Article

Inscriptions

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Inscriptions

Inscriptions constitute one of the most significant categories of primary evidence for the early history of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, spanning from the fourth century A.D. to the early eighteenth century and encompassing Sanskrit, Malay, Arabic, Bugis, Dutch, Portuguese, and English texts carved in stone, clay, and metal. The corpus, though small in absolute numbers, extends across Kedah, Province Wellesley (modern Perak), Trengganu, Singapore, Malacca, Brunei, and the island of Bangka, and it documents the arrival of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam; the operation of maritime trade networks linking the region to South India, Java, and China; the evolution of indigenous legal traditions; and the administrative and social life of European colonial settlements [1], [2], [3], [4]. The physical fragility of many of these monuments—several are fragmentary, weathered, or lost—has made their scholarly documentation a matter of urgency from the earliest decades of the Society’s journal [3], [5].

Scope and Historical Definition

The earliest inscriptions to attract sustained scholarly attention in the region were the Sanskrit records of the fourth to sixth centuries. H. Kern, working from facsimiles published by Colonel J. R. M. Low and J. W. Laidlay, identified four groups: a stone from Kedah found under the floor of a small ruined building, a pillar from the north of Province Wellesley, a series of small rock fragments at Tokun (also in Province Wellesley), and a damaged stone formerly at the entrance to the Singapore River [2]. Kern dated the pillar inscription—bearing the donor formula of Buddhagupta, described as a mahānāvika (eminent shipowner) resident at Raktamrttika—to approximately 400 A.D. on the strength of its exact palaeographic agreement with the Wenggi and Tjampa inscriptions of West Java, which Burnell had assigned to the fourth century [2, pp. 98–99]. He identified Raktamrttika with the Chinese port Chih-tu (Red-earth) in the Gulf of Siam, attested in Chinese navigational sources, thereby linking the inscription to a known node in Indian Ocean maritime commerce [2, p. 98]. The Kedah inscription, containing the standard Buddhist creed-formula Ye dharma hetuprabhavah followed by a verse on the accumulation and cessation of karma, was interpreted by Kern as having been set in the kuti (monk’s hut) of a Buddhist establishment, the building’s dimensions of ten to twelve feet square being consistent with that function [2, p. 95]. The Tokun fragments, too small and indistinct to yield much beyond palaeographic data, included one bearing the word arama (monastery-garden), confirming the existence of a Buddhist establishment at the site [2, pp. 99–100].

The Singapore River inscription, written in Kawi script, was assigned by Kern to the Javanese Kawi type rather than the Sumatran type on the diagnostic evidence of the letter ma, which differs markedly between the two traditions; he noted that palaeography did not contradict a proposed date to the reign of Cri-Raja Wikrama (1223–1236), a conjecture drawn from Captain Begbie’s The Malayan Peninsula [2, p. 101]. C. O. Blagden, in a separate short note of 1903, described a fragmentary clay tablet bearing a tenth-century Nagari inscription discovered by H. Vaughan Stevens in a cave in Kedah and now held in the Singapore Museum; Professor Kern, examining a photograph, recognised parts of the Buddhist formula ye dharmā hetu prabhavā at the top but was unable to decipher the whole [5, p. 205]. Blagden contrasted this tablet’s Northern Indian script with the South Indian alphabet of the Kedah and Province Wellesley inscriptions, concluding that both Northern and Southern India had contributed to the civilisation of the Malayan regions [5, p. 205].

The Trengganu inscription, a fragmentary gneissic granite stele dated to 702 A.H. (c. 1303 C.E.), occupies a unique position 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 [1, p. 253]. The stone, roughly 33 inches in height with a maximum breadth of 21 inches and weighing between 400 and 500 lbs, was discovered some twenty-five years before Paterson’s 1924 notice by an Arab trader and tin-prospector in the river Teresat near Kuala Berang, approximately twenty miles upstream from the Trengganu estuary [1, p. 252]. It had long lain in front of a local surau (prayer hall), where it served as a foot-washing step, before an imam ordered its removal on account of the inscribed characters [1, p. 252]. The top portion of the stone is lost, and Paterson estimated that as much as half the original text may be missing [1, p. 253].

Beyond the Malay Peninsula, the Bugis inscription in the Udok-Udok cemetery near Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, discovered in 1986 by Awang Suhaili of the Brunei Museum, represents the only known Bugis inscription on stone [4, p. 105]. Carved on a standing stone in a five-line text, it records the triple name of a Bugis man—La Toga, grandfather of I Potto, son of Sea Captain Cakka, who lived in Balan(n)ipa, a well-known port in South Sulawesi—and is interpreted as a gravestone commemorating him without explicitly mentioning death or burial [4, pp. 103–104]. The reverse bears the European-numeral date 1272 Hijrah (A.D. 1855–6), though Robert Nicholl has argued that the stone may instead date from the mid-eighteenth century, when the Bugis held dominant political power in Brunei, and that the 1272 H. date may reflect a later reuse or re-dating of an older monument [4, pp. 110–111].

