Asian and African studies blog

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

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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

The two Malay manuscripts from Banjar presented here could not be more different in content and form: one a carefully-crafted court chronicle, presenting and perpetuating the public image of a Malay sultanate; the other a letter written hastily with no thought for posterity, and yet which nearly two centuries later vividly conveys some of the preoccupations of daily life in Kalimantan in the mid-19th century.  

The alun-alun or public square in Banjar.  Photograph by G.F.J. (Georg Friedrich Johannes) Bley, 1925-1933.  Tropenmuseum of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).

Hikayat Banjar is the dynastic chronicle of the most important kingdom on the south coast of the island of Borneo.  Its narrative, spanning the 15th to 17th centuries, relates the founding of the kingdom of Banjar, the rise of the ruling house, and its later conversion to Islam.  According to the text, the kingdom was founded by a merchant prince from India who comes to seek his fortune in Southeast Asia.  His newly-established court, modelled on the great Javanese kingdoms to the south across the Java sea, initially thrives on trade with China, but is eventually unsettled by the booming pepper market and its impact on the established social order in Banjar.


The first page of the Hikayat Banjar, which begins with the story of a rich merchant in India named Saudagar Mangkubumi, ancestor of the kings of Banjar.  British Library, Add.12392, f.2v.  

The text of Hikayat Banjar was completed in or soon after 1663, but all surviving manuscripts date from the nineteenth century.  The British Library’s manuscript, Add.12392, which has just been digitised and can be read online here, is the earliest copy known of this work.  It was copied in 1816 for Thomas Stamford Raffles while he was Lieutenant-Governor of Java (1811-1816), through the assistance of Sultan Syarif Kasim of Pontianak (r.1808-1819), on the west coast of Borneo.  According to a note at the beginning of this manuscript, Raffles had asked the Sultan - who had previously sent him a Malay legal text and a copy of the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain - to find him a manuscript of Hikayat Banjar.  Sultan Syarif Kasim had despatched a boat in search of the text, and a copy was finally located in the possession of the ruler of Kota Ringin in south Borneo, from which the present manuscript was copied.  But by the time the copy was completed Raffles had already left Java for Europe, and so Sultan Syarif Kasim writes that he is sending the manuscript to John Crawfurd, Resident of Yogyakarta in Java, in order that Crawfurd might convey it to Raffles in England.  Probably due to the scholarly rivalry between Crawfurd and Raffles – both were engaged in writing major works on the history of  the Malay archipelago – the manuscript was never delivered to Raffles, and in 1842 entered the British Museum along with Crawfurd’s other Malay manuscripts.


The note dated 1 Zulkaidah 1231 (23 September 1816) explaining that the manuscript was a gift from the sultan of Pontianak for Raffles: Ini surat hikayat Lambu Mangkurat Jenral Mister Raffles sudah minta kepada Sultan di negeri Pontianak tolong cari ini hikayat, maka Sultan Pontianak sudah suruh satu perahu cari ini hikayat, maka sudah dapat di dalam negeri Kota Ringin kepada raja Kota Ringin, maka Sultan Pontianak sudah dengar khabar Mister Raffles Lutenan Jeneral sudah pulang di Europa, maka Sultan Pontianak sudah kasih ini hikayat kepada sahabat kita Kapitan William Scott biar Kapitan William Scott kasih kepada Mister Crawfurd residen di dalam negeri Jogja, dan jika Mister Crawfurd pulang di negeri Europa bilang sultan Pontianak kasih tabik salam banyak2 kepada Mister Raffles.  Tertulis pada satu hari bulan Zulkaidah pada tarikh sanat 1231.  British Library, Add. 12392, f.1r (detail).

The second manuscript is a very brief letter, Or. 14537, dated 8 Zulhijah 1259 (30 December 1843).  It is from Haji Abdul Rahman, penghulu or chief of Banjarmasin, to two Dutch officials, asking for the return of wooden beams for the mosque, urgently needed before of the feast of Id al-Adha on the following Monday.  The single sheet of paper was then simply folded and then sealed shut, and the address written on the outside.  Haji Abdul Rahman writes his signature in fluent roman letters, suggesting he was literate in both Arabic and Latin script.  Why or how this letter - never intended to outlast its aim of retrieving the mosque beams - survived is not known, but we are glad to have it, as a rare example of a concise Indonesian 'memo' written nearly two hundred years ago.


