Article

An early Chinese account of Kelantan

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

An early Chinese account of Kelantan

M.W.F. Tweedie published this brief note in 1953, presenting a translated passage from the Hai Lu Chu (a 1938 Shanghai publication recording the late-18th-century travels of Hsieh Ching Kao) that offers a rare Chinese eyewitness account of Kelantan’s political, legal, and economic life. The article’s central contribution is the identification of the “spear-hurling” aborigines described in the text as the Temiar, and the tentative correlation of the gold-mining route with the Kelantan–Pahang land corridor.

Summary

The Hai Lu Chu was compiled in 1820 in Macao by Yang Ping Nan at the dictation of Hsieh Ching Kao, a Kwantung-born sailor who had spent fourteen years abroad before going blind at age thirty-one. The Kelantan passage, translated by Mr. Lee Kim Chuan of Singapore’s Public Relations Department, provides a compact ethnographic portrait of the state as it appeared in the late 1700s: a Siamese vassal ruled by a Sultan whose bamboo-and-plank palace had a single door, whose court sat on the floor, and whose justice system combined direct verbal hearing with two ordeal mechanisms—submergence of boys in water and retrieval of iron from boiling oil (pp. 216–217).

Tweedie’s own commentary focuses on two interpretive problems. First, the identity of the aggressive, spear-throwing inland people who settled disputes by duel: he consulted T.W.T. Bangs, Development Officer for Kelantan, who identified them as the Temiar, noting the dramatic contrast between the predatory duellists of the 1780s and the “amiable, inoffensive” Temiar of the 1950s (pp. 218–219). Second, the toponyms in the gold-mining paragraph—Alosuav, Sangor, Galating—resist confident identification, though Galating is plausibly cognate with the River Galas near Pulai, and the route may refine the northern land corridor previously postulated by Rentse (1947) from Kuala Kelantan through the Lebir, Galas, and Nenggiri rivers into Pahang (p. 219).

The passage also records the fiscal and commercial architecture of the state: vessel tonnage taxes, the annual hasil and machi levies, the heavy taxation of wine, opium, and gambling, and the tribute of 30 katis of gold paid to Siam. The Chinese community is described as stratified between Hokkien town-dwellers (traders, pepper planters) and Cantonese rural gold miners, with a Kapitain serving as their internal authority (pp. 217–218).

Key Findings

  • Hsieh Ching Kao was born in 1765 at Ka Ying Chao, Kwantung; went to sea at 18; spent 14 years abroad; went blind at 31; died at 57. The Hai Lu Chu was published by the China Commercial Press, Shanghai, in July 1938 (p. 216).
  • Vessel taxation: large ships paid 500–600 silver coins; small ships 200–300. Individual visitors paid 1 silver coin, renewed annually. The country paid 30 katis of gold in tribute to Siam each year (p. 218).
  • The “boiling cauldron” ordeal used a piece of iron “a few inches long, over an inch broad, and two to three inches thick” submerged in boiling oil; the guilty party would be burnt and unable to retrieve it (p. 217).
  • A few hundred Chinese came annually to the gold-mining areas at Sangor and Galating; Hokkiens occupied the town (trade, pepper) while Cantonese worked the rural mines (p. 218).
  • The “submergence” ordeal required both parties to take a boy by the roadside, submerge him in water while a priest prayed; the first to surface represented the guilty party, and the verdict was final (p. 217).
  • Galating is tentatively identified with the River Galas region near Pulai, close to the Pahang border, potentially refining the land route from Kuala Kelantan through the Lebir, Galas, and Nenggiri rivers into the Tembeling and Jelai rivers (p. 219).

Conclusion

Tweedie’s note establishes that the Hai Lu Chu passage constitutes a valuable, if unverified, late-18th-century Chinese observation of Kelantan that corroborates the Siamese overlordship, the rudimentary judicial ordeals, and the gold-mining economy, while the identification of the spear-throwers as Temiar and the correlation of Galating with the Galas/Pulai area offer testable hypotheses for the state’s pre-modern geography and ethnic history.

Context

  • The primary source is the 1938 Shanghai edition of Hai Lu Chu, a copy of which was provided by Mr. Han Wai Toon of Singapore; the translation was supplied by Mr. Lee Kim Chuan (Public Relations Department, Singapore) (p. 216).
  • Historiographically, the article extends the work of Rentse (JMBRAS 20(1), 1947: 32) on the Kelantan–Pahang land route and complements Tweedie’s own 1947 report on bronze objects from the Tui Gold Mine, Pahang (JMBRAS 20(1): 43–44), which is appended as a brief addendum identifying a ring bearing the Chinese character Fu (Happiness) (p. 219).

References