Legal and Religious Content

The Trengganu inscription has generated the most sustained scholarly debate, not only on the question of Islam’s arrival but on the nature of early Malay-Indonesian law. H. S. Paterson’s 1924 preliminary notice drew attention to the stone’s content: 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, false evidence, and default on payment of fines [1, p. 254]. Paterson’s central philological observation was 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 [1, p. 254]. 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 [1, p. 254].

C. O. Blagden’s companion note of the same year addressed the inscription’s most pressing interpretive difficulty: the date statement on the first face ends with the words “di-tahun Saratan di-sasanakala Baginda Rasul Allah telah lalu tujoh ratus dua,” which Blagden argued is necessarily incomplete because the word tahun must have continued onto the now-lost upper portion of the next face [6, p. 259]. This lacuna opens a range of possible readings for the final digit group—dua alone, dua-lapan (eight), dua-puloh (twenty), or combinations thereof—yielding candidate years of A.H. 702, 708, 720–729, and 780–789 [6, p. 259]. The zodiacal year-name “Saratan” (Cancer) proved incompatible with a simple solar-position system applied to the drifting Islamic lunar year; Blagden proposed instead that it reflects a surviving Hindu 12-year Jupiter cycle, and under a modified model (Jupiter’s position at the start of the Islamic year), A.H. 702, 727, and 788 all qualify as Cancer years, corresponding to beginnings in August 1302, November 1326, and February 1386 respectively [6, pp. 260–261].

M. B. Hooker’s 1976 note redirected attention from the long-discussed question of Islam’s arrival to the inscription’s significance in the legal history of the Malay-Indonesian world [7, p. 127]. Hooker identified three overlapping “legal worlds” within the text: an Indian-derived element, an Islamic element, and an indigenous South East Asian element. The Indian element is demonstrated by the use of derma (from Sanskrit dharma) in both a general sense (right conduct) and a specific sense (particular rules), a multiplicity of reference Hooker parallels with the Javanese Agama or Kutara-Manava-Sastra [7, p. 129]. The Islamic element is confined to the preamble, where rulers are defined as “expounders on earth of the doctrines of God’s Apostle”; Hooker stressed that no actual rules of Islamic law appear in the extant provisions [7, p. 129]. The indigenous element lies in the substance of the rules themselves—punishments for sexual misbehaviour, false evidence, and default of payment—which find direct parallels in later Malay and Javanese law texts [7, p. 129]. Hooker’s central analytical move was to show that the foreign elements serve a legitimating function rather than a substantive one: the preamble-rule structure, the use of tamra (from Sanskrit tamrasasana, “edict inscribed on copper”), and the invocation of “Dewata Mulia Raya” all belong to a standard Malay-Indonesian mechanism for conferring validity on law [7, p. 129]. The inscription permits the commutation of corporal punishment into a money payment—a general feature of Malay-Indonesian legal thought that is absent from classical Islamic law—and the term for stoning is hembalang, a Javanese word providing direct evidence of Javanese cultural influence on the definition of law in the peninsula [7, p. 127].

The Kota Kapur inscription from Western Bangka, dated to approximately A.D. 686–7, ranks among the oldest Indonesian records known at the time of Blagden’s 1913 note [8, p. 69]. Its content records Sri Wijaya, ruler of a country called Parawis, setting up the stone after punishing or raiding the rebellious land of Jawa, warning his subjects against treason, disobedience, and various offences including evil-working charms and poisoning, and invoking a deadly curse on offenders while calling down blessings on loyal subjects [8, p. 69]. Blagden’s main interest lay in the inscription’s language, an archaic form allied to Malay, for which he provided extensive illustrative vocabulary showing correspondences with modern Malay, the retention of w where modern Malay has b, stress-shifting with suffixes, a large proportion of Sanskrit loanwords indicating strong Hindu influence, and a distinctive passive in ni- that is completely lost in modern Malay [8, pp. 69–71].

European Colonial Epigraphy

The tombstone inscriptions in St. Paul’s Church, Malacca, documented by E. M. Merewether in 1900, constitute a continuous European burial record spanning from 1568 to the early eighteenth century [3, p. 1]. Merewether, working during a temporary residence in the settlement, produced a systematic epigraphic record of thirty-six inscriptions before further weathering could render the stones illegible, aided by a previously unknown 1713 inventory compiled by the church sexton Michiel de Bruyn [3, pp. 1–2]. The earliest inscription dates to 29 March 1568 (Ricardo Gonsalves and Magdalena Trindade, Portuguese-era), and the latest to 16 September 1712 (George Cooke, a Dutch naval captain) [3, pp. 13–14]. The inscriptions are predominantly in Dutch, with two in Portuguese and one in English; they record the names, dates of birth and death, and official positions of Dutch East India Company personnel, including governors, Opperkoopman (Chief Merchants), and their families [3, pp. 3–5].