Text of the letter: Bahwa ini surat daripada saya Haji Abdul Rahman penghulu di Banjarmasin mendapatkan sahabat saya Tuan Hendrik postaur di Muara Pantuil atau Sennyur Karlus postaur di Muara Cerucuk. Ini kaum2 mesjid di Banjar saya sudah mencari batang mesjid larut kabar2 orang ada di Pantuil kepada sahabat kita, iaitu kalau betul ada kita minta kembali itu batang pakai batang mesjid boleh sahabat kita kasih saja itu batang kepada yang membawa surat kita ini mau dipakai lekas sebab hari isnin yang di muka ini ada hari besar bulan Haj demikian adanya. Maka tiada apa2 lain hanya dicintakan sahabat kita tetap di dalam segala selamat juga adanya. Hari Sabtu 8 bulan Haj sanat 1259. ‘This is a letter from me Haji Abdul Rahman, Penghulu of Banjarmasin, to my friend Tuan Hendrik, Posthouder of Muara Pantuil, or to Senor Carlos, Posthouder of Muara Cerucuk. My mosque congregation in Banjar has been searching for the beams from the old mosque, and some people say that these are in Pantuil with my friend; if this is true then we request that these be returned for use in the mosque, my friend may give the beams to the bearer of this letter, because we need them urgently as this coming Monday is the feastday of the month of Hajj. There is nothing more to add save my loving wishes that my friend may remain in all safety. Saturday 8th of the month of Hajj, the year 1259.’  British Library, Or. 14537 (detail).

Further reading

I. Proudfoot and A.T. Gallop. ‘57. Hikayat Raja-Raja Banjar’.  Macau: o primeiro século de um porto internacional / Macau: the first century of an international port, Jorge M. dos Santos Alves.  Lisbon: Centro Cientifico e Cultural de Macau, 2007, pp.160-162.

J.J. Ras, Hikajat Bandjar: a study in Malay historiography.  The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968. (Bibliotheca Indonesica; 1).

A.T. Gallop, Three Malay letters from Sumenep, Banjarmasin and Brunei. Malay-Indonesian studies: dedicated to the 80th birthday of Vilen Sikorsky, ed. Victor A. Pogadaev.  Moscow: Econ-inform, 2012; pp.117-127. (Malay-Indonesian Studies; XIX).

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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To many young Malays today, the most immediate fact that comes to mind about Wales is Malaysian ownership of the Cardiff City football team.  But there is another, much older, Welsh-Malay connection: for over 160 years, two important Malay manuscripts were housed in the small but historic town of Lampeter in southwest Wales.

Malay literary manuscripts are rare, and it is always a cause for some excitement when a previously unknown one surfaces. It is even more interesting when two manuscripts are found together, and they contain the two iconic Malay texts from the glory days of the great kingdom of Melaka: the Sejarah Melayu or Sulalat al-Salatin, ‘Descent of Kings’ (Or.16214), and the Hikayat Hang Tuah, ‘Epic of Hang Tuah’ (Or.16215).  These two manuscripts, which were acquired by the British Library in 2006 from the University of Wales in Lampeter, have just been digitised and can be read by clicking on the highlighted shelfmarks above.  
    
The story of the manuscripts revolves around the figure of Thomas Phillips (1760-1851), a London-born but Welsh-bred East India Company surgeon who for many years was based in India.  In 1796 he visited Penang on his way back to India from Australia, and in 1811 he accompanied the British expeditionary force under Lord Minto which invaded and captured Java (Morgan-Guy 2010).  In 1817 Thomas Phillips retired and returned to London a wealthy man, but a notably generous and charitable one.  In retirement in London, he developed 'what can only be termed an obsession for the purchase and distribution of books on a massive scale’ (Walters 1999: 37), presenting over 22,000 volumes to St. David’s College in Lampeter, including our two Malay manuscripts.


