Article

An unpublished variant version of the “Malay Annals”

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

An unpublished variant version of the “Malay Annals”

C.O. Blagden, a British colonial administrator and Malay philologist, published in 1925 the first edition of eight previously unprinted chapters from a variant manuscript of the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), arguing that this text—though physically a copy made in the early nineteenth century for Stamford Raffles—preserves a genuine seventeenth-century historical tradition about the post-conquest Malay states that is both more candid about Malay military failures and richer in local detail than the received text of Shellabear.

Summary

The article addresses a gap in Malay historiography created by the loss of pre-Islamic literary traditions and the miscellaneous, legend-laden character of the Sejarah Melayu, the oldest surviving Malay history, composed in the second decade of the seventeenth century. Blagden identifies MS. No. 18 of the Raffles collection in the Royal Asiatic Society, London, as containing a variant recension that diverges substantially from the published text only in its final chapters—those dealing with events after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511. The manuscript, written on English paper bearing a C. Wilmott watermark dated 1812, comprises 202 pages of Malay script and was clearly a copy made for Raffles from an older source. Blagden notes that Van der Tuuk had flagged the variant in his catalogue fifty-seven years earlier, but no further work had been done on it (pp. 10–13).

Blagden’s central argument is that the variant text embodies authentic historical tradition rather than mere scribal corruption. His evidence includes the archaic spelling patterns (such as keluar, di-luar, bēdil, tuan) that suggest a seventeenth-century rather than nineteenth-century origin; the presence of a superior reading (turun daripada bizurai) in chapter 34; and, most importantly, the text’s frankness about Malay defeats and internal dissensions, which Blagden considers unlikely to be invented (pp. 11–13). He concedes, however, that the passage establishing a genealogical link between the Johor dynasty and the rulers of Perak appears to be “special pleading” possibly composed by a Perak man seeking to authenticate his rulers’ pedigree, and that certain spellings suggest a northern dialect (p. 12).

The eight published chapters (I–VIII) narrate the political and military history of the Johor-Bentan court under Sultan Mahmud Shah and his successor Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah, covering the failed Malay sieges of Portuguese Malacca, the rivalry between Lingga and Indragiri, the Portuguese bombardment of Kota Kara, the exile of the Raja Muda to Perak where he was proclaimed Sultan Muzaffar Shah, and the internal court disputes that characterised this period. The text includes vivid episodes such as the cockfighting of Tun Biajit (son of Hang Tuah) at Indragiri, the breaking of the royal elephant’s tusk against the Malacca fort wall, and the execution of the Portuguese envoy by Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah (pp. 13–16, 17–52).

Key Findings

  • The variant manuscript (MS. No. 18, Raffles collection, RAS London) is written on English paper (12¼ × 7¾ inches) with a C. Wilmott watermark dated 1812, confirming it was a copy made for Raffles from an older source; it contains 202 pages of Malay script with a normal line count of 25 per page (p. 13).
  • The text diverges from Shellabear’s published version only after chapter 34; in the first 34 chapters it merely rearranges chapter order (placing ch. 5 before 4, ch. 22 before 21, ch. 32 before 31) and omits chapter 16 entirely (p. 11).
  • The variant text records a failed Malay siege of Malacca in which the Paduka Tuan charged the royal elephant Bidam Setia against the fort wall, breaking its right tusk, while a storm on the preceding Friday night had prevented the coordinated land-and-sea assault (pp. 25–26).
  • Sultan Mahmud Shah’s reign is given as 48 years total: 30 years at Malacca, 1 year at Pahang, 12 years at Bentan, and 5 years at Kampar (p. 40).
  • The Portuguese fleet that attacked Kota Kara under Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah consisted of three galleys, two long ghalis, ten fustas, and half a dozen bantings; the siege lasted three days and three nights of continuous bombardment (pp. 47–48).
  • The Perak founding narrative in the variant text names the exiled Raja Muda (son of Sultan Mahmud Shah) as having been carried from Kang to Perak by a Manjong trader named Si-Tumi, where he was proclaimed Sultan Muzaffar Shah with 16 children by Tun Trang and one son, Raja Muhammad, by a concubine (pp. 40–41).

Conclusion

Blagden concludes that despite the probable interpolation of the Perak genealogical passage, the variant text as a whole “seem[s] to embody much genuine historical tradition” and is “not far removed in date from the time when the main body of the work was composed” (p. 13). Its value lies in providing a more unvarnished account of Malay military failures and courtly dissensions during the critical period between the Portuguese conquest of Malacca and the Dutch capture of 1641, supplementing the received text with details of local geography, personal names, and diplomatic incidents that corroborate known historical events.

Context

  • The primary source is MS. No. 18 of the Raffles collection of Malay manuscripts in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, a collection assembled during Raffles’s governorship of Java and Singapore (1811–1816).
  • The article’s historiographical contribution is the first critical edition of a variant recension of the Sejarah Melayu, demonstrating that the text’s transmission involved independent supplementary layers composed by different hands, and establishing a methodological framework for evaluating the authenticity of Malay manuscript variants through palaeographic, linguistic, and internal-consistency evidence.

References