The Hikayat Patani : the kingdom of Patani in the Malay and Thai political world
Nathan Porath’s 2011 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society applies René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire to the Hikayat Patani, a six-book Malay manuscript composed between the late seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries to serve as a political charter for the Sultanate of Patani. Porath argues that the text’s first book operates as a mimetic narrative in which Patani affirmatively recognizes its similarity with Ayutthaya—even while narrating its sultans’ rebellions against that kingdom—while simultaneously fracturing every possible resemblance with Johor, thereby positioning Patani as an elite Indic kingdom distinct from its Malay-speaking neighbours (pp. 45–48).
Summary
Porath’s central intervention is to reframe the Hikayat Patani’s treatment of Patani’s two great neighbours as a deliberate structural contrast in mimetic identity rather than a simple chronicle of wars and alliances. The text, he argues, was composed by court scribes for political legitimation and reflects on the kingdom’s identity within Indic hierarchical order rather than expressing any ethno-nationalist consciousness (pp. 47–48). The founding and conversion legends are read through the lens of Jordaan and Josselin de Jong’s work on skin-disease metaphors as representations of the social contract between ruler and realm: the Encik Tani story symbolizes the realm seeking a ruler and dismissing Ayutthaya as a possibility, while the conversion narrative encodes the kingdom’s political and social contract with Islam, making the sultanate’s viability conditional on its Islamic character (pp. 49–50).
The article then traces how Patani’s power relations with surrounding Malay polities—Sai, Kelantan, and Johor—were structured by the construction of a new coastal political entity from an inland dynasty originally based at Kota Maligai. The tension between the sultans of Patani and the bendahara (prime minister) of Sai, culminating in Raja Kayu Kelat’s revolt against Queen Raja Hijau, illustrates the progressive devolution of effective power from the royal centre to the prime ministerial fiefdom (pp. 51–53). With Johor, the text employs what Harrison calls “fracturing resemblances”: at every narrative juncture the hikayat acknowledges the cultural similarity between the two kingdoms while insisting on differences in custom and civility, most explicitly in the episode of the envoy Raja Lela, who is told by a Johor servant that “it is Johor in the Patani way” (pp. 53–54).
The most original argument concerns Patani’s relationship with Ayutthaya. Porath contends that Sultan Mudhaffar Syah’s attack on the Ayutthaya palace (c. 1564) was not a secessionist rebellion but a failed usurpation within the Indic frame of mimetic kingdom-hood, undertaken when the Ayutthaya king appeared weak under Burmese pressure. The sultan’s statement that “the king is not different from us” and that “rather than one country, two is better” is read as an indirect reference to the Ayutthaya–Burmese war and the threat that the two kingdoms would be merged into “one golden country” under Pegu (pp. 55–58). The second rebellion under Queen Raja Ungu (c. 1630s), triggered by the usurpation of King Prasat Thong, is interpreted as the queen’s rejection of Ayutthaya’s authority to confer her royal Thai title, which she replaced with the Islamic title Paduka Syah Alam (pp. 59–61).
Key Findings
- The Hikayat Patani manuscript was written in 1839 and comprises six books composed at different periods from the late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century, following the end of the original founding dynasty and during the kingdom’s decline under Kelantanese kings (p. 47).
- Sultan Mudhaffar Syah’s attack on Ayutthaya (c. 1564) is confirmed by the Luang Prasoert chronicle, which records the sultan riding one of King Cakkraphat’s white elephants in the palace plaza; van Vliet’s account identifies the motive as the perceived weakness of Cakkraphat and his son Prince Mahin under Burmese threat (pp. 56–57).
- Queen Raja Ungu rejected her Ayutthaya-conferred Thai title Phra Nang Chaou Ying and substituted the Islamic title Paduka Syah Alam, an unprecedented severing of Patani’s ties with Ayutthaya’s authority; van Vliet noted her “ambition to obtain the highest power” (pp. 60–61).
- The second rebellion (c. 1630s) was supported by the datuk besar (bendahara) of Sai but opposed by most of the orang kaya (noble merchants), indicating internal factional division over the anti-Siamese policy and its commercial consequences (p. 61).
- King Prasat Thong mobilized 60,000 men for the punitive expedition against Patani, headed by the Governor of Ligor, Okya Kalahom, the Pra Klang, and Rabisit (a Muslim official); he also requested Dutch armed ships from Batavia, which arrived too late (p. 61).
- Bradley’s revision places the deposition of Queen Raja Kuning by the King of Kelantan at 1649 (not 1688 as Teeuw and Wyatt held), with a Kelantanese son installed in 1651 with Ayutthaya’s support (p. 52).
Conclusion
Porath’s definitive takeaway is that the Hikayat Patani reveals Patani’s kingdomhood as fundamentally dependent on its mimetic relationship with Ayutthaya: the text’s affirmative portrayal of similarity with the Siamese kingdom, even amid rebellion, encodes the recognition that Patani’s prestige and political confidence in relation to southern Malay states derived from its position on the periphery of the Ayutthaya mandala. The text’s failure to moralize against Ayutthaya—unlike other Malay hikayats that deny resemblance with Siam—suggests that maintaining peace and hierarchical order with that kingdom was a precondition for the viability of the Patani kerajaan (pp. 62–63).
Context
- The study draws on the Teeuw and Wyatt (1970) edition of the Hikayat Patani, the Thai version edited by Wyatt (1967), van Vliet’s Siam (Baker et al. 2005), the Luang Prasoert chronicle (Cushman 2006), and Syukri’s mid-twentieth-century history, alongside theoretical frameworks from Girard, Harrison, and Suwannathat-Pian.
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in applying mimetic theory to pre-modern Southeast Asian political texts, offering an alternative to both ethnicist and purely institutional readings of the Hikayat Patani’s political narrative.