 29. Indonesia, 142, 143, 261, 293, 298300, 316, 326; Indonesians, 143. Indra, 70. Indragiri, 131. Indrapura, 235. Innes, 193. lör (= Johore), no, 113. Iraniens, 48. Iria, Alberto, 107. Is’änapura, 30. Is’anavarman, 30. Iskandar (= Alexander the Great), 233Iskandar, Sultan of Singapore, 239. Iskandar Muda (= Makota ‘Alam), 109. Islam, 217, 218, 219, 224, 225, 230, 293» 299, 300, 311 ; in North-east Malaya, 61; Islamic Law, 215. Isma'il, Bendahara of Perak, 170. Isma’il, Nakhoda (Shaikh), 224, 225. Isma'il, Raja, 128. Israel, 285. Israelites, 311. Isthmus, see Kra. Isvara, 281. Jaffanapatnam (s), 123. Jager, Herbert de, 257. Jahweh, 285. Jambi, 26, 27, 112, 120. Jambu Ayer, 228. James, William, 134. Japan, 92, 101, 133. Jassin, H. B., 305, 307, 316. Java, 29, 30, 43, 47, 60, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 237, 240, 257, 260, 267, 270, 287, 297, 300; west(em), 74, 278; Javanese, 115, 239; Javanese histo­ riography, 37. Jayadevi, 31. J ay anäs’a, 31. Jayavarman I, 30, 31. Jefferys, Thomas, 37. Jelebu, 196. Jen Nai-ch‘iang, 44. Jerau, 223. Jitsuzo Kuwabara, 62. Job, 315. Joginder, Singh Jessy, 149, 150. Jogjakarta, 143. Johns, A. H., 37, 61, 303. Johnson, 201. Johnston, A. L. & Co., 171, 181. Johore (Johor, Jor), 7, 108, no, 115, 122, 128, 137, 146, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 181, 207, 241, 329; Johore-Lingga empire,

348

Index

Johore (cont.) 170; Johore empire, 123; Johore Treaty of 1855, 172, 173; JohorePahang Treaty of 1862,180; Sultan (King) of Johore, 105, 113, 116, 118, 120, 170, 171, 176, 178. Johore Bahru, 174. Jorkins, 187. Josselin de Jong, P. E. de, 235. Jourdan, 123, 124, 125. Jourdan, Sullivan and De Souza, Madras firm, 123, 124, 125, 127. Judaism, 284. Juma’at, 170. Junk Ceylon, 38, 122, 126, 130, 131, 132» 136, I39> 140Juvenal, 1. Ka^äram, 5K, 59. K'ai-yuan, period, 28. Kakao Island, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86. K’â kuk lâ, 68. Kala, Sang Hyang, 271, 280, 281; Kala Visésa, 280; see also Bhatara. Kala, island off Tenasserim, 70. Kalah (Kalâh, K'â lâ), 51, 52, 68, 69, 70, 83, 84; the different spellings of, in Arabic texts, 68; problem of location of, 68-70. Kalâh-bâr, Sea of, 68, 69, 70. Kâla päni, 46 ; = Andaman Islands. Kali (goddess), 63. Kali, devil, 280. Kalinga, 226. Kaliyuga, 270. Kammalar, 47. Kangchu, system, 207. K'ang-hsi Tzu-tien, 43. K'ang-tao yiieh-k'an, 44. Kao Chou, 205. Kapitan China, 167 (in Lukut), 206 (in Marang). Karang Bralu, 237. Karlgren, B., 34, 35, 54. Kashmir, 59. Kat äh a, 50, 51. Kathäsaritsägara, 50. Kattigara, 68. Kaumudimahotsava, 50. Kaundinya, 50, 53. Kau t’éj?u, 44; = Canton. Kechil, Raja, 128, 145. Kechil Besar, Raja, 225. Kedah, 40, 50, 51, 52, 58, 59, 60, 69, 72, 73, 83, 115, 122-31, 136, 138, 139, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164; coast, 160; Fort, 160, 162, 163; eighteenth-century history of,

145 ; Royal House, 147,151 ;—Royal Family Genealogical Trees, 146, Appendixes A, B, and C, 154 sqq. ; people, 161, 163; river, 161, 162, 163; Sultan (raja, ruler) of, 126-9; 140, 144, 145, 147, 148, 156, 163; Kuala, see under Kuala. Kedukan Bukit, 24, 25, 27, 31, 32. Kelantan, 61, 63, 64, 72, 75, 158, 162, 170, 203, 258. Kelly and Walsh, publishers, 4. Kemaman, 220. Kennedy, J., 145. Kem, H., 33, 71. Kem, R. A., 25, 28, 258. Kemial Singh Sandhu, 46. Khânfû, 61 ; = Kuang-chou. Khinsä, 61 ; = Hang-chou. Khmer: king, 30; kingdom, 32. Khrysoanas, 39. Khurdädhbih, Ibn, 68, 69. Kiçlâram = Kadäram. Kiei lung Island, 39. Kimberley, 193, 200. Kingship, Buddhist concepts of, 7374Kin-li-p’i-che, 28 ; = Sri Vijaya ? Kinloch, I. Y., 135. Kitab, kitab \ al-Awsat, 35; Gemala Hikmat, 323 ; Tawarikh Melayu, 7. K'juat tuo kân, 67, 68. K’juot tuo kuan, 67, 68. K’iu-tou-k'ien, 68. Klang, 68, 69, 123, 128, 145, 170, 195, 196; shoals, 69; valley, 168. Klinkert, 262. Kloos, 313. Klungkung, 276. Knutsford, 187, 191, 192, 194, 195, 197, 199, 200, 201. Koek, Adriaan, 258. Kolè[polis], 49. Ko-lo, 50, 51, 52, 54, 57. Ko-lo-she-fen, 72. Kongkonagara, 59. Ko-po, 97. Korea, 89. Koris, Tun, 176. Korn, V. E., 287. Korsika (Sang), 278, 281. Kota Baharu, 75. Kota Kapur, 29, 30, 237. Kra, 69; Isthmus, 76, 77, 81, 136, 140; trans-Isthmian route, 81. Kroeber, A. L., 45. Krom, N. J., 25, 26, 28, 33, 65. Ksiti-Kala, 280. Kuala Batrang, 147. Kuala Brang, 61, 203, 207, 208. Kuala Kedah, 125, 128, 129, 147.

