ZAKARIAALI

NOTES ON THE SEJARAH MELAYUAND ROYAL MALAY ART

Numerous objects are mentioned in the Sejarah Melayu, completed Demang Lebar Daun initiates the festivities or Malay Annals, a semi-historical account ofthe Malacca with a wide variety of entertainments that continue for sultans, their ancestors, and their descendants, first writ­ forty days and forty nights. Buffaloes, oxen, and sheep ten in 1482, by aJohore prince, Raja Bongsu, also known are slaughtered to feed the guests. Princes, ministers, as Tun Sri Lanang.' The objects include textiles, weap­ courtiers, heralds, chieftains, and all the people feast ons, metalwork, furniture, musical instruments, tomb­ and drink to the accompaniment ofevery sort of music. stones, vessels, buildings, gardens, and fortifications (see Then the ceremonial water in the golden vessels studded appendixj." The importance of these objects is twofold: with jewels is brought in. The prince and his bride are first, although they are accidental to the narration ofthe borne in procession seven times round the pavilion, and story, they give us hints about of the material culture of take the purification bath on the central platform. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Malacca and the sur­ prince unwraps his towel and puts on his royal sarong, rounding port cities. Second, they tell us something called darapata darmani, and the princess wears hers, about how artistic objects were to be understood in called burudaimani. Both are invested with the complete Malacca in those centuries. insignia of sovereignty, whereupon they sit on the gold­ The objects in the Sejarah Melayu are used like props en dais . They eat the ceremonial rice while everybody on a stage to suggest the setting. The main thrust of the watches. Finally they crown themselves with the royal narration is on the characters moving in and out ofa giv­ ornamented headdress. In the last part of the ceremony en scene or anecdote, but the contextual relation be­ the menfolk are led by the prince onto the royal golden tween a scene and an object or a series of objects which yacht, while the queen rides a silver one." appears in it sometimes gives hints about its appearance The first six chapters of the Sejarah Melayu treat mate­ and purpose. The kris is a royal symbol, in one instance, rials which are largely legendary; the subsequent chap­ a gift in another, and a deadly weapon in a third, where it ters are essentially about the rise and fall of the Malacca is used in the famous dual between Hang Tuah and sultanate. The legendary story traces the beginnings of Hang Kasturi. In this third instance, Hang Tuah's secret the Malay kings to Alexander the Great of Macedonia. affair with one of the palace women attendants is discov­ Raja Bongsu bases this lineage on the Hikayat Iskandar, a ered by the sultan, who then orders Hang Tuah to be Malay translation of the Perso-Arabic romance about executed. Knowing that Hang Tuah is no ordinary Alexander the Great, his model for writing his Sejarab fighter, the prime minister takes it upon himself to put Melayu. The Hikayat Iskandar confirms the nobility ofthe Hang Tuah in fetters. This punishment enrages Hang Malay rulers: Raja Bongsu asserts that the line runs from Kasturi - Hang Tuah's dearest friend - who revolts by Alexander down to a succession of kings in India whose running amuck in the palace. In despair the sultan descendants had spread across the vast Malay archipela­ invokes Hang Tuah to deal with Hang Kasturi. The go and Indianized the Malay rulers in Palembang, from prime minister releases Hang Tuah, who is given the sul­ where the founder of the Malacca sultanate had come tan's kris which kills Hang Kasturi. The kris performs early in the fifteenth century." more than just symbolic and practical functions. It con­ Raja Bongsu was aware that there were problems with veys the deeper message that no one should ever revolt this lineage: Alexander preceded the Prophet Muham­ against the sultan" because that violates the Malay ethos. mad by many centuries, and many more centuries were Another scene is a royal wedding. The ruler of Palem­ to elapse between the Prophet Muhammad and the bang, Demang Lebar Daun prepares for the ceremonial gradual Islamization ofthe Malays. The Malays could not lustration. A series of objects are described whose pres­ be Muslims prior to the Prophet Muhammad. So Raja ence is central to the scene; a seven-tiered bathing pavil­ Bongsu adopts a textual strategy by inserting the bismil­ ion is built with five spires of the finest quality; when it is lah as the opening line of his preface; he then precedes NOTES ON THE SEJARAH MELAYU 383

