Asian and African studies blog

This blog is normally used to present items from the British Library’s collections, but today I would like to introduce a Malay gem from a neighbouring institution in London. The Wellcome Library, housed at 186 Euston Road, was founded on the collections of Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936).  Best known for its medical materials, the Wellcome also holds important Asian collections especially pertaining to medicine, divination and magic, including Malay, Batak and Javanese manuscripts (described in Ricklefs & Voorhoeve 1982).   

Last week Wellcome Images was launched, making over 100,000 images freely available for download and reuse, in both low and high resolution.  A search on the keyword ‘Malay’ yielded a wealth of items including Malay manuscripts on magic, photographs of Sarawak and Penang, and watercolour drawings of Singapore and Johor.  But the most exciting item to me was a copy of an early Malay newspaper published in Singapore in 1877, no other copies of which are known to survive anywhere else in the world: Peridaran al-Shams wa-al-Qamar, ‘The revolution of the sun and the moon’.  


Peridaran al-Shams wa-al-Qamar, issue no.20, 30 August 1877.  Wellcome Library, Malay collection / Hervey collection / Pamphlets / 1.

The publication of the title was first noted in January 1880 by E.W. Birch, who mentioned Peridaran Shamsu Walkamer as one of two early Malay newspapers that had ‘after a short run, died out’.  When William Roff published his seminal guide to pre-war Malay periodicals in 1972, although no copies had been traced he guessed that the paper was hand-lithographed.  The existence of a copy of this rare newspaper in the D.F.A. Hervey collection in the Wellcome Library was first brought to light by Ellen, Hooker & Milner (1981: 92), but as their article was mainly about Hervey's Malay manuscripts, not many scholars of early Malay printing were alerted to this discovery.  In 1992, Ahmat Adam noted a contemporary reference in the Padang newspaper Bentara Melajoe, no.8, of 8 May 1887, which mentioned that Peridaran was a weekly, first published on 19 April 1877, and that the editor ‘had studied with Keasberry and Abdullah Munsyi’.  Benjamin Peach Keasberry (1811-1875) was an American missionary who had pioneered lithographic printing in Singapore, while Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi (1796-1854) - a renowned Malay writer, scribe and teacher, and author of the Hikayat Abdullah (1849) - had first learned typeset printing from missionaries in Melaka, and later worked with Keasberry at his lithographic press at Bukit Zion in Singapore.

The issue of Peridaran al-Shams wa-al-Qamar shown here is no.20, dated 30 August 1877, with its 8 pages numbered 160-167, and it is indeed lithographed.  From information on the front page, the newspaper appeared every Thursday, and cost 15 cents per issue.  The list of agents covers not only the states of the Malay peninsula but also further afield: Johor and Teluk Belanga, Melaka, Kelang – Selangor, Pulau Pinang, Betawi [present-day Jakarta], Padang, Pontianak and Sarawak.  As well as articles on Aceh and Cirebon and the Russo-Turkish war, of great interest is the main story on the front page: a portion of the serialised Pelayaran Ibrahim Munsyi, ‘The voyages of Ibrahim Munsyi’.  This account by Ibrahim, Dato’ Bentara Dalam of Johor (d. 1904) and son of Abdullah Munsyi, was previously believed to have been printed for the first time posthumously in 1919 (Sweeney & Phillips 1975: xxxii).   Hervey had studied Malay with Ibrahim, and this might be a reason why he kept this issue of the newspaper.

The first Malay newspaper to be published in Singapore was the typeset Jawi Peranakkan, launched in 1876.  However, the earliest surviving copies of this title, which are held in the British Library, only date from March 1881.  This leaves the Wellcome Library’s copy of Peridaran al-Shams wa-al-Qamar of August 1877 not just the only known issue of this title, but also as the oldest known surviving issue of a Malay newspaper from Singapore.

The oldest surviving issue of Jawi Peranakkan, vol.5, no.214, 28 March 1881.  British Library, OP 434.

