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Syair Peri Tuan Raffles pergi ke Minangkabau: a Malay account of Raffles’ second expedition to the Sumatran highlands in 1818

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Syair Peri Tuan Raffles pergi ke Minangkabau: a Malay account of Raffles’ second expedition to the Sumatran highlands in 1818

Raimy Ché-Ross (2003) recovers and transliterates the Syair Peri Tuan Raffles Pergi ke Minangkabau, a Malay verse composed in 1818 that narrates Sir Stamford Raffles’ second expedition into the Sumatran highlands, providing a native account of an episode hitherto treated perfunctorily in Western studies of his Sumatran administration. The article is primarily a bibliographic and textual study that restores this “lost” work to general circulation, tracing its provenance from the Malayan Miscellanies (1820) through the abandoned 1887 publication project of Resident Councillor Hervey to its eventual deposit at the Arkib Negara Malaysia.

Summary

The Syair is a 162-stanza Malay verse composed by an unnamed local author who was not personally present on the expedition but gathered his material from eyewitnesses. It was printed as the final fascicule (No. XIII) of the inaugural volume of the Malayan Miscellanies, issued by the Sumatra Baptist Mission Press at Bencoolen between 1820 and 1822. The text narrates Raffles’ journey from Bencoolen to Padang and thence into the Minangkabau interior—through the Tiga Belas Kota, across the lake to Simawang, and to Pagar Ruyung (Seruasa)—with particular attention to the political negotiations, the discovery of an inscribed stone, and the failed attempt to deliver a letter to the Tuanku Paseman. The author’s narrative is notably restrained in its praise, exhibiting what Ché-Ross identifies as a “crisp journalistic presentation” atypical of the syair genre’s usual vociferous adulation (p. 69).

Ché-Ross devotes considerable attention to the text’s material history. The Syair was first identified in the catalogue to the Private Papers of the Hon. Dudley Francis Amelius Hervey, Resident Councillor of Malacca (1882–1893), who had prepared an English translation and annotation for inclusion in Dr. Reinhold Rost’s Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Indo-China and the Indian Archipelago (Second Series, 1887). Correspondence between Rost and Hervey reveals a protracted and ultimately futile editorial process, complicated by Rost’s overwork and the series’ poor financial return, which led to the volume’s abandonment. Hervey’s proofs, dated 17 December 1887 and 7 January 1888, were filed away and forgotten until the collection was auctioned by Hodgson & Co. in 1934 and eventually deposited at the Arkib Negara Malaysia in 1969 (pp. 28–30).

Rather than relying on Hervey’s translation—which Ché-Ross judges to be “littered with too many errors and mis-readings”—the study is based on a fresh transliteration of the Jawi text from the Malayan Miscellanies, cross-checked against copies at the British Library and the National Library of Australia. The article appends Raffles’ own dispatches to the Secret Committee and Court of Directors (5 August 1818), including the Deed of Cession signed by the Chiefs of Tiga Belas Kota and the Treaty with Minangkabau, enabling direct comparison between the native and European accounts (pp. 71–75).

Key Findings

  • The Syair comprises 162 stanzas of four lyric sentences each (648 lines total), printed across 14¼ pages in the Malayan Miscellanies Vol. I, Fascicule 13, and is perhaps the oldest known published example of the syair form printed in the region (pp. 32, 69).
  • Raffles arrived at Padang on Sunday, 8 Ramadan 1233 AH (12 July 1818) at 9 o’clock in the morning; the Syair itself was composed in 1234 AH (Year Jim), placing its composition between three and twelve months after the event (pp. 35, 63).
  • The Deed of Cession from the Chiefs of Tiga Belas Kota was signed at the Balai of Solo Selaya on 20 July 1818, ceding “all our rights privileges and claims upon the Countries on the Sea Coast, from the summit of the Mountains Westward to the Sea” to the East India Company (p. 72).
  • The Treaty with Minangkabau was sealed at the Balai of Pagar Ruyung on 24 July 1818, in which the “Emperor” ceded the districts of Pinangahan, Sindang-baker, and Kasi, and appointed Raffles as his “Representative in all the Malay States” (p. 73).
  • Raffles paid a customary tax of one Tahil and one Paha of gold, estimated at the equivalent of $20 Straits Dollars, to satisfy the adat requirements of the Tiga Belas Kota chiefs (p. 65, n. 78).
  • In his dispatch to the Court of Directors, Raffles reported traversing “not less than 250 miles” on foot over 14 days and estimated the population within a thirty-mile radius of Pagar Ruyung at “not less than a million” (p. 74).

Conclusion

Ché-Ross argues that the Syair possesses “manifold worth and multi-layered intensity”: as the earliest known printed syair in the region it marks a significant phase in the emergence of Malay mass publication; as a narrative it exhibits an unusually balanced and factually grounded perspective for its genre; and as a source it provides a native vantage point on events previously known only through Raffles’ own edited and augmented account, enabling a critical comparison of the two perspectives (p. 69).

Context

  • The primary archival collections consulted are the Private Papers of the Hon. D. F. A. Hervey (SP 16/3/10–14) at the Arkib Negara Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, and two printed copies of the Malayan Miscellanies at the British Library (HSS pp. 3801) and the National Library of Australia (RB 919.2 MAL).
  • The study’s historiographical contribution lies in restoring a previously overlooked indigenous source to the literature on Raffles’ Sumatran administration, and in demonstrating that the Syair was known to and worked upon by Hervey in the 1880s before being lost to scholarship for over a century.

References