Upon reviewing the English translation of the first page from Hikayat Faqir, which is the only page that has translation, it becomes clear that the translation struggles to capture the rich nuances and depth of the original Malay text. The hurried translation process has resulted in the omission of important textual subtleties that are vital to fully appreciating the Malay narrative.

From the get-go, the translation seems to strip the text of its natural rhythm and poetic repetition, features that embellish the original Malay script. Elements such as the rhythmic and repetitive phrases, like ‘dan lagi’, which accentuate the aspects or events narrated, are sadly lost in translation. The English version opts for simplified phrases that fail to convey the original text’s poetic essence.

Furthermore, the English version suffers from potential misinterpretations of certain words, which while not incorrect, do not encapsulate the deeper essence of the original phrases. For instance, ‘masyhur’ suggests being renowned, a notion that extends beyond just being famous. The word ‘murah’ embodies generosity or kind-heartedness, not simply being liberal. Moreover, descriptions of festivities are translated quite literally, failing to vividly convey the joyous celebrations portrayed in the Malay narrative.

Notably, the translation overlooks a crucial sub-clause that illustrates the actions of the faqir, specifically whils he ‘datang duduk minum kanjah’ or ‘came to sit and drink kanjah’. Although the translator noted the English equivalent, ganjah, in the manuscript margin, it lacks contextual explanation, leaving a gap in the narrative and raising questions about ganjah’s role and significance in the story. This missing detail might have offered a deeper insight in the faqir’s character or a significant cultural aspect, thus adding to the storyline.

And evident flaw is the omission of the recurring preposition/adverb/conjunction ‘hatta’, which in the Malay text serves to connect sentences and events, fostering a seamless and interconnected narrative. Its absence in the translation results in a fragmented text, devoid of the smooth flow and cohesive progression seen in the original.

This discrepancy is not just a result of linguistic barriers but is also deeply rooted in the socio-historical circumstances of the British colonial era during which it was acquired. The manuscript, housed in the British Library, reflects a time of territorial and cultural conquests, acquired by the Scottish poet and scholar John Leyden around 1811. Leyden, profoundly interested in Oriental languages, fostered a strong alliance with Thomas Stamford Raffles during his time in Penang between 1805 and 1806. This collaboration facilitated the creation of a significant collection of Malay manuscripts, mirroring the power dynamics of that time.

Examining this manuscript reveals the tumultuous zeitgeist of its creation period. Its rushed translation mirrors the colonial setting, offering just a superficial glimpse into the Malay narrative. This approach hints at a lack of genuine engagement and respect for the native literature and culture, reminiscent of the colonial era’s sentiment.

Thus, when scrutinizing the English translation against this larger backdrop, the faults cannot be separated from the broader implication of British colonialism, which is marred by power imbalances and cultural negligence, palpably represented in the translation.

References:

https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/01/malay-literary-manuscripts-in-the-john-leyden-collection.html

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Malay_B_10

Brown, I.M. 1955. John Leyden (1775-1811): his life and works. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh

In Part I of this blogpost on Linguistic Encounters, we saw how a VOC administrator attempted to translate the sacred language of Arabic into the European vernacular of the Dutch language in the context of the VOC’s philological and missionary enterprise. There, I showed how interlinear translations can invoke a sense of closeness, through familiar terms of comparison in Biblical understandings of Creation.[iv] However, not every linguistic encounter leads to closeness or connections. Some can create distance and alienation.

Petrus van der Vorm’s Malay interlinear translation of the Arabic translation of the Book of Genesis can point us in many different directions. Clearly, in this case, we are seeing a translation of a translation: the Arabic verses are translations from the Hebrew, collaboratively produced by two men of unknown origins; and the Malay is the Dutch pastor’s word-for-word translation of the Arabic translation for the purposes of translating the Bible into Malay. Curiously, unlike other translations from Arabic to Malay, almost none of the Malay words Van der Vorm chose in his interlinear translation are Arabic cognates; in fact, he seems to have carefully avoided using Arabic terms altogether, except when Allah was mentioned. Furthermore, it seems that Van der Vorm might have been relying on his knowledge of either Hebrew or the Dutch translation of the Hebrew Bible to translate some of the Arabic words into Malay.

Arabic Translation of Hebrew

Awwalu mā khalaqa Allāhu al-samā'u wa al-arḍu wa kānat al-arḍu tahiyyatan bāhiyyatan wa al-ẓalāmu 'alā wajhi al-ghamri wa al-rīḥatu al-'aẓīmatu tahubbu 'alā wajhi al-mā'i.^[v]

[English Translation: First what Allah created was the heaven and the earth and the earth was desolate and empty and the darkness was on the surface of the inundation and the mighty wind blew over the surface of the water.]

Malay Interlinear Translation of the Arabic Translation

Pertama yang dijadikan Allah itulah langit dan bumi; dan adalah bumi itu hampa lagi sunyi dan kelamlah di atas muka arungan dan angin yang amat besar bertiuplah di atas muka air.[vi]

[English Translation: First that which was created by Allah was the sky and the earth; and the earth was empty and desolate and the darkness was over the surface of oceanic crossings and the wind that was very big blew over the surface of the water.]

The Arabic words “tahiyyatan bāhiyyatan” (Image 2) are almost impossible to translate without knowing their corresponding Hebrew words of similar root, “tohu wa-bohu,” which were commonly translated as “desolate and empty” in English and “woest en ledig” in Dutch.^[vii] Van der Vorm’s Malay interlinear translation reads “hampa lagi sunyi” (empty and desolate), corresponding to the common Dutch translation of “tohu wa-bohu.”^[viii] While this invites more questions than answers, the translation of “tahiyyatan bāhiyyatan” into the Malay “hampa lagi sunyi” might point to intermediating languages not explicitly on the page: the hint of Hebrew words “tohu wa-bohu” and the common Dutch translation of the Hebrew as “woest en ledig.” It is perhaps the form of the interlinear translation itself that not only forces the Arabic derivation of Hebrew words to correspond directly with Malay, but also creates a sense of ambiguous distance, bringing the intermediating language of Dutch as well as the original Hebrew between the lines of one’s reading.

