An early Malay inscription in Trengganu
H. S. Paterson, a British military officer serving in the colonial administration, published this preliminary notice in 1924 reporting on a fragmentary gneissic granite stele discovered in Trengganu, dated to 702 A.H. (c. 1303 C.E.). The inscription is of major significance as the oldest known Malay text rendered in Arabic script and the earliest contemporary record of Islam’s formal introduction to any state on the Malay Peninsula, predating the next such record by a full century.
Summary
Paterson’s article serves as a first descriptive and philological account of the stone, which was discovered some twenty-five years prior by an Arab trader and tin-prospector in the river Teresat near Kuala Berang, approximately twenty miles upstream from the Trengganu estuary. The stone had long lain in front of a local surau, where it served as a foot-washing step, before an imam ordered its removal to the river on account of the inscribed characters. It was eventually presented to the late Sultan Zainal-Abidin and placed in the old Malay fort on Bukit Puteri, where it attracted various folk interpretations ranging from a record of hidden treasure to a memorial of a raja’s punishment of an unfaithful wife. A transcription was even sent to Mecca for interpretation, with no recorded result. Paterson drew attention to the stone in late 1922, when it was traced out with chalk and photographed by Mr. N. Suzuki of Kuala Trengganu.
The physical description reveals a roughly squared stele, 33 inches in height with a maximum breadth of 21 inches tapering to 10½ inches at the base, weighing between 400 and 500 lbs. The inscription covers all four faces for 18 inches from the top, with the lower 15 inches left clear for planting upright in the ground. The top portion of the stone is lost, and Paterson estimates that as much as half the original text may be missing. The workmanship is described as distinctly crude, with unorthodox spelling, definite blunders, and the near-total absence of diacritical points that in standard Arabic script distinguish one letter from another.
The content comprises a proclamation ordering rulers and governors to expound and uphold the Muslim faith, followed by nine or ten numbered legal sections covering creditor-debtor relations, sexual offences (prescribing stoning for married persons and flogging or graduated fines for the unmarried), false evidence, and default on payment of fines. The concluding section binds the code on the addressee’s children and grandchildren. Paterson’s central philological observation is that the text contains 29 words of Sanskrit origin but fewer than 10 borrowed from Arabic (limited to day and month names and the stock phrase “Rasul Allah sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallama”), leading him to conclude that this represents the promulgation of a new religion in language deliberately adapted to a population educated only in Hinduistic religious terms. The expression for the Deity is simply a Malay translation of the Arabic “Allah subhanahu wa taala,” and the title “Dewata Mulia Raya” (Great High Godhead) reflects the Hindu cosmological vocabulary of the audience.
Key Findings
- The inscription is dated to a Friday in the month of Rejab, 702 A.H., corresponding to approximately February–March 1303 C.E., making it a full century earlier than the next contemporary record of any Peninsula state embracing Islam (p. 253).
- The stone measures 33 inches in height, 21 inches maximum breadth, 10½ inches at the foot, and 9½ inches average depth, weighing between 400 and 500 lbs; the inscription covers all four faces for 18 inches from the top (p. 253).
- The text contains 29 words of Sanskrit origin compared to fewer than 10 Arabic borrowings, the latter confined to weekday and month names and the formula “Rasul Allah sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallama” (p. 254).
- The sixth law prescribes stoning to death for married persons committing sexual wantonness and a hundred blows of the rattan for unmarried free persons, with graduated fines for children of Mandalikas (10½ sagas), Mentris (7 tahils and 1 paha), and elders (5 tahils) (pp. 255–256).
- In 1365, Trengganu was claimed as a vassal state of the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, whose state religions were Hinduism and Buddhism, yet this does not exclude Trengganu having already adopted Islam, as similar claims were made over Perak and Samudra, which had certainly done so (p. 254).
- The earliest other examples of the Malay language in Arabic script in the Peninsula date to 1468, confirming this inscription’s unique position as the earliest known instance of the combination (p. 254).
Conclusion
Paterson concludes that the inscription testifies to the gradual but sure displacement of older Hindu-Buddhist beliefs by Islam in the Malay Peninsula, a process achieved not by the forcible methods employed in the western conquests but by the persistent efforts of Arab traders and missionaries. The linguistic evidence—Sanskrit vocabulary carrying the weight of religious and legal expression while Arabic contributes only the barest formulaic elements—demonstrates a deliberate strategy of cultural accommodation in which the new faith was presented in terms intelligible to a Hindu-educated population.
Context
- Paterson held the rank of Major and was evidently serving in the colonial administration in Trengganu; the article is explicitly framed as a “preliminary notice,” with the author deferring the deeper historical and philological analysis to Mr. C. O. Blagden, whose translation he reproduces with permission (pp. 252, 258).
- The chain of custody of the stone—from Arab trader to Sultan to Raffles’ Museum, Singapore—reflects the colonial-era pattern of archaeological material being funnelled into Singapore’s institutional collections, and the article’s publication in JMBRAS situates it firmly within the British colonial scholarly apparatus of the period.