Article

The answer of Pasai

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The answer of Pasai

R. Roolvink’s 1965 article “The Answer of Pasai” presents a newly discovered Palembang-origin version of the famous Malay Annals episode in which Sultan Mansur Shah of Malacca sends a theological question to the learned men of Pasai, and argues that this third text represents a skillful redaction that inverts the story’s satirical target from the Pasai Makhdum to the entire Pasai scholarly establishment. The article situates this version within a comparative framework of three known recensions of the episode, demonstrating how editorial choices across the textual tradition shift the narrative’s moral and political emphasis.

Summary

The episode in question—Sultan Mansur Shah’s delegation to Pasai bearing a question about the duration of stay in Heaven and Hell—had previously been studied by Hans Overbeck (1933) on the basis of the Shellabear edition, and by Sir Richard Winstedt (1938) in the Raffles 18 manuscript. Roolvink introduces a third version found in a romanized type-script copy held at the Royal Institute for the Tropics in Amsterdam, which he identifies as originating from Palembang on linguistic grounds (p. 130). This manuscript is unique, ends abruptly with the Portuguese conquest of Malacca, and is followed in a second volume by a history of Palembang beginning in 1812 (p. 130).

Roolvink’s central argument is that the three versions represent a textual evolution in which the story’s satirical aim is progressively sharpened. In the Shellabear version, the Pasai Makhdum is the butt of the joke: he gives the wrong (orthodox) answer, his student Tun Hasan knows better, and the King of Pasai saves his face by privately supplying the correct esoteric answer, then humiliates the Makhdum by refusing his gifts (pp. 131–132). In the Raffles 18 version, Tun Hasan himself gives the correct answer and the Makhdum escapes unscathed, keeping the presents—a development Roolvink finds narratively unsatisfying (p. 133). In the Palembang version, the entire structure is inverted: the orthodox answer is simply carried back to Malacca, and it is Sultan Mansur Shah himself who delivers the devastating reply, exposing the collective ignorance of the Pasai theologians and instructing them to study the mystical teachings of Maulana Abu Bakar (pp. 133–134).

Roolvink identifies a structural “flaw” in both the Shellabear and Raffles 18 versions—the passage in which the book is sent to Pasai for interpretation and the Malacca theologian praises his Pasai colleague’s exegesis—which is absent from the Palembang text, where the book is instead translated into Malay locally (pp. 132–134). He concludes that the Palembang version is a later, more skillful redaction of the Shellabear text, one that eliminates narrative inconsistencies and concentrates the satire on Pasai as a whole rather than on an individual figure (p. 134).

Key Findings

  • The Palembang manuscript is a romanized type-script of unknown provenance, linguistically identifiable as Palembang Malay, and unique in its present form; a second copy may have existed in the possession of L. C. Westenenk (pp. 130, 130 n. 6).
  • The Palembang version omits the pantuns and Javanese passages found in the printed texts, and is a “drastically re-written text done by a clever editor” who in places improved on his original (p. 130).
  • In the Palembang text, the book Durr-al-Manzūm is translated into Malay in Malacca by the Mufti Kadampenakudara, eliminating the narratively implausible passage in which it is sent to Pasai for interpretation (pp. 134, 137).
  • The Kadi Yusuf episode in the Palembang version is integrated into the main narrative with a human motivation (his sense of superior learning), and he is eventually released from his kadi-ship in favour of his son Menawar (pp. 134, 137).
  • Sultan Mansur Shah’s reply to the Pasai theologians employs a river-navigation metaphor: their answer is like a man who went upstream without noting the creeks and cannot describe the route, rendering his account unbelievable (p. 136).
  • The narrative concludes with the King of Pasai requesting Maulana Abu Bakar be sent to Pasai, where he becomes teacher to the king and all the people of rank, and esoteric knowledge becomes as widespread in Pasai as in Malacca (p. 139).

Conclusion

Roolvink’s definitive takeaway is that the Palembang version, while a later redaction, represents the most narratively coherent and thematically pointed form of the story: it transforms a tale of individual embarrassment into a systematic exposure of Pasai’s theological inadequacy before Malacca’s superior mystical learning, and in doing so it serves the political purpose of elevating Malacca’s spiritual prestige over that of its northern rival.

Context

  • The article extends the scholarly tradition begun by Overbeck (1933) and Winstedt (1938) in the same journal, contributing a third textual witness to the “Answer of Pasai” episode and advancing the textual-critical study of the Malay Annals.
  • The Palembang manuscript’s presence at the Royal Institute for the Tropics in Amsterdam reflects the colonial-era accumulation of Malay-language texts in Dutch institutional collections, a pattern that continues to shape the field’s source base.

References