Historical literature is the richest, and probably the most important, branch of Malay literature. Almost every kingdom in the Archipelago had its own history. This told of events that had happened in the palace and focused on the fortunes of the kingdom over several generations. The idea behind the writing of such a history usually came from within palace circles and its audience too was commonly restricted to members of the nobility. This explains why historical literature was seldom produced outside the palace (C. Hooykaas, 1947: 89).

The word sejarah comes from the Arabic word syajarah, which means ‘a tree’. Syajarahalnasab, for example, means a genealogical tree. Another term often used to refer to history is salasilah (or silsilah), which means ‘a chain’. From the use of these terms, we can conclude that silsilah or lineage lies at the heart of Malay historical literature. R. Roolvink has shown that the Sejarah Melayu only gradually grew to become the Sejarah Melayu we know today. The Malay view of History is different from that of the West. The English word ‘history’ comes from the Latin, historia, which means a study or systematic account of real past events, narrated in a chronological fashion. The German term Geschichte (or geschiedenis in Dutch) is derived from the verb, geschehen, which means ‘to happen’ or ‘to occur’. Thus history is something that have actually happened and historians define history as a set of facts about the development of human society.

Historical literature has attracted much attention from scholars and various in-depth studies have been undertaken. However, scholars are still divided over the value of historical literature. There are some who argue that historical literature makes no distinction between myth and history. R. A. Kern, for example, argued that historical literature should not be taken seriously because, although it contains elements of history, it is deeply mired in fairytales and fantasy (J. J. Ras, 1968: 12-15).

Folk literature (sastera rakyat) is a literature that lives in the midst of the people. A mother may tell a story to her child in the cradle. A storyteller may impart a tale by word of mouth to other villagers who cannot read. (The storyteller him- or herself may not be able to read either). Such stories are passed down orally from one generation to the next. This is a different situation from the written literature that exists in the royal courts of the king (although it should be mentioned here that the boundary between folk literature and written literature is not always clear in Malay literature). Stories of the Mousedeer, for example, were widespread among the common people. As time went by, these stories were gathered and turned into a book at the behest of a ruling nobleman or king. The Hikayat Hang Tuah, according to a Russian scholar, also had its genesis in folk literature which was subsequently rearranged and adapted according to the dictates of the palace. Conversely, there were also works of written literature which later became oral literature; for example, the story of a magic bird became the basis for Hikayat Ahmad dan Muhammad. Another famous example is the story of a king who understood the language of animals, as found in the Hikayat Bayan Budiman (Winstedt, 1958: 62). This story gave birth to a story among the Gayos and Bataks which goes like this:

This English edition of the A History of Classical Malay Literature is based on Sejarah Kesusasteraan Melayu Klasik, published by Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia in August 2011. That work follows an earlier two volume edition, published in Jakarta in 1991 and 1993 by the Erlangga Publishing Company. In the ensuing period since then, many new studies on the history of classical Malay literature have appeared. I have included some of these new materials in this book, particularly in Chapter 1. I have also revised various sections in the other chapters, although not extensively. Of course it is not possible to incorporate all the new materials. Therefore, in the bibliography attached at the end of the book, I have provided a record of the books I consider important, including a new catalogue of sources for the history of traditional Malay literature. Readers who are interested can refer to the list of books in the bibliography for more information.

I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Riris K. Toha-Sarumpaet for editing the 2011 edition, and Dr Razif Bahari and Prof. Dr. Harry Aveling for their dedicated attention to the English translation over a two year period. I also wish to thank the late Bapak H. B. Jassin, who is sadly not with us anymore. Pak Jassin was closely involved in the writing of this book. He edited the original Singapore edition of 1975 and wrote the introduction to the third Singapore edition. He also edited the first Indonesian edition. I am forever indebted to him for his kind contributions.

Hopefully this book will be useful for both teachers and students who are interested in Malay literature.

