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Pengembaraan La Galigo ke Washington D.C.: Memperkenalkan Husin bin Ismail [The La Galigo manuscripts in Washington D.C.: Introducing Husin bin Ismail

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Pengembaraan La Galigo ke Washington D.C.: Memperkenalkan Husin bin Ismail [The La Galigo manuscripts in Washington D.C.: Introducing Husin bin Ismail

Roger Tol, in this 2020 article (originally published in 2003), traces the provenance of five La Galigo manuscripts held at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., arguing that their journey from 19th-century Singapore to the United States is inseparable from the career of Husin bin Ismail, a Bugis scribe of Wajoq origin who was among the most productive Malay and Bugis copyists of his era.

Summary

The article addresses a straightforward but important philological question: how did Bugis manuscripts end up in the Library of Congress? Tol reconstructs the chain of custody from the Wilkes Expedition’s arrival in Singapore in February 1842, when the American minister Alfred North presented a package of Malay and Bugis manuscripts to Captain Wilkes. The manuscripts had been copied at North’s request by two scribes working at the Mission Press in Singapore: Abdullah bin Abdulkadir Munsyi (for the Malay texts) and Husin bin Ismail (for the Bugis texts). Tol’s central argument is that the Bugis and Malay portions of the Library of Congress collection are not merely co-located but intrinsically linked as a single coherent package produced by a small team of scribes under one collector.

Tol’s method is philological rather than archival in the conventional sense. He identifies Husin as the sole copyist of all ten Bugis manuscripts in the collection by comparing handwriting, colophons, and North’s own annotations on loose leaves inserted in the volumes. The evidence is cumulative: colophons naming “guru La Uséng” (Teacher Husin), North’s marginal notes describing the scribe as “a learned Bugis in Singapore,” and the consistent hand across all volumes. Tol then extends the identification beyond Washington to Cambridge (Houghton Library, Harvard) and to collections in London and Cambridge, England, where additional manuscripts bear Husin’s name in their colophons.

The article’s broader significance lies in its recovery of Husin bin Ismail as a historical figure. Unlike his colleague Abdullah, whose autobiography (Hikayat Abdullah) has made him one of the best-known figures in Malay literary history, Husin left no self-narrative and is absent from Abdullah’s own account. Tol reconstructs what can be known—his Wajoq origin (specifically the village of Bélawa), his roughly thirty-year career (c. 1830–60), his dual role as language teacher and copyist, and his distinctive European-influenced writing style—entirely from the physical evidence of the manuscripts themselves.

Key Findings

  • The Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842) arrived in Singapore in February 1842; Alfred North presented a package of Malay and Bugis manuscripts to Captain Wilkes, which were transferred from the Smithsonian Institution to the Library of Congress in 1865 (p. 67).
  • All ten Bugis manuscripts in the Library of Congress collection were copied by a single scribe, identified through colophons as “guru La Uséng” and through North’s marginal annotations describing him as “a learned Bugis in Singapore” (pp. 68–69).
  • Husin bin Ismail was a Bugis of Wajoq origin, born in the village of Bélawa, who worked in Singapore for approximately thirty years (c. 1830–60) as a copyist and language teacher for British, American, and Dutch patrons (pp. 69–70).
  • A second package of manuscripts from North (13 Malay, 6 Bugis) was deposited at Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA, in 1843 after the closure of the ABCFM post in Singapore (p. 67, n. 4).
  • By 1849, the Bugis community in Singapore numbered 2,269 persons, predominantly from Wajoq, living in their own kampung with distinct customs and language (p. 70).
  • Husin’s Bugis manuscripts display a distinctive European-influenced style, notably the use of inter-word spacing, a convention foreign to traditional Bugis script but consistent with the manuscripts having been produced at the request of a Western collector (p. 71).

Conclusion

Tol’s definitive takeaway is that the Library of Congress Bugis collection is a unique artifact of 19th-century Singapore’s multilingual manuscript culture, and that Husin bin Ismail—though historically invisible in the sense of leaving no autobiography or biographical record—deserves recognition as the most productive surviving Malay and Bugis copyist in the world, whose work spans collections across the United States, Britain, and (presumably) the Netherlands.

Context

  • Primary archival collections examined: Library of Congress (Washington D.C.), Houghton Library (Harvard, Cambridge MA), SOAS (London), and Cambridge University Library; the von de Wall collection at Perpustakaan Nasional RI (Jakarta) is referenced but not fully examined.
  • The article’s historiographical contribution lies in shifting attention from the well-studied figure of Abdullah bin Abdulkadir Munsyi to his Bugis colleague, and in demonstrating that the Bugis and Malay manuscript collections in Western libraries are not independent acquisitions but products of a single collaborative enterprise in colonial Singapore.

References