UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Playing Along Infinite Rivers: Alternative Readings of a Malay State A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature by Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar August 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Hendrik Maier, Chairperson Dr. Mariam Lam Dr. Tamara Ho Copyright by Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar 2015 The Dissertation of Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar is approved: ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements There have been many kind souls along the way that helped, suggested, and recommended, taught and guided me along the way. I first embarked on my research on Malay literature, history and Southeast Asian studies not knowing what to focus on, given the enormous corpus of available literature on the region. Two years into my graduate studies, my graduate advisor, a dear friend and conversation partner, an expert on hikayats, Hendrik Maier brought Misa Melayu, one of the lesser read hikayat to my attention, suggesting that I read it, and write about it. If it was not for his recommendation, this dissertation would not have been written, and for that, and countless other reasons, I thank him kindly. I would like to thank the rest of my graduate committee, and fellow Southeast Asianists Mariam Lam and Tamara Ho, whose friendship, advice, support and guidance have been indispensable. Also, Muhamad Ali and Justin McDaniel, whose graduate courses have cultivated my interest in Southeast Asia beyond the literary into appreciating the religious complexity and diversity of the region. The people, groups and organizations mentioned below have contributed to my academic, intellectual, creative and spiritual growth in one way or another: Kieran Johnston, probably the first American I met and learned from, who taught me a movie a day keeps the doctor away. Peter Cole, the first teacher who I met when I came to America and the one who sparked my academic interest in Malay and Austronesian linguistics during my time at the University of Delaware. iv Barbara Andaya, whose research on Perak history has been essential to this dissertation. All the faculty members and colleagues at UC Riverside, particularly the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Southeast Asian Studies program with whom I have shared physical, personal and intellectual spaces in the fun, interesting and exciting, sometimes mind-wrenching world of literature, texts, critical theory, philology, history and so on. All the faculty members and colleagues at the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware. Institute of International Education, and the Fulbright FLTA Program. KUCR 88.3 fm, Coachella Valley Art Scene, Quita Penas, Orkes Pantai Barat, Inner Prisms, New Straits Times Press, Mukha, Camwerk. My immediate and extended family especially my mother, Sharifah Zahrani Ali and my sister, Suraya Al-Attas, who relentlessly and kindly supported my leaving home in search of knowledge and wisdom beyond the confines of familial, familiar borders, whose patience in waiting for me to find my way in the world has been undescribably and consistently soothing. And the rest of my brothers and sisters – Syed Hadi, Syed Ezzat, Sharifah Nadiya, Syed Helmi, your love has always been a wall of comfort. And of course, my lovely nephews and nieces, inspiring in their own spontaneous, playful ways. All my dear friends, in particular my Malaysian and American friends, too many to mention, who have been helpful at one point or another during the course of my travels and research. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Playing Along Infinite Rivers: Alternative Readings of a Malay State by Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Comparative Literature University of California, Riverside, August 2015 Dr. Hendrik Maier, Chairperson This dissertation deals intimately and critically with the fundamental question of Malay statecraft. It presents texts that have been uncritically considered ‘cartographic’, ‘historical’ and ‘literary’ on Perak a step into the different possible ways of navigating and thinking about a Malay geopolitical entity beyond prescribed Cartesian maps and boundaries, by first exploring the context of the cartographic encounter between 18th century European and Malay paradigms, ones which underlie the different modes of representing the world in map-making, writing and reading. These two maps – an 1876 Malay map and a 1792 British map - could be considered as prototypical products of map-making technologies prevalent then, showing distinctive mechanisms of selective representation that make certain places/points/aspects/people present while obscuring others. It provides an introspective and comparative analysis of these maps with other contemporaneous visual (maps) and textual (narratives) in English and Malay to address the looming descriptive questions of how the maps came to be, and how they came to be as such. In other words, what stories do the maps tell of the processes involved in their making and how the world (of which the state of Perak is a small, yet for the purpose of this study, the most immediate and interesting part) was seen from the eyes and in the vi minds of their makers? Literary perspectives of early scholars/authors of texts on the state exhibiting manners in which Perak and its population have been written about and languaged by way of stories, anecdotes, and historical narratives are thoroughly examined. In the process of cultural and textual translation, from one into the other, and the ‘other’ into mainstream historical texts during the inception of modernity in the region, unilateral impositions of labels, laws and ideals correspond with ones that had already been long institutionalized in Europe. The construction of a historical reality through the acts of compiling, reading, writing about and translating Malay texts, the British historical and literary paradigms (and their supposed biases for primitive, fantastic, enchanting tales that befit the stereotypical notion of people living in villages in previously uncharted tropical land) decided which Malay texts would be printed, reprinted, and incorporated into it. Ultimately determining the logical and cultural grounds on which the people of Perak might be understood through long-accepted discourses such as ‘history’ and ‘literature’, this dissertation offers methodologies and critical paradigms of seeing beyond the constraints of discursive practices, and into the silences buried between the lines of canonical histories. Central to alternatively archaeologizing these silences are the syair in Misa Melayu, and maps that have been considered irrelevant to factual historiography, as well as other Malay syairs, namely Syair Bahr An-Nisa, Syair Perahu 1 and Syair Perahu 2 with similar thematic foundations of aquatic navigations, ships, and rituals involved in linguistic/literary/historical representations of the Malay world. Based on the underlying notion of the ‘cosmos’ as the fundamental stuff being represented in the texts, the main vii foci points of this dissertation are the metaphorical and physical correlations between the syairs and meaningful embodiments of these texts in the historical reality of Perak specifically and more generally the Malay world. A further step into the realm of the oral/aural world of Malay narratives necessitates an intricate discussion on the communities of imagination from which these fluid texts were recited and heard, produced and read. Reflecting nuanced Malay gnoses/noetics of the past, literary artifacts like the syair carry with it ethereal poetic elements that have been long buried under the dust of history. Also put into consideration are religious texts that circulated contemporaneously with the hikayats and were the earliest to be recited, translated, and read, and therefore relationally connected as they provide early bases for the first Malay lexicons used in translations of any hikayat. Rather than imposing any definite status on the hikayat as religious or non-religious, it is more practical to examine the fact that the hikayat, and texts that have been considered religious and exegetical were circulating in the same literary space, and thus deserve a more refined and attentive reading. In short, all throughout these pages, hopefully meaningful, poetic connections between the world, the reader and texts beyond prescriptive, familiar concepts could be drawn by readers other than myself. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………..…….…… iv – v Abstract …………………………………………………………………… vi – viii List of Maps ……………………………………………………………….……..xi List of Figures …………………………………………………………….……. xii Introduction ……………………………………………………………………... 1 CHAPTER 1: Playing along the Perak river: readings of an 18th century Malay state Perak: a summary ……………….……………….…………………….……....….16 Readings of strange maps: mythology of/on the peninsula…………….…….…....19 Playing with strange texts ….…………………………………………….….…… 39 Misa Melayu & the quandary of translation ….…………………………..……… 48 CHAPTER 2: Reimagining narrative paradigms: reading beyond the historico-literary. Translating a terra incognita …………………………………………….……..... 60 On narrativizing a state …………………………………………………… .…..... 65 Between ‘representations of/in factual literature’