Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun – The verses to live by
March 2023
Taufiq Hanafi
Fig 1. The cover of the 26th volume or juz’ of the Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun (1989)
It might not be as sensational as Roberto Tottoli's discovery of Johann Zechendorff's 1632 Quran, which is entirely composed of the Arabic text that Zechendorff meticulously copied out, as well as his Latin translation of the entire book; but, I believe I have found something comparable in the form of Sundanese translation of the Quran in 30 separate volumes (juz'), each of which includes the Arabic text with an interlinear Sundanese translation and commentary written by the author/translator, a renowned Sundanese Muslim scholar-cum-polyglot named Moh. E. Hasim. While Tottoli found the Zechendorf’s Quran shelved in the city library in Cairo, Egypt, I made the discovery at a location relatively closer, in the family’s Dār al-Kutub, our private library in Bandung.
At home, I could clearly recall that we never actually used the term ‘interlinear’ because neither my father nor I were unaware that it had an ‘interlinear’ translation or that the layout was known as such. Simply put, we referred to it as Tarjamah Quran per kata (Quran word by word) or Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun (The Holy Verses to Live by). What’s more, interlinearity was a concept that was foreign to us or rather too sophisticated to use. And, frankly, I didn't find out about the concept and the debates surrounding it until well after I had already left home. Now that I think about it, I realized that home is actually where interlinearity began and, to borrow God's own words from Surah Qaf, had always been ‘nearer to [me] than [my] jugular vein.’ I was introduced to the interlinear tradition at a very young age when my father, who had just begun his career as a mubaligh in my kampung, shelved the first print of the holy Quran in thirty volumes (juz’) as the holy verses for us to live by.
The Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun (1989) is contemporary and typeset, so it does not require the Herculean effort that one should or would employ when reading, say, Zechendoff’s interlinear Latin translation of the Quran or Snouck Hurgronje’s collective volume from the 1900s where its Malay interlinear translation is occasionally hardly discernible. Having said that, Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun stands out because it questions the way Sundanese language conceptualizes linguistic politeness, which clearly has a variety of ramifications for all aspects of society. The Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun uses lancaran mode, which is an unrefined form of Sundanese in a low vernacular stylistics. Accordingly, this makes God (sound) more approachable in contrast to, for example, the lyrically oriented Indonesian translation of the holy Quran.
For instance, God is quoted saying the following: ‘And We have created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein.’ This verse explains that nothing is vague or hidden from God. He sees and hears everything that man does, and knows every thought that passes through man’s mind, whether good or evil.
Fig 2. Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun, Surah Qaf 50:16 Juz’ 26, p. 211
In the Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun, the use of the (perfective) verbs or predicates (geus ngayuga, nyaho, deukeut), as well as a first-person pronoun (Kami), a second person pronoun (maneh), and nouns (manusa, urat beuheung), all indicate that the enunciator of the verse, i.e. Allah, maintains an intimate, democratic relationship with the addressee or the reader, or at least with me. Instead of using a more refined tos nyiptakeun, terang, caket as predicates, Kuring and anjeun as pronouns, jalmi and urat tengek as nouns in the verse, God convenes in everyday, egalitarian language and is unconcerned with using certain speech level to establish His authority and position higher in the relationship’s hierarchical structure. In fact, according to Sundanese most prominent scholar Ajip Rosidi, the refined Sundanese language was an invention, imposed primarily by pretentious, feudal Sundanese aristocrats who clung to social hierarchy for their own benefit.
Tying in to this textual issue, some tafsir scholars interpret Allah's statement that ‘We are closer to him than his jugular vein’ to suggest that His angels are nearer to a person than their jugular vein, while others translate it as ‘Our knowledge’, both to avoid the sense of incarnation and indwelling. The Sundanese translation, on the other hand, faithfully renders the meaning and backs up the assertion made by the renowned tafsir scholar Ibn Kathir that these two creeds are false in the view of the vast majority of Muslims. In short, it is as it is written; it is as it is interlineally translated in the Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun, by which I used to live.
Wallahualam bi shawab.
وَاللّٰهُ اَعْلَمُ بِالصَّواب
References
Anderson, E. A. ‘Speech Levels: The Case of Sundanese,’ Pragmatics, 3: 2. 1957: 107-36.
Hasim, Moh. E. Ayat Suci Lenyepaneun (Bandung: Pustaka Jaya, 1989)
Rohmana, J. A. Allah sebagai Aing (Bandung: Ushuluddin, 2021)
Wessing, R. “Language levels in Sundanese,” Man 9, 1974: 5-22.