Malay Manuscripts and early printed books at the Library of Congress. Facsimile reprint
A. Kohar Rony, a curator in the Library of Congress’s Asian Division, published this article in 1991 (reprinted in JMBRAS 2020) to document the provenance and contents of the Library’s holdings of Malay manuscripts and early printed books, arguing that the collection—acquired largely through the agency of American missionary Alfred North during the Wilkes Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842—constitutes a unique and irreplaceable resource for the study of Malay language, society, and the history of printing in insular Southeast Asia (p. 33).
Summary
The article traces the path by which a small but significant body of Malay-language manuscripts and early printed books came to reside in the Library of Congress. The collection’s origin lies in the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, a US Navy mission authorized by Congress that reached Singapore in February 1842. There, the expedition’s philologist was assisted by Alfred North, an American missionary stationed in Singapore since 1836, who identified, selected, and in some cases commissioned the copying of manuscripts from local scribes. Under an 1865 agreement, the Smithsonian Institution transferred these materials to the Library of Congress, where they remain in the Southern Asia Section of the Asian Division (pp. 34–35).
Rony’s central argument is that the collection’s value lies not in its size but in its uniqueness and the specific historical window it opens onto the first half of the nineteenth century. The fourteen codices and a bound volume of forty-seven letters of official correspondence from Malay and Southeast Asian rulers to the British Resident in Singapore provide direct evidence of political relations during the early period of British dominance in the region. The correspondence reveals a pattern of deference: even a ruler of Palembang felt compelled to send greetings to the British “Tuan Besar” (p. 41). For philological purposes, Rony demonstrates that the Library’s manuscript of Hikayat Abdullah, copied under North’s close supervision, differs in word choice and paragraph order from the later Shellabear lithographic edition in ways that alter the interpretation of events described (pp. 41–42).
The early printed books, though few in number, document the development of printing in the Malay archipelago from the first press at Penang in 1806 through missionary imprints in Malacca (1815) and Singapore (1822), including the first Arabic-script titles of 1817. Rony emphasizes that two copies of the Sejarah Melayu held at the Library are the only extant copies in the world—neither the British Library nor the National Library of Malaysia possesses them (p. 44).
Key Findings
- The collection comprises fourteen Malay codices and one bound volume containing forty-seven letters of official correspondence from rulers in Brunei, Johor-Pahang, Kelantan, Riau, Siak, Trengganu, Palembang, and Cambodia, addressed to Colonel William Farquhar, British Resident in Singapore, dated between 1812 and 1822 (pp. 35–38).
- The earliest printed title in the collection is a 1677 Oxford imprint of the Four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles translated into Malay, unique in its testimony to Malay as the lingua franca of the seventeenth-century Malay world (p. 40).
- The first printing press in the region was established at Prince of Wales Island, Penang, in 1806, followed by Malacca in 1815 and Singapore in 1822; the first Arabic-script imprints appeared in 1817 (“The Ten Commandments” and “Dr. Watts’ First Catechism”) (p. 39).
- The Kitab Adat segala Raja-raja Melayu dalam segala negeri in the collection was originally composed in 1779 at the request of the Dutch Governor De Bruin; an earlier copy dated 1819 belonged to Datuk Sulaiman of Kampung Melayu, Malacca, who was Abdullah’s teacher (p. 36).
- The Library’s manuscript of Hikayat Abdullah was copied by the Bugis scribe Ismail bin Hussein under Alfred North’s supervision and completed in approximately five months; textual comparison with the Shellabear edition (1915) reveals differences in dates (e.g., “1231” vs. “1239” for Abdullah’s father’s death) and phrasing that affect historical interpretation (pp. 41–42).
- The two copies of the Sejarah Melayu at the Library of Congress (North edition, c. 1840; Shellabear edition, 1896) are the only extant copies of these particular imprints worldwide (p. 44).
Conclusion
Rony’s definitive takeaway is that this collection represents the first acquisition of research materials from Southeast Asia by the United States Government—a feat achieved not through institutional planning but through the convergence of a well-funded naval expedition and the presence of a single culturally literate individual, Alfred North, who functioned as an indispensable go-between between the expedition and the Malay book world. The collection’s significance is compounded by the fact that, more than a century and a half later, no other library outside the British Library holds comparable examples, making the Library of Congress holdings a singular resource for Malay studies (pp. 42–44).
Context
- The primary archival collection examined is the Malay manuscripts and early printed books held in the Southern Asia Section of the Asian Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
- The article builds on A. Teeuw’s 1967 brief report of eight manuscripts and Harun Mat Piah’s 1987 more detailed description, extending the inventory to fourteen codices and the correspondence volume, and adding the first systematic discussion of the early printed books and their significance for the history of Malay printing.