First page of the Sejarah Melayu manuscript.  British Library, Or.16214, f.1r.

Colophon of the manuscript, called here Hikayat Melayu, and dated Saturday 16 Rejab in Singapore: Tamatlah kisah Hikayat Melayu ini kepada enam belas hari bulan Rejab dalam negeri Singapura yaum al-Sabtu jam pukul sebelas maka ada pun surat ini disalin daripada surat yang ada kepada orang Melaka yang menyuratnya Enci’ Husain bi[n] [I]smail yang ada terhenti di Tanah Merah itulah adanya.  British Library, Or.16214, f.301r (detail).

The manuscript of Sejarah Melayu is a copy of the ‘long’ version, ending with the defeat of Johor by Jambi, which was copied in Singapore on 16 Rejab (no year given), by Husain bin Ismail – one of the most prolific Malay scribes known (Tol 2001) – from a manuscript belonging to a person of Melaka. At the top of the first page is a note: ‘Sa Jarha Malayu, or Code of Malay Law, copied from a Manuscript lent me by Count von Ranzow who had it from His Highness Abdoolrachman Shah, Sultan of Linga. F.J.D.’. Lodewijk Carel, Graaf von Ranzow, was the Dutch Resident in the Riau islands, to the south of Singapore, from 1822 to 1826, while Sultan Abdul Rahman Syah, sultan of Riau, reigned in Lingga from 1812 to 1832. However, the identity of F.J.D. is unknown.  This manuscript can be compared with another copy of the Sejarah Melayu in the British Library, Or.14734, which I wrote about in September, which was copied in Melaka in 1873.

A view of Singapore published in 1830, just before the manuscript of the Sejarah Melayu was copied in Tanah Merah.  British Library, P1681.

The manuscript of Hikayat Hang Tuah contains some reading marks in pencil in English in the margin, dated 1835.  It joins another manuscript of this epic in the British Library, Add.12384, which was copied in Kedah, and which has also been digitised and can be read here.  


Opening page of the Hikayat Hang Tuah.  Or.16215, f.2v (detail).

Although Phillips was in Southeast Asia on at least two separate occasions, he appears to have acquired the Malay manuscripts after his return to London in 1817, for they are both written on English paper, watermarked with the dates ‘1832’ in the case of the Sejarah Melayu, and ‘1828’ for the Hikayat Hang Tuah.  The two manuscripts were probably acquired by Phillips from the same source, for both bear pasted-on printed labels apparently cut out from a bookseller’s or auctioneer’s catalogue, that on the Hikayat Hang Tuah reflecting a complete lack of understanding of the role of rubrication (the use of red ink to highlight certain important words) in the Malay (or any other!) manuscript tradition: ‘Another copy of the Hang Tuah, of larger size, on European paper. / All the preceding Malay MSS, are fairly and elegantly transcribed in the Arabic Character, and on every occasion that a lacuna in the original MS is supplied in the copy, it is done in red ink; an evidence of the fidelity of the writer.’ The wording of the label suggests that this was just one of a number of Malay manuscripts offered for sale, presumably in London, probably between the years 1835 and 1842, the date of their donation to Lampeter.  I have not been able to identify the source of these printed labels; if anyone can, please contact me!


Cutting from a bookseller's catalogue, and old ownership label from St. David's Lampeter, on the Sejarah Melayu manuscript.  British Library, Or.16214, f.10v.

Label from a bookseller's catalogue on the Hikayat Hang Tuah manuscript.  British Library, Or.16215, f.1r (detail).

Further reading

John Morgan-Guy, ‘Biography of Thomas Phillips: A Cultivated and Well-Stored Mind, Thomas Phillips MRCS, Benefactor of St David's College Lampeter’,  2010.
Roger Tol, ‘Master scribes: Husin bin Ismail, Abdullah bin Abdulkadir, their handwritings and the Hikayat Abdullah’, Archipel, 2001, 61 (1):115-138.
Gwyn Walters, ‘Books from the ‘Nabob’: the benefactions of Thomas Phillips at Lampeter and Llandovery’, Trafodion Anrhydeddus Gymdeithas y Cymmrodorion 1998 / Transactions of the Honorouble Society of Cymmrodorion.  New series, Vol. 5, 1999, pp.36-61.