Index Kuala Lumpur, 5, 195, 196, 242. Kuala Muda, 161. Kuala Pilah, 4. Kuala Selinsing, 86. Kuala Som, 208, 210, 217. Kuala Trengganu, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 217, 218, 219, 220. Kuang-chou, 61. Kuantan, 171, 176, 178, 179, 180; river, 176. Kubang Pasu, 159. Kubang Rotan, 162. Kui Nua, 67. Ku-li, 94. Kuo Ch'üeh, 94, 97, 103, 104. kurun, 45. Kurusya (Sang), 278, 279, 281. Kwangtung, 97, 102, 205. Laidlaw, F. F., 74. Lajonquière, E. L. de, 78. Laksamana, no, in, 113, 114, 119. Lamb, A., 40, 58, 60, 76, 79, 82, 83. Lambri, 97. Lamuri, 224. Lancamanâ, see Laksamana. Lancaster, 66. Landau, Rom, 334. Langat, 193. Langkat, 303. Langkawi Island, 38. Lang-pi-yeh, 43. Lang-ya, 54. Lang-ya-hsiu, 51. La-ni, 95. Lankasuka, 49, 51, 53, 54, 61, 63, 64. Laos, Upper, 74. Laotians, 32. Larut, 166, 169, 170, 177, 199; river, 177. Lassamane, lassemane, see Laksamana. Läufer, B., 48. Laver, R., 123. Lebar Daun, Demang, 239. Leclerc, L., 72. Legur, see Ligor. Leiden, 244; University of, 4; Univer­ sity Library, 244, 258, 256, 259. Leiden, John, 320. Leur, J. C. van, 41, 143, 241. Lévi, S., 31, 32, 36, 50. Liang Shu, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 67. Li Fang, 45. Light, Francis, 124-40, 147, 148, 151. Ligor = Ligore, Legur: Rajah of, 156, 157; stele, 58. Lim Say Hup, 141. Lincoln (s), 129.

349

Linehan, W., 36. Lingga, no, 258; Johore-Lingga em­ pire, 170; see also Johore. Linggi, river, 123, 177. Ling-wai Tai-ta, 40. Lin-i, 39, 51. Linschoten, 66. Lion City, 52. Lioness (s), 129. Lisbon, 108, 109, 114. Li Tao-yüan, 49. Liu Chou, 205. Liu Ming-shu, 62. Li Yen Shou, 45. Loboe Toewa, 80. Logan, J. R., 159, 162. London, 8, 124, 183, 195, 202, 257, 320, 321, 329; (= British govern­ ment), 167, 186; University of, 7; society, 174. London (s), 123. Lopes, Francisco, 118, 120. Lophburi, 56. Love, D. H., 125. Low, James, 157, 160, 161, 162, 191, 194, 200, 320. Lo-yang Ch'ieh-lan Chi, 49. Lucas, C. P., 186, 191, 196, 197. Luce, G. H., 55, 67, 70, 74. Lukut, 167, 168, 170, 177. Lumbang, Mpu, 271, 272, 273. Luwu, 145. Luzon, 97. Ma’abri, 224. Ma’bar, Mabar, 224. Macao, 137. Macassâ, see Macassar. Macassar, 58, 115, 145; Macassarese pirates, 231. Macgregor, I. A., 109. Mackenzie, Compton, 2. MacLeod, N., 108. Madras, 115, 125, 126, 128, 130, 148; Association, 124,128,129,130; civil service, 125; Council, 130, i32(?); firm, 123; merchants, 123; Select Committee, 123-9; Syndicate, 123. Madre de Deos, 116. Ma ya mjuat, 73 ; = Muhammad (the Prophet). Magdalen College, 1. Magdalen School, 1. Mahabalipuram, 78. Maha-Deva, 281. Ma-ha-mo : the Muslim Haji, Ch‘i-ni, 94Maharaja, 174; = Abu Bakar, Temenggong of Johore. Mahmud, Sultan of Malacca, 239.