Further reading

Ahmat Adam, Sejarah dan bibliografi akhbar dan majalah Melayu abad kesembilan belas.  Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1992.
E.W. Birch, The vernacular press in the Straits. Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1879, (4):51-5.
R.F. Ellen, M.B. Hooker and A.C. Milner, The Hervey Malay Collections in the Wellcome Institute.  Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1981, 54 (1): 82-92.
M.C. Ricklefs & P. Voorhoeve, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: addenda et corrigenda.  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1982, Vol.XLV, Part 2, pp.300-322.
William R. Roff, Bibliography of Malay and Arabic periodicals published in the Straits Settlements and Peninsular Malay States, 1876-1941. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Amin Sweeney and Nigel Phillips. The voyages of Mohamed Ibrahim Munsyi.  Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Annabel Teh Gallop
Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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Asian and African Studies have just uploaded more than 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts online. This is the result of two years' work in an ongoing project sponsored by the Iran Heritage Foundation together with the Bahari Foundation, the Barakat Trust, the Friends of the British Library, the Soudavar Memorial Foundation and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.


The jackal Dimnah tricks the ox Shanzabah into believing that his former friend the lion had turned against him, and was intending to eat him. From Husayn Va'iz Kashifi’s Anvar-i Suhayli. Mughal, 1610-11 (BL Add.18579, f87v)

The manuscripts were selected for their historical, literary and artistic importance and form part of a three year project to provide digital records of our Persian manuscript collection and images of 50 manuscripts.  We have created a dedicated project page which gives details of all the digitised manuscripts together with links to their images and supporting documentation. This is located at Digital Access to Persian Manuscripts but can also be easily found by clicking on the ‘Persian’ tab at the top of this page.

We’ve already written posts about several of these manuscripts, for example the Jalayirid Khamsah of Khvaju Kirmani (Add18113); Shah Tahmasp’s copy of Nizami’s Khamsah (Or.2265) and the late Timurid Mantiq al-Tayr by Farid al-Din ʻAttar (Add.7735), posts 1, 2 and 3 . We’ll be publishing more during the next few months so please subscribe to our blog (add your email in the box at the top of this page) to keep up with further developments.

Meanwhile, here is a selection from what we’ve digitised so far! Click on the links to go directly to the digitised folio.


The well known story of the hare who tricks the lion into drowning by attacking his own reflection in the well. From Naṣr Allāh Munshī's Kalīlah va Dimnah dated 707/1307-8 (BL Or.13506, f 52v)

The opening of Timur’s grandson Iskandar Sultan’s pocket encyclopedia containing 23 works. Copied 813-4/1410-11 (BL Add.27261, ff 2v-3r)




The fire-ordeal of Siyavush. From Firdawsi’s Shahnamah, Shiraz Safavid style, dating from the 16th century (BL IO Islamic 3540, f 98r)


 

The dragon outside its mountain cave explaining to Darab that it had been sent by God as His servant on earth. Artist: Narayan, c.1580-85. From the Darabnamah, a prose romance written in the 12th century by Abu Tahir Tarsusi (BL Or.4615, f112v)



A leaf from the Saddar (‘100 doors’), a popular compilation of 100 rules for Zoroastrians which range from justifying instant death for sodomy to the treatment of good and evil animals, and the avoidance of different forms of pollution. This copy, dated Samvat 1631 (AD 1575), is in Persian language, but transcribed in Avestan (Old Iranian) script, together with a Gujarati translation (BL IO Islamic 3043, f 137r)




Fath ʻAli Shah Qajar with two princes in attendance, receiving Mirza Riza Quli Munshi al-Mamalik. From the Shahanshah namah by Fath ʻAli Khan Saba. Qajar, dated 1225/1810 (BL IO Islamic 3442, f 64v)

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

Among the treasures recently digitised thanks to the generous support of the Iran Heritage Foundation is a fine illustrated copy (BL Add. 7735) of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s famous poem Manṭiq al-ṭayr (‘Speech of the Birds’), a Sufi allegory of the quest for God. The first posting in this series introduced the poem and discussed some textual and artistic features of the manuscript. The second examined three illustrations while, this, the third in the series, examines three more miniatures and the accompanying text, in relation to ‘Aṭṭār’s poem and some of its principal themes.


British Library Add. 7735, folio 68r

The skilful and atmospheric painting on folio 68r (ed. Gawharīn, p. 93) illustrates one of the more charming stories in the Manṭiq al-ṭayr, in which Sultan Mas‘ūd of Ghazna, son of the redoubtable Maḥmūd, is depicted helping a poor orphan to catch fish. The miniature, too, is attractive although it is slightly discoloured and the setting is less ambitious than that of most Bihzād school paintings (see my earlier post). In both the catalogue description by Norah Titley (Miniatures, p. 35) and the brief mention of the episode by Helmut Ritter in his vast study of ‘Aṭṭār, the royal protagonist is misidentified as Maḥmūd rather than Mas‘ūd.

