As a first step to find out I made a comparison of the religious aspect of the two renderings. In the ninth-century text the religious aspect is part of the core message. The text  tells a romantic story about a happy couple and their vicissitudes. At the same time the story is about good and evil: Rama, the namesake of the poem, is an incarnation of the Hindu god Wisnu, come to the earth to liberate the world from evil. The setting of the text is thoroughly Hindu: we read about Hindu gods, Hindu concepts of good and evil, incarnations, Hindu patterns and prescriptions regulating life, etcetera. Fine tuning the above question one wonders what remains of this Hindu aspect in the modern version, created in an Islamic environment.

 For my pilot I picked one small passage of the story, the so-called ‘hymn in praise of Rama’. This hymn is embedded in both texts in the episode of the battle waged by Rama and his allies against the villainous king who kidnapped his wife. A serious setback for Rama occurs when a magic weapon is applied by the enemy: he is paralyzed on the spot. Unable to move he loses his fighting spirit and gives up. At that moment a divine group appears in sky, singing his praise. As a result the effect of the magic weapon is undone. Soon Rama gains the upper hand.

Figure 2. Hanuman, one of Rama’s allies, immobilized by the magic weapon of the enemy. Relief at Panataran. Source: Jasadipoera, Serat Rama, 1925.

What interested me was the miracle that happens to Rama: what is the secret of the hymn? An analysis of such hymns in general in Old Javanese literature carried out by Stuart Robson suggests that three elements are crucial for the hymn to have effect: it is uttered by one of the protagonists of the story, it is uttered at a moment of crisis, and it contains a plea for help, persuading the deity addressed by underlining that deity’s supreme power and the worshipper’s humility and helplessness.

These three elements are all present in the old hymn. How about the modern version? This shows many similarities compared to the old version: the context is the same, and so is the content, even up to and including some of the wording and imagery. However, next to the many similarities there are also dissimilarities, quite a few in fact, in wording, in imagery. I found dissimilarity especially in two respects. To begin with, there is a difference of tone. While the Old Javanese hymn is a reverent prayer to the god, the modern version is rather an encouragement in a familial, even homely tone.

Next, besides the difference in tone, there is also a difference of perception on who Rama is. The Old Javanese text stresses the oneness of Rama and Wisnu, whereas in the modern version there is no oneness at all – at least, it is not mentioned explicitly. The godlike Rama of the Old Javanese in the modern version is reduced to a brave hero.

The conclusion from this small comparison must be that the modern version of the Ramayana replaces views no longer acceptable by modern standards. At the same time it appears that, although the translation can by no means be called interlinear, still the principle underlying interlinear translation, of faithfulness to the original at the level of the word, is adhered to within the limits set by religious doctrine.

References:

Jasadipoera. Serat Rama. Kawewahan beboeka lan sesorah déning toewan J. Kats. Djilid III (Weltevreden: Balé Poestaka, 1925. Mawi gambar tjorèk 33 idji. BP 696b).

Kern. H. Rāmāyaṇa. The Story of Rāmā and Sītā in Old Javanese. Romanized edition by Willem van der Molen (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2015. Javanese Studies 1).

Pigeaud, Th.G.Th. Literature of Java. Catalogue raisonné of Javanese Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and Other Public Collections in the Netherlands. Volume I (The Hague: Nyhoff, 1967. Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde).

Rama Jarwa Leiden University Library Or. 1791.

Robson, Stuart. "Hymns of Praise in Kakawins. H.M. Creese and A. Griffiths (eds.) From Laṅkā Eastwards. Rāmāyaṇa in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2011. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 247) 1-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004253766_002

For instance, in the section dealing with clothes and textiles, there appears a confusing word spelled as dāl-ḥā’-rā’-yā’-ḍād (in 3231(8)) or dāl-ḥā’-rā’-ṣād (in 3233(2)), which can be read as daḥrīḍ or possibly daḥriṣ (3233(2) provides no diacritics). Such a word does not seem to be found in dictionaries, but its interlinear Malay translation appears to give a clue to what it might have originally been. Below the line, this word is translated as suji baju (‘shirt embroidery’). There is an Arabic word for embroidery that could have sounded similarly to daḥriṣ to a non-native Arabic speaker, that is taṭrīz, as well as another word, takhrīm, that could have possibly transformed into daḥriṣ as a result of two stages of corruption, phonetical and graphical (the final mīm having been misinterpreted by a copyist as ṣād). If any of the two is the case, this seems to suggest that the history of reproduction of the text included both written and oral transmission, i.e. at different points in time it might have been copied from a manuscript and written down by dictation.