350

Index

Mahmud, ex-Sultan of Lingga, 178, 179. Ma Huan, 87, 88, 89, 95. Majapahit, 65, 71, 231, 233, 234, 268. Mâjid, Ibn, 62. Majumdar, R. C., 36. Makota ‘Alam, 109; = Iskandar Muda. Malabar, 60, 224; Coast, 85, 95. Malacca, 4, 71-73, 87-89, 93-120, 123-4, 126, 128, i31-9, 167-70, 176-7, 204, 226, 231-41, 307, 320; relations between China and, 87 sqq. ; siege of, 109 sqq.; State Mountain of, 98, 101 ; Sultanate, 33Malaka = Malacca. Malay: Annals, see Sejarah Melayu; Archipelago, 124, 132; -Baba Chi­ nese marriages, 218; -Baba settle­ ment, 220; ritual of, courts, 55, 72; language, 213, 221; nationalism, 218, 221; Peninsula, 26, 29, 30, 36, 42-45, 49-53, 56, 58-60, 62-66, 68, 71-72, 76,78,80,82-84,96,122-40, 166-7, 170-2, 178-9, 181-2, 200, 202; Ancient History of the Malay Peninsula, 33-75 ; Malay Peninsula during the late eighteenth century, 122-40; ritual and protocol at Pen­ insular courts, 55, 72; ports, 138; States, 122, 128, 137, 139, 148, 149, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 181, 182, 183; Protected States, 184-202; Studies, 9, 320-39; Translation Bureau, 4. Malaya, 2, 6, 8, 9, 33, 38, 40, 61, 140, 142, 144, 145, 152, 166, 205, 206, 213, 238; Association of British, 8; Radio, 213 ; University of Malaya, 8. Malayan: culture, 220; reinterpreta­ tion of, History, 141-53; identity, 215; Union, 8; Malayans, 153. Malays, 2, 72, 115, 133, 148, 157, 158, 160, 161, 167, 204, 208-17, 220, 241. Malaysia, 72. Malâyu, 26, 27, 28. Malik al-Mahmud, 227. Malik al-Mansur, 226, 227. Malik as-Saleh, 224, 225, 227, 238; = Merah Silau. Malik az-Zahir, 226, 227, 228, 238. Mänava Dharmaiästra, 46. Mandalay, 70. Manevilette, 37. Mangku Koténu, 270, 271. Manikkiraman, 80, 81. Manilla, 119, 142. Manjung, 228.

Ma Pin, 92-94, 98-99. Mâppappâ]am, 59. maps, ancient, 37. Marajà, marraja (title of Achinese general), no, 113, 114. Marang, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220; harbour, 206; river, 205, 206, 207, 217. Maria Theresa, 134. Marican and Sons, publishers, 8. Marraja, see Marajà. Marrison, G. E., 66. Marsden, William, 258, 320, 321. Martin, Isaak de St., 256, 258, 266. Martindale, D., 47. Mas'ùdï, 35, 43, 68, 83. Matang, 3,4. Mather, R. B., 47. Ma Tuan-lin, 47, 55, 74. Mauritius, 124. Maxwell, Sir William, 139, 186, 191, 321. May, R. Ie, 76. Ma-yeh-wêng, 97. Mead, J. P., 223. Mead, Margaret, 292. Meade, 188, 197. Mecca, 211, 212, 224, 225. Mediterranean, 45. Meilink-Roelofsz, M. A. P., 153. Mekong, 30, 32. Melaka, see Malacca. Melayu, Tanah, 320 sqq. Meliapor, 109, 112, 117. Mello (Sampaio), Gaspar de, 109, 120. Mello, Jorge de, 120. Menangkabau, see Minangkabau. Mengiri, 224. Mengkasar, see Macassar. Merbok, Estuary, 83. Mercer, Thomas, 138. Merdalong, 163; = Phathalung. Merewah, Daing, 146. Mergui, 131, 140; archipelago, 68, 69, 137, 139; coast, 136; district, 70. Meru, Mount, 52. Métri (Sang), 278, 279, 281. Mévilimbangam, 59. Middle East, 40, 82. migration of rural Chinese in Treng­ ganu, 203 sqq. Mills, J. V., 37, 71, 115. Mills, L. A., 141, 156. Minâna Tâmvan, 25-32. Minangkabau, 27, 97, 233; ruler, 145. Ming: court, 100, 102, 103, 104; dynasty, 87. Ming Shih, 87, 88, 100. Ming Shih-lu, 88. Ministry of Rites, 91, 94, 101.

Index Min-nang-ko-po, 97. Missions, 89-93, 95-IO3î see also Envoys. Mitchell, 187, 188, 192, 197, 199, 201. Mo'an Sukhodai, 71. Mochamad Tjieng Naim Baktie Naija Widjaija, 260; see Muhammad Ching Sa'idullah. Moens, J. L., 26, 59. Moluccas, 132. Monckton, Edward, 125-30, 134, 140, 144, 145, 148, 151Mongol: nations, 89; tribes, 47. Mon Khmer, 32. Moquette, J. P., 222, 228, 230. Mormonism, 293. Morse, H. B., 137, 138. Moule, A. C., 61, 88. Mount, 37. Muar, 87, 172, 178. Muda, river, 140, 161 ; cf. Kuala Muda. Mudin, Penglima, bin Penglima Hasan, 329. Muhammad (the Prophet), 73, 293, 300. Muhammad, Sultan of Ma abri, 224. Muhammad, Sultan of Selangor, 168, 170. Muhammad, Ching Sa'idullah, 260, 261, 265; = Tjing Saiedoellah Mohd. Edries. Muhammad Jiwa Zainal 'Abidin Mu'azzam Shah, Sultan of Kedah, 147, 148, 149, 152. Muhammad Salleh, Hajji, ibn Mu­ hammad (of Kelantan), 162. Muhammad Salleh (of Kubang Ro­ tan), 162. Muhammad Yunus Maris, 242. Mundy, Peter, 113. Mus, P., 70. Muscat, 120. Musi, 26, 27, 28. Mu'tabar, 224. Mutahir, Bendahara of Pahang, 175, 176, 178. Muzaffar Shah, Sultan of Malacca, 232.