Annabel  Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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One Malay manuscript in the British Library never fails to attract the attention of visiting scholars from Malaysia and Indonesia.  The manuscript is not beautifully illuminated or especially old, nor does it contain a text of great historical or literary value.  But everyone is intrigued by its title, Hikayat Raja Babi, ‘The Story of the Pig King’ (Add. 12393), highly unusual in a Malay Muslim milieu, where pigs are regarded as unclean animals staunchly avoided and best ignored.  What’s more, this Pig King is described as a paragon of courage and nobility.

Hikayat Raja Babi tells of the adventures of a prince who came to the world in the form of a pig.  Most Malay works of fantastical literature are anonymous, and are only known today from manuscripts that are probably multi-generational copies of the original composition, and which have usually been embellished by each succeeding scribe.  The manuscript of Hikayat Raja Babi is quite exceptional in opening with a lengthy note by the author, explaining why, how and when he came to write the tale.  The story was written by Usup ibn Abdul Kadir, a merchant from Semarang of Indian descent from Cooch in west Bengal (peranakan Kuj), during a trading voyage to Palembang. Having no success, he anchored in Sungai Lawang and consoled himself by writing this story, and completed it in twenty days, on 10 Zulkaidah 1188 (12 January 1775).  He begs his readers not to mock or scorn his unruly letters or his handwiting which had run wild, mengamuk – familiar as the Malay word which has entered the English language as ‘amok’.


Palembang harbour, a pen-and-ink and wash drawing probably by one of Colin Mackenzie’s draftsmen, ca.1811-1814.  British Library, Add.Or.5003.

The author’s note on completing the story (Hijrah al-nabi salla Allah ‘alayhi wa-salam seribu seratus delapan puluh delapan tahun sepuluh bulan kepada bulan Zulkaidah dan kepada tahun ha dan kepada hari Jumaat dan waktu pukul sebelas bahwa tamat hikayat caritera Raja Babi adapun yang punya Ayahan [or ayahnya?] Usup ibn Abdul Kadir peranakan Kuj anak di negeri Semarang di Kampung Melayu asalnya duduk kemudian maka pindah di Pakujan luar kota tatkala pergi berdagang ke negeri Palembang maka tiada punya dagang dan duduk berlabuh di Sungai Lawang maka hendak mengiburkan hati supaya jangan menjadi gundah maka duduk menyurat dua puluh hari lamanya maka tamat dan barang siapa suka membaca tetapi jangan ditertawakan dan disunguti daripada hal hurufnya karena kalamnya mengamuk urat kenakan tauladannya d.m.y.t.q tamat bi-al-khayr). British Library, Add. 12393, f.3r.

The story was evidently well appreciated in Semarang, for it passed from the author’s possession to three generations of owners, who recorded their names on its pages: Muhammad Salih (f.105r); Ismail ibn Muhammad Salih (f.105r); and Encik Amaladin ibn Ismail Muhammad Salih (f.2r), who asks anyone who borrows the book to be sure to return it as soon as they have finished reading it.  The manuscript was subsequently acquired by John Crawfurd, who served in the British administration in Java from 1811 to 1816, and whose collection of Indonesian manuscripts was sold to the British Museum in 1842.  No other manusript of this story is known to be held in any other library. 

So what is Hikayat Raja Babi about?  The story starts by describing how this Pig King was so brave and strong that no other king could match him.  But what happened next?  The answer, alas, is unknown, for despite the flurry of interest always aroused by its title, Hikayat Raja Babi has never been studied or published.  If anyone would like to be the first to do so, just click here and start reading!

The story begins: ‘This is the tale of the Pig King, the greatest hero of his age, no other prince could match the Pig King’ (Al-kisah peri mengatakan cetera Raja Babi yang pahlawan lagi perkasa kepada zaman masa itu seorang pun tiada boleh segala raja2 sebagai Raja Babi).  British Library, Add. 12393, f.3v. 

Two owners of the manuscript have inscribed their names: Encik Muhammad Salih and - doubtless his son - Encik Ismail ibn Muhammad Salih of Semarang, Kampung Pakujan, Gang Tengah.  British Library, Add. 12393, f.105r (detail).