Figure 2. The first few verses from Petrus van der Vorm’s Malay interlinear translation of the Arabic translation of the Book of Genesis. BSS, Cod.arab.233, f. 2v. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00018809?page=11.

Linguistic encounters in the process of creating interlinear translations can create a sense of closeness as well as distance, as one sees how other languages lurk in the interpretive gaps between translations. While the Arabic to Malay translation is word for word, one seemingly having a direct relationship to another, other languages come into play as Arabic is deposed from its usual place of authority.[i] Layers of translation across multiple linguistic boundaries are embedded in this one copy of the Book of Genesis, some visible, others invisible. For indeed a translator, too, can summon his or her own multilingual “prior texts” in the process of translation, manifested in silence or perhaps in this case, in the barely audible trace of similar roots and of meandering meanings.[ii] While comparative readings between the two copies of Van der Vorm’s interlinear translations will require continued research, this brief example, I hope, demonstrates how interlinear translations, as a form, open up new ways of interpreting cross-cultural and cross-lingual interactions, both in the past and in the present.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod.arab.233.

Cambridge University Library, Or. 193.

Secondary Sources

Becker, A.L. “Silence across Languages.” In Beyond Translation: Essays toward a Modern Philology, 283-294. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Collins, James T. “A Book and a Chapter in the History of Malay: Brouwerius’ Genesis (1697) and Ambonese Malay,” Archipel 67 (2004): 77-127.

Kister, Menahem. “Tohu wa-Bohu, Primordial Elements and Creatio ex Nihilo,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 14:3 (2007): 229-256.

Swellengrebel, J.L.  In Leijdeckers Voetspoor: Anderhalve Eeuw Bijbelvertaling en Taalkunde in de Indonesische Talen. ’S-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.

Wieringa, Edwin. “Arabisch-Malaiische Genesis, Arabic-Malay Genesis.” In Die Wunder der Schöpfung: Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek aus dem islamischen Kulturkreis (The Wonders of Creation: Manuscripts of the Bavarian State Library from the Islamic world), edited by Helga Rebhan, 58. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010.

Arabic words are put one after another in a line, little space being left between them. Their Malay translations hang hooked to them beneath, often exceeding the source in the number of words and length. The vocabulary is divided into three big chapters according to a grammatical principle: particles, nouns, and verbs. Within the chapters, thematical arrangement is applied. The chapter on the nouns takes an encyclopaedic form, commencing with sections on God’s names, religious, epistemological and abstract terms, and then proceeding to words describing the physical world: those for land and sky; geographical notions; inanimate phenomena and materials; spices and aromatics; food and drinks; vessels and household utensils; diseases; plants and their parts; water and fish; animals and insects; body parts; categories of people; clothes and furnishings. Often a number of synonyms is provided, their translation replaced by the letter mim under the line. Humans find themselves in the fauna section, after the word al-ḥayawān (‘animal’), which is translated to Malay as segala yang hidup (‘everything that lives’). They are classified according to their gender, age, and social roles: men and women, old and young, free and slaves, kings, ministers and warriors. Women are divided into maids, brides, widows, young and old, married and not, and a variety of kinship terms is listed, as well as other words describing interpersonal relationships: friend, enemy, neighbour.

The sloppy handwriting and somewhat messy structural arrangement of this anonymous manuscript leaves an impression that the vocabulary was not intended for any audiences. It rather resembles personal notebooks in which learners of foreign languages write down words learnt and to be learnt in an endeavour to systematise their knowledge. Apparently compiled by a Malay-speaking learner of Arabic somewhere in nineteenth-century Sumatra, this wordlist provides an insight not only into the language learning practices of the time, but also into the student’s worldview and mindset. Assembling the elusive foreign words in logically arranged sections, the scribe unwittingly describes the world around—in an encyclopaedic and largely intuitive way.

Source:

Or. 3231(8), ff. 33r –32v, Leiden University Library

Some scholars argue that after Tarjumān, no translation activity was found until two centuries later, and the need for translation was already fulfilled by Tarjumān. This assumption may not be accurate because (1) several translation manuscripts have been found from those centuries, and (2) the need for a Qur’an translation in the Malay language might not have been as urgent as it is suggested. In fact, from the past until now, Indonesian Muslims who study Islamic sciences have generally used Arabic-language books from an early age.

During my childhood, once I had learned how to read the Qur’an, the next step was to acquire knowledge of the essential sciences of Islam, such as Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and Aqidah (theology). It was typically achieved by studying simple Arabic-language books like Safīnatun Najāh, rather than reading books written in local languages such as Javanese or Malay. Consequently, it became the norm to rely on Arabic books for a comprehensive understanding of the Qur’an, making Tafsīr al-Jalālayn more popular than Tarjumān in this regard. For Muslim students, reading Arabic-language books holds more legitimacy than reading books in local languages.

This assumption is supported by the widespread use of Tafsīr al-Jalālayn as the standard reference for comprehending the Qur’an in various Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) across Indonesia. An example that illustrates how Javanese individuals accessed the Qur’an is a Jalālayn manuscript dating back to the 18th-20th century which was digitized by the Endangered Archive Project (EAP) from Pondok Pesantren Langitan in Tuban, East Java. The EAP has collected numerous similar Jalālayn manuscripts from pesantren in Ponorogo and suraus (Islamic assembly places) in West Sumatra.

This EAP061/1/105 is not a complete Jalālayn manuscript. This volume only includes Surah al-Baqarah to al-Ahqaf, consisting of 461 folios. Based on similar manuscripts, it can be assumed that there is a separate second volume from this manuscript, which may contain Surah Muhammad to Surah al-Fatihah. The arrangement, used in most Jalālayn manuscripts in pesantren including EAP061/1/105, differs from the arrangement of surahs in the Qur’an, which usually starts from al-Fatihah and ends with al-Nas. Manuscripts that start from al-Baqarah and end with al-Fatihah reflect the division of manuscripts based on the author’s order.

As known, Jalālayn is a tafsīr book written by two individuals, Jalaluddin al-Mahalli and his student, Jalaluddin al-Suyuthi. When writing this tafsīr, al-Mahalli started from Surah al-Kahf to al-Nas. When he intended to complete it from the beginning of the Qur’an, he passed away after completing just al-Fatihah and 26 verses of Surah al-Baqarah. The tafsīr writing project was then continued by al-Suyuti, who rewrote it from al-Baqarah, omitting the 26 verses of al-Mahalli’s version, until completing Surah al-Isra. Unlike this manuscript, the current printed version of Jalālayn usually starts from al-Fatihah.

