Article

Notes on the texts of the Malay Annals

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Notes on the texts of the Malay Annals

W. Linehan’s 1947 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society undertakes a close textual comparison of two major manuscript traditions of the Sulalatu’s-Salatin (Malay Annals)—the Raffles No. 18 manuscript and the Shellabear text—to argue that the Raffles No. 18 Preface is the earliest and least corrupt of all known Prefaces, and that the place called Goa in the Shellabear Preface refers not to the Portuguese settlement in India but to a locality in Pahang, most likely the gold-bearing caves near Kuala Lipis or Kota Gelanggi.

Summary

Linehan’s central concern is the genealogy of the Malay Annals’ Prefaces. He demonstrates that the Raffles No. 18 Preface must have been composed between 13 May 1612 (the date the compilation was ordered) and 6 June 1613 (the death of Sultan ‘Ala’u’d-din Ri’ayat Shah at Aceh), because it makes no mention of that Sultan’s death and does not style the down-stream prince as Sultan. The Shellabear Preface, by contrast, was written after 6 June 1613 and reflects a later, more corrupted stage of transmission. Linehan reconstructs the specific chain of copyist errors that produced the fictitious figure “Raja Dewa Said” in the Shellabear text: a reduplication of dewasa itu, a misreading of Pasir as Pasai, the reinterpretation of the orphaned word Raja as part of a personal name, and the phonetic substitution of Sait for the unfamiliar Said. This analysis shows that the absence of the name in Raffles No. 18 is not a defect but a mark of antiquity.

The second major argument concerns the identification of Goa. Linehan marshals Dutch, Chinese, and Malay sources to reconstruct the political upheavals of 1612–1613: Johore’s sack of Pahang in September 1612, the flight of Sultan Abdul Ghafur to the gold-mining region of Ulu Pahang, and the subsequent Acehnese conquest of Johore. He argues that the “history brought from Goa” was in fact a Pahang version of the Annals—carried there by the entourage of the fugitive Malaccan Sultan Mahmud after 1511, enriched with local Pahang topography and legend, and captured as spoil by Johore forces in 1612. The Pahang “flavour” persists in the Shellabear text through passages describing the river Pahang’s alluvial gold, the capture of Maharaja Dewa Sura at Jeram Koi, and the relocation of the legendary Gelang Gui from Pahang to the Johore river.

Key Findings

  • The Raffles No. 18 Preface was composed between 13 May 1612 and 6 June 1613, bracketed by the date of the compilation order and the death of Sultan ‘Ala’u’d-din Ri’ayat Shah at Aceh (p. 109).
  • The corruption producing “Raja Dewa Said” involved at least four distinct copyist errors: reduplication of dewasa itu, misreading Pasir as Pasai, reinterpretation of dewasa itu as Dewa Sait (identical lettering in Malay script), and phonetic substitution of Sait for Said (pp. 110–111).
  • Chinese records (Ming Dynasty, Wan-Li period 1573–1619) describe the Pahang king fleeing to the “gold mountains” after the Johore attack, with “half of the people killed” and spirits wailing for three days (p. 113).
  • Sultan Abdul Ghafur of Pahang owned gold-mines in Ulu Pahang and granted the Tembeling watershed to a son on marriage to a Perak princess, confirming his special connection to the upper Pahang region (p. 114).
  • The Pengkalan Kempas “ordeal” stone, dated 1467 A.D., bears the same record in both Old Javanese and Arabic scripts, providing a terminus for the transition from the earlier to the Arabic alphabet in Malay writing (p. 116, n. 1).
  • The Shellabear text’s placement of Gelang Gui on the Johore river is identified as a Johore “improvement” of a Pahang legend originally referring to Kota Gelanggi, a view corroborated by Dr. Quaritch Wales’s finding that no such fort existed on the Johore river (pp. 115–116).

Conclusion

Linehan concludes that the Malay Annals existed in at least two parallel manuscript streams from the pre-1511 Malaccan period: one that remained in Johore and emerged with minimal alteration as the Raffles No. 18 text, and another that passed through Pahang, acquired local topographical and legendary material, was captured by Johore in 1612, and was subsequently “improved” by a Johore annalist before feeding into the Shellabear tradition. The Raffles No. 18 manuscript thus represents the more authentic and earlier witness to the Annals’ composite form.

Context

  • The article draws on the Raffles Collection (Nos. 18, 35, 39, 80) and the Maxwell Bequest (No. 26) in the Royal Asiatic Society Library, London, alongside Dutch, Chinese, and Perak Malay sources.
  • It forms part of a broader programme of textual criticism of the Malay Annals in the JMBRAS during the 1930s–1940s, building on Winstedt’s 1938 romanised edition of Raffles No. 18 and Linehan’s own History of Pahang (1940).

References