Several inscriptions carry broader historical significance. Maria Quevelerius’s tomb (No. 18) explicitly identifies her husband as “first Commander and founder of the fort and colony on the Cape of Good Hope,” linking Malacca’s burial record to the founding of the Cape settlement [3, p. 11]. A single English-language tablet commemorates Major Ferrier, 48th Regiment M.N.I., Resident Councillor of Malacca, born in Scotland 1811, died at Pringit 1854, erected by his widow—marking the brief British interregnum [3, p. 15]. Several inscriptions record infant and child deaths, including Theodorus Herbers (died aged 9, 1659), Constantyn Johannes Rooselaar (died aged 4, 1707), and Balthasar Sonmans (born and died within four days in 1667), illustrating high mortality among colonial families [3, pp. 7], [9]. Merewether also recorded a list of fifteen coats of arms that had hung on the church walls, all of which have since disappeared [3, pp. 19–21].

C. O. Blagden’s 1941 note documents a brass cannon captured by the British in the Third Burma War, now in the garden of Chelsea Hospital, bearing eleven inlaid inscriptions in Arabic and Malay [10, pp. 122–124]. The cannon bears a dated inscription identifying it as the property of “Sultan Sulaiman Shah the Victorious King,” dated Monday 4 Dhu’l-qa’dah A.H. 1063 (26 September 1653), though Blagden noted this ruler remains unidentified [10, p. 123]. The Malay inscriptions include devotional verses, a maker’s colophon, and a warning to the gunner; the final inscription names the engraver as “Tun Juma’at Abu Mendus” of Singgora [10, p. 124]. A separate Burmese engraving records the gun’s capture at the conquest of Dwarawati (Siam) in 1128 Burmese era (1766 A.D.), corresponding to the Burmese invasion that captured Ayuthia in 1767 [10, p. 122].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on inscriptions reveals a clear evolution in scholarly priorities across more than a century. The earliest contributions, from the 1870s and 1880s, were primarily descriptive and antiquarian: W. E. Maxwell’s 1878 notice on the “Antiquities of Province Wellesley” [9] and the publication of facsimiles by Colonel Low and J. W. Laidlay in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal provided the raw material for subsequent analysis [2]. The first systematic philological and palaeographic study was Kern’s 1907 article, which extended the Wenggi–Tjampa palaeographic sequence into the Malay Peninsula and provided the first systematic dating of the region’s oldest Sanskrit inscriptions [2]. Blagden’s 1903 note on the Kedah clay tablet and his 1913 note on the Kota Kapur inscription further consolidated the corpus and its linguistic significance [5], [8].

The Trengganu inscription, once it was drawn to scholarly attention in 1922 and published in 1924, became the focal point of sustained debate. Paterson’s preliminary notice and Blagden’s companion note established the basic facts and raised the dating problem [1], [6]. Hooker’s 1976 intervention marked a decisive shift in interpretive framework, redirecting the inscription from a document about the arrival of Islam to a document about the formation of a distinctive Malayan legal tradition that synthesises Indian and Islamic foreign elements to validate indigenous rules of conduct [7, p. 127]. Hooker explicitly corrected the tendency in earlier scholarship to read the inscription as evidence of Islamic law’s arrival in Malaya and challenged the common practice of attributing “Hindu influence” to later Malay manuscripts on dubious grounds [6, p. 131, n. 19].

The Bugis inscription in Brunei, published by Noorduyn in 1993, represents the most recent addition to the corpus and illustrates the continuing importance of epigraphic evidence for the history of migration and settlement in Borneo, a topic for which primary evidence remains scarce [4, p. 105]. The physical vulnerability of the inscriptions themselves—several are fragmentary, the Trengganu stone has lost its upper portion, the Malacca tombstones were already partially illegible by 1900, and the coats of arms have all disappeared—underscores the urgency that drove Merewether’s documentation and that continues to motivate scholarly attention to the surviving monuments [1], [3].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. H.S. Paterson (1924). An early Malay inscription in Trengganu JMBRAS 2(3): 252–258. Read on JSTOR
  2. H. Kern (1907). Concerning some old Sanskrit inscriptions in the Malay Peninsula JSBRAS 49: 95–101.
  3. E.M. Merewether (1900). Inscriptions in St. Paul’s Church, Malacca JSBRAS 34: 1–21. Read on JSTOR
  4. Noorduyn. J and H.E. Wilson (1993). The Bugis inscription in the Udo-Udok cemetery in Brunei JMBRAS 66(2): 103–112.
  5. C.O. Blagden (1903). A Buddhist votive tablet JSBRAS 39: 205–206.
  6. C.O. Blagden (1924). A note on the Trengganu inscription JMBRAS 2(3): 258–263. Read on JSTOR
  7. M.B. Hooker (1976). The Trengganu inscription in Malayan legal history JMBRAS 49(2): 127–131.
  8. C.O. Blagden (1913). The Kota Kapur (Western Bangka) inscription JSBRAS 64: 69–71.
  9. W.E. Maxwell (1878). Antiquities of Province Wellesley JSBRAS 1: 114. Read on JSTOR
  10. C.O. Blagden (1941). A XVIIth century Malay cannon in London JMBRAS 19(1): 122–124.