As seen in Figures 1-2, the strategy used by Javanese Muslims to “translate” the untranslatable Qur’an is by translating the Jalālayn. The Jalālayn manuscript itself consists of two texts. The red text represents the verses of the Qur’an, while the black text represents the Jalālayn interpretation. Using two different colours for the Qur’an text and the interpretation is not unique to Indonesia. Several manuscripts from the Middle East also use the same approach.

Javanese individuals employ interlinear translation when working with the Jalālayn. The translation is rendered in black ink and appears smaller in this manuscript. While the Qur’an text and the Jalālayn interpretation are written in naskh script, the Javanese interlinear translation is penned in riq’ah script. This specific writing style, known as “makna gantung” or “makna gandhul” (hanging meaning), is commonly observed in Java. The language utilized in this manuscript is Javanese.

This translation of makna gantung, as shown in manuscript EAP061/1/105, was written by a student in a pesantren. They provided translation notes based on what their teacher (kiai) recited. As seen in Figure 2, the hanging translation by these students is done for both the Qur’an text (red) and the Jalālayn text. It can also be observed that the student leaves some words untranslated. The words left without translation are usually words whose meanings were already known.

Manuscripts like Jalālayn, as shown here, are evidence that the scarcity of Qur’an translations until the 20th century is mostly due to Javanese people who chose to become users of the Arabic language in their study of Islam. Because, in any case, the Arabic language is in their eyes more authoritative than other languages. The motivation to master Arabic is higher than the need to read translations.

Figure 2. Jalālayn manuscript from Pondok Pesantren Langitan, Tuban, Indonesia. Endangered Archives Programme EAP061-1-105, p.3.

Source:

Jalālayn manuscript from Pondok Pesantren Langitan, Tuban, Indonesia. Endangered Archives Programme EAP061-1-105. https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP061-1-105

Notably, the first page of this manuscript is heavily annotated in pencil with an interlinear English translation. This translation presents a confounding complexity. It is not a faithful translation of the original text, and words are frequently misplaced in different lines. In addition, rather than providing a word-for-word interlinear translation, it fails to capture the essence and details of the narrative.

To shed further light on this issue, below is the transliteration of the first page of Hikayat Faqir, followed by its English translation.

Transliteration of the First Page:

   Billahi 'ala. Ini hikayat pasal yang pertama-tama yang amat

   masyhur dan lagi terlalu amat banyak dan lagi memberi manfaat yang mendengarnya.

   Adalah suatu raja bernama Sulthan Abduljalil nama negerinya Zamin Ambar.

   Hatta baginda itu terlalu amat besar kerajaannya dan beberapa buah negeri ta'luk

5       karenanya. Hatta baginda itu serta dengan adil lagi dengan murahnya. Syahdan,

   hatta baginda itu pun sehari-hari pergi bermain-main di luar negeri yang tiada berhenti.

   lagi diiringkan oleh segala raja-raja menteri hulubalang ra'yat sekalian demikian sehari-hari

   makan dan minum yang tiada khalnya lagi. Hatta kepada suatu hari baginda keluar

   negeri bermain itu maka baginda pun berjumpa dengan suatu kebun bunga-bungaan

10     dan bagai-bagai jenis poko'-poko' di dalam kebun itu. Hatta baginda pun turunlah

   dari atas kudanya  lalu berjalan ke dalam kebun itu. Tatkala itu faqir yang empunya

   kebun datang duduk minum kanjah(?) maka faqir itu pun kedengaran

   suatu suara. Demikian bunyinya. Hatta faqir aku datanglah. Maka faqir itu pun

   heranlah dirinya. Siapa juga yang berteriakkan aku ini. Hatta …

The English Translation:

              Billahi a’la the beginning of this story, this first chapter of which is very

              Famous and good and will do good to all who hear it

              There was a rajah named Sultan Abdul Jelil & his country

              Zamin Ambar. This prince was great in his sovereignty and many

5            Countries were under his government & he was upright & liberal

              This Prince was good to go from his country daily to amuse himself

              & he was attended by his ministers, hoeloebalangs & people

              & their eating and drinking was never finished

              One day the prince went out from his county when where he

10          Fell in with a garden (caboon) in which were flowers & various

              plants & trees - on which he alighted from his horse &

              entered the compound; the fakir to whom

              the garden belonged heard a voice saying, hey,

              fakir, you, come here, on which the fakir thought within himself, or said

              to conjecture who it was who called to him

The reason behind this inadequately done interlinear translation remains a subject of speculation and leaves us pondering the motivations and intentions of the translator. While the exact reason behind this enigma remains speculative, several factors could have contributed to this puzzling situation.

One possible factor is time constraints. Translating a manuscript, like Hikayat Faqir, requires a significant investment of time and effort. The translator may have been restricted by limited time availability, potentially due to other commitments or pressing deadlines, resulting in a rushed and incomplete translation.

Limited resources may have also played a role. Translating a text from one language to another necessitates access to dictionaries, reference materials, and linguistic expertise. If the translator lacked sufficient resources, such as comprehensive dictionaries or access to language experts, it would have been challenging to produce a precise and thorough translation.

Linguistic difficulties could have further complicated the translation process. Malay literature often contains intricate language structures, cultural references, and idiomatic expressions that can pose challenges for translators. If the translator faced difficulties in comprehending or conveying these nuances, it could have resulted in an inaccurate translation.

Another possibility is that the translator's intention was not to provide a meticulous, word-for-word interlinear translation. Instead, their goal may have been to offer a general overview of the story, focusing on conveying the broader narrative rather than preserving every detail. This intention, while understandable in certain contexts, could contribute to the imprecise nature of the translation.

In the absence of concrete information about the translator's circumstances and intentions, we can only conjecture on the reasons behind the inadequate translation. The case of Hikayat Faqir serves as a reminder of the intricacies involved in translating prose works from the past as we navigate the intricate world of translation and explore the wide reaches of Malay literature.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Rahmat Sopian and Genie Yoo. Their invaluable assistance and expertise in reading the translated page have been instrumental in shedding light on its contents. A more in-depth analysis on the translation may soon follow.