The sad-faced boy needs fish to feed himself and his six siblings. Mas‘ūd, whose name means ‘fortunate’, catches a hundred fish for him but declines the half share of the catch which the boy offers him. Next day the Sultan sends for the boy, having found him to be a sincere friend, who unlike some of his courtiers asks nothing of his king – and shares his throne with him.

While galloping his grey horse as fast as the wind,
  he espied a child sitting by a river,
with a net cast into the flowing stream.
  The King greeted and sat down next to him.
The youngster sat there despondently;
  he was sore of heart and weary of soul.
Said [the King], ‘Why are you so sorrowful?
  I never saw anyone as mournful as you!’
The youngster replied: ‘O most virtuous Prince,
  we are seven children, now fatherless.
We have a mother, who’s unable to move;
  she is so very poor, and all alone.
Every day I cast out a net for fish;
  until nightfall I stay here at my post.
If I catch one fish, with a hundred pains,
  that’s our food until the next night, great Prince.’
Said the King, ‘O dejected child, would you like
  me to join in and be partners with you?’
The youngster was happy to be his partner;
  the king began casting the net in the stream.

British Library Add. 7735, folio 75v

The mysteriousness of Providence features once again in the passage in ‘Aṭṭār’s poem to which folio 75v relates (ed. Gawharīn, pp. 102-3). One night the Angel Gabriel (Jibril) hears from on high the cries of a worshipper whom he takes to be a person of great purity of soul. Unable to locate that individual, the Angel seeks directions from God, Who directs him to a temple in Rūm, or Asia Minor. There Gabriel finds a man from whom the imprecations are emanating, and he is kneeling before a golden idol. Deeply puzzled that such a pure-sounding prayer should come from an idolater, Gabriel implores God for an explanation. The response is that the man is the victim of his own ignorance, that he is to be pardoned, and that by Divine Providence this idolater will be guided to true faith.

Jibrīl went, and espied him, plain to see,
  imploring that idol most plaintively.
Jibrīl, perturbed at such goings-on,
  returned to [God’s] Presence, scandalized;
then, opening his mouth, he said: ‘You Who need naught,
  unveil this mystery for my sake.
A man in a temple – addressing an idol!
  Do You respond to him with kindness?’
God Most High said: ‘He has a blackened heart.
  Knowing not, he has erred in the path he’s taken.’

British Library Add. 7735, folio 84r

In the previous illustration the Archangel flies, or hovers, in the margin of the page. Likewise, this painting on folio 84r (ed. Gawharīn, p. 112), which like many Persian miniatures ‘reads’ from right to left, makes imaginative use of the space beyond the text frame. The subsidiary characters are at the centre, while the main ones leap into the margin and almost, as it were, off the page. The artist has brought the text to life with charm and inventiveness.

By contrast, however, this vignette from Manṭiq al-ṭayr exemplifies ‘Aṭṭār’s sometimes grim sense of humour. Narrated in just four couplets, it is a tale of two foxes whose happy life together comes to an abrupt end when a king (thus in ‘Aṭṭār’s text – but the artist has painted a young, beardless prince, accompanied by an older huntsman) appears on the scene, hunting with a falcon and cheetah. The second couplet of the four in this passage, which mentions the royal hunter’s arrival, is mysteriously missing from the text in our manuscript. A number of other omissions from Add. 7735 were mentioned in the first posting in this series.

Two foxes met and became companions;
  then a couple, living a fine life together.
[A king came to their land with a falcon and cheetah,
   parting those two foxes from one another.]
The vixen asked the dog, ‘O bolt-hole seeker,
  do tell me, please: where shall we meet again?’
Said he, ‘Even if we survive for a while,
  it will be in town – in the furriers’ shop!’

ʻAṭṭār’s contemporaries in northeastern Iran had experienced extreme and bloody upheavals even before the horror of the Mongol invasion in the early 7th/13th century. They would probably not have been surprised at the fact that the theme of the nearness of death looms large in his poetry – any more than we are surprised that the same is true of many of those who seven centuries later found themselves fighting in a Great War, a ‘War to end all Wars.’

Follow this link to see the whole manuscript on the British Library's digitised manuscripts site, and keep in touch with further developments at @BLAsia_Africa.