Naga Mengulor, Kampong, 210. Nägarakrtägama, 38, 63, 71, 236, 237. Nainar, Muhammad Husayn, 35. Nakawn Sri Tamarat, see Nakhon Sri Thammarat. Nakhon, 156-8, 162-3; Nakhonese, 160, 164; Nakhon Sri (Si) Tham­ marat, 60, 69, 80; governor (Chau Phaya) of Nakhon Sri Thammarat (= Rajah Ligore), 156-9, 163-4;

351

province of Nakhon Sri Thammarat, 156, 157. Nandamanna, Pagoda, 67. Nangur, 56. Nan-Hai, 38. Naning, 128. Nanking, 88, 98, 99, 101, 103. Nan Shih, 45. Napier, William, 171, 174, 175. Napoleon, 152. Naravaranagara, 30. Navy, Royal, 124. Negapatam, Negapatäo, 109, 113-15. Negrais, 125, 135. Negri Sembilan, 7, 38, 72, 73, 168, 184. Nehru, Jawaharlal, 142. Nelson, 151. Nepal, 89. Neptune (s), 123. Nerus, river, 209. Netherlands Indies, 143. Newbold, T. J., 167, 168. New College, 1. Ngah Ibrahim, Menteri, 170. Nicobar Islànds, Nicobars, 134. Nilakanta Sastri, K. A., 26, 36, 58, 60, 77, 78, 79, 80. Nivison, D. S., 152. Nong Jiwa, Tunku, 147. Norfolk (s), 129. Noronha, Don Miguel de, Count of Linhares, 112, 113, 121. Nyaung-u Sawrahan, 74.

Oc-Eo, 56. Odelim, no. O’Donnell, Captain, 133. Odyssey, 3. O’Flynn, S., 5. Olschki, L., 73. Oman, 83. 'Omar Talib, 260. Oosterwijck, Jan, 120. Ophuijsen, van, 323. Orang Laut, 64. Orta, Garcia da, 66. Osborn, S., 158, 160, 161. Overbeck, H., 145, 146. Oxford, 323, 326, 327; University, 8. Padang, 243. Padang Ayer, 209, 220. Padang Maya, 228, 229. Padang Sira, 206. Pagan, 67. Page, 37. Pa’ Hak, Kampong, 210; Hak.

_ . = China

352

Index

Pahang, 61, 63, 64, 72, 73, 91, 113, 115, 122, 167, 168, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 197, 198, 258; civil war, 175-80 ; murder case, 198 ; State Council, 198. Pai-hua, 91. Pajigu, 67; = Pegu. Paka, 220. Pak Bilis, Kampong, 208. Pakchan, river, 136. Palembang, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 87, 97» 98, 9$, 102, 103, I3I> 259. Paly at, Mpu, 267. Pânduranga, 59. z Pané, Armijn, 304, 313. Pané, Sanusi, 314, 317. Pang-ha-la, 91. Pang-ko-la, 91. Pangkor, Engagement, 187, 188. Pan Malayan Islamic Party, 221. P‘an-p*an, 47, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 71Pansur, 97. Pantai, 235. Pantou, 48. Paramesvara, érï, king of Ko-lo, 54. Parameswara, founder of Malacca, 87, 100, 102, 103, 104. Parani, Daing, 146. Paris, 88, 256. Parrish, S. C., 24. Parsons, T., 42, 283. Parthia, 44, 48. Pasai, 222-34 ; Chronicles, see Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai; si, 223, 226. Pasangan, 223; river, 225. Patane = Patani. Patani, 51, 72, 125, 140; Queen of, 105, ”3» 115, 116, 118; Malay States, 157. Paterson, H. S., 61. Paterson, William, 171, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180. Paterson and Simons, 181, 183. P*echaburi, 60. Pedir, 131. Pegu, 67, 73, 125, 131, 132; Peguans, 67. Pei Shih, 52, 72. P'ei Wen-yün Fu, 43. Pelliot, P., 28, 34, 44, 47, 48, 55, 87, 88, 93, 95. Pe Maung Tin, 70, 74. Penaga, 161, 162, 163. Penang, 125, 126, 127, 129, 139, 140, 149, 159, 160, 162, 163, 168, 169, 182; Argus, 178; Gazette, 178. Pengkalan Bujang, 83, 84, 85. Peninsula, see under Malay.