References:

https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/01/malay-literary-manuscripts-in-the-john-leyden-collection.html

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Malay_B_10

Brown, I.M. 1955. John Leyden (1775-1811): his life and works. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh

Please find the continuation of the article in the following link:

Lost in Translation- Part 2

In the manuscript, the original Old Javanese poetic line is written first, Old Javanese words and their equivalents are then put side by side, and finally a sentence in Modern Javanese is constructed. The marks, pada guru, are used to separate these parts, namely, they are used between the first part and second part and between the second part and third part. Since this manuscript doesn’t have the Modern Javanese translation from the middle of Canto 21 and only the Old Javanese text continued to be written from that point onwards, the marks also disappear from there.

Therefore, the marks with arranged circles play an important role in visualizing the stages of translation by creating partitions between the stages that are specific to the method of this manuscript’s translation.

Actually, other manuscripts related to the Bhāratayuddha which are contemporaneous and belong to the same collection do not, at least not frequently, have such marks, with the exception of one manuscript. And this exceptional manuscript is the one with the Old Javanese text and an interlinear Modern Javanese version.

Figure 2: A Bhāratayuddha manuscript with Old Javanese in black ink and its Modern Javanese version in red ink, 1812. British Library, MSS Jav 25, f. 6v.

The Old Javanese text is written in Balinese script here, and the mark is apparently only used for the Old Javanese. According to Balinese orthography the mark is called pasalinan and is used at the end of a section, namely, a verse etc. (Everson 2005). Therefore, it is likely that the Javanese scribe followed the method employed in the Balinese manuscript to which he was referring. On the other hand, however, these might also have been the marks that were typically employed in manuscripts as a strategy to contrast the Old and Modern Javanese sections in the Javanese literary tradition that was non-Islamic and not written in the pegon script.

While the Old and Modern Javanese lines follow the patterns faithfully, the mark has many different variations whose patterns I have not been able to categorize yet.

Figure 3: The various kinds of pada guru. British Library, Add MS 12279, f. 92r, 109r, 140v and 34v.

These 4 images are just a few examples among the many kinds of marks. How the person who put down these marks differentiated them is not clear. However, there must have been an intention to make the text more attractive or more understandable for people who looked at the manuscript, whether they actually read it or not.

Who wrote these marks? This is also one of the main questions about them.

The marks that show up from the opening page suddenly disappear from f. 5r. The marks written until f. 5r give the impression that they were somewhat forced into places where there was not enough space. Also, that the marks were written in a darker ink than the actual text may indicate that they were added later.

Figure 4: The first two examples show that the beginning and end of each line on the page are aligned, yet the marks nevertheless are extend beyond the lines. The latter two examples show that the marks are added on the text already written before. British Library, Add MS 12279, 2v-3r.

Looking at f. 41r to f. 61v, there are blank spaces without circles in each line as you can see in Figure 5 below. The blank spaces strengthen the impression that the circles inside the mark were added after the text was written.

Figure 5: The blank space inside the mark. British Library, Add MS 12279, 41v.

Behrend mentions a division of labor in the production of manuscripts in 19th century Yogyakarta. In some cases it is clear that the copying, illumination, and binding were done by different scribes or artists (Behrend 1993: 421). Dick van der Meij, in his analysis of illuminated manuscripts, shows that generally the text was written first and the illumination was provided later (Van der Meij 2017: 81).

Going back to the question of who inscribed the marks on the manuscript, it is possible that a scribe initially wrote all of the text and then someone else added the marks. If this is the case, the marks are included in the category of illumination.

While the text follows a translation method faithfully, the marks seem to be relatively free and playful and even include elements of illumination. This irregular movement of those marks makes us feel the mystery of the unknown and is a case in point which reminds us that we know only a small part of this subtle and profound “textual microcosm.”

Even a single kind of mark raises a lot of questions. On what basis were different kinds of marks differentiated? What does the number of circles surrounded by double lines represent? Did the content, metres, or the translation of the poetic lines influence the marks? Was a special mark such as the one you see in the last image in Figure 4 used because the content or its translation of the line of special interest, attracting the attention of the person who added the mark?

Although these marks seem to speak eloquently about the text to which they are attached, further comparative studies of manuscripts are needed to gain a better understanding of what they speak to and what function they play in a specific manuscript with an interlinear translation.

References and image credits:

British Library Add. MS. 12279

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_12279

British Library MSS Jav 25

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Jav_25

Behrend, T.E. 1993. “Manuscript Production in Nineteenth-Century Java; Codicology and the Writing

of Javanese Literary History”, In Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 149(3): 407-

437.

Dick van der Meij. 2017. Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok.

Leiden: Brill.

Everson, M. 2005. “Proposal for encoding the Balinese script in the UCS”, UC Berkeley: Department

of Linguistics.

Everson, M. 2007. “Proposal for encoding the Javanese script in the UCS”, UC Berkeley: Department

of Linguistics.

The manuscript, now preserved in the Vatican Library (Vat.ind.7), is labeled “Malay Lexicon and Grammar.”^[i] According to Dr. Bart Jaski, a VOC translator named Cornelis Mutter, who had once been commissioned to assist in the Malay translation of the Bible in Batavia in 1698, likely sent this manuscript, along with many others, to the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland (1676-1718) in Utrecht.^[ii] While Mutter had once owned this manuscript, he likely did not write in it. A close inspection of Vat.ind.7 reveals that it has two parts, each written in a different hand, neither of which belonged to Mutter: first, a Malay-Dutch lexicon, a scrupulous listing of words in Malay and Dutch in alphabetical order; second, an incomplete explanation of Arabic grammar, which includes a word-for-word interlinear translation from Arabic to Dutch. The interlinear translation was titled, “A grammatical exercise of the Arabic language, on the 64th Chapter of the Quran, which is titled, the Chapter of Fraudulence” (Figure 2).^[iii] The purpose of this interlinear translation, then, was to assist Dutch learners interested in basic Arabic grammar, presumably in the Dutch East Indies.