The Panji stories

Panji stories were a product of Javanese literature. They were very popular among Indonesians, especially among the Javanese and Balinese, but also among the Malays who adapted them into a prose form known as the hikayat intended for recitation to an audience by a storyteller. The enduring popularity of the Panji tales is evidenced by the many old Panji manuscripts that can be found in various libraries in London, Leiden, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. Its prevalence may be attributed to the fact that, like the much-loved penglipur lara (soother of woes) tales, they often tell stories of adventure and war. Perhaps what makes the Panji stories even more widespread is that they sometimes contain erotic love stories and comical tales depicting the antics of punakawans (court jesters or clowns) which can, at times, be downright bawdy and risqué—something that cannot be found in the tales of the penglipur lara. The spread of Panji stories could also be partly due to propaganda purveyed by the Javanese themselves.

A number of in-depth studies have been done by scholars on the Panji stories. Among these, the one that most deserves our attention is the work of Dr W. H. Rassers. In his dissertation, De Pandji Roman, Rassers explicates the origins of the Panji stories at great length. According to him, the Panji stories may have had their origins in an ancient myth about the moon and sun, as found in the story of Kalangi and Manimporok of the Minahasa (Sulawesi) region. The myth tells of two gods, Kalangi and Manimporok, who were good friends. One day, Manimporok called on Kalangi who was not at home at the time. Seeing Kalangi's wife, Kalongkopan, alone at home, lust got the better of Manimporok and he abducted her. Upon returning home, Kalangi was devastated when he found his wife gone. Pining for her, he spent his days making a figurine that looked like her. In the end, the figurine came to life and became Kalangi's new wife.

We do not know for certain when Islam arrived in the Archipelago or from where it came. In general, scholars believe that a tombstone belonging to a Muslim woman found in Leran (Gresik) and dated 1082 is the oldest remaining Muslim relic. Scholars also agree that a Muslim village must have existed there at that time. According to these scholars, Muslim traders very seldom brought their families with them on long journeys. When they stayed in a place for a considerable time, they would marry the local women after converting them to Islam. However, the woman whose grave was found in Leran was certainly not a convert. Her father's and grandfather's names were also appended to hers on the gravestone: “Fatimah binti Maimun ibn Hibatullah” (S. Q. Fatimi, 1963: 39).

After this discovery, there are no other findings that attest to the presence of Islam in the Archipelago for the next 200 years. However, further indications of the presence of Islam surfaced in the 13th century. In 1292, Marco Polo reported that a large number of people in Perlak (in Acheh) had already embraced Islam. In 1297, Al Malikus-Saleh, the first Muslim king of Samudra Pasai, passed away. At about the same time, Pasai sent an envoy to China. The envoys were Muslims and were called Hasan and Sulaiman. This meant that at that time, Pasai had a sufficient number of Muslims among its populace for some of them to be selected as important state officials.

The rapid growth of Islam in the Archipelago is connected with the spread of Islam across the world during that time. In 1196, Gujarat was conquered by Muslims. This meant that the Gujaratis, who came to trade in this region in great numbers, were now made up of not just Hindus but included Muslims as well, possibly of other ethnicities. In 1258, Baghdad fell into the hands of the Mongols and as a result, inland trade came to a halt. Muslims started venturing out to sea to explore distant lands in the East.

Two thousand years ago, trade relations were first established between India and the Malay world. Many Indian traders made a stopover in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsular on their way to China. The region along the coast of the Straits of Malaka was a vital lifeline for trade and commerce. A large part of the population were involved in these international trading activities. Under the influence of the Indian traders or the local populace who were themselves influenced by Indian culture, small kingdoms emerged in the area. Many of these kingdoms were located in the northern part of Malaya, such as Langkasuka and others. After Buddhism was founded in India, even larger numbers of Indians travelled to or stopped over in parts of the Malay world. Since Buddhism does not subscribe to a caste system, its followers were not hesitant about interacting with people of other races. Moreover, its followers showed a missionary zeal to spread their faith in all directions. Around 420 AD, a prince from Kashmir called Gunawarman travelled to Java and Sumatra. This explains why a large number of ancient relics found in these areas include Buddhist sculptures in the Amravati style from south India that date back to the second and third centuries CE. Many inscriptions etched in stone have also been discovered, including the famous stone tablet issued by King Mulawarman in the region around Kutai, Kalimantan in 400 A.D. Another stone tablet produced by King Purnawarman, the king of Taruma around Bogor, West Java, originated from a later period, circa 450 A.D.

