Berunai in the Boxer Codex: with commentary
John S. Carroll’s 1982 article presents a complete translation and scholarly commentary on folios 71–86 of the Boxer Codex, a late sixteenth-century Spanish manuscript describing the sultanate of Brunei under Sultan Lixar (Saif-ul-Rejal) circa 1589–1590. Carroll identifies the anonymous author as likely a ranking Spanish secular official in Manila—possibly Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas or his secretary Juan de Cuellar—drawing on information from a Malay-speaking Tagalog trader who had visited Brunei as recently as 1589 (p. 1). The article stands as the most extensive surviving European-language account of Brunei’s internal affairs in the late sixteenth century, covering geography, royal genealogy, law, religion, commerce, and military organisation (p. 1).
Summary
The translation opens with a geographical description of Borneo as seen from Manila, identifying the Brunei River, the bay with its two channels (Muara Basar and Muara Damit), and the city situated a league and a half upriver, built entirely over water and accessible only by small boats called bancas (p. 2). The population is estimated at eight thousand vecinos (tribute-paying heads of household), with the city flanked by two mountain ranges that supply fresh water via split bamboo conduits (p. 3). The kingdom’s jurisdiction extends to the Sambas River on the southwest coast, which the Codex notes has been taken by the queen of Java, while Sulu (Jolo) remains tributary (p. 3).
The historical narrative recounts the founding of the Brunei sultanate by Sultan Yuso, a lord from a city called “Cauin” in the Malay-speaking world near Mecca, who migrated with followers approximately three hundred years before 1590, subdued the native Bisaya (Bagangan) population, and then sailed to China where the Chinese emperor confirmed his royal title, bestowed insignia, and married him to a Chinese woman from a city called Namtay (identified by Carroll as Chang-chou) (pp. 4–5). Yuso left a gold tablet recording the names of his descendants, which was lost during Francisco de Sande’s 1578 raid on Brunei (p. 5). The Codex then lists the succession: Sultan Soliman, Sultan Salan (Bolkiah), Sultan Aril Lula (‘Abdul Kahar), and the reigning Sultan Nula Alan (Lixar/Saif-ul-Rejal), with his son Raja Borney designated as heir (p. 5).
The bulk of the translation details the legal and administrative system: four hereditary judicial offices (bendahara, temenggong, di-gedong, shahbandar) held exclusively by royal kin, who could sentence to death without royal interference; oral trials resolved within a single hearing; and a range of execution methods including decapitation (sinunbale), strangulation (ganton), impalement (sinosuen), the shoulder-stab (salang), nailing to a pole (pakukan), clamping of the jaw (kabitan), and a method newly invented in 1588 involving encasement between two crosses and shooting with arquebuses (pp. 6–8). The Codex also records Islamic practices as observed by a Spanish outsider—Friday congregational prayer, the role of the khatib besar, male and female circumcision, the veneration of shaikhs whose bodies were believed to vanish from their graves, and the drinking of rice wine in violation of Islamic prohibition (pp. 9–11). Economic life is described through the minting of pitis (tin or lead) and paku (copper-silver alloy) coins to replace the silver batguin that foreigners had been carrying away, a system of weights based on the bahara–pikul–kati–tahil hierarchy, and a floating market of over five hundred boats operating twice daily (pp. 13–14).
In his commentary, Carroll cross-references the Codex with the Brunei salsilah (royal genealogies), Pigafetta’s 1521 account, Sande’s 1578 expedition documents, and Hugh Low’s 1880 transcription of the salsilah, arguing that the salsilah were deliberately edited to suppress the Chinese element in Brunei’s royal ancestry (pp. 17–18). He identifies the “kamanah from China” mentioned in the salsilah as the regalia of investiture bestowed on Yuso by the Chinese emperor, and suggests that descendants of the Chinese wife censored the genealogies to diminish rival claims to the throne (p. 18). Carroll also correlates the Codex’s coinage with the tin and lead coins excavated by Tom and Barbara Harrisson at Kota Batu in 1957, concluding that Brunei began minting its own currency between 1521 and 1589 (p. 19).
Key Findings
- The Codex provides the only known European-language description of Brunei’s four judicial offices (bendahara, temenggong, di-gedong, shahbandar) as functioning in the reign of Saif-ul-Rejal, predating Hugh Low’s claim that Sultan Hasan established these offices (pp. 6, 18).
- A new method of execution—encasing the condemned between two wooden crosses and shooting him with arquebuses—was “invented in the year [fifteen] eighty-eight,” providing a precise terminus post quem for the manuscript’s composition (p. 8).
- The sultan replaced the silver batguin coin (worth 4½ reales) with base-metal pitis and paku coins because foreign traders were draining the kingdom of its silver; a paku was valued at 32 pitis, and a laksa of pitis was worth 322 tomines (approximately 193.2 grams of silver) (pp. 13, 19).
- The Codex confirms that the sultan of Sulu was a first cousin and brother-in-law of the Brunei sultan, corroborating Sande’s 1578 reports and the salsilah account of Bolkiah’s marriage to a Sulu princess (pp. 9, 18).
- The native Bisaya (Bagangan) population, who inhabited the interior and raised pigs, paid tribute (upeti) “more by force than willingly” and were described as enemies of the Brunei Malay, killing them “if they can catch them off-guard” (p. 3).
- The Brunei gantang (dry measure) contained one and a half times the volume of the Manila gantang, demonstrating that weights and measures were not standardised across sixteenth-century Southeast Asia (p. 13, 20).
Conclusion
Carroll’s definitive takeaway is that the Boxer Codex constitutes an irreplaceable window into the political, legal, and economic life of Brunei at the height of its regional power, just before the onset of its long decline. By triangulating the Codex with the salsilah, Pigafetta, Sande’s documents, and archaeological evidence from Kota Batu, Carroll demonstrates that the manuscript’s anonymous compiler had access to reliable, current intelligence gathered by a Malay-speaking Tagalog trader, and that the text preserves details—particularly regarding the Chinese origins of the royal house and the monetary reform—that no other extant source records (pp. 17, 21).
Context
- The Boxer Codex manuscript was purchased by C.R. Boxer in 1947 from the library of Lord Ilchester at Holland House; Boxer translated the China section in 1953, and Quirino and García translated the Philippines section in 1958, but the Brunei folios (71–86) remained untranslated until Carroll’s article (p. 1).
- Tom Harrisson, curator of the Sarawak Museum, obtained a negative photostat of folios 71–86 from Boxer in 1960 and commissioned Carroll to examine it; a positive print was made by Shui Kat & Co. in Kuala Lumpur in 1961 (p. 1).