pepper cultivation, 206-7, 209. Perah, 206 ; see also Peroh. Perak, 2, 3, 7, 58, 72, 73, 86, 108, 119, 120, 122, 128, 133, 137, 140, 168, 169, 170, 177, 182, 184, 187, 189, 190, 192, 194, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 321, 329; (Government) Gazette, 2, 201 ; —’s Poet Laureate, 3; Railway, 196; slavery and debt bondage in, 199. Perk, J., 313. Perlak, 224-6, 230. Perlis, 145, 148, 157; Kuala, 128; sungai, 148. Peroh, Kampong, 206, 207. Perpatih Pan dak, Tun, 225. Perpatih Tulus Segara Tuikan, 228. Persian Gulf, 85, 112, 120. Persians, 48. Phanga, 159, 160. Phan Rang, 59. Pharao, 311. Phathalung, 163; = Merdalong. Phaya: Aphy Thibet, 158, 162; Borirak Phuthon, 160; Si Phiphat, 158, 159, 160. Philippines, 74, 86, 142, 143. Phnom Baldièh, 70. Phra’: Borirak Phubet, 158 (= Phaya Aphay Thibet); Sena Nuchit, 158, 160, 163; Chau Phaya, Khlang, 158. Phuket Island, 51, 76. Phun-Phin, 51. Pien, 48. Pigeaud, Th., 267. Pigot, Lord, 125. Pinder-Wilson, 82. Pinto, Antönio Vaz, 115. Pinto, Mendez, 66. Pissurlencar, Panduronga, 106, 107, 108, 114, 120. Pi-sung, 48, 49. Plassey (s), 123. Poerbatjaraka, R. Ng., 27, 28. Poh Sallee, 135. P'o-lo, 97, 98. Polo, Marco, 61, 73. Polynesia, 74. Pondicherry, 134. P*o-ni, 98. Ponnani, 95. Pontianak, 257. Portugal, 241; Portuguese, 37, 112, 115, 120, 143, 232, 237, 239, 240, 241. Po-ssû, 42. Powell, I. B., 123. Prai, 161 ; river, 140. Prambanan, 308.

Index Pra Narai, group of sculptures, 76-79, 81-82. Prapanca, 71. Pratanjala, 278, 279, 281. Princeton, 88. Protestantism, 283, 300. Ptolemy, 36, 81. Pudjangga Baru, 304, 305, 313, 316. Pulau Aur, 62. Pulau Babi, 205, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214, 220. Pulau Butang, 115. Pulau Dinding, 139. Pulau Kra, 69. Pulau Kundur, 37, 62, 115. Pulau Manir, 209, 220. Pulau Redang, 62. Pulau Sekijang, 38. Pulau Tioman, 62. Pulleyblank, E. G., 88. Pulo Jerejak, 140. Pulubutum, 115, 117. Pun-pin, 51. Pura Dalem, 271. Pùrnavarman, 74. Purva Bhumi, 269, 270; Kamulan, 271, 274, 277, 278 sqq. ; Tua, 271. Pusalker, A. D., 36. Pyu, 70, 74. Qäqulla, 68. Qazwïnï, 68, 69. Quaritch Wales, H. G., 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86. Queiros, Femâo de, 107. Quinsai, 61; = Hang-chou.

Rachado, Cape, 115, 117. Radin, P., 286. Raffles, Sir Stamford, 5, 6, 234, 256, 257, 258, 329; College, 6. Râjapûrï, 60. Rajendra, 59. Rama III, 159. Rama VI, 74. Ramachandra Dikshitar, V. R., 36. Räma Gamhen, 71. Ram-Hurmuz, 39. Ramus io, 66. Rangda, 292, 293, 295. Rânïrï, 242, 243, 257. Ranjuna Tapa, Sang, 239. Ratburi, 60. Rawa, Kampong, 206, 216. Read, W. H., 171, 172. Red Earth: Kingdom, 64; Land, 40, 5L 52, 55, 57Redfield, R., 43. Red Sea, 85. Reinwardt, Professor, 266.

353

Rembau, 128. Rheo, Rhio, see Riau. Riau, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 131, 136, 137, 138, 139, H®, 145, 146', 258, 260, 329. Richmond, Duke of, 122, 123. Rilaka, Upu Tenribong Daing, 145. Rimba Jerun, 223. Ripon, 187, 188, 192, 197, 198, 199, 201. Robeck, de, 195. Robinson, Sir William, 185. Rockhill, W. W., 34, 87, 89. Rodrigues, Matthias, 106. Rohr-Sauer, A. von, 35. Romans, 112. Ronkel, Ph. S. van, 24, 25, 244, 256, 257, 258, 261, 265. Roolvink, R., 222, 223, 233, 242. Roorda van Eysinga, P. P., 258. Rouffaer, G. P., 33, 59. Royal Academy, 8. Royal Asiatic Society, 7, 8, 235, 257; Malayan Branch, 2; journal Royal Asiatic Society Malayan Branch, 2, 321, 322, 330. Royal'Geographic Society, 81. Royal Henry (s), 129. Royal Singapore Yacht Club, 8. Rumbold, Thomas, 130, 131. Ruskin, 2. Rustah, Ibn, 68. Rustam Effendi, 313. Ryukyu, 91, 92. Sabam, 37. Sabana, 37. Sabäo, 115 ; see also Sabam. Sahara, 37. Sabon, see Sabam. Sadka, Emily, 184, 186. Sagaing, 67. Saiburi (1. = Kedah; 2. = Patani), 164. Saigon, river, 32. Saiva, 271, 272, 274, 281. Sak In, Nai, 163. Salahu’d-din, Sultan of Selangor, 147. Salasilah Berau, 235. Salasilah Kutai, 237. Salengore, 139; = Selangor. Samaräiccakahä, 50. Sambor-Prei Kuk, 30; = Is’änapura. Samudra, 91-93,96-103,223-30; Marhum, 238. Sands, North and South, 69. Sang-hyang-hujung, 38; = Sungei Ujong. Sangkara, 280. Sangkul Putih, 278.