Hindu influence, on the other hand, permeated throughout the Malay world over a longer and more sustained period of time, in a peaceful manner. A ship anchored at a Malay harbour. Its crew of Indian traders were astute enough to win the trust of the local Malay rulers. Some presented beautiful gifts to these rulers, others taught them the magic arts which could cure illnesses or defeat their formidable foes.

Pantun

The pantun was originally a form of folk verse that was meant to be sung. Pantun are still meant to be sung. In his Account of a Voyage to Kelantan (Pelayaran ke Kelantan) Abdullah Munsyi noted various ways in which a pantun might be sung, including Lagu Dua, Lagu Ketara, Ketapang, Dendang Sayang, and so on. The pantun form first appears in Malay literature in the Sejarah Melayu and in some other chronicles from that time. It also occurs within the long narrative syair such as the Syair Ken Tambuhan.

There are various opinions about the word “pantun” itself. Some believe that it is based on the high Javanese parik, which is similar to the Malay pari, a proverb (peribahasa). In this sense it is close to the Indian sense of the seloka, a two-line verse form. Dr. R. Brandstetter, a Swiss comparative linguist, has suggested that the word originates from tun, which is found in a number of Indonesian languages; for example, in Pampanga, tuntun means “well organized”; in Tagalog, tonton suggests a skilful arrangment; in Old Javanese, tuntun means “a thread”, atuntun means “well arranged”, and matuntun is “to lead”; in Batak Toba, the word “pantun” means “polite, worthy of respect” (Djajadiningrat, 1933/34). R. O. Winstedt supports this opinion, noting that in many Indonesian languages, words which suggest “something set out in rows” gradually gain the new meaning of “well arranged words”, in prose or in poetry (Winstedt, 1958: 158).

In Malay, the pantun is a quatrain, rhyming abab. In Sundanese, however, the pantun is a long narrative poem, recited with a musical accompaniment.

The pantun has been studied in considerable detail by many scholars. One of the points of discussion is whether there is any semantic connection between the first couplet and the second. Pijnappel, in a paper he read at the Sixth Orientalists’ Congress held at Leiden in1883, has argued that the two are always closely related (Pijnappel, 1883).

A world-historical transformation is under way in the early twenty-first century as Asia recovers the global position it had lost in the late eighteenth century. Yet the idea of Asia and a spirit of Asian universalism were alive and articulated in a variety of registers during the period of European imperial domination. One of the most creative exponents of an Asiasense was Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. “Each country of Asia will solve its own historical problems according to its strength, nature and need,” Tagore said during a visit to Iran in 1932, “but the lamp that they will each carry on their path to progress will converge to illuminate the common ray of knowledge… it is only when the light of the spirit glows that the bond of humanity becomes true.”

In my book A Hundred Horizons I had claimed that Tagore was an eloquent proponent of a universalist aspiration, albeit a universalism with a difference. This specific claim was part of a larger contention that modern history could be interpreted – not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially – as an interplay of multiple and competing universalisms. The colonized did not simply erect defensive walls around their notions of cultural difference. They were keen to be players in broad arenas of cosmopolitan thought zones and wished to contribute to the shaping of a global future.

The spirit of different universalism that appealed to anti-colonial nationalists in Asia may have been water-borne as it traveled through sea voyages across the Indian Ocean, but was never quite defined by an expanse of water except in a metaphorical sense. It is best in this context not to exaggerate the contradiction between oceans and continents that has crept into some of the scholarly literature. The myth of continents has been subjected to a powerful indictment with some justice as a meta-geographical concept hopelessly tainted by the hubris of European imperialism. The idea of Asia, however, or of Africa, I might venture to add, was not a singular one and had almost as many variations as it had individual authors.

INTRODUCTION

In the eyes of the world, it is the multicultural character of George Town and Melaka that sets them apart from other World Heritage Sites. The historic centres of the two cities are cultural sites in Malaysia, jointly listed as a World Heritage Site in July 2008 for their histories of trade and civilizational encounter, their living traditions and intact townscapes, all of which reflect a confluence and co-existence of diverse cultures. An obvious manifestation of the cities' multiculturalism is the clustering of various religious sites - George Town and Melaka each has a “street of harmony”, where mosque, church and temple have stood side by side for hundreds of years. This tradition of religious pluralism was apparently a factor which persuaded the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to include them in the prestigious list.