(Translations by M.I. Waley)

Further reading
‘Aṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm. Manṭiq al-ṭayr. Ed. and comm. Sayyid Ṣādiq Gawharīn. Tehran, 1342/1963.
Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Tr. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. London, 1984.
Ritter, Helmut. The Ocean of the Soul: men, the world and God in the stories of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār. Tr. J. O’Kane. Leiden, 2003.
Titley, N.M. Miniatures from Persian manuscripts. London, 1974.

Muhammad Isa Waley, Asian and African Studies

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Happy New Year, and Selamat Tahun Baru 2014 to all our readers in Southeast Asia.

For my first post of the year, I would like to ponder the question of why illuminated Malay manuscripts are so rare. Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that, apart from a superb copy of the Taj al-Salatin (Or. 13295), almost none of the Malay manuscripts I have been writing about are decorated in any way. Among the recently-digitised Malay manuscripts from the historic British Museum collections, the only other finely illuminated work is a copy of the Hikayat Isma Yatim, Add. 12379, from the John Crawfurd collection, which has a pair of ornamental frames around the first two pages. The manuscript has just been digitised in full and can be read here, with high zoom capabilities allowing a close inspection of the artwork.


Hikayat Isma Yatim, by Ismail, recounting the story of a young writer who becomes a trusted advisor to the king.  British Libary, Add. 12379, ff. 1v-2r. 

When I first began to survey illuminated Malay manuscripts in British and other collections,  it was surprisingly hard to make sense of the data: no patterns or trends could be read into the decorated frames, headpieces and tailpieces which adorned the books, however beautiful they were. It was only when I realised that the finest examples of manuscript art from the Malay world are found not in literary, historical or legal manuscripts written in Malay, but in manuscripts of the Qur’an and other religious works mainly written in Arabic, that the mists began to clear, and distinctive regional schools of Southeast Asian Islamic manuscript art could be identified. On the basis of the shape and structure of the decorated frames, and the palette and ornamental motifs used, it is usually possible to identify the origin of a Qur’an manuscript from Southeast Asia, whether from Aceh, or Terengganu, or Java.  But although many decorated Malay literary manuscripts exist, they stubbornly refused to group themselves into clusters on the basis of the artistic criteria which had proved so effective in identifying regional schools of Qur’anic illumination. 

The reason for this discrepancy may lie in differing perceptions of the status of religious and literary manuscripts in the Malay world. Manuscripts of the Qur’an, containing the enduring and unchanging Word of God, are usually the most beautifully ornamented books in any Muslim culture, and much the same reverence enveloped certain other texts in the Islamic canon. It is where the written text was deemed to have intrinsic value that we find illumination in a prescriptive and conformist way, also fulfilling a functional purpose: decorated frames announced the opening and closing words of the Holy Book, while marginal ornaments guided the reader to standard divisions of the text.  On the other hand, Malay literary works were composed for oral delivery: they came alive while being recited aloud and while being listened to, with the beautiful sounds of sung syair (narrative poems) enjoyed as halwa telinga, literally 'sweetmeats for the ear'. There was thus little sense of permanence attached to any particular written manifestation of a work of literature; indeed, Malay scribes conventionally exhort their successors to correct and improve the text in front of them.  Perhaps this is why literary manuscripts were not traditionally deemed to merit illumination, with decoration only occasionally being supplied at the whim of individual scribes.

Another important consideration is differing contexts of production. Illuminated religious manuscripts in the Malay world almost always appear to have been created in the communities within which they were initially destined to be ‘consumed’. On the other hand, many illuminated Malay literary manuscripts known today were copied at the behest of European patrons, implying that western tastes and commercial incentives may have played a pivotal role in their production, with illumination added as halwa mata, 'eye candy', to attract the client and add value to the book.  It is hardly surprising that the only other illuminated Malay manuscript known to have been owned by John Crawfurd – a copy of Hikayat Dewa Mandu, written on English paper watermarked 'Budgen & Wilmott 1809' and perhaps commissioned by Crawfurd himself – was snapped up by another European collector, and is now held in the Staatsbibliothek (Preussischer Kulturbesitz) in Berlin. 

What, then can we say about the British Library’s Hikayat Isma Yatim?  The gold panels at top and bottom of each page reflect the influence of Qur’anic illumination, for such panels would normally enclose surah titles in a Qur'an manuscript. The use of pale blue pigment may indicate a Javanese origin, which is in fact consistent with the majority of Malay manuscripts in the Crawfurd collection. And the suggestion of European patronage in the production of this illuminated Malay manuscript is strengthened by the presence of some writing exercises in Latin script on the first page.