354

Index

Çankhay, 44. Santiago (bulwark at Malacca), 111. Säo Domingos (bulwark at Malacca), in. Säo Francisco, 116; hill of, m, 112. Säo Joäo, in, 114, 116, 117. Sâo Thomé (de Meliapor), 112, 115. sati, 57. Sauvaget, J., 35. Sawang, 37; see Sabam. Sawrahan, 74. Schafer, E., 48. Schiefner, F. A. von, 67. Schippers, Thomas, 126, 128. Schlegel, C. G., 66. Schlegel, G., 34. Schnitger, F. M., 32. School of Oriental and African Studies, 7, 87. Schools : Malay, 4, 5 ; in Malaya, 6. Schouten, Justus, 71. Scott, James, 127,138,139,140, 148. Scott O’Connor, V. C., 70. Sdok Kak Thom, 55. Secret Committee, 127. Seguntang, 24. Sejarah Melayu, 7, 58, 59, 99, 151, 222-41, 257, 323, 33°« Selangor, 7, 38, 122, 123, 126, 128, I37> U8, 139, I44> 145, 146, 147, 148, 168, 169, 184, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200; government, 187; Land Depart­ ment of, 193; Railway, 195-6; river, 123. Select Committee, 129. Semerluki, Keraing, 58. Semudera, see Samudra. Semujong, 38; = Sungei Ujong. Seng-chih, 51. Sengguhu, 267, 268, 269, 272. Setiu, 220. Setul, 157. Seven Years War, 123, 137. Seychelles, 134. Sha'ir Ikan Tongkoi, 243, 244. Shaman, Dravidian, 47. Sha-mi-ti, 100. Shamsu’l-Din, 243, 244. Shan-tung, 40. Sharh Rubai Hamzah al-Fançürï, 243, 244. She-ch'ien-shan, 39. Sheehan, J. J., 71. Shellabear, W. G., 227, 322, 323, 329. Shih Chi, 47. Shih~huo, 62. Shih-lu, 88. Shiwa, see Siva. Shui Ching Chu, 49.

Shulan, Raja, 59. Shu-yü Chou-tzü Lu, 94. Sia-chi-san, 39; = She-ch’ien-shan. Siak, 128, 131, 139, 145. Siam, 72, 73, 89-102, 131, 149, 156, 162, 164, 178, 179, 227-9;southern provinces of, 159; Gulf of, 51, 81; King of, 156; Siamese, 130, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162; Siamese Tin Syndicate, 76. Siddhimantra, 268. Silappadikâram, 50. Silau, Merah, 223, 224, 230. Silsilah Melayu dan Bugis, 151. Silveira, Dorn Jeronimo da, 108, 119, 120. Simons, H. M., 171, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180. Sincapura, 115; = Singapore. Sind, 85. Singapore, 6, 69, 87, 115, 142, 149, 167, 168, 170-81, 188, 193, 198, 199, 235, 236, 239, 325; Chamber of Commerce, 168, 176, 179, 199; Free Press, 172,, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179; Island, 60; Straits of, 108, 119. Singapurs, see Singapore. Singaradja, 268. Singhal, D. P., 144. Singora, 115, 131, 140, 162. Sinha, N. K., 123. Sinqua, 138. Siraf, 83. $i tsi City, 52; = Seng-chih. $i tsi Rock, 39. Situmorang, T. D., 223, 237. Siva, 268-77, 281, 308, 332. Sivaditya, 277. Skeat, W. W., 6, 7, 74, 337. Skinner, C., 156. Smail, J. R. W., 144, 152. Smith, George, 125. Smith, Sir Cecil Clementi, 186, 187, 190-201. Soedjatmoko, 143. Sogdiens, 48. So-li, 94, 95 ; = Chola. Solo (= Surakarta), 304, 305, 307. So-lo, 97. Solomon, Song of, 316. Songkhla, 157, 158, 160, 162. South-east Asia, 41, 43, 45, 52, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 89, 90, 100, 145, 152; history of, 144; reinterpretation of South-east Asian history, 143; pre­ Malaccan economic history of, 85; knowledge of Chinese officials about, 89, 9iSouza, De, 123, 124, 125, 129. Spain, 143.