Another owner, Encik Amaladin ibn Ismail Muhammad Salih is evidently the son and grandson of the first two owners mentioned above.  British Library, Add. 12393, f.2r (detail).

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

Last month I wrote about one of our most important Malay manuscripts, the Hikayat Raja Pasai, ‘Chronicle of the kings of Pasai’, Or. 14350, which was copied in Semarang in 1797.  At least four other Malay manuscripts in the British Library’s collection can also be linked to Semarang, a bustling port city on the north coast of Java, which in the 18th and 19th centuries seems to have been a hive of Malay scribal activity, centred on the districts of Kampung Melayu, Kampung Tawang and Kampung Pakujan.  These manuscripts are all now fully accessible online through the ongoing project to digitise Malay manuscripts in the British Library.


The countryside around Semarang, on the north coast of Java, by Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn.  British Library, 1781.a.21, plate 1. 

First is a copy of the Hikayat Dewa Mandu, Add. 12376, which tells the story of Raja Kangsa Indra Pekerma Raja. This belongs to a very popular Malay genre of fantastic adventure narratives, mostly composed anonymously in the 16th or 17th centuries, drawing upon a great number of motifs and descriptive devices deriving from Indian, Javanese and Middle Eastern literatures, yet representing true Malay re-creations rather than mere translations.  According to Braginsky (2004: 319-321), all these stories follow the same pattern: a prince is born in a great kingdom, who through some misfortune is forced to leave his native land and undergo a long and arduous journey involving battles with monsters and other adversaries, during the course of which he marries – sometimes several times – before finally triumphantly returning and regaining his throne.  Although the text of the British Library’s Hikayat Dewa Mandu is incomplete, the manuscript contains some charming doodled sketches of faces drawn in accordance with the stylised iconographic conventions of wayang kulit, the Javanese shadow puppet theatre.  A note at the end is dated 1200 AH (1785/6 AD) and mentions that the owner was Encik Babah of Kampung Tawang, Semarang.  Kampung Tawang’s current claim to fame is as the site of Semarang’s Tawang Station, built in 1868 and one of the oldest railway stations in Indonesia.


Sketch of a figure in wayang style.  British Library, Add. 12376, f.221r (detail).

Hikayat Dewa Mandu, beginning of an episode concerning Raja Belia Dewa and Dewa Raksa Malik.  British Library, Add. 12376, f.108r.

A note dated 1200 AH (1785/6 AD) giving the name of the owner as Encik Babah and his residence as Kampung Tawang in Semarang.  British Library, Add. 12376, f.217v (detail).

Also copied in Kampung Tawang is a manuscript of Hikayat Syahi Mardan, Add. 12388, one of the most popular and widespread of the fantastical adventure Malay hikayat, manuscripts of which have been found from Minangkabau to Mindanao.  A colophon in syair verse form at the end of the text states that the manuscript was completed on Sunday at 9 o'clock in the morning in the month of Muharam – frustratingly, as is often the case in Malay manuscripts, no year is given – by Encik Amat of Kampung Tawang, Semarang.  On the following page is a note with the date 1810 naming the next owner as Encik Abdullah;  Kampung Pakujan is mentioned below.  Could this be the same Encik Abdullah, the Kapitan Melayu of Semarang, who is named in Or.14350, f.45r, the British Library’s manuscript of Hikayat Raja Pasai and Hikayat Raja Handik, as the owner of the original copy of Hikayat Raja Handik from which Or.14350 was copied?

Colophon of Hikayat Syahi Mardan, in verse form:

tamatlah surat tamat hikayat / tamat di dalam hari ahad,
kepada waktu pukul sembilan /  pagi kepada bulan Muharam,
bukan hikayat bukan sindiran / akan pengibur hati yang dandam,
Enci' Amat akan namanya / di bandar Semarang kediamannya,
ialah terlalu amat daifnya / di Kampung Tawang akan rumahnya.

British Library, Add. 12388, f.79r.