Detail of the first illuminated page of Hikayat Isma Yatim. The palette is centred on gold, red and pale blue, with black ink used for outlines and an important role played by ‘reserved white’, whereby the white background of the paper is manipulated as essential component of the colour scheme. British Library, Add. 12379, f.1v (detail).

Writing exercises in English on the first page of the Hikayat Isma Yatim manuscript.  The sentence in Malay in Jawi script reads: Raja Ahmad yang menulis surat Inggris ini adanya, 'Raja Ahmad wrote these English letters'. British Library, Add. 12379, f.1r (detail).

Further reading

A.T.Gallop, Malay manuscript art: the British Library collection. British Library Journal, 1991, 17 (2): 167-189.

A.T. Gallop, Islamic manuscript art of Southeast Asia.  Crescent moon: Islamic art & civilisation in Southeast Asia, ed. James Bennett.  Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2005, pp.156-183.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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A new year – a new beginning. An easy (re)solution, one might think. But it may turn out later that things like love and relationships should not be taken too lightly, and it is always worth thinking twice. Or, at least, seeking advice. People in 19th century Siam would certainly have done so before getting serious in a relationship. They would have consulted a divination specialist (mor doo) who would have had the knowledge to interpret the texts and illustrations of divination manuals (phrommachat) that had been handed down from generation to generation. Such manuals were part of the paraphernalia of divination masters who specialised in fortune telling, matching the horoscopes of prospective couples, and giving advice on love and marriage.


British Library, Or.4830, folio 30, showing a couple of 'average' humans.

Divination manuals were found in Thailand not only in Thai language but also in Mon and Shan languages, but usually the illustrations in these manuscripts are in central Thai style. Some beautifully illuminated examples of such manuals are held in the Thai, Lao and Cambodian collections of the British Library.
 
One outstanding phrommachat manuscript was acquired for the Library by Henry Ginsburg in 1975 (Or. 4830) and has been digitised recently. Although the manuscript has no colophon and is not dated, we know from the style of writing and orthography that it was produced during the second half of the 19th century. However, it may be a revised copy of an older manuscript that was in a deteriorating state due to frequent use.  The manuscript has 59 folios of text written on mulberry bark paper, accompanied by coloured illustrations on 32 folios and one ink drawing of entwined naga serpents. The text mainly explains how to interpret the illustrations, which include drawings based on the Chinese zodiac that relates each lunar month to the animals of the 12-year-cycle and their reputed attributes (earth, wood, fire, iron, water) as well as a male or female avatar (representing yin and yang), and a symbolic plant. A small number diagram used to work out periods in a person’s life which are particularly dangerous or unlucky is also usually present.

British Library, Or.4830, folio 6, showing the horoscope page for people born in the year of the tiger.

Each zodiac-related folio is followed by one folio of paintings, which symbolise the fate of a person under certain circumstances. The paintings are accompanied by numbers and one would have to trust the interpreting skills of the divination specialist to find out about the future.


British Library, Or.4830, folio 7, containing illustrations that represent possible fates of a person born in the year of the tiger.

Most interestingly, the manuscript includes descriptions of lucky and unlucky constellations of couples. At first sight, these portrayals may appear like some wild imaginations of love and lust as they involve not only humans, but also angels (devata) and demons (phi suea). However, the figures - which are shown locked in amorous embrace - in fact represent different human characters, and the purpose is to take people’s characters in consideration in addition to the horoscopes.


British Library, Or.4830, folio 26, with explanations of the prospects of marriages between demons, as well as between demons and angels.

According to these interpretations, a couple of rough, noisy or hot tempered (demonic) characters have a good chance of living happily together through all ups and downs and growing old together, whereas the relationship between a demonic male character and an angelic female will not go well, although they can marry and have children together.


British Library, Or.4830, folio 28, illustrating the possible fate of marriages of angels with humans and between angels themselves.

The relationship between average humans and angelic characters may begin with passionate love, but it will not last long. They may end up fighting and having a lot of trouble. The best possible constellations for marriage are between two average humans, and between two angelic characters. These couples are said to grow old together happily with many children and without any worries.  