Unlike most interlinear translations made by Islamic authority figures in the archipelago, the VOC administrator, in this case, wrote the Dutch interlinear translation above the Arabic:

Dutch Interlinear Translation

Hij is dewelke ú geschapen heeft en onder d’ úwe (zijn) ongelovige en onder d’ úwe heeft men gelovige, ende god (is) over t’gene dat gijlieden doet ziende. Hij heeft geschapen de Hemelen en d'aarde, in der waarhijt ende hij heeft úl[en] geformt, en moy of goed gem[aak]t úwe gedaante, en tot hem is de toekomst.^[iv]

[English translation: He is the one who has created you and among you (are) unbelievers and among you one has believers, and god (is) seeing over that which you do. He has created the Heavens and the earth in the truth and he has formed you and made your form beautiful or good, and to him is the arrival.]

Arabic from the Second and Third Verses

Huwa al-ladhī khalaqakum faminkum kāfirun wa minkum mu’minun wa Allāhu bimā ta’malūna baṣīrun. Khalaqa al-samawāti wa al-arḍi bi al-ḥaqqi wa ṣawwarakum wa aḥsana ṣuwarakum wa ilayhi al-maṣīru.^[v]

[English translation: He is the one who created you, though among you are unbelievers and among you are believers, and Allah is all-seeing in what you do. He created the heavens and the earth with truth and formed you and made your form good and to him is the place of destination.]

Word-for-word translations, for instance, of khalaqa as “heeft geschapen” (has created), al-samawāt as “de Hemelen” (the Heavens), al-arḍ as “d’aarde” (the earth), and aḥsana ṣuwarakum as “moy of goed gem[aak]t úwe gedaante” (made your form beautiful or good), all point to familiar terms of comparison in biblical understandings of Creation, with slight variations. Here, it is the Dutch language that bends towards Arabic, bringing the vernacular to align more closely with the sacred language. While “de Hemel” (the Heaven) in the singular is more common in the Dutch translation of Genesis, the translator would faithfully render al-samawāt as “de Hemelen” (the Heavens),  specifying in the grammatical explanation of individual Arabic terms, that al-samawāt was the plural form of the singular noun “samā’ the Heaven [de Hemel], from the root samawa.”^[vi] Moreover, rather than translating aḥsana ṣuwarakum as “made your form good,” the translator would add another adjective “moy” (beautiful), which hews closely to other meanings stemming from the same Arabic root. Choosing this particular surah as a “grammatical exercise of the Arabic language” over other, more popular surahs in the archipelago likely highlights its intended readers and students in the Dutch East Indies: VOC administrators, likely all familiar with the Dutch Bible, who were interested in learning Arabic with a textual guide in Dutch.

Figure 2. The second page of the VOC administrator’s grammatical exercise from Arabic to Dutch. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.ind.7, f. 115v.

This blogpost showed how a VOC administrator stationed in the archipelago attempted to translate the sacred language of Arabic into a European vernacular. In the VOC’s philological and missionary enterprise, administrators used the form of the interlinear translation for various reasons, in this case, to provide a pedagogical exercise to train Dutch administrators interested in learning Arabic grammar. These linguistic encounters can invoke to a sense of closeness, as one sees how one language bends to conform to the other. In the second part of this blogpost, I will discuss another VOC administrator’s efforts to provide a Malay interlinear translation of the Arabic translation of the Hebrew Bible, a linguistic encounter that creates distance. Whether such textual encounters have led to a crossing of cultural and religious boundaries between historical actors of vastly different backgrounds in the context of Dutch imperialism is a question that remains to be answered.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.ind.7.

Secondary Sources

Jaski, Bart. “The Manuscript Collection of Adriaan Reland in the University Library of Utrecht and Beyond.” In The Orient in Utrecht: Adriaan Reland (1676-1718), Arabist, Cartographer, Antiquarian and Scholar of Comparative Religion, edited by Bart Jaski, Christian Lange, Anna Pytlowany, and Henk J. van Rinsum, 321-361. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2021.

Jaski, Bart. “Appendix 2: The Manuscript Collection of Adriaan Reland.” In The Orient in Utrecht: Adriaan Reland (1676-1718), Arabist, Cartographer, Antiquarian and Scholar of Comparative Religion, edited by Bart Jaski, Christian Lange, Anna Pytlowany, and Henk J. van Rinsum, 434-484. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2021.

The manuscript contains a copy of the Arabic text of Umm al-barāhīn (‘Mother of arguments’, also known as al-‘Aqīdah al-sanūsiyyah al-ṣuġrā or al-Durra) complemented by a variety of ‘secondary’ texts that either follow it or occupy interlinear and marginal spaces. The text of Umm al-barāhīn itself occupies 50 pages; the lines are widely spaced leaving enough room for interlinear notes, while the frame ruling creates large fields for marginalia. The latter fields are extensively used for glosses; between the lines, translation to Malay is placed, its units hanging hooked to the corresponding parts of the Arabic text. Following the Umm al-barāhīn, another (supplementary but much lengthier) text occupies some 93 pages of the manuscript, i.e. sharḥ (commentary) by Muḥammad Zayn al-Faqīh Jalāluddīn al-Āshī, a scholar from eighteenth-century Aceh. Composed in 1756–1757 and also known as Bidāyat al-hidāyah, this work is the earliest known ‘Malay version’ of Umm al-barāhīn and the oldest Malay work on ‘aqīdah, which remains highly popular up to the present day.

The manuscript represents an epitome of the long and peculiar afterlife of al-Sanūsī’s work in the Indonesian-Malay world. Written in fifteenth-century Tlemsen, by a North African Ash‘arite theologian, this ‘aqīdah was a rationalistic attempt to systematize the essentials of the Islamic faith. There were indeed three versions of the catechism, the ‘short’ (al-ṣughrā), ‘medium’ (al-wuṣṭā), and ‘long’ (al-kubrā) ‘aqā’id, as well as an even shorter one called ṣughrā al-ṣughrā. Having spread throughout the Islamic world, these texts were used in religious education and marked the grades of primary, middle, and advanced studies. Over the centuries, an extensive body of glosses and commentaries has grown around al-Sanūsī’s creeds—especially al-ṣughrā that has gained most popularity—both in Arabic and other languages of Islam. These were taught together with the main text, and often shared the page with it in manuscript copies and later in printed editions.

