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On a recent edition of the Undang-undang Melaka. {Review article of Undang-undang Melaka, the laws of Melaka by Liaw Yock Fang

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On a recent edition of the Undang-undang Melaka. {Review article of Undang-undang Melaka, the laws of Melaka by Liaw Yock Fang

G.W.J. Drewes published this extensive review in 1980, evaluating Liaw Yock Fang’s 1976 critical edition of the Undang-undang Melaka (Bibliotheca Indonesica, Vol. 13, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague). The article, spanning 27 pages, serves as both a historiographical survey of scholarship on Malay legal codes and a detailed philological and juridical critique of Liaw’s translation and commentary, ultimately affirming the edition’s value as a milestone while identifying numerous points requiring revision.

Summary

Drewes situates Liaw’s work within a long but uneven tradition of scholarship on Malay undang-undang, tracing interest from Raffles’ 1818 translation of the Undang-undang laut through the contributions of Crawfurd, Newbold, Dulaurier, and Logan in the mid-nineteenth century, a subsequent lull, and a revival beginning with Van Ronkel’s 1919 text edition and Winstedt’s 1923 article on a Brunei code. Drewes notes that Van Ronkel’s edition was based on too narrow a manuscript base and superficial consultation, whereas Liaw undertook the far more ambitious task of surveying all known manuscripts—numbering well over forty across collections in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Singapore—and establishing their mutual relationships. This preliminary work led Liaw to distinguish seven groups of manuscripts, of which only the first, “Undang-undang Melaka proper” (comprising 19 manuscripts, 13 of which are independent witnesses), forms the basis of his printed text.

The core of Drewes’ review is a chapter-by-chapter examination of Liaw’s translation and commentary, covering all 44 pasal of the code. Drewes demonstrates that the Undang-undang Melaka is a hybrid compilation of at least six distinct elements: the core Melakan code, Maritime Law, Muslim Marriage Law, Muslim Law of Sale and Procedure, the Undang-undang Negeri, and the Undang-undang Johor. He draws on Arabic legal sources—particularly al-Nawawi’s Minhaj al-talibin, al-Shirazi’s Tanbih, and Bājūrī’s Hashiya—to show where Liaw’s rendering of technical Shafi’ite terminology is imprecise or erroneous, and he compares the Malay text with Old-Javanese legal codes (notably Jonker’s edition) to illuminate shared juridical concepts such as the diving ordeal, danda-parusya, and grounds for divorce. Drewes also corrects Liaw’s handling of key Malay legal vocabulary, including negeri, dusun, anak sungai, teluk rantau, hamba raja, maharajalela, dayus, bermadu, and menebus, arguing that several of Liaw’s translations obscure the text’s actual juridical meaning.

Throughout, Drewes stresses the importance of distinguishing between kanun (royal legislative enactments), ‘adat (temporal customary law), and syara’ (Islamic divine law) as they operate within the code, and he cautions against treating the compilation as equivalent to modern legislation. He references Snouck Hurgronje’s observations in the Ambtelijke Adviezen on the limited practical significance of such texts in the administration of justice, urging that the various elements still require close study before definitive conclusions can be drawn about their origin, content, and public importance.

Key Findings

  • The Undang-undang Melaka proper is attested in 19 manuscripts, of which 13 are independent witnesses (6 and 7 in two sub-groups); 3 and 2 texts respectively were used to establish the printed text (pp. 24–25).
  • The code comprises 44 pasal, of which Section I (core Melakan law) accounts for 22 and Sections III–IV (Muslim Marriage and Sale/Procedure Law) together account for 17 (p. 25).
  • Drewes dates Sections I and II to the reigns of Sultans Muhammad Syah (1424–1444) and Muzaffar Syah (1445–1458); Section V (Undang-undang Negeri) to approximately the early sixteenth century; and Section VI (Undang-undang Johor) possibly to the order of Sultan Mahmud Syah of Johor (1761–1812) (p. 25).
  • The minimum distance (masafat al-qasr) justifying a government-appointed guardian (wali) for a bride is fixed at two marhala, equated in Sayyid ʿUthman’s Kitab al-kawanin al-sharʿiyya (Batavia, 1893) to 90 paal (approximately 135 km) (p. 39).
  • A discount of 10% is accorded to a buyer who accepts an article with a defect that arose after sale, and 20% if the defect pre-existed at the time of sale (p. 43).
  • The maximum price for selling or exchanging tin coins into foreign currency is capped at 112½ rial, irrespective of the number of coins involved (p. 49).

Conclusion

Drewes concludes that Liaw’s edition represents indispensable philological groundwork—a “milestone in the study of the Undang-undangs”—for having established a reliable text from a comprehensive manuscript survey and provided the first integral English translation. However, he maintains that the translation in particular is “susceptible of revision in several places,” and that the various elements of the code (adat, royal edicts, Islamic Law) still require close study as regards their content, origin, and public importance before the knowledge of this subject-matter will be sufficiently advanced to admit of conclusions.

Context

  • The review draws extensively on Arabic Shafi’ite legal manuals (al-Nawawi’s Minhaj al-talibin, al-Shirazi’s Tanbih, Bājūrī’s Hashiya, Juynboll’s Handleiding) and Old-Javanese legal sources (Jonker’s edition of the Old-Javanese Code) to evaluate Liaw’s juridical interpretations, representing a comparative legal-historical methodology.
  • Drewes’ own prior work on Malay mysticism and his familiarity with the Sejarah Melayu (Situmorang-Teeuw edition) inform several of his textual observations, particularly on royal ideology and the Sufi vocabulary in the code’s closing passages.

References