The miniature paintings in this manuscript are of outstanding beauty and quality. The unnamed artist paid great attention to every single detail of the figures - facial expression, hand gestures and body language, and the elaborate designs of their clothes and jewellery. It is a fine example of 19th century Thai art and wisdom.  The entire manuscript can be viewed online on the British Library’s Digital Manuscripts Viewer.

Further Reading

Ginsburg, Henry, Thai art and culture: historic manuscripts from Western collections. London, 2000. (Chapter on Fortune-telling, pp. 120-129.)  

Pattaratorn Chirapravati, Divination au royaume de Siam: le corps, la guerre, le destin. Manuscrit siamois du XIXe siècle. Paris/Geneva, 2011.

Wales, H. G. Quaritch, Divination in Thailand: the hopes and fears of a Southeast Asian people. London, 1983.


Jana Igunma, Ginsburg Curator for Thai, Lao and Cambodian

In my final post for this year on the Malay manuscripts digitisation project, I thought I would give a glimpse of the 'food chain' for digitising a Malay manuscript.

To start with, none of this would have been possible without our generous patrons, William and Judith Bollinger, who, when they moved from London to Singapore, expressed their desire to support collaboration between the British Library and the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore, by digitising material held in the British Library of interest to Singapore.  The evolution of the project was overseen by Sarah Frankland and colleagues in the Development Office, while three main collection areas in the BL – Malay manuscripts, early maps of Singapore, and papers relating to Sir Stamford Raffles – were identified by Noryati Abdul Samad and Ong Eng Chuan of the NLB during a research visit to London in January 2012.  

Once we had agreed to start by digitising all the Malay manuscripts in the British Library, Rossitza Atanassova, Digital Curator, kindly shepherded me through the complex technical and procedural framework of the process.  The selection of Malay manuscripts was made from the authoritative published catalogue by M.C. Ricklefs & P. Voorhoeve, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain (London, 1977), but one of my main tasks was to recatalogue all the manuscripts on the BL’s online catalogue using the Integrated Archives and Manuscripts System (IAMS).  All the manuscripts selected for digitisation had to be condition-checked by conservator Jane Pimlott, and at this important hurdle, a few items had to be dropped as being too fragile. Then, with the helpful advice of Anna Vernon, Andrew Tullis and Rachel Marshall, all the choices had to be considered carefully to ensure that digitisation would not cause breaches of copyright, necessitating the further omission of a couple of more recent items.  

The collection of treaties in Malay and Tausug signed between Alexander Dalrymple for the East India Company and the sultans of Sulu, 1761-1764, which can not currently be digitised due to the poor condition of the volume.  British Library, IOR: H/629.

It was an exciting moment when photography started: Chris Lee allocated us space in the Imaging Studios in June 2013, and assigned photographer Neil Cowland to the task.  As Neil worked through the manuscripts, producing high-resolution TIFF images of nearly 100 MB per page, Sarah Biggs quality-checked all resulting images.  One of the most complicated elements of the process was filenaming: according to long-standing British Library conventions, blank pages and fly leaves of a manuscript are not numbered, but the resulting digital images needed to be numbered appropriately to ensure they appeared in correct sequence in the digitised version of the manuscript.  


Neil Cowland preparing to photograph a manuscript in the Imaging Studios of the British Library.  


Sarah Biggs checking the qualityof a digital image from a manuscript of Hikayat Dewa Mandu, Add. 12376.  Sarah is famed as the author of the ‘Knight v. Snail’ posting in Sept 2013 on the BL’s Medieval Manuscripts blog, which garnered 36,000 views worldwide in a single day!

Finally, all images were published online in the DIPS system, through the BL’s Digitised Manuscripts site, which was originally developed for a Greek manuscripts digitisation project funded by the Stavros Niarchos foundation.  The Malay project was the first time that manuscripts written in a right-to-left script had been uploaded, and the ‘open book’ viewer, showing two facing pages side-by-side, therefore needed adjustment.  The revised viewer, which has been developed by Paul Jones and Ken Tsang, will benefit not just Malay manuscripts but all other languages written in right-to-left scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew.

'Open book' view of a book in Arabic script, read from right to left, in the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts viewer.  Malay Qur'an, from Kelantan or Patani, 19th c., Or. 15227, ff. 3v-4r.

'Open book' view for books in right-to-left scripts in the new prototype of the Digitised Manuscripts viewer, which will also offer a 'top to bottom' viewing option for palm leaf and other manuscripts.