In the Indonesian-Malay world, al-Sanūsī’s short catechism has become the most popular and widely used work on Ash‘arite doctrine. A cluster of commentaries, glosses, versifications, and additions has been built around it by local scholars, initiating the development of a new regionally-specific genre of ‘aqīda writing, i.e. the sifat dua puluh (‘Twenty Attributes’). Among the kitab kuning (teaching materials used in pesantren, Islamic boarding schools) dealing with the doctrine, texts based on Umm al-barāhīn are the most popular group and are often referred to as Sanusi or Sanusiyah. Manuscript copies of the matn (original text) of Umm al-barāhīn tend to contain Malay or Javanese interlinear translations, some of those closely following the source text and others including certain amount of commentary.

The manuscript discussed in this post demonstrates a case of a rather literal, word-by-word, translation. Every Arabic word, including particles, prepositions, and other function words, finds its equivalent in Malay. But also some extra Malay words are added in order to make the translation readable independently of the source. Literal as it is, the translation is still not an exercise in deconstructing the original text into isolated elements: if rearranged into horizontal lines, the translation reads as a self-consistent (though not naturally structured) text. Neither is the translation entirely literal: one can find in it scarce explications woven into the text.

The opening lines of the text, whereas al-Sanūsī defines the three basic logical categories of his argument, go as follows (corresponding Malay translation units are put in parenthesis):

i‘lam (ketahui olehmu) anna al-ḥukm (bahwa sesungguhnya hukum) al-‘aqlī (akal itu) yanḥaṣiru (tersimpan ia) fī thalāthat (pada tiga) aqsām (bahagi) al-wujūb (pertama wajib) wa-al-istiḥālah (dan kedua mustahil) wa-al-jawāz (dan [ke]tiga jaiz) fa-al-wājib (maka yang wajib itu yaitu) mā lā (barang yang tiada) yutaṣawwaru (terupa) fī al-‘aql (pada akal) ‘adamuh (adamnya makna adam di sini nafi) wa-al-mustaḥīl (dan yang mustahil itu yaitu) mā lā (barang yang tiada) yutaṣawwaru (terupa) fī al-‘aql (pada akal) wujūduh (wujudnya) wa-al-jā’iz (dan yang jaiz itu) mā yaṣiḥḥu (barang yang sah) fī al-‘aql (pada akal) wujūduhu (wujudnya) wa-‘adamuh (dan adamnya) 

The translation is mostly literal, except for the order words added to structure the text and a brief explanation of the word adam (see in brackets):

Know that rational judgement is confined to three parts: [firstly] necessity, [secondly] impossibility, and [thirdly] possibility. The necessary is that of which non-existence is not conceived in the reason. [The meaning of ‘non-existence’ (adam) here is ‘negation’ (nafi)]. The impossible is that of which existence is not conceived in the reason. The possible is that of which existence and non-existence are both acceptable in the reason.

In the cited instance, translation follows the source text rather closely. Same can be said for the rest of the text, although infrequent elucidations of Arabic terms can be still found between the lines. It is also remarkable that some of the Arabic terms are reproduced in the translation as loanwords while others are translated to Malay in quite a literal way (e.g. simpulan for ‘aqā’id). Plurals are conveyed with sekalian, Arabic past tense with telah, prepositions, sometimes mechanically, with one and the same Malay equivalent—the translation demonstrates certain consistency in conveying Arabic lexical units and grammatical categories. Being in line with the standardised ways of rewriting Arabic in Malay found in other texts from the region, these translation patterns demonstrate the manuscript’s belonging to the tradition—the tradition of translating from Arabic to Malay, and, more specifically, that of translating theological and doctrinal texts, and Umm al-barāhīn in particular. Not fully identical to other known Malay translations of the catechism, this version shares with them many translation solutions and lexical choices.    

The literal, word-by-word translation of the authoritative text appears to represent an exercise in relevance: it barely departs from the source, while the equivalence of rather small units of translation to those of the original text is visually manifested in their hanging arrangement. This arrangement, along with the smaller size of letters and lesser accuracy in handwriting, also seems to demonstrate the Malay text’s inferiority to the Arabic one. Faithful as it is, the translation still allows brief explanatory notes that, again, highlight the capacity of Arabic to convey a complexity of meanings with a single word and the inability of Malay to provide a proper equivalent. A superficial view of the page provides a reader with an idea of the high status of the text and the language it is written in, while closer alternate reading of the source and its translation would help students to memorise both the creed and the meanings of the Arabic words it consists of. In the educational milieu where memorising often preceded understanding, providing a text with interlinear translation might have been an endeavour to achieve the two with one exercise.     

Source:

https://www.hmmlcloud.org/dreamsea/detail.php?msid=1624, DREAMSEA digital collection, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The manuscript in Figure 1 was copied by pun Sastrawijaya in A.D. 1814. It includes the original Old Javanese texts from Bhāratayuddha, but between its poetry lines there is also a word-by-word translation into Modern Javanese inserted between the Old Javanese words, and a line-by-line Modern Javanese prose translation as well.

To be specific, the text is divided into three parts in each line of kakawin. In the first part, the Old Javanese poetic line appears. In the second part, Old Javanese words are repeated and their translation into Modern Javanese follows after each Old Javanese word. In the third part, Modern Javanese words employed in the second part are rearranged and a sentence in Modern Javanese is created.

Each part is separated with a special mark that consists of vertically arranged circles.

These procedures are repeated for every poetic line.

There is a huge gap of about 650 years between the original work and the year this manuscript was written. The original was composed in A.D. 1157 during the period of the Kediri Kingdom which was a Hindu-Buddhist Javanese Kingdom in East Java. On the other hand, in A.D. 1814, the Javanese court had already been Islamized.

In the 18th and 19th centuries a revival movement of classical Javanese literature arose in the royal court in the Mataram Sultanate in the south of Central Java. In the process of these retroactive literary activities, many Old Javanese literary works were re-edited into Modern Javanese versions. To attain a better understanding of Old Javanese literature and be able to create new works inspired by it, Modern Javanese authors and scribes had to translate Old Javanese—no longer in use at the time―into Modern Javanese.

