Some historical sources used by the author of the Hikayat Hang Tuah
T. Iskandar’s 1970 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society argues that the anonymous author of Hikayat Hang Tuah was a literate, historically informed intellectual who deliberately drew upon written sources—chiefly Sejarah Melayu and Bustanus-Salatin—to construct a symbolic historical romance intended to bolster Malay morale in the post-1641 Johor-Riau period. The study systematically identifies and maps the borrowed episodes, demonstrating that the work’s apparent chronological incoherence is in fact a conscious compositional strategy rather than the ignorance of a “rhapsodist” as Sir Richard Winstedt had claimed.
Summary
Iskandar begins by surveying the scholarly reception of Hikayat Hang Tuah, tracing the critical trajectory from Overbeck’s 1922 German translation (which classified it as a “historical romance” and doubted the existence of a single author) through Hooykaas’s coinage of “Malay legendary romance,” Winstedt’s dismissive “Malayo-Javanese romance” label, Kassim bin Ahmad’s treatment of the work as a purely literary national epic, and finally A. Teeuw’s 1960 argument that the work’s internal unity demands a conscious author. Iskandar sides with Teeuw, accepting that the work is the product of a deliberate composition, and sets the terminus post quem at 1641 (the Dutch conquest of Malacca, the last historical event mentioned in the text) and the terminus ante quem at 1724 (Francois Valentyn’s first known reference to the work).
The bulk of the article is a chapter-by-chapter comparison of Hikayat Hang Tuah with the Shellabear edition of Sejarah Melayu, identifying at least twenty distinct episodes that have been borrowed, rearranged, or repurposed. Iskandar shows that motifs appearing early in Sejarah Melayu (the swordfish attack on Singapore, the falling of the crown into the sea) are relocated near the end of Hikayat Hang Tuah where they serve a different narrative function—justifying the subjugation of Inderapura or foreshadowing the fall of Malacca. He also identifies a passage describing the palace of the Sultan of Turkey that is copied word-for-word from Bustanus-Salatin, the Acehnese chronicle of Nuruddin al-Raniri, and traces the embassy-to-Turkey episode to the historically documented Acehnese mission of 1564. Additional borrowings are noted from Panji stories, Hikayat Iskandar Dzulkarnain, Hikayat Seri Rama, and Malay folklore.
From this evidential base, Iskandar constructs his central interpretive claim: the author was not ignorant of history but had deliberately condensed the entire sweep of Malay history—from the founding of Singapore to the Dutch conquest—into the lifetime of a single hero. Hang Tuah is a Weberian “ideal type,” a composite of all heroic qualities found across the sources, while the unnamed “Sultan Melaka” is a symbol for all Malay rulers from Palembang to Johor. The work is thus a “symbolic historical romance,” comparable in technique to the Old Javanese Arjuna Wiwaha, which Berg had shown to be a veiled history of King Airlangga.
Key Findings
- The terminus post quem for composition is 1641 (Dutch conquest of Malacca, the last historical event in the text) and the terminus ante quem is 1724 (Valentyn’s Oud- en Nieuw Oost-Indien, the first known external reference to the work) (pp. 37–38).
- The description of the Sultan of Turkey’s palace in Hikayat Hang Tuah (pp. 456–460 of the hikayat) is copied word-for-word from Bustanus-Salatin (Bab II, Fasal 13), the Acehnese chronicle written by Nuruddin al-Raniri, providing direct proof that the author had access to written historical sources (p. 44).
- The embassy-to-Turkey episode in Hikayat Hang Tuah (pp. 437–477) is derived from the historically documented Acehnese embassy sent by Sultan Alauddin Ri’ayat Shah al-Kahar in 1564, as recorded in Bustanus-Salatin and confirmed by Ottoman documents cited by P. Voorhoeve in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (p. 44).
- At least twenty distinct episodes in Hikayat Hang Tuah are identifiable as borrowings from Sejarah Melayu, including the swordfish attack, the falling crown, the Majapahit marriage, the Tun Teja abduction, and the Portuguese conquest, all of which have been relocated and repurposed for different narrative functions (pp. 38–43).
- The apparent confusion between Hang Jebat and Hang Kasturi (the traitor who duels Hang Tuah) is explained etymologically: both jebat and kasturi mean “musk” in Malay, suggesting the two names originally referred to a single character who was split into two to reach the culturally significant number of five friends (pp. 43–44).
- The author’s deliberate omission of the Sultan of Pahang in the Tun Teja episode (where Sejarah Melayu names him as her fiancé) is interpreted as a conscious avoidance of ridiculing the Pahang royal house, a liberty available only in a non-historical work (p. 40).
Conclusion
Iskandar’s definitive takeaway is that the author of Hikayat Hang Tuah was a “literary genius” who transcended even Hooykaas’s category of “intellectual artist.” Far from being a rhapsodist ignorant of chronology, the author was a widely read man who possessed and deployed historical writings—including Bustanus-Salatin, which furnished him with dates and details—to construct a symbolic narrative in which the entire history of the Malay people is compressed into the life of one ideal hero, serving the political purpose of inspiring Malay audiences in the Johor-Riau courts to recover the glory of the Malacca era.
Context
- The study draws on the Shellabear edition of Sejarah Melayu (Kuala Lumpur, 1967) and Iskandar’s own 1966 edition of Bustanus-Salatin as its two primary textual bases for source identification.
- Historiographically, the article represents a corrective to the Winstedt school’s tendency to dismiss Malay literary authors as chronologically incompetent, and it aligns with Teeuw’s structuralist approach to Malay romances while extending it with concrete philological evidence of intertextual borrowing.