George Town, capital of Penang, has not always been celebrated for its historic qualities. Over the last fifty years, the processes of nation-building, local place-making and economic globalization have influenced the public estimation of this former British colonial port city. Its reputation is now greatly enhanced by the recent UNESCO inscription, even though the process of getting listed took almost ten years. Furthermore, this recognition was only possible with the new thinking of UNESCO and its partner ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) in terms of cultural sites. Since the creation of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, the World Heritage Committee has gradually (some say too slowly) enlarged its purview beyond monumental sites to acknowledge the value of intangible heritage and historic communities.

The story of the “Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca”, it could be said, started in Melaka and continued in George Town. The river port of Melaka dates back to 1400, when it was established by the precursors of the first Malay Sultanate on the Peninsula. It became an illustrious port on the maritime silk route and a stopover on the Zheng He voyages, before being occupied by the Portuguese, Dutch and British in succession.

How has Asia appeared as a region and been conceived as such in the last hundred years? While there is a longstanding and still burgeoning historiography of Asian connections through the study of the precolonial and early modern maritime trade, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are generally not seen as a time of growing Asian connections. The recent rise of interest in Asian connections in the current time is thus unable to grasp the continuities and discontinuities that form the present. Even more, it is unable to evaluate the risks and possibilities of the present moment.

Before launching upon the subject, we need to question how, where, and why a region appears. I will approach this question from the perspective of historical sociology. Scholars have made a useful distinction between a region and regionalization, distinguishing between the relatively unplanned or evolutionary emergence of an area of interaction and interdependence as a “region,” and the more active, often ideologically driven political process of creating a region, or “regionalization.”

While understanding the history of the concept of the Asian region requires us to utilize both of these conceptions and their complex interactions, I believe that there is a more fundamental issue underlying why regions and regionalisms succeed or fail, and also why they take the shape they do, as few will argue that the Asian region reflects a cartographic representation of Asia. After all, Asia was merely the name of the area east of the Greek ecumene in ancient times. I hypothesize that regions and regionalizations tend to follow the dominant or hegemonic modes of spatial production during a period. For the twentieth century, the paradigm of large-scale production of social space was the territorial nation state under conditions of global capitalist production and exchange. Note that this way of formulating the problem may also incorporate the socialist nation state, which sought to industrialize under conditions of global capital accumulation.

INTRODUCTION

George Town's new status as a UNESCO World Heritage City has heightened the importance of heritage as a means to turn Penang into a major tourist destination and revitalise its economy. The commodification of heritage is however closely entwined with Malaysian nationalist discourses as heritage is often synonymously understood as “tradition”, a central narrative in the reconstructions of national identity. Against this background, heritage pursuits in the inner city of George Town have been characterised by claims on ethno-religious legacies and a call for the preservation of their associated buildings, sites, objects, skills and/or ways of life in order to ensure their survival into the future. In these pursuits, state, semi-quasi-state agencies, and capitalists often act together to impose heritage imaginations along the lines of mainstream ethnic distinctions between Malay, Chinese, Indian, and other communities. Affected civil and community groups have responded by invoking a myriad of multi-layered ethnic identities and/or shared cultural dimensions between ethnic groups as resistant culture. These dynamics have produced a wide array of imaginaries that not only reinforce but also challenge and complicate official ethnic categories in Malaysia. It is evident that both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forms of heritage imaginations are deeply encumbered by nationalist ethnic categories, the very forces which threaten to tear Malaysian society apart. There is hence an imperative to expand the meaning, goals and repercussions of heritage practices in Penang beyond ethnic legacies.

In this paper I wish to explore the promise of heritage in the hope of providing alternative pursuits to those driven by nationalist and market interests. In particular, I am interested in heritage as a mode of knowledge production that creates critical consciousness about time and society. For this, I draw on the conceptualisation of heritage as a practice which creates new forms of knowledge via re-assembling time and space or architecture. I begin with theoretical discussions to approach heritage as a mode of knowledge production with recourse to the past but which produces new ideas.