The Brata Yuda manuscript is viewed as reflecting such activity. From the text, we can see that the agents (translators and adaptors) involved in it made various endeavors in the text-building. For example, in Modern Javanese translation, (1) characters are shown respect by using a script which Old Javanese doesn’t have and (2) there are attempts to grasp the pronunciation which is no longer in use in Modern Javanese literature.

(1) One of the major differences between Old Javanese and Modern Javanese is the honorific language represented by speech levels such as ngoko and krama, which Old Javanese does not have. In Modern Javanese, not only words but also scripts possess such a hierarchy.

In the manuscript consonant scripts called aksara murda, used for honorific purposes, appear in various ways, for example in personal pronouns, in personal names and in honorifics (see the image below). Moreover, when honorifics are omitted in the Old Javanese source text, they are often added in Modern Javanese translations.

Modern Javanese tends to be more conscious of hierarchical relationships and power structure than Old Javanese. Therefore, when translating Old Javanese into Modern Javanese, the agent had to compensate for such functions (in this case a murda form and honorific title) that do not appear in Old Javanese.

Figure 2: aksara murda in a personal pronoun. The s in sira which means “he/she” is changed into aksara murda. British Library, Add MS 12279, f. 96r.

(2) On the contrary, in terms of sound, while Old Javanese distinguishes between long vowels and short vowels due to the influence of Sanskrit, Modern Javanese does not distinguish between them.

In the manuscript, there are attempts to overcome this, through a method to express long vowels in Old Javanese by using Modern Javanese scripts. Frequently, the Old Javanese long vowel ā is represented by adding a comma called pada lingsa, or by adding an h after the short vowel a. That is to say, ā is represented by a, and ah.

To summarize, the rigid rule of verbatim translation helps the translator work mechanically with less creativity and flexibility. Also, the efforts to fill the gaps in both the source and target languages enable the audience or readers to grasp the venerable characters and to perceive Old Javanese long vowels. I believe that these are the manifestation of an attitude of trying to read as faithfully as possible to the source language and source text. The manuscript presents translation as a “process” from which readers can derive further interpretations, explanations, or free translation.

References and image credits:

British Library Add. MS. 12279

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_12279

Supomo, S. Bharātayuddha : an old Javanese poem and its Indian sources (International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1993)

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.

In contrast to the first two pages, which prominently display motifs resembling European baroque ornamentation (image 1), the last two pages show locally styled cartouches, with indigenous floral motifs, geometric designs with triangular crowns and diagonals, as well as a succession of finial-tipped lines and curves radiating from the borders (image 2).[ii] Significantly, the penultimate page displays four protective Seals of Solomon, which Annabel Teh Gallop has identified as the "Ring of Solomon" in Malay (cincin Suleiman).[iii] The final two pages, moreover, exhibit the last two surahs of the Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Falaq and Sūrat al-Nās, referred to as the two verses of protection, or al-mu‘awwidhatayn. These verses seek the protection of Allah from evils of many kinds, and they both begin in the same way: “Say: I seek the protection of the Lord…” While there are many differences between the Arabic and the Malay vernacular translation of the two surahs, three particular verses caught my attention.

The imam of Tomilehu, Batou Langkaij (likely Batu Langkai or Langkawi), had copied the fourth verse of Sūrat al-Falaq in the following way: 

Arabic: “wa min sharri al-naffāthāti fī al-‘uqudi [sic]”[iv] 

[English: and from the evil of the blowers upon the knots]

The interlinear translation reads: 

Malay translation with some Arabic: “dan daripada kejahatan mantra sihir yang dimembisikkannya [sic] pada sipulan [sic] tali yang disimpul aw siḥr.”[v]

[English: and from the evil of the mantra of sorcery that has been whispered onto the knotting of a rope that is knotted, or sorcery]

Here, the translator has expanded on the original “evil of the blowers upon the knots” with “the evil of the mantra of sorcery that has been whispered onto the knotting of a rope.” It elides the feminine plural of al-naffāthāti–women who blow or spit on knots to perform a curse or to cast a spell. In addition to changing the act of blowing (or spitting) to an act of whispering, the translator has used two passive Malay verbs (to be whispered and to be knotted) in a verse that did not contain any verbs. Furthermore, the focus is not on the female actors but on the manifestation of the act itself as “the mantra of sorcery,” from which believers are instructed to seek the protection of Allah. While we cannot be certain, perhaps such interpretations shed light on everyday concerns about keeping oneself safe from sihir (from the Arabic siḥr), sorcery or black magic–the translator’s summary interpretation of the verse as a whole. Allowing this translation to contextualize the visual elements on the page, the protective Seals of Solomon in the four corners of the cartouche come to have added layers of meaning.  

A close reading of this third verse from Sūrat al-Falaq can also help us to understand the translator’s readings of specific words from other verses. For instance, he had already used a form of the Malay word for whisper (bisik), as we saw above. The fourth and the fifth verses of Sūrat al-Nās implores believers to seek the protection of Allah from the evil of the whisperer who whispers. The two verses were separated and copied as follows:

            Arabic: “min sharri al-waswās / al-khannās al-ladhī yuwaswisu fī ṣudūr al-nās”[vi]

[English: from the evil of the whisperer / the withdrawer who whispers in the hearts of mankind]

The translator would, however, render these verses as:

Malay: “daripada segala kejahatan waswas / shaytan yang indari aqil disebut dhikr Allah kan lutuh ia lagi memberi waswas pada segala hati manusia”[vii]

[English: from the evils of misgivings / Satan who evades the intellect called the remembrance of Allah, shall he strike again to put misgivings into the hearts of mankind]

Rather than translating “the whisperer” and “to whisper” into Malay, the translator has used the Arabic-derived Malay term waswas, which can mean worry, anxiety, doubt, even suspicion. There is a possibility that the Arabic waswās and the Malay waswas, while related as loan words and now false friends, influenced the translator’s reading and interpretation of the verses. In other words, rather than rendering the Arabic into Malay, he seems to have read the Malay back into the Arabic. Furthermore, the translator has elaborated on al-khannās–literally one who withdraws, referring to the devil–by adding that Satan is one who keeps a distance from dhikr Allah (rememberance of Allah). This addition seems to provide a practical, everyday solution to the devil and his evil influence: perform and maintain dhikr Allah to keep him away.

