“Raja Bersiong, the Fanged King, is a cannibal monarch in the Kedah epic literature Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa (HMM). By looking closely into the character of Raja Bersiong, this article examines the underlying ambition of the Kedah Sultanate in commissioning the HMM as a rhetorical statement of power, presumably around the early 19th century. By the late 18th century, Siamese predation had greatly destabilised Kedah. Lacking military capacity to deny Siamese suzerainty, Kedah plunged into double-dealing: through writing, the HMM downplays Siamese power by masking Kedah’s subordinate status to Siam as a relation of kin, and by considering Siam as an offshoot of Kedah’s royal legacy. Adopting an approach informed by Hendrik Maier, this article interprets the HMM as an ambiguous text that alludes to the diplomatic desperation of a small state. Such critical lens enables a more complex understanding of court writing as a historical source. In the face of geopolitical insecurity, Raja Bersiong figures as the abject, the symbolic surrogate for Siam to be expelled from Kedah, embodying a dialectics between Kedah and Siam, self and other, civility and savagery.”
“The Royal Library of Bone: Bugis and Makassar manuscripts in the British Library
In March 2019, the digitisation was completed of 75 Javanese manuscripts from Yogyakarta now held in the British Library, which had been captured from the Kraton or Palace of Yogyakarta in June 1812 following a British assault. What is much less widely known is that the British Library also holds the core of another royal library from Indonesia, also taken in armed conflict during the brief period of British administration in Java from 1811 to 1816 under the command of Thomas Stamford Raffles. All the 34 manuscripts from south Sulawesi in the British Library can be identified as orginating from the palace of the Bugis kingdom of Bone, and were seized in a British attack on of Bone in June 1814.” (Read more.)
“This is an annotated transcription and translation of the Syair Tabut (Poem of the Tomb Effigies) of Encik Ali, a Malay-language, Jawi-script syair account of the Muharram commemorations of 1864 at Singapore. The only known part lithograph and part manuscript of this text, on which this edition is based, is held in the library of Leiden University, shelfmark Kl. 191. For a full discussion of this Syair, see the accompanying article by Lunn and Byl (2017).”
The Syair is a riveting account of Muharram commemorations in #Singapore in 1864 – the last year Muharram processions were permitted before the colonial authorities banned them. For an image of Muharram in late colonial Singapore, here's a glimpse: Schlitter, 1858. pic.twitter.com/vt9x5b0xui
.@juliasbyl and I also published a (rather long) analysis of the Syair, looking into the court cases that emerged from the "Muharram riots" that year, the music, and the many rich details in the poem – that article also seems to be open access! https://t.co/PIxcAtY0nb
The Syair itself is a #Jawi-script scroll that lay unexamined in @ubleiden for over 150 years – here's a sense of the beautiful lithographed opening, and the messy, manuscript end: pic.twitter.com/lE33YSeAA1
Anyway, open access, for who knows how long: I hope people will enjoy at least the Syair, and for a sense of some of the most colourful aspects, check out the Muharram Scroll, from c. 1840s Madras Presidency, now in the collections of @acm_sgpic.twitter.com/ua8rfOBkld
And (finally? maybe) it was the wonderful @michaeltalbotuk who directed me to the map collections of the @UkNatArchives – who knew (apart from real historians) that such gems existed? The snippet below was crucial in reconstructing 19thC Singapore geography. pic.twitter.com/YANiWA4vUJ
In 1753 the British Museum was founded through the bequest of the vast collections of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1673), including over four thousand manuscripts, which are now held in the British Library. … (Read more here.)
Arabic text with interlinear translation in Javanese
Featured image: 16th century-mid 18th century, Arjunavijaya A broken piece of palm-leaf, with text in Old Javanese written in Balinese script, containing parts of stanzas 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 (but not of stanza 13) from canto 10 of the Arjunavijaya (or Arjunwijaya), a court poem (kakavin or kakawin) authored by Mpu Tantular in the second half of the 14th century, describing a scene of confrontation between Śiva’s attendant Nandīśvara and the demon Rāvaṇa. This fragment corresponds with the critical edition published by Supomo (1977 I: 109), with English transation (1977 II: 203-204). Identified by Ida Bagus Komang Sudarma, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan and Arlo Griffiths, June 2018. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=sloane_ms_3480_f001r