So when the Memorandum of Understanding – drafted by Shanthi Thambapillai – was signed on 19 August 2013 in Singapore by Chief Executives Roly Keating for the BL and Elaine Ng for the NLB, and the first few digitised Malay manuscripts went live on both the BL and NLB websites, it represented the culmination of many months’ work.  Efforts to publicise the digitised manuscripts continue, through the Asian & African Studies Blog and Twitter account @BLAsia_Africa pioneered by Ursula Sims-Williams and Malini Roy, and the appreciative comments we receive from all over the world, particularly from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, are our greatest reward.  

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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As 2013 draws to a close, it is a pleasure to announce the successful completion of the first stage of the project to digitise all the Malay manuscripts in the British Library, in collaboration with the National Library of Singapore, generously funded by William and Judy Bollinger. 56 Malay manuscripts, mostly from the historic collections of the British Museum, have been fully digitised and are now accessible online through the British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site (search with keyword ‘Malay’), and copies of the images are also being made available via the National Library of Singapore’s BookSG website.  

As regular subscribers to this blog will know, each week we have been highlighting a different Malay manuscript, aiming to give each its ‘15 minutes of fame’. Some are already well-known, such as the earliest of only two manuscripts recorded of Hikayat Raja Pasai (Or. 14350) and the beautiful Taj al-Salatin from Penang (Or. 13295), but others less so, including a previously unknown copy of Hikayat Hang Tuah (Or. 16215) which had spent most of its life in Wales. In one case, an obscure manuscript was catapulted to fame: ‘The Malay story of the Pig King’, posted on 18 Nov 2013 featuring our unique Hikayat Raja Babi manuscript (Add. 12393), has received over 4,800 page views, far more than any other posting on this blog!

We have now launched a Digital Access to Malay Manuscripts project page, which lists all the Malay manuscripts digitised so far, and which will be updated in the course of 2014 as we begin to photograph manuscripts from the India Office collections for the second half of the project. Shown below are some of manuscripts which can now be read in full online, while highlights to look forward to next year include the important record of court regulations from 17th-century Aceh, Adat Aceh (MSS Malay B.11) and a fine illuminated copy of Hikayat Nabi Yusuf (MSS Malay D.10) copied in Perlis.  


Sulalat al-Salatin, more popularly known as Sejarah Melayu, 'Malay Annals', the chronicle of the Malay sultanate of Melaka, copied in Melaka, 1873.  British Library, Or. 14734, ff. 1v-2r.

The zoom capabilities of the Digitised Manuscripts viewer allow close study of the scribe's pen strokes and even the texture of the paper, as in these opening words of the Sejarah Melayu.  British Library, Or. 14734, f. 1v (detail).

Kitab mawlid, poems in praise of the Prophet, in Arabic with interlinear Malay translation.  A manuscript from Aceh with fine illuminated frames, 19th c.  British Library, Or. 16769, ff.6v-7r.

Malay-English vocabulary, 1731. British Library, Egerton 933, ff. 1v-2r.

The digitisation of the full manuscript allows the study of not only the text but also other notes, jottings and doodles in the manuscript, such as these end pages from Hikayat Dewa Mandu, copied in Semarang, late 18th c. British Library, Add. 12376, ff.220v-221r. 

Some of the digitised manuscripts contain material in languages other than Malay.  A volume of farewell letters to Thomas Stamford Raffles on his departure from Java in 1816  includes many letters in Javanese, including this one from Raden Adipati Prawiro Adinagoro, Regent of Bangkil.  British Library, Add. 45273, f. 91r. 

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

Related articles

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Malay 'eye candy': illuminated literary manuscripts

Sejarah Melayu: a Malay masterpiece

John Crawfurd and Malay studies

Many of the Malay manuscripts in the British Library came from the private libraries of British collectors. What did these collectors do with their Malay books: did they read them for pleasure, or for research, or did they just buy them as exotic curiosities? The two Malay manuscripts from  Sir Hans Sloane reflect his insatiable appetite for books written in all the languages of the world, while the Welsh surgeon Thomas Phillips bought his Malay manuscripts only to give them away again almost immediately, for his particular ‘obsession’ was endowing institutional libraries.  On the other hand, the Library’s superb Taj al-Salatin manuscript was specially selected in Penang by Ralph Rice as an exquisite gift for his bibliophile brother in Brighton, to be admired for its fine calligraphy, impressive illumination, de luxe red leather and gilt binding and recognisedly edifying contents, despite the fact that there was little chance that it would ever be read.