In the Arabic lines of the vocabulary, such possible traces of oral transmission still appear to be rather scarce. The majority of misspellings are those a copyist could produce due to inattention or unclear handwriting in the earlier manuscript, while the scribe’s own relatively fine hand suggests that the wordlist was copied without much haste from a written source—which seems to not be the case for the Malay translation. This translation is scribbled between the lines in a less accurate manner and might not have been copied at the same time with the Arabic text. Besides the sloppiness of the handwriting, there is another feature pointing to the different life paths of the Arabic and Malay parts of the vocabulary. The Malay translations of the Arabic words in the two manuscripts are largely identical, but not entirely, and the differences do not seem to result from recopying. For example, the Arabic word al-sundus (‘taffeta,’ thin silk textile) is translated in 3231(8) as kain sutra yang nipis (‘thin silk fabric’) and in 3233(2) as just kain (‘cloth, fabric’); and al-biṭānah (‘lining’) as lapis baju (‘shirt lining’) and luar baju (‘outer layer of a shirt’), respectively. Might these differences be due to a teacher’s reinterpretation in the classroom, or a student’s hastiness in writing the translations down?

Corrupted as it is, the Arabic wordlist in the vocabulary still appears to be a more stable part of the text than the Malay translations. The spelling differences between the two manuscripts seem to be not intentional, but rather result from the multiple stages of thorough but not flawless recopying by non-native Arabic speakers. The variety in translations, on the other hand, appears to be more voluntary, which might reflect the fluid character of interlinear translation and the role of an oral element in its transmission.

After its opening sentence the Kitab moves on to the formulaic “thus spoke the Prophet SAW,” with Muhammad speaking to his daughter Fatima but in fact turning to all women, reminding them of the duty to be devoted to God, His Messenger and their husbands. The Kitab then continues with a series of prohibitions on women: they should not be sinful towards their husbands, neither speak with anger nor make the husband sick at heart – all these behaviors being the distinguishing signs (A. ‘alāmah; J. tĕtĕngĕr) of a wicked woman.  The opposite characteristics are also enumerated. For example, the Prophet highlights God’s love for devoted and obedient wives who will gain all the fruit, clothes and palaces of paradise. 

The Kitab concludes with a tradition attributed to the Prophet’s wife Aishah about how a woman carrying her husband’s child will receive the rewards of one who fasts, prays day and night or fights a holy war. It is noteworthy that this text about and for women ends with a carrot, not a stick. We may also consider that it ends with mention of holy war: perhaps women’s lives are an ongoing holy war or holy struggle of sorts to live correctly, constantly facing the temptations and challenges that the authors of such texts expected them to overcome.

In considering the Kitab’s interlinear translation I will here highlight briefly a single aspect: voice.

Voices in the Kitab
On the surface the Kitab can be read as a long series of “dos” and “don’ts” addressed to women. Total dedication to one’s husband is portrayed as a religious obligation and an indication of faith in God and the Prophet. A closer look reveals that although this is indeed the general framework, and although the dominant figure whose words are cited is Muhammad, there is a variety of voices speaking throughout the Kitab’s pages. Whose voices are they and how were they mediated through translation? Here are two examples.
            After Muhammad states that women who obey their husbands will be welcome in paradise, paradise itself speaks, asking (Arabic followed by the Javanese translation that appears in between the lines):
Faqāla aljannatu ayna ḥabībī wa ayna dākhilī
Maka matur sawarga pundi ka2sih amba lan pundi kang amanjing ing amba
Paradise spoke: where is my beloved and where is the one to enter me?

The Javanese translation expresses a hierarchy not present in any form in the Arabic. Paradise is speaking to God using the verb matur (to speak) and referring to itself with the humble first person pronoun amba (“I,” literally slave, servant). As a site, paradise bears no title. When God responds His speech is depicted as follows:

Faqāla Allah ta‘āla                
Maka nagandika gusti Allah ta‘āla

For God, the verb ngandika (“speak” in a high register of Javanese) rather than matur is employed and He receives the royal Javanese title gusti. In this example the same verb for speech is employed in Arabic (qāl) for paradise and for God. Javanese, with its hierarchical structure and emphasis on honorifics, conveys nuance that emphasizes the difference between the two speakers through the verb, a self-deprecating pronoun and the addition of a title (Ricci 2023). The voice of paradise in Javanese is speaking from a lower status, conveying humility and deference.

Hell’s voice too is heard through direct speech in the Kitab, cited by Muhammad:

Alnnāru jahannama nādin                    min makānin ba‘īdin    
Naraka jahanam iku angundang2        saking anggon kang adoh
Hell beckons                                         from a place far away 

Ta‘ālū yā                                     nisā’  al‘āṣiyati         
Padha mareneha sira wadon     hai sakehe wadon kang padha duraka ing lakine
Come O                                      rebellious women

Wa ana juw‘un      wa ‘aṭshun          
Lan isun iku luwe  lan dahga isun        
As I am hungry and thirsty

Here is found another characteristic of Javanese interlinear translation: expansion. Various elements that are “built-in” to Arabic verbs or nouns, for example the plural form, need clarification in Javanese (e.g. ta‘ālu - “come!” - is translated as padha marenehe). The Arabic ‘āṣiyati, “disobedient, rebellious” in the feminine form is translated by wadon kang padha duraka ing lakine, highlighting that the women mentioned are rebellious in a specific realm – towards their husbands. This suggests that Javanese women reading the Kitab or listening to it being read and translated had access to a set of clarifications that didn’t leave much room for speculation or misunderstanding.