The exemplar to be discussed here is from colonial Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). The original Arabic text was copied in Colombo in 1891. The small manuscript measuring 15x10 cm and containing 98 pages includes, besides the Arabic text, a Malay interlinear translation. On the cover are written in black ink the title and the owner’s name: Muhammad Mu‘in al-Din ibn Baba Yunus Saldin (known as M.M. Saldin). According to a note in Malay on the manuscript’s second page the manuscript was gifted to the owner by encik Junus Tumurtu, who, as clarified by a brief note in English on the inner cover, was his maternal grandfather who presented the manuscript to him in 1910. [1]It was later inherited by Mrs. Jayarine Sukanthi Iyne, M.M. Saldin’s granddaughter, and is presently in the possession of her family in Colombo. It was digitized as part of the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (“Digitizing Malay Writing in Sri Lanka,” EAP609) and is listed as item EAP 609/5/4, available at https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP609-5-4

The manuscript is in very fragile condition, with some pages falling out and the binding loosely connected. It is illuminated on its first two and last two pages in red, green, blue, brown and black, with flowers, leaves, buds and geometrical designs framing these pages (see Figure 1). All other pages exhibit a simple, double-lined frame in red ink. The Arabic is written in black ink while the Malay is written in a lighter shade of gray and a smaller unvocalized script, known across Southeast Asia as jawi and in Sri Lanka as gundul. The hand of the Arabic text and the translation is not the same. On the initial five and a half pages, written in poetic verse in which all lines begin with “assalamu ‘alaika,” only the second half of the lines is translated, beyond the first instance (which includes the translation “salam atasmu hai Muhhmad.” The translation is written with a slant beneath each straight Arabic line, sometimes extending beyond the end of the line and red frame, especially in the pages’ bottom lines (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: A page from the Maulid al-Nabī Sharaf al-Anām where the extension of the translation beyond the frame is visible.

The manuscript offers testimony to the ongoing connections between the small diasporic Malay community in colonial Ceylon and the Indonesian-Malay lands to the southeast. Not only was the Sharaf al-Anām among the most popular mauluds in that broader region but it was also selected for translation via the interlinear method, most often into Malay, in different sites across it, including Aceh, Java, Makassar and Patani from the 18^th century onwards. Composed in part-prose, part-poetry it stands out among numerous interlinear translations from the region that are more prescriptive and less narrative in nature. A comparison among such interlinear translations of the same devotional Arabic text reveals both local particularities and a strong standardizing impulse, the understanding of which will require much further research. Preliminary findings point to the Ceylon translation in some ways resembling a Javanese interlinear translation of the Maulid more than it resembles other Malay interlinear translations of the text. For example, both the Ceylon exemplar and one from Java (British Library, MS. Or 16873) add titles (that do not appear in Arabic) to various figures depicted in the narrative and they also tend to clarify details (e.g. inserting a name into the translation rather than employing ‘ia’ or ‘nya’ which translate the Arabic pronominal suffixes more precisely) where other Malay translations do not. These similarities may reflect the strong demographic and cultural Javanese element within the broader, diverse diasporic community that over time came to be designated as “Malay.”

References:

Maulid Sharaf al-Anām. British Library MS. Or. 16873

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=23&ref=Or_16873

Maulid Sharaf al-Anām. EAP 609/5/4 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP609-5-4

Ricci, Ronit. Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka and Ceylon (Cambridge: Cambridge

      University Press, 2019).

The manuscript remains a witness of the dramatic last stages of the Aceh War (1873–1913), as well as of Snouck Hurgronje’s academic interests. The text of both the poems and their translations was copied for the scholar, who was back then an advisor to the Governor of Aceh, from another manuscript brought from a campaign in Gayo lands by Gotfried C.E. van Daalen (1863–1930), an infamous military commander whose atrocities would raise heavy criticism a year later. This original manuscript, that had earlier belonged to “migrant Acehnese legal scholars and nobles,” was soon transported to Java and is nowadays stored in the National Library of Indonesia in Jakarta.

The poem under discussion, the first of the two, is untitled and consists of 38 lines. It is written in Classical Arabic and addresses a student (of an Islamic school, apparently) with instructions in the ethics and principles of learning. Classified as urjuza, a poem written in rajaz metre and paired rhyme, the poem presents an example of Arabic didactic verse that has been known in the Middle East since the medieval period and was used to assist memorisation. In the Malay-Indonesian world, this practice found its continuation in the genre called naẓm or manẓūm, which comprises didactic texts written in rhymed verse. The genre falls within the larger category of kitab kuning, i.e. various texts used for teaching in pesantrens and other Islamic schools of the region. The poem on the duties of a student is one of such texts and is still used for teaching in these institutions, being known under the title Naẓmu l-maṭlab.    

In Indonesia’s Islamic schools, teaching such texts often incudes their recitation in unison which is followed by the teacher’s translation and explanation, while students write those down between the lines. In the Leiden manuscript, the interlinear Malay text is arranged according to the traditional pattern described in Malay and Javanese traditions with the terms “bearded books” (kitab jenggotan) or “hanging meaning” (makna gandhul). Broken down into fragments, the phrase by phrase translation of the poem is placed diagonally under the line, its units hanging as if hooked to particular words or parts of the Arabic text. However, the Malay ‘translation’ does not always correspond precisely to the source: while some of the lines are provided with rather literal Malay equivalents, in other cases interlinear text diverges from the Arabic original to different extent. The borderline between translation and what a modern reader would call a commentary or interpretation appears to be rather vague, and one might wonder if this kind of distinction existed for the writers and readers of the text.  

As studying such bilingual texts seems to involve both memorising the original through its repetitive recitation, and obtaining an understanding of the content by listening to the teacher’s explanation, one could possibly speculate on the correlation between the form of the translation and its purpose. The interlinear translation of the urjuza is neither a literal one, fragmented into the smallest units in order to allow the students to scrutinise the structure and grammar of an Arabic sentence, nor is it a polished literary, not to say poetic, translation aspiring to become an equivalent of the source text. It appears to be something in-between, apparently aiming at teaching both the Arabic language through a meaningful text, and the meaning of the text, i.e. learning principles and ethics, through an authoritative language—the language of the Quran.