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A missionary source for a biography of Munshi Abdullah

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

A missionary source for a biography of Munshi Abdullah

A.C. Milner (1980) examines the London Missionary Society archives held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, to recover independent contemporary evidence on the life and intellectual development of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi, the founder of modern Malay literature. Writing in the early 1820s through the 1840s, the LMS missionaries in Melaka, Singapore, and Penang left letters that corroborate, complicate, and extend the narrative Abdullah told in his own Hikayat, and Milner argues that these documents are essential for understanding how European missionary contact shaped Abdullah’s critical, individualist outlook.

Summary

Milner’s central contribution is methodological and interpretive. He demonstrates that the LMS correspondence, previously unused in Abdullah scholarship, provides a second, external vantage point on the relationship between Abdullah and the missionaries — a relationship that Abdullah’s autobiography presents from one side only. By cross-referencing Thomsen’s letters, the 1825 LMS Deputation report, Stronach’s 1841 account of the New Testament translation, and Beighton’s hostile comments from Penang, Milner reconstructs how the missionaries themselves perceived Abdullah: as a steady, inquisitive, and teachable collaborator, but also, in Beighton’s view, as a potentially subversive “artful Mahometan” whose influence on translation work could not be trusted (pp. 111–116).

The article then moves beyond mere corroboration to address the deeper question of intellectual influence. Milner draws on Thomsen’s own words — “We have to teach them first to think” — and on the missionaries’ disdain for ritual and their emphasis on personal salvation to argue that the LMS missionaries functioned as agents of what Skinner called “cultural shock,” provoking Abdullah to subject Malay society and its norms to critical scrutiny (pp. 117–118). The missionaries’ influence, Milner contends, should not be measured by whether Abdullah converted to Christianity (though he was known among Malays as “Abdullah Padre”), but by the degree to which he absorbed an individualist, rationalist sensibility that led him to condemn the oppressive structures of the Malay Sultanates and to assert the capacity of the individual mind to develop and “bear fruit” (pp. 117–118).

Milner is careful to note that missionaries were not Abdullah’s only European interlocutors; Raffles and John Turnbull Thomson also featured prominently in his intellectual life. The LMS archives, however, offer the most sustained and detailed window into the daily process of that cross-cultural exchange, and Milner closes by inviting further investigation of the collection for future biographical work (p. 119).

Key Findings

  • The first LMS reference to Abdullah appears in March 1816, when C.H. Thomsen reported studying Malay with an unnamed teacher for five months; the name “Abdollah” first appears in the archives in the financial year August 1821–August 1822, when he was paid 198 dollars for nine months’ work as “Thomsen’s teacher” (pp. 111–112).
  • The 1825 LMS Deputation (Bennet and Tyerman) criticised Thomsen for having “employed a Teacher for 10 years,” calling it “an extravagance in learning so simple a language” — confirming Abdullah’s long tenure with the mission (p. 113).
  • In March 1841, John Stronach described Abdullah as “almost the only learned native scholar in the Malay language now to be found” and detailed the translation procedure: Stronach would test Abdullah’s corrections against the old Dutch version, Blomfield’s Greek grammar, the French translation, and Walton’s Polyglot, then give the decided meaning to Abdullah in both English and Malay (p. 114).
  • Thomas Beighton in Penang, in letters of 1842, accused Abdullah of being “an artful cunning Mahometan” who would corrupt the New Testament translation, and reported that Abdullah “hates me with all his heart” for daring to find fault with the versions Abdullah had worked on (pp. 115–116).
  • Thomsen reported in December 1821 that “the Malays in (Melaka) know almost as much about Christianity from what they learn from my teacher and books, as if oral instruction had actually been carried on,” indicating the breadth of Abdullah’s role as a cultural intermediary (p. 117).
  • John Turnbull Thomson noted that Abdullah, who had “learnt a freedom of thought” from the missionaries, was generally referred to by the Malays as “Abdullah Padre”; J. Bethune Cook later reported that “foul play” was suspected at Abdullah’s sudden death in Mecca because “he was considered by some Mahomedans to be a Christian” (p. 117).

Conclusion

Milner’s definitive takeaway is that the missionaries’ influence on Abdullah must be understood in terms of intellectual emancipation rather than religious conversion. The LMS missionaries, by modelling a critical, individualist mode of thought and by provoking Abdullah to question the ritual and hierarchical structures of Malay society, contributed to the “cultural shock” that enabled him to break from the established literary pattern and become the first modern Malay writer (pp. 117–118).

Context

  • Primary archival collection: London Missionary Society archives, Ultra-Ganges, Incoming Letters (Malacca, Penang, Singapore sections), held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, since 1973 (p. 111, n. 3).
  • Historiographical contribution: Milner’s article extends the source base for Abdullah studies beyond the Hikayat itself and beyond the newspaper evidence examined by C. Skinner (JMBRAS 39, 1966), establishing the LMS correspondence as a necessary complement for any future full biography (pp. 111, 119).

References