Index Spectator, The, 84. Speedy, 199. Speelman, 257. Spencer, J. E., 74. Spenlow, 187. Spice Islands, 133. Ssrî Dharmarâja (Nâgara), 60. Érî Kçetra, 70. Sri Tri Buana, 239. Sri Vijaya, 24-33, 4°> 58-60, 90-91, 203, 237, 238. Stanley, 190. Stapel, F. W., 65, 236. Stein, R. A., 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 68. Stevens, 67. Stevens, Captain John, 107. Stevenson, R. L., 1. St. George, Order of St. Michael and, 7. Stith Thompson, 265. St. John’s Hill, 116. St. John’s Island, 38; = Pulau Sekijang. St. Matthew, 139; —’s Island, 136. St. Michael, Order of, and St. George, 7St. Paul’s Hill, 133. Straits: (= Malay Peninsula), 195, 198, 199, 200, 201; Singapore Branch of the, Association, 199; Government Gazette, 173; Pension Regulations, 190; Settlements, 16670, 172, 174, 177, 183, 188, 190, 200, 201, 204; of Malacca, 58, 69, 83, 93, 103, 122, 123, 124, 131, 134, 139, 140, 145, 149, 181, 309. Sturler, J. E. de, 258. Sturrock, A. J., 328. Stutterheim, W. F., 27, 32, 71, 74. Sudarsana, 70. Su-er-mi-nang, 97. Suffren, 125, 135. Sui, 57; Sui Shu, 40, 48, 50, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 64, 72. Sukarno, 300. Suk'ofai, 60. Sulaiman, Raja, 145. Sulaiman al-Mahri, 62, 66. Sulâlatu's-Salälin, 241 ; = Sejarah Melayu. Sullivan, 123-5, 129. Sullivan, Lawrence, 134. Su-lu, Sulu, 98. Sumatra, 6, 26, 29, 64, 80, 90, 107, 115, 232, 243, 304, 306, 307, 312, 316; north, 122, 230, 303, 304; east, 132, 137; west, 132; west coast of, 133, 134; south, 300. Sundas, Lesser, 74. Sunday Mail, 65.

355

Sung: Dynasties, 83, 85 ; the southern, 61 ; Shih, 43. Sungei Muda, 161 ; see Muda river. Sungei Ujong, 38, 167, 168, 169, 176, 177, 196, 200; Undang of, 176. Supreme Court, 199. Swellengrebel, J. L., 287, 293, 294, 297, 300. Swettenham, Sir Frank, 3, 8,142, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 321. Syack = Siak.

T’ai, rulers, 52. Taiping, 201. T'ai-p'ing Huan Yü Chi, 48, 49, 50, 5L 52, 53, 69, 72. T'ai-p'ing Yii-lan, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 57, 64, 68. T*ai-ts*ang, 98. T’ai-tsu Kao Huang-ti, 91. Tajik, 73. Tâju’d-din, Tajuddin, see Ahmad Tajuddin Halim Shah. Täju's-Salätin, 241. Takakusu, J., 34. Takdir Alisjahbana, 304, 313, 314, 315, 317Takola, Takko la, 36, 39, 50, 81. Takuapa, 56, 76, 78, 80, 82-86, 131, 159; inscription, 79, 80; region, 81 ; river, 76, 77, 78, 81; sites, 83, 85. Talak Sembang, 227. Tala ng Tuwo, 31. Tamalin, 50. Tâmbralinga, 50, 60, 63, 65. Tamil, inscription, 77, 78, 79, 82. Tampuon, 32; = Thpuon. Tanah sari, 66. T'an Ch'ien, 92, 104. T'ang: account, 57; dynasty, 82, 83, 84; period, 28; times, 48, 51, 64. Tangur, 56. Tanjong Malim, 4. Tanjong Putri, 174. Tanjong Putus, 132. Tanjong Sizan, 39. Tanjore, 58; inscription, 36. Tan-tan, 51, 53, 54, 64, 71, 72. Tantrism, 271 ; Tantric rites, 63. Tantu Panggelaran, 2,67. Tao, 285. Tao-i Chih-lioh, 63. Tapah, 3. Târanâtha, 67. Tarling, N., 170, 171. Tartar, tribes, 47. Taruma, 71, 74. Tarusan, 235.

356

Index

Ta T'ang Hsi-yü Ch'iu-fa Kao-seng Chuan, 40. Tatengkeng, 313, 314, 315. Tavernier, 66. Tavoy, 131. Tây-ninh, 32. Tâzï, 73. Teeuw, A., 222, 223, 233, 237, 304. Telaga Batu, inscription, 25, 26, 27. Telok Ketapang, 139. Teluk Ayer Tawar, 161. Temasik, 60, 63. Temenggong (of Johore): 1. Ibrahim, 170-3, 175; 2. Abu Bakar, 173-5, 177-81. Tenasserim, 66, 67, 122, 131; coast, 136; estuary, 70; different spellings of the name, 66-67. Tengah, Raja, 225 ; = Raja Kechil Besar. Terror of the World (s), 114, 121. Thailand, 80, 149, 210; see also Siam. Thang Chan, Nai, 163. Thbong Khmum, 32. The Hague, 256, 260. Thiphakarawong, 158, 159. Thornton, John, 27. Thpuon, 32; = Tampuon. Thùpârum, pagoda, 66. Tibbets, G. R., 36, 83. Tibbett, B., 65. Tibet, 89. Tiele, P. A., 108, 120. Tien-sun, 44. t'ien t’juk, 44, 47 ; = India. Times, The, 8. Timmerman Thyssen, 258. Tin: mining, 83, 167-70, 176; trade, 177. Tirok, Kampong, 208-9, 211-14, 218; = Kampong China. Tjing Saiedoellah Mohd. Edries, see Muhammad Ching Sa'idullah. Tmon, 32. Tok Setol, Kampong, 207-8, 214, 216, 217. Tomé Pires, 87, 95. Topping, M., 148. Toyohachi Fujita, 62. trade: Bureau of Maritime, 92, 97, 98, 100; early maritime, of Asia, 86; Malayan, in the thirteenth century, 40; between Middle East and Far East, 81 ; Muslim trading com­ munities along the South China coast, 61 ; pre-Malaccan Asian maritime commerce, 84; South­ east Asian, 41 ; Chinese ceramic export, 85; goods, 40-41, 63-64, 82-84, 96; products, 125.

