Annexation in the Malay states: the Jervois papers
J.L. Humphreys, a Malayan Civil Service officer stationed at Alor Gajah, published “A Naning Recital” in 1921 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (No. 88), presenting a restored Malay customary wedding speech from Naning, Malacca, collected from an elderly reciter named Ungkai Lisut. The article documents the survival of Menangkabau customary law (Adat) in a community that had been politically annihilated by British colonial administration following the Naning War of 1831–1832, and uses the recital as a lens into the mythic origins of the two great Malay legal traditions.
Summary
The article centres on a single primary source: a long Malay verse composition (teromba) recited by Ungkai Lisut at a wedding in Jelatang, Naning, and subsequently repeated for Humphreys. The recital is structured in three parts — a prelude addressing the bride’s clan elder, a “Song of Origins” narrating the mythic division of the world between two law-giving chieftains (Dato’ Temenggong and Dato’ Perpatch Pinang Sabatang), and a peroration stating the speaker’s present purpose of paying the bride-price. The Song of Origins is the substantive core: it tells how Maharaja Di Raja, the mythical Sultan of Menangkabau, attempted to impose a dual dominion on his two chieftains, who refused on the grounds that “one land, two Chiefs” was abhorrent to custom. The King then divided the realm at Bandar Rokan — the seaward portion to Dato’ Temenggong, who established the law of talion (“the slayer shall be slain”), and the landward portion to Dato’ Perpatch, who established the law of reparation (“whoso slays shall replace”). The narrative then traces the tradition’s transmission down three rivers (Kuantan, Kampar, Batang Ari) and its eventual migration to the Peninsula, where Naning is identified as “our mother” and the land of Jelebu as “our offshoot.”
Humphreys frames the recital within the broader history of Naning’s political destruction. The state, originally one of the Nine States founded by Sumatran immigrants in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had maintained a semi-democratic tribal constitution of Chief, Heads of Tribes, and Elders of Clans. The East India Company’s attempts to levy full tribute triggered the Naning War of 1831–1832, after which the tribal constitution was abolished and Naning became a Malacca District under territorial Penghulus. Despite this, Humphreys argues, the Custom survived with “remarkable vitality” in matters of property, marriage, and inheritance, owing partly to the proximity of Rembau (where the fuller Adat persisted) and partly to the natural fitness of the Custom for regulating a peasant community of exogamous clans. The rubber industry of the 1910s was already weakening its hold, but the combination of ancient customary law with lenient British rule had given the Naning peasantry “so comfortable a lot with so few regrets for the past.”
Humphreys’s extensive endnotes provide the article’s secondary analytical layer, drawing on Newbold’s History of Sumatra, Wilkinson’s Law (Papers on Malay Subjects), Parr and Mackray’s Rembau, and Skeat’s Malay Magic to elucidate obscure passages. He identifies the “Chieftains Twain” with the famous law-givers of Malay myth (Kai Tumungong and Perpati Sabatang), discusses the jurisdictional hierarchy of Lembaga, Undang, and Raja, and offers a metrical analysis arguing that the verse is accentual rather than syllabic, comparable in rhythm to Old English alliterative verse.
Key Findings
- The Naning War of 1831–1832 resulted in the abolition of the tribal constitution; even the use of the terms Dattoo and Sookoo was formally forbidden by the colonial administration (p. 1).
- The recital identifies four surviving tribes in Naning — Seri Melenggang, Tiga Batu, Mungkal, and Anak Melaka — each with many exogamous sub-clans, whose heads were known as the “Pillars of the Hall” (Tiang Balai) of the Dato’ Naning (p. 21, note 7).
- The Adat Perpateh principle of reparation for homicide required not the death of the murderer but the transfer of the slayer’s blood-relation (typically his nephew, who under exogamic custom could not be a member of his father’s tribe) to the tribe of the slain (p. 24, note 21).
- The recital’s genealogical formula — “Menangkabau our overlord, Johor our Raja, Siak our ally, Malacca our landing-place, Naning our mother, the land of Jelebu our offshoot” — is argued by Humphreys to predate the installation of Raja Melewar as first Sovereign of Negri Sembilan in 1773, referring instead to the founding of the Negri Sembilan colonies in the 15th and 16th centuries (p. 25, note 24).
- The four hereditary titles of the Undang (Chiefs) of Sungai Ujong, Johol, Rembau, and Jelebu are named in the recital: Petra Indera Pahlawan, Lela Perkasa Setiawan, Maharaja Lela Sedia Raja, and Paduka Alam Penghulu Adil (p. 16, line 260).
- The metrical system of the recital is accentual, with two key-words per line carrying the principal beats, marked in performance by a drum (rebana); Humphreys compares the rhythm to Old English alliterative verse such as Beowulf (pp. 28–29).
Conclusion
Humphreys’s definitive takeaway is that the Naning recital constitutes a living document of Menangkabau customary law that survived the complete political destruction of its state, and that its continued vitality owed as much to the compatibility of Adat with a lenient colonial regime as to any inherent cultural resilience. The recital is, in his assessment, “good poetry” — fitted for its time and place, full of true pleasure — and its preservation represents a small but significant act of cultural conservation in a community whose political identity had been erased by imperial administration.
Context
- The author was a serving officer of the Malayan Civil Service (stationed at Alor Gajah, later Trengganu), and the article reflects the contemporary colonial administrative interest in documenting indigenous customs for the purposes of governance and legal reform — the Attorney General’s reference to the Naning Malays in the Legislative Council, cited in the text, was in the context of amending the Malacca Lands Ordinance to secure their ancestral holdings (p. 1, note 1).
- The primary source is a single oral performance, restored from a tattered manuscript and supplemented by the reciter’s memory after “a special discipline of prayer and fasting” during a 1914 visit to Singapore; Humphreys acknowledges that Ungkai Lisut’s memory proved “more accurate than his document” (p. 1).