It is impressive how, in Prasenjit Duara's paper, Asian regions are understood and presented—in the breadth of the world, not as objects with sharp edges, or compact entities of cultures, economies, and politics, as blocks of which the present and the global so often are still thought to be made. Reading Duara's paper, I was made to think of the successful Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki's recent grand plan for Singapore, the epitome of Asia today, a design conceived not as a space made of buildings, offices, and flats, not of blocks, but of flows—bridges and flyovers, “links,” as Maki calls them. These links are there and the most powerful part of the whole, making the city-state space by cutting through it, over the blocks, and along them. The links are empowered to make everything in the city-state face the open, and to move into the open. A skeptic, of course, may ask, “into what open?” Indeed, the “links” of Singapore, at least those already in action, often lead from offices, flats, and blocks into one mega-supermarket and then into another.

The notion of speed came to my mind first as I read the paper—the speed of political movement, of ideology, of development, the myth of speed, the fear of speed, speed continually increasing as well as the possibility of speed deceleration and sudden stops, the history of speed, the structure of speed. In Duara's Asia, I missed most of this. His Asia, the web of it, the model of interconnectedness, “inter-referencing Asia,” as he calls it, the intriguing plethora of extraterritorial metropolises, biopolises, fusiopolises, as he presents it (or “Disney Land with the death penalty,” as William Gibson might call it), the nebula, in all the intensity and sophistication of Duara's paper, to me, is not much else but floating. No gears shifting.

I can hear too much clicking in this history, the steady rhythm that makes machine owners happy, but that, to me, at one moment becomes uninteresting, at another boring, and yet at another scary.

Prasenjit Duara's “Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times” is a rich and inspiring paper. The distinction between the concept of region and the concept of regionalization shows the author's historical approach. Asia as a region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the result of imperial regionalism and the anti-imperialist regionalization project. The question of Asian “modernity” must eventually deal with the relationships both between Asia and European colonialism and between Asia and modern capitalism. A lot of research has shown Asia as a region from a long historical perspective, but most can be thought of as a modern construction of the early history of Asia in light of imperial or anti-imperialist projects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

For example, as early as the 1940s, Miyazaki Ichisada began to explore the “birth of Song dynasty capitalism” through the study of wide-ranging historical transportation links, believing firmly that the study of “the development of modernity after the Song has brought us to the point of needing to reflect on modern Western history in terms of the development of modern East Asian history.” That his theory of “East Asian modernity” overlapped with the Japanese idea of a “Greater East Asia” does not obscure the insight inhering in Miyazaki's observations. He saw that from the perspective of world history, the digging of the Grand Canal, urban migration, the ability of the circulation of commodities such as spices and tea to connect European and Asian trade networks, and the promotion of artistic and cultural exchange between Europe and Asia enabled by the expansion of the Mongolian empire not only changed the internal relations in Chinese and Asian societies, but also connected Europe and Asia by land and sea. If the political, economic, and cultural features of “Asian modernity” appeared as early as the tenth or eleventh centuries, was the historical development of these two worlds merely parallel, or more closely linked?

Since the conference co-organized by ISEAS and SERI took place in June 2010 from which the papers that constitute this book, the latter think-tank has undergone a major organizational transformation.

Most significantly, SERI became Penang Institute in August 2011. This name change proclaimed a consolidation of research initiatives aimed at strengthening institutional competence in selected fields; helping the state and federal government in key policy areas; and positioning the institute within the growing regional context with the conviction that economic growth must immediately involve new thinking about emerging issues affecting East Asia in order for its impact to be broad and responsible.

The ideas discussed in this volume are in line with this ambition, following as it does on the earlier publication in the Penang Studies Series, Pilot Studies for a New Penang (ISEAS and SERI 2010). More volumes are in the making, geared towards turning Penang Studies into a discipline that not only discusses the finer points of sub-national development and its connection to national and regional well-being, but also illustrates the regionalism that has always informed Penang's culture, politics and economy.

We are thankful to ISEAS and its former Director, Ambassador K. Kesavapany, for his cooperation in our projects, and to all the scholars and friends of Penang who have contributed in various ways to bring this second volume to completion.

We live in exciting but difficult times. Such times throw forth new challenges that are best met by the region's best minds working together, constructing new concepts and ideas and bringing these to public attention. National perspectives need to be complemented by subnational and regional ones at the same time if we are to have a good chance of breaking the back of the serious problems troubling our times, such as shortages involving water and food, crises involving urban sprawl and poverty; and climate change and global warming.