A third Malay manuscript from Semarang, Add. 12385*, Hikayat Dewa Indera Layangan, tells the story of a king Mengindera Cuwaca of Indera Percangga and his sons. This manuscript is dated clearly 1815, and was copied in Kampung Melayu in Semarang.

Opening page of Hikayat Dewa Indera Layangan, with a decorative headpiece.  British Library, Add.12385*, f.2v. 

Colophon stating that the manuscript was completed on 30 Safar 1230 (11 February 1815) on a Thursday, at 9 o’clock, in the Malay quarter of Semarang (tarikh seribu dua ratus tiga puluh tahun kepada tahun zai dan kepada tiga puluh hari bulan Safar kepada hari Khamis pukul sembilan dewasa itulah tamatnya Hikayat Indera Layangan dalam negeri Semarang Kampung Melayu adanya).  British Library, Add. 12385*, f.69r (detail). 

All these manuscripts can be accessed directly by clicking on the highlighted shelfmarks above, or through the Digitised Manuscripts website.  In the next post I will discuss another Malay manuscript from Semarang, the strangely-named Hikayat Raja Babi, ‘The Story of the Pig King’ (Add.12393). 

Further reading
Vladimir Braginsky, The heritage of traditional Malay literature: a historical survey of genres, writings and literary views.  Leiden: KITLV, 2004.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

Malay manuscripts have been present in the British Library from the very earliest days of the institution.  When the British Museum was founded in 1753, among the 71,000 natural history specimens, objects, manuscripts and printed books bequeathed to the nation by collector extraordinaire Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) were a number  from the Malay world.  These include three palm-leaf documents in Javanese (Sloane 1035, Sloane 1403.A and Sloane 1403.E), an Arabic treatise on Islamic jurisprudence with interlinear translation into Javanese (Sloane 2645), several of the earliest Malay printed vocabularies and translations of the Bible, and two manuscript volumes in Malay.  Together with all the other books and manuscripts in the library of the British Museum, these items were transferred to the newly-formed British Library in 1973. 


Portrait of Sir Hans Sloane holding a book, detail of an engraving from The Newcastle Magazine, 1785-6.  British Library, P.P. 6077.d.

The two Malay manuscripts from the Sloane collection are very different from each other, in both content and form.  One is a legal text or undang-undang,  Sloane 2393, probably dating from the 17th or early 18th century.  Its physical form is highly unusual in that the text is written lengthwise across the page, parallel to the spine of the book.  This suggests that the manuscript may have originated in a region where palm leaf – with its horizontal format – was still the standard writing medium.  A few characters in Javanese script on the cover (see below) point to an origin in Java, or perhaps from the environs of the strongly Javanese-influenced courts of Jambi and Palembang in east Sumatra.  The text has been studied in detail by the Malaysian scholar Mohammed Jajuli Rahman, who found that it differs from most other Malay texts on Islamic law (fiqh) of the 16th to 19th centuries by focussing on criminal law (hukum jenayah).  The text introduces itself on the first page as Inilah bab takzir, ‘This is the section on punishment’, and presents definitions of and punishments for murder, injury, adultery, slander, theft and banditry, concluding with a final section on legal procedure, for example in dealing with witnesses.


Section discussing injuries to the head (Ini kitab pada menyatakan luka kepala), from Bab takzir, an early Malay text on punishments according to Islamic criminal law.  British Library, Sloane 2393, f.7r. 

Detail showing Javanese characters on the cover of Bab takzir.  British Library, Sloane 2393, f.21v (detail).

The term ‘Malay manuscript’ generally calls to mind a work from Southeast Asia produced in a Muslim milieu, written in Malay in the adapated form of the Arabic script known as Jawi, such as Sloane 2393 described above.  But as the technical definition of  ‘Malay manuscript’ essentially covers any item written by hand in the Malay language, it thus includes some very varied types of works, such as the second Malay manuscript owned by Sir Hans Sloane: a compilation of Christian hymns and the Psalms of David, as well as services for marriage and baptism, written in romanized Malay in a 17th-century Dutch hand (Sloane 3115).  On the flyleaf is inscribed the name Cornelius van der Sluijs, and a note in Dutch stating that in the year 1672 he sailed on the ship ‘The Coat of Arms of Alkmaar’ ('t Wapen van Alkmaar) to the East Indies, as a church representative to visit the sick. His arrival in Ambon on 10 July 1674 is recorded by François Valentijn in his monumental Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën (1726, p.75), who described 'Cornelius van der Sluis' as a doctor from Utrecht.  The note in the manuscript further records that Van der Sluijs took his final church exams in 1678, and was then sent to Ternate as chief church minister.  This manuscript was therefore probably compiled in the Moluccas, in eastern Indonesia.


