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Malay and Bugis manuscripts and early printed books at the Library of Congress: An Update

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Malay and Bugis manuscripts and early printed books at the Library of Congress: An Update

Abstract

This article updates a description on Malay and Bugis manuscripts and early printed books at the Library of Congress published by A. Kohar Rony almost thirty years ago. It discusses the provenance of these holdings, linking them to the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–42 by means of lists of manuscript and book purchases found at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and draws attention to the role of the American missionary, Alfred North, in their acquisition. The article also highlights three items at the Library of Congress that were re-discovered due to these lists, among them a Malay code of law copied by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir. In addition, the article points towards a digitized collection of 46 nineteenth-century letters available online through the Library of Congress website (https://lccn.loc.gov/2019276520).

Summary

This article by Joshua Kueh, a reference librarian in the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, updates the description of the institution’s Malay and Bugis manuscripts and early printed books first published by A. Kohar Rony and Asma Ahmat nearly three decades earlier. The central historical problem it addresses is the long-standing uncertainty over how a body of nineteenth-century Malay letters and associated manuscripts came to be housed at the Library of Congress. While the received account attributed their acquisition to the American missionary Alfred North acting for the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–42), no documentary evidence had previously been produced to confirm this link beyond a cryptic notation in North’s handwriting on one letter. Kueh resolves this gap by identifying three unsigned, undated purchase lists in the Smithsonian Institution Archives that explicitly name North as the buyer and Captain Wilkes as the requesting officer, thereby anchoring the provenance of a substantial portion of the collection in primary documentation (pp. 46–51).

The article also traces the institutional journey of these materials through a chain of American scientific bodies: from the National Institution for the Promotion of Science (founded 1840), which stored expedition collections in the Great Hall of the Patent Office during the 1840s, to the Smithsonian Institution (created 1846), and finally to the Library of Congress via the 1866 Smithsonian Deposit. This path is corroborated by a note from Charles Pickering, curator of the National Institute, dated 22 November 1842, which enumerates “Nineteen volumes of Malay manuscripts” and “Eleven volumes of Bugis manuscripts” among the expedition’s philological acquisitions (p. 47). The narrative draws on Charles Wilkes’s published narrative, Alfred North’s travel journal, and the expedition’s administrative records to reconstruct the circumstances of purchase in Singapore in 1842.

Beyond provenance, the article highlights three previously unreported items in the Library of Congress holdings that were re-discovered through cross-referencing the Smithsonian lists: a Johor code of law copied by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, an 1839 address on education printed at the American Mission Press, and a trilingual vocabulary. It also announces the high-resolution digitization of forty-six nineteenth-century Malay letters, making them accessible online for the first time (pp. 54–60).

Key Findings

  • Three purchase lists were located at the Smithsonian Institution Archives (Record Unit 7058, National Institute, Records, Box 14, Folder 6), all headed with references to “Rvd. A North Singapore for U.S. Ex.Ex. By request of Capt. Wilkes.” List One includes prices; for example, Handzah (a thick quarto) is priced at $31.38, and “10 Vols Bugis Manuscripts” at $79.28 (p. 50).
  • The re-discovered Kitab undang-undang kanun yang dipakai dalam Negeri Johor contains a 71-folio Johor code of law (dated 29 March 1836) and a 17-folio maritime code attributed to Sultan Mahmud Syah of Melaka, with a note reading “Copied by Abdullah ben Abdulkadir, at Singapore, 1837” (pp. 55–56).
  • The Address of the Raffles Institution Committee to the Malays of Singapore on the subject of education is a single broadsheet in Jawi, printed at the American Mission Press, bearing the silver seal of Tengku Abdul Jalil, son of Sultan Husain Syah of Singapore, and dated 28 Jamadulakhir 1254 (18 September 1838) (p. 57).
  • The digitized letter collection comprises 46 letters spanning 1812–1832, originating from Brunei, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Johor, Riau, Lingga, Palembang, Pammana, Siak, Singapore, and Cambodia. Of 25 seals in the collection, 23 have been examined by Annabel Teh Gallop in her 2019 catalogue (p. 60).
  • The collection includes a letter from Sultanah Siti Fatimah binti Jamaluddin Abdul Rahman of Pammana, dated 13 Zulkaedah 1237 (1 August 1822), described as one of the only known extant Malay letters from a reigning female monarch of the nineteenth century (p. 59).
  • The 1866 Smithsonian Deposit transferred more than 40,000 books from the Smithsonian to the Library of Congress; several Malay items in the Southeast Asia Rare Book Collection bear the “Smithsonian Deposit” label (p. 48).

Conclusion

Kueh concludes that the three Smithsonian lists provide the strongest evidence yet for the provenance of the Malay and Bugis items that form the foundations of the Library of Congress’s Asian and Southeast Asian collections, and that the digitization of the Farquhar letters opens these materials to a wider research community (p. 62).

Context

  • Primary archival collections consulted: Smithsonian Institution Archives (Record Unit 7058, National Institute, Records, Box 14, Folder 6); Library of Congress Asian Division (Southeast Asia Rare Book Collection), Law Library, and Rare Book and Special Collections Division; Charles Wilkes papers; Alfred North travel journal (UC San Diego Special Collections).
  • Historiographical contribution: The article provides the first detailed discussion of the three purchase lists (previously only mentioned in a footnote by Ibrahim Ismail, 1986), updates the holdings description of Rony (1991) and Asma Ahmat (1993), and identifies items absent from all prior published catalogues (Teeuw 1967; Harun Mat Piah 1987; Proudfoot 1993; Chambert-Loir and Oman 1999).

References