or follows his Malay sentences with Arabic phrases and states that commoners cannot use the color yellow for locutions. The authority ofArabic, especially the bismil­ cloths, curtain fringes, bolster ends, mattresses, wrap­ lah, eradicates or at least mitigates the stigma ofan infi­ pings. Strung jewels cannot adorn the houses of com­ del past. He refers to himselfas afakirwho is aware ofhis moners. They cannot have closed verandas, hanging pil­ weakness and the limitation ofhis knowledge, mounted, lars, posts that reach the roofbeam. Commoners cannot as he is, "on the steed ofignorance. »6 At the end ofmost have summer houses or boats with windows and cabins. chapters, in typical Muslim self-effacing fashion, he White umbrellas are reserved for kings and yellow declares the standard affirmation: "God knoweth the umbrellas for princes. Commoners cannot have metal truth. To Him do we return." Yet even a pagan past had casings on their kris, not even half way up the sheath. its own glory, of which the Malacca kings are eager to Commoners are forbidden to wear ankle bracelets of partake. That light ofglory is filtered through the prism gold; silver-knobbed gold anklets are a royal privilege. of Islam and refracted to the material world as some­ Regardless of rank, no one is permitted to enter the pal­ thing pure. Purity was expressed, on the one hand, by ace without wearing his sarong in the overlapped fash­ the idea of pure blood sanctified by the Hindu caste sys­ ion, his kris in front, and a scarfover his shoulders. Any­ tem , or some residual form ofit and, on the other, by the one who wears his kris behind will have it confiscated by purity of the Arabic language, Qur'anic or otherwise, in the gatekeeper. The penalty for defying this order is the minds of the non-Arab Malays. The textual strategy death." Courtly etiquette and injunctions were taken se­ operates through both time and faith; both are treated riously; there was no appeal for the offenders. Over time, in a way that enhances the focus of the Sejarah Melayu however, when Malacca was overrun by the Portuguese which according to the preface is to chronicle the gene­ in 15I! and the seat of Malay power moved to johore, alogy of Malay rajas , to set down in writing the ceremo­ these injunctions were less strictly enforced.IO nies ofthe royal courts, and to inform the royal descend­ While the tradition of courtly courtesies was still very ants of their history. Whenever he has to conceal or to much alive in the palaces of twentieth-eentury Malaysia, reveal , Raja Bongsu resorts to Arabic phrases for maxi­ most of the royal treasures from earlier times were no mum impact. longer extant. Most gold objects were melted down or As the narrative gets closer to his own time, Raja looted; stone objects weathered away by neglect; wooden Bongsu is constrained by other considerations. The most objects perished in the humidity of the tropics. We can pressing ofthese is the Malay sense ofpropriety. It forces only imagine what they looked like. Some of them are him to speak guardedly, especially about palace mentioned in such a way that one can visualize some intrigues, crimes, jealousies, all aspects ofseizing, using, approximation of them, but references to palaces, gar­ and maintaining power. Power is expressed in terms of dens, and fortifications are not often backed up by ade­ the objects connected with the reign ofeach ruler. Inevi­ quate description. There is a fairly good description of tably, these objects are made of gold: "Where there is the fortified city of Bija Negara, but it gives an impres­ sovereignty, there is gold.»7 No one but the shah is per­ sion that Raja Bongsu may have relied either on some­ mitted to wear gold, no matter how rich he is, unless it is one else's description or on a miniature painting; the lat­ a present from the ruler; then he is permitted to wear it er is more likely because the description has a pictorial in perpetuity" This obsession with gold runs throughout quality about it. He writes that the fort is of black stone the book, from the early Indianized period to the setting with walls seven fathoms thick and nine fathoms high. up of the Islamic port cities in the fifteenth century. The The masons are so skilled that no space can be seen be­ reader is often benumbed by the numerous references tween the stones. The gate is ofhammered gold, studded to golden objects - a bejeweled chair of gold, golden with jewels. The fort encompassed seven mountains. In caskets filled with precious stones, horses with gold trap­ the middle of the city was a lake as wide as the sea in pings, golden yachts, a Pahang cleaver inlaid with gold, which the king kept fish of every sort. In the middle of plates, bowls, trays ofsilver or gold and so on . The reader the lake was an island ofgreat height whose summit was begins to wonder whether these references are literary always wrapped in foggy mist. This island was a pleasure conventions or statements of fact. As there are no other garden planted with fruit trees and flowers from all over texts like the Sejarah Melayu from the fifteenth and six­ the world. In the forest reserve ofthe island were all sorts teenth century, we have no choice but to take Raja Bong­ of wild beasts. The king went there when he wished to su's presentation at its word. hunt elephants. Raja Bongsu conceded that ifhe were to The book also lists what the commoner cannot do . It go on , he would write a book as thick as the Hikayat Ham-