The Psalms of David, in romanised Malay, late 17th century.  British Library, Sloane 3115, f.16r. 

Further reading
Mohamad Jajuli Rahman, The Undang-undang: a mid-eighteenth century Malay law text (BL Sloane MS 2393): transcription and translation. (Canterbury: University of Kent, Centre of South-east Asian studies, 1986).
Mohamad Jajuli Abd. Rahman, Teks undang-undang Melayu pertengahan abad kelapan belas (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1995).

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asian studies

When in around 1345 Ibn Battuta spent two weeks in the kingdom of Pasai on the northeast coast of Sumatra, he wrote of the courtly treatment and rich hospitality he received from Sultan Malik al-Zahir. It was this ruler’s father, Merah Silau, who embraced Islam at the end of the 13th century and took the name Sultan Malik al-Salih.  Although Muslims had been present in Southeast Asia for centuries, this was the first time that a Malay ruler had converted, and thus Pasai is renowned as the earliest Islamic kingdom in Southeast Asia.

The story of the coming of Islam to Pasai is recounted in the Hikayat Raja Pasai, which is the oldest known historical chronicle written in the Malay language, and is believed to have been composed in the 15th century.  Only two manuscripts of this text are known: a copy made for Raffles in 1815, now in the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and an earlier manuscript in the British Library (Or. 14350), copied in Semarang on the north coast of Java in 1797, which has now been fully digitised. 


The opening page of Hikayat Raja Pasai.  British Library, Or. 14350, f.45v.

The first part of Or. 14350 contains the Hikayat Raja Handik – in other manuscripts called Handak or Khandak – a well-known heroic tale in Malay about the early wars of Islam fought by the Prophet.  This text bears exceptionally detailed introductory and closing remarks that contribute greatly to our understanding of the context of production and consumption of Malay manuscripts.  The opening exhortations are addressed to a very mixed audience of men and women, Malays and Makassarese, and also peranakan: locally-born Chinese, who had often intermarried with indigenous Southeast Asians.  In the colophon, we are told that the manuscript was copied by Encik Usman, son of the Malay scribe in Makassar, in the house of Encik Johar in the Kampung Melayu of Semarang, at the request of Encik Usep of Kampung Belikang in Makassar, from an original manuscript owned by Abdullah, the Kapitan Melayu of Semarang.  This richly-detailed account affords us a tantalizing glimpse of a complex inter-island network of manuscript owners, patrons and scribes, linking the cosmopolitan ports of the archipelago.  The manuscript itself is well-thumbed, with little red crosses in the margins perhaps indicating the point of the tale reached in a night’s recitation.


The colophon of Hikayat Raja Handik, identifying the scribe, patron and owner of the original from which the present manuscript was copied, in the Malay quarter in Semarang on 8 Syaaban 1211 (6 February 1797). British Library, Or. 14350, f.45r.


The grave of Sultan Malik al-Salih, the first Muslim ruler of Pasai, who died in 1297, and in the background the grave of his son Sultan Malik al-Zahir.  Photograph A. Gallop, June 2013.

Further reading

A.H. Hill, ‘Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai: a revised romanised version of Raffles MS 67, together with an English translation’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1960, 33 (2): [1]-215.
E.U. Kratz, ‘Hikayat Raja Pasai: a second manuscript’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1989, 62 (1):1-10.
Russell Jones, (ed.), Hikayat Raja Pasai (Kuala Lumpur: Yayasan Karyawan and Fajar Bakti, 1999).
Hermansyah, ‘Terkuburnya naskah Hikayat Raja Pasai’, 2 Feb 2013 [blogpost]

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asian studies

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