One collector who certainly did read his own Malay manuscripts was John Crawfurd (1783-1868).  Crawfurd served with the East India Company all over Southeast Asia, including periods as Resident of Yogyakarta (1811-16) and Singapore (1823-26), and he spoke and read Malay and Javanese. In 1840 Crawfurd offered his collection of 136 Malay, Bugis and Javanese manuscripts and books to the British Museum for the sum of £516. This offer was refused by Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts, for although he viewed it as the most complete collection in Europe of 'the lowest class of oriental literature', it was too expensive. A deal was finally struck in 1842, when Crawfurd’s collection was purchased for £250, and it is today held in the British Library (Harris 1998: 134).  


Hikayat Putera Gangga, from John Crawfurd’s collection, with the lines numbered in pencil, presumably for his future reference.  The manuscript has been fully digitised and can be read here. British Library, Add. 12385, ff. 1v-2r.

In the intervening period, however, it appears that Crawfurd may have hawked his collection around and even sold one or two manuscripts, for the Staatsbibliothek (Preussischer Kulturbesitz) in Berlin owns a manuscript of Hikayat Dewa Mandu formerly belonging to Crawfurd, another copy of which is still found in the Crawfurd collection in the British Library (Add. 12376). Neither of the published catalogues of the Malay manuscripts in the Staatsbibliothek (Asma 1992: 124-6; Snouck Hurgronje 1989: 73-82) mentions the name of Crawfurd as a previous owner, but a clue is hidden within the pages of the book itself.  


Hikayat Dewa Mandu, a fantastical Malay adventure narrative, from the collection of John Crawfurd.  MS. Or. Fol. 404, ff. 1v-2r. Reproduced with kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz).  

I visited the Staatsbibliothek in 2006 to see this manuscript - which has colourful decorated initial frames - as part of an ongoing study of illuminated manuscripts from the Malay world. But while looking through the pages, I was amazed to come across a small pencil sketch in the margin, of a family of ‘stick people’ – father, mother and child – labelled ‘J.C.’, ‘H.C.’ and ‘F.C.’, with the explanation written in pencil above: ‘John Crawfurd, Esq.’, ‘A. Horatia Crawfurd’ and ‘Flora Crawfurd’. An image immediately floated into my mind’s eye of how this manuscript must have been read nearly two centuries earlier. I could just picture John Crawfurd, sitting in a chair reading the Hikayat Dewa Mandu, with his young daughter Flora on his lap. As she got fidgety, he would have hushed her – perhaps by telling her of the adventures of Prince Dewa Mandu, and how he rescued the beautiful Princess Lela Ratna Kumala, who had been turned into an elephant by the wicked demon king Dewa Raksa Malik after she refused to marry his son – and then, as the fidgets continued, tried to amuse her by drawing on the page a picture of Daddy, Mummy, and little Flora.  John Crawfurd and his wife Anne Horatia (nee Perry) had two sons and three daughters, named Margaret, Horatia Charlotte and Eleanor, and so 'Flora' may have been the nickname of one of the girls. Crawfurd appears to have found reading Hikayat Dewa Mandu heavy going – perhaps little Flora just wouldn’t leave him in peace  In very faint pencil, towards the end of the manuscript (and not even the last page!) he has written, ‘Finis (Thank god)’.  


Crawfurd’s pencil sketch of his family in the margin of Hikayat Dewa Mandu.  MS. Or. Fol. 404, p.77 (detail). Reproduced with kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek (Preussischer Kulturbesitz).


Crawfurd’s faint pencilled comment, ‘Finis (Thank god)’, towards the end of Hikayat Dewa Mandu.  MS. Or. Fol. 404 (detail). Reproduced with kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek (Preussischer Kulturbesitz).

Further reading

Asma Ahmat, Katalog manuskrip Melayu di Jerman Barat.  Catalogue of Malay manuscripts in West Germany.  Kuala Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, 1992. (Siri bibliografi manuskrip; 8)

P.R. Harris, A history of the British Museum Library 1753-1973.  London: British Library, 1998

Snouck Hurgronje, C., Katalog der Malaiischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek in Berlin.  Reproduction of the manuscript (Leiden Cod. Or. 8015), edited with an introduction by E.U. Kratz.  Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1989. (Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland; Supplementband 29)

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia