Malay Perspectives on Ming China during the Age of Exploration
Abstract
When the Portuguese and Spaniards first arrived in the South China Sea (ca. early 1500s), the commercial worlds they encountered in centres like Melaka and Manila were closely connected with the politics and economy of China under the Ming dynasty (r. 1368–1644). This article examines how the Malay sultanates conceptualized China in three works of Malay epic literature (Malay: hikayat)—the Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai, Hikayat Hang Tuah, and Sejarah Melayu. A comparison of these semi-fictional texts with historical accounts provides evidence that during Europe’s Age of Exploration, when Southeast Asia first became the crossroads of global maritime exchange, the sultanates of Southeast Asia were deeply intertwined with Chinese diplomacy in ways that help explain European colonial-era activities in the South China Sea well into the twentieth century.
Summary
This article by Ali Humayun Akhtar investigates how three fifteenth-century Malay epic texts—the Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai, Hikayat Hang Tuah, and Sejarah Melayu—represented China, and what those representations reveal about the actual political and commercial entanglement between the Malay sultanates and Ming China on the eve of the European Age of Exploration. The central historical problem is one of source asymmetry: the conventional narrative of Southeast Asia’s integration into global trade has been built primarily from Chinese and European documents, leaving the Malay perspective underexplored. Akhtar argues that the semi-fictional Malay epics, when read alongside Chinese travel accounts and Ming annals, provide independent corroboration of a deep and multi-layered Chinese-Malay connection that extended across diplomatic protocol, material culture, martial arts, royal genealogy, and even kinship.
The article traces a spectrum of Chinese presence in the Malay world, from the political-foreign (China as a peer kingdom in the Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai) to the culturally local (Chinese villages, martial arts teachers, and material culture embedded in Malay courtly life), to the genealogical-intimate (royal intermarriage and shared ancestry in the Sejarah Melayu). A recurring methodological move is the cross-referencing of Malay literary descriptions with Chinese and Central Asian sources—Ma Huan’s observations of Chinese Muslim communities, the Timurid artist Naqqash’s account of the Ming court, and the Persian traveller Khitayi’s framing of Sumatra as a Chinese frontier—to demonstrate that the epics’ “legendary” details align with documented historical realities.
A secondary thread runs through the article’s treatment of the Portuguese. In the Hikayat Hang Tuah, the Iberians appear not as sophisticated merchants but as quarrelsome, uncouth pirates who are socially and militarily inferior to the Malay and Indian protagonists. Akhtar reads this as evidence that the Malay sultanates perceived the Portuguese as disruptive interlopers in a commercial and diplomatic order already structured around Chinese patronage, which helps explain both the sultanates’ resistance to European encroachment and the Europeans’ own strategic interest in the region’s Chinese commodity networks.
Key Findings
- Ma Huan’s Ying-yai Sheng-Lan records Chinese Muslims from Canton, Guangzhou, and Quanzhou who “fled and now live in this country” (Java/Sumatra), having escaped Ming retribution after the fall of the Yuan dynasty; the Hikayat Raja Handik manuscript (British Library Or. 14350) was addressed to a mixed audience including Malays, Makassarese, and Chinese listeners (pp. 3–4).
- The Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai describes a kampung china (Chinese village) in Pasai led by a pendikar named Ali, and the prince’s royal regalia includes “bracelets in the form of dragons” and a headdress of “fine yellow silk” in the colour china kepaluan—elements that parallel the Timurid diplomat Naqqash’s (fl. 1419–22) near-contemporary description of yellow silk, dragons, and mythical birds in the Ming court (pp. 5–9).
- In the Hikayat Hang Tuah, the Malay delegation to the Ming court is initially restricted to meeting four named ministers (Wang Kim Seng, Pa Shin Nga, Lu Ti, Sim Pai Qip) before the emperor grants direct audience; Hang Tuah is subsequently gifted “more than seven complete Chinese suits” per Malay member of the entourage (pp. 13–15).
- The Sejarah Melayu narrates that a Chinese nobleman who settled in Palembang married Sang Sapurba’s adoptive daughter and that “from whom are descended the royal race who reign in China at the present time,” establishing a shared genealogical origin for Malay and Chinese kingship (pp. 16–17).
- The marriage of Chinese princess Hang Li-Po to Sultan Mansur Shah of Melaka was accompanied by an entourage of approximately five hundred courtiers who converted to Islam, and the embassy’s gifts included golden needles, silks, and brocade—pointing to Ming textile and metal-manufacturing industries (notably Shanxi iron specialties) supplying Southeast Asian courtly economies (pp. 17–18).
- The heqin (peace marriage) policy, instituted during the Han dynasty with the Xiongnu (ca. 202 B.C.–220 C.E.) and continued under the Tang and Yuan (seven Yuan princesses married Korean princes), was notably NOT employed by the Ming in its overland frontier relations; the Sejarah Melayu’s depiction of a Ming princess sent to Melaka thus represents a maritime extension of this practice, corroborated by the sixteenth-century Persian traveller Ali Akbar Khitayi, who described Sumatra as part of China’s frontier (p. 19).
Conclusion
Akhtar’s definitive takeaway is that the Malay sultanates were not peripheral recipients of Chinese influence but active participants in a Ming-era diplomatic and commercial system that structured the South China Sea as a zone of Chinese imperial reach. The Malay epics, far from being mere folklore, encode a coherent political imagination in which Melaka occupied a position analogous to a Chinese maritime frontier—powerful enough to merit heqin-style marriage alliance, culturally sophisticated enough to command the Ming emperor’s respect, and commercially central enough to explain why the Portuguese and later the Dutch targeted the region. This reframing positions the Malay literary record as an indispensable primary source for understanding the pre-colonial political economy of Southeast Asia.
Context
- The study draws on three Malay-language epic manuscripts (Hill 1960 edition of Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai; Robson 2010 translation of Hikayat Hang Tuah; Leyden 1821 Malay Annals) cross-referenced with Chinese travel accounts (Ma Huan, Fei Xin), Central Asian sources (Naqqash, Khitayi), and Ming annals, without relying on European colonial-era archives.
- Historiographically, the article contributes to the growing field that treats Malay literary texts as evidence for political and economic history, extending the method beyond the well-studied Sejarah Melayu to include the less-examined Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai and Hikayat Hang Tuah, and situates them within the broader context of Ming maritime statecraft and the heqin marriage tradition.