Baba Ounus Saldin: an account of a Malay literary savant of Sri Lanka
B.A. Hussainmiya (1991) presents a biographical study of Baba Ounus Saldin (1832–1906), a Malay literary entrepreneur and community leader in colonial Sri Lanka, arguing that Saldin’s pioneering work in Malay journalism and lithographic printing establishes the island as a significant, previously overlooked centre of traditional Malay literary activity. The article draws primarily on Saldin’s own Kitab Segala Perhingatan (KSP), a 58-page family journal written in Jawi script, supplemented by regimental records, contemporary newspapers, and the Register of Printed Books in Ceylon.
Summary
The article addresses a persistent problem in Malay literary historiography: the near-total anonymity of pre-modern Malay writers, for whom biographical data is scarce and whose works were treated as communal rather than individual productions. Hussainmiya uses Saldin’s life to demonstrate that a rich classical Malay literary tradition thrived in nineteenth-century Sri Lanka, outside the physical periphery of the Malay World, sustained by a small community of descendants of Dutch-era military recruits from Java, Madura, Bali, and the Malay Peninsula. The KSP, unique in its comparative detail among Sri Lankan Malay personal documents, anchors the narrative of Saldin’s ancestry, military service, and transition to civilian life, while colophons in manuscripts he copied or owned provide evidence of his literary activities across three languages—Arabic, Malay (Jawi), and Arabu-Tamil.
Saldin’s career spanned multiple domains: soldier in the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, clerk with European agency houses, lithographic printer, newspaper publisher, import merchant, Sufi scholar, and community leader. Hussainmiya devotes substantial attention to the 1869–1886 schism in Kampung Kertel (Slave Island) between Regimental Malays and civilian Malays over the appointment of a mosque Khatib, a dispute in which Saldin played a mediating role and which ultimately led him to establish the Malay Pensioners’ Fund (1877) and campaign for a new burial ground (Jawatte, first used January 1879). His publishing ventures—Alamat Langkapuri (1869–70, 1877–78) and Wajah Selong (1895–c.1900)—are analysed through content analysis of surviving issues, revealing a newspaper that balanced local community news with foreign reporting and reader correspondence, and that in its later incarnation reached subscribers across the Straits Settlements, Siam, and Java.
The article’s broader argument is that Saldin’s achievements, though modest in scale compared to figures like Munshi Abdullah or Raja Ali Haji, were made under markedly different conditions: a microscopic minority community (never exceeding one percent of Sri Lanka’s population), no colonial patronage, and no established literary infrastructure. His work nonetheless expanded the cultural boundary of the Malay world and justifies Colombo’s inclusion among its literary centres.
Key Findings
- Alamat Langkapuri, first published mid-June 1869, predates Jawi Peranakan (Singapore, 1876) and is therefore the first Malay-language newspaper in the Malay World, revising William Roff’s earlier attribution of that distinction (pp. 122, 125).
- Saldin paid a penalty of 8 British pounds to purchase his premature discharge from the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, against a daily corporal’s pay of 9 pence; his subsequent salary with Venn & Co. reached 12 sterling pounds per month by April 1863, compared to 3.5 pounds for a Subedar (pp. 108–109).
- He imported a lithographic press from Europe at a cost of 250 Rupees on 2 July 1878; the Register of Printed Books in Ceylon records at least 500 copies of each Arabu-Tamil or Arabic booklet produced by his press (pp. 110, 122).
- The Slave Island mosque dispute, triggered by the contested appointment of Khatib Thaiban in 1869, persisted for nearly twenty years until reconciliation in 1886, an event reported as far as Penang (pp. 114–115).
- Syair Faid al Abad (1904), Saldin’s only original poetic work, comprises approximately 323 stanzas across 48 pages, covering Sri Lankan political history from Sinhalese rule through the Kandyan rebellion of 1818 and the CRR’s dispatch to Hong Kong (p. 126).
- Wajah Selong (1895) maintained a network of agents in Singapore, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Java, and was listed in a Singapore bookseller’s catalogue as the only Jawi-language newspaper available for sale during the 1896–1900 slump in Malay periodical publishing in the Peninsula (pp. 124–125).
Conclusion
Hussainmiya’s definitive takeaway is that Baba Ounus Saldin, working as a solitary figure without patronage or institutional support, made a signal contribution to the literary achievements of the Malay World through his newspapers and printing enterprise, and that Sri Lanka—particularly Colombo—can justly claim a place among the traditional centres of Malay literary activity alongside Malacca, Aceh, Palembang, Riau, and Singapore.
Context
- Primary sources include the KSP (microfilmed at Universiti Malaya and Arkib Negara Malaysia), Sri Lanka National Archives (regimental and municipal records), Ceylon General Orders, Ferguson’s Ceylon Handbook and Directory, and the Register of Printed Books in Ceylon; extant copies of Alamat Langkapuri and Wajah Selong are held by the author and by Saldin’s descendants.
- The study’s principal historiographical contribution is the correction of William Roff’s claim that Jawi Peranakan was the first Malay-language periodical, and the establishment of Sri Lanka as a recognised node in the network of traditional Malay literary production.