Trafalgar, battle of, 151. Tran, dynasty, 102. Trang, 131, 157. Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, 171. Tregonning, K. G., 142, 143, 151, 186. Trengganu,61-64, 122, 128, 130,132, 140, 178, 179, 181, 203-21, 258; Malay, 212, 217; river, 61, 62, 203, 205-9, 217, 219; stone, 61; Sultan (raja, king) of, 128, 130, 176; valley, 203. Tretayuga, 270. Trichinopoly, 79. Trincomali, 133. Tübingen, 256. Tuhfat al-Nafis, 258, 260. Tu-k’un, 48. T'ung Ch'ih, 71. T'ung Tien, 40, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 64, 69, 71, 72. T'ung T'uk, 81, 82, 84, 85. Tun-sun, 44-48, 50, 55, 57, 66, 67. Turkestan, western, 48. Turki, tribes, 47. Turnbull, C. M., 166. Tuuk, H. N. van der, 33, 243, 244, 258, 259, 260, 278. Tu Yu, 48. Twitchett, D., 152. Tz'ü-t’ung (ch'eng), 61 ; = Zaytun.

Ujong Pasir, 116. Ujong Salang, see Junk Ceylon. Uma, 278, 279, 281 ; see also Bhatari. United States, 143. Upu Tenri bong Daing Rilaka, 145.

Vahu Ravu, 270, 272. Vaisnava, 274. Valaippandupi, 59. Vaiidi-Togan, A. Z., 35. Vamana Puräna, 50. Varthema, 66. Vasconcellos, Gonçalo Mendes, 120. Vasuki, 70. Vella, W. F., 149, 156, 159. Victoria, Queen, 175. Vietnamese, 32. Vilvatikta, 268. Virgins, Feastday of the Eleven Thousand, 112. Vishnu, Visnu, 79, 276, 281; Visnu Ening, 269. Viévakarma, Visvakarman, 47, 273. Vogel, J. Ph., 74. Voorhoeve, P., 242, 243, 252, 256. Wade, collection, 88.

Index Wakaf Tapai, 208, 211,212, 214, 220. Wako, 101. Waleheren (s), 112. Waley, A., 67. Wang Ch'ung-wu, 91. Wang Gungwu, 63, 87, 203. Wang Ta-yüan, 63, 64, 75. Warmington, E. H., 49. Warren, Captain, 160. Weber, Max, 42,47, 53, 283, 284, 285, 286; Weberian, 296. Weld, Sir Frederick, 185, 187-90, 193-6, 200. Wellan, J. W. J., 26, 27, 30. Wellesley, Province, 160, 161, 162, 169. Wen-hsien T'ung-k'ao, 47, 49-55, 57, 69, 72. Wên Liang-fu, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99. Wemdly, 258. Wertheim, W. F., 70. West, H. J., 150. Wheatley, P., 33-35, 37, 43"45, 49~5i, 62-63, 67, 71, 73, 83, 85, 88, 203. Wheeler, 136. Wichiankhiri, 158, 159. Wilhelmus (bastion at Malacca), 133. Wilis, Mount, 309. Wilkinson, C., 122. Wilkinson, R. J., 2, 3, 4, 9, 200, 243, 306, 321-4, 330-3, 337William of Rubruck, 73. Windsor, 174. Winstedt, Eric, r. Winstedt, Sir Richard, passim; biblio­ graphy, 10-23, 325 sqq.; articles about Malay texts, 330. Wolff, E. C. H., 4.

357

Wolters, O. W., 40, 42, 67. Wong Lin Ken, 168. Wood, Sir Charles, 174, 179-82. Wright, A. F., 152. Wu-pei-chih, 39, 62, 66; charts, 38. Wu Wen-liang, 80.

Xavier, Padre Manuel, S.J., 105, 106, 107, 113. Yahya, Raja Haji, 3. Yangtse, 98, 103. Yao Ch‘a, 44. Yao Ssù-lien, 44. Ya‘qübî, 69. Yâqüt, 51, 68, 69, 71. Yasodharapura, 70, 71. Yâvadvîpa, 39. Yen Ts’ung-chien, 94. Yin Ch'ing, 89, 93-104. Ymg-ya: (Shêng-lan chiao-chu), 87, 89, 95Yi-tsing, 28; see I-Ching. Yüan, dynasties, 83, 85. Yüeh Shih, 48. Yule-Bumell, no. Yung-lo, 88,89,91,93,95,96,98-104; ‘ Yung-lo Shih-lu, 88, 89, 92, 94-97, 100, 101, 103, 104. Yusuf, 170.

Za’ba, see Zainal ‘Abidin bin Ahmad. Zäbag, Maharaja of, 30. Zaide, Gregorio F., 142, 143. Zainal ‘Abidin, ruler of Samudra, 100. Zainal ‘Abidin bin Ahmad, Dr. Haji, 4, 7, 9, 142, 320; = Za’ba. Zaytun, 61.