A new collection of Malay proverbs
Hugh Clifford published this collection of previously unpublished Malay proverbs in 1891, drawing on his experience as a British colonial administrator in Pahang. The article presents approximately sixty proverbs with literal English translations and philological annotations, arguing that the Malay language’s natural terseness makes it exceptionally well suited to aphoristic expression.
Summary
Clifford frames the collection as a product of idle travel in the interior of Pahang, though the work is clearly a deliberate philological exercise. He argues that Malay proverbs are of particular interest to the linguist because they preserve vocabulary that appears in no written Malay text but remains common in colloquial speech across the Peninsula. The proverbs are arranged alphabetically by the Malay text, and each entry is accompanied by a literal translation, a gloss of the intended meaning, and notes on obscure or dialectal terms.
The annotations reveal Clifford’s primary scholarly interest: documenting words absent from published Malay dictionaries. He identifies terms such as pokah (bent, crooked), cherang (a forest clearing), elak (to shirk), sior/sualak (to desire), and degap (thoroughly) as common in spoken Malay but missing from lexicographical works. Several entries include comparative dialectal observations, such as the Perak pronunciation shift from final -ir to -ior, and a discussion of the root apit (to press) and its derivatives (kapit, kepit, sepit, hempit, sempit, sumpit, chubit), which Clifford speculates may derive from Sanskrit.
Culturally, Clifford uses the proverbs to illustrate broader points about Malay social behaviour: the conservative reverence for ancestral wisdom (perkataan orang tua-tua), the preference for metaphorical and allusive discourse over direct reasoning, and the social function of proverb-quotation in debate. One entry in particular—a verse attributing characteristic vices to the men of Malacca, Menangkabau, Rembau, Trengganu, and Pahang—offers a snapshot of inter-ethnic stereotyping in late nineteenth-century Malay society (p. 115).
Key Findings
- Clifford claims the collection contains no proverb previously printed, distinguishing it from Maxwell’s earlier collection in JSBRAS No. 3 (p. 87).
- The term cherang (forest clearing) is identified as characteristic of the Eastern slope states and possibly derived from Trang (light, open, clear); a cognate form cherakn appears in the Senoi dialect of Sakai (p. 96).
- The root apit (to press) generates at least eight documented derivatives in colloquial Malay, including kapit (press), kepit (carry under the armpit), sepit (squeeze), hempit (press against), sempit (narrow), sumpit/kempit (narrow rice bag), and chubit (pinch) (pp. 105–106).
- Clifford corrects Favre’s dictionary, arguing that blang means striped (not piebald) and that tompok is the correct Malay word for piebald (p. 113).
- The Perak dialect systematically renders final -ir as -ior (e.g., kikir → kikior), a phonological rule Clifford documents through multiple examples (p. 112).
- Native tradition in Pahang attributes the state’s name to the mahang tree (Macaranga), linking it to a brook at Kuala Tembeling where a giant mahang tree once stood (p. 105).
Conclusion
Clifford’s definitive contribution is the demonstration that Malay proverbs constitute a valuable repository of colloquial vocabulary invisible to written sources and published dictionaries. By anchoring each proverb in its social and linguistic context, he establishes the genre as a legitimate object of philological study and provides a model for the kind of field-based lexicography that would later become standard in Malay linguistic scholarship.
Context
- Clifford was serving as a British colonial administrator in Pahang at the time of writing; the article reflects the administrative-ethnographic tradition of the Residency, in which officials documented local culture as a byproduct of governance.
- The article draws exclusively on Clifford’s personal observation and colloquial contact in Pahang and the Eastern slope states; no archival or manuscript sources are cited.