Additional voices speak out in the Kitab. The interlinear translation helps us assess how, through particular translation strategies, the translator understood these voices, differentiated among them and characterized them. Furthermore, the Kitab offers us a chance to consider, on a small scale, the gendered dimensions of Islamic interlinear manuscripts. Considering the centrality of the stories and messages offered in such didactic texts, and of the pedagogical settings in which they were read, the gendered aspects of interlinear translations are worthy of further research.

References:

https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP211-1-4-37

According to the catalogue, the manuscript was written during approximately four months, from the end of April to the end of August 1812, and was owned by the son of Panambehan [Panĕmbahan] of Samanap [Sumĕnĕp] (Ricklefs, P. Voorhoeve† and Annabel Teh Gallop 2014: 61). This indicates that this manuscript was created in Java under British rule. The Panambehan of Samanap, who is called Panambahan of Sumenáp by Raffles in his monumental work The History of Java, was the informant whom Raffles relied on at the time and whom he considered to be a rare Old Javanese scholar in post-Majapahit Java, albeit with limited linguistic abilities. The Panambahan of Sumenáp came from a Javanese family that had specialized in the ancient scripts and in Old Javanese, and Raffles noted that this family had acquired this knowledge through connections with Bali (Raffles 1817: 370).

As Javanese courts had become Islamized, Hindu-Javanese culture and associated traditions of court literature fell into disuse and knowledge of Old Javanese gradually diminished. On the other hand, Bali became, and continued to be, a center of Hindu-Javanese tradition where the manuscripts of Old Javanese literature were copied and preserved in better conditions than on Java.

In his book Raffles writes the following about Bhāratayuddha: “Considering how little was known on Java of the Kawi language, and how likely that little was to be lost for ever, I felt a strong interest in analyzing and translating, as far as practicable, one of the principal compositions in that language; and availing myself of the literary acquisitions of the Panambahan of Sumenáp..." (Raffles 1817: 410). Kawi here refers to Old Javanese.

If we assume that the manuscript MSS Jav 25 was also part of Raffle’s project, then it is most likely a manuscript created on Raffles’ order with the help of the Panambahan of Sumenáp or someone from his family, and its purpose was to attempt to learn Old Javanese and its grammar using stories written in that language.

Another manuscript associated with the Panambahan of Sumenáp is Lor. 2174E which contains the Old Javanese original text of the Rāmāyaṇa with verbatim interlinear glosses below it. What MSS Jav 25 and Lor. 2174E have in common is that Modern Javanese is inserted between the lines of the original Old Javanese text, whether it is word for word or sentence by sentence. Another common feature is that rather than writing the original text in modern Javanese script, the scribes tried to recreate the ancient sounds by using a different script.

The Old Javanese text in MSS Jav 25, written in Balinese script, distinguishes sounds which are not distinguished when writing in modern Javanese script. For example, the long vowel ā is distinguished from the short vowel a by adding the long syllable markers called tedung after a consonant. Also, when writing the long vowel ī, the marker ulu sari is used instead of the marker used for the short vowel i. Also, d in dental and ḍ in palatal, t in dental and ṭ in palatal, s in dental, ś in retroflex, and ṣ in palatal are written in different scripts. These differentiations also occur in Lor. 2174E.

            Such similarities between MSS Jav 25 and Lor. 2174E encourage a hypothesis: the fact that both manuscripts with interlinear glosses are associated with the Panambahan of Sumenáp or his family indicates that he utilized interlinearity as a method of translating Old Javanese in dealing with the tasks commissioned by Raffles. And, if so, the interlinearity in these two manuscripts focuses more on language learning than on conveying the content of the original text because the purpose of the Bhāratayuddha translation as stated by Raffles was the learning of Old Javanese. In addition, reproducing sounds of Old Javanese, which are no longer used in Modern Javanese, by using Balinese script or an ancient Javanese script was an essential option for Raffles, who attempted to preserve the knowledge of the language that he feared was on the verge of being lost at the time. Further research is needed to develop and substantiate this hypothesis.

References and image credits:

British Library MSS Jav 25

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

Leiden University Library Lor. 2174E

Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 1817, The History of Java. Volume One. London (reissued with a new Introduction 1978, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press).

Ricklefs, M.C., P. Voorhoeve† and Annabel Teh Gallop, 2014, Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain: A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Indonesian Languages in British Public Collection, New Edition with Addenda et Corrigenda. Jakarta: Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, Perpustakaan National Republik Indonesia, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia. Naskah dan Dokumen Nusantara Seri XXXIII.

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.