Playing Along Infinite Rivers: Alternative Readings of a Malay State

278 Pages·2015·5.18 MB·English

UC Riverside
UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Playing Along Infinite Rivers: Alternative Readings of a Malay State
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/70c383r7
Author
Syed Abu Bakar, Syed Husni Bin
Publication Date
2015

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

Playing Along Infinite Rivers: Alternative Readings of a Malay State

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Comparative Literature

by

Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar

August 2015

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. Hendrik Maier, Chairperson
Dr. Mariam Lam
Dr. Tamara Ho
Copyright by
Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar
2015
The Dissertation of Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar is approved:

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________
Committee Chairperson

University of California, Riverside
Acknowledgements
There have been many kind souls along the way that helped, suggested, and
recommended, taught and guided me along the way. I first embarked on my research on
Malay literature, history and Southeast Asian studies not knowing what to focus on,
given the enormous corpus of available literature on the region. Two years into my
graduate studies, my graduate advisor, a dear friend and conversation partner, an expert
on hikayats, Hendrik Maier brought Misa Melayu, one of the lesser read hikayat to my
attention, suggesting that I read it, and write about it. If it was not for his
recommendation, this dissertation would not have been written, and for that, and
countless other reasons, I thank him kindly.
I would like to thank the rest of my graduate committee, and fellow Southeast
Asianists Mariam Lam and Tamara Ho, whose friendship, advice, support and guidance
have been indispensable. Also, Muhamad Ali and Justin McDaniel, whose graduate
courses have cultivated my interest in Southeast Asia beyond the literary into
appreciating the religious complexity and diversity of the region.
The people, groups and organizations mentioned below have contributed to my
academic, intellectual, creative and spiritual growth in one way or another:
Kieran Johnston, probably the first American I met and learned from, who taught
me a movie a day keeps the doctor away.
Peter Cole, the first teacher who I met when I came to America and the one who
sparked my academic interest in Malay and Austronesian linguistics during my time at
the University of Delaware.
iv
Barbara Andaya, whose research on Perak history has been essential to this
dissertation.
All the faculty members and colleagues at UC Riverside, particularly the
Department of Comparative Literature, and the Southeast Asian Studies program with
whom I have shared physical, personal and intellectual spaces in the fun, interesting and
exciting, sometimes mind-wrenching world of literature, texts, critical theory, philology,
history and so on.
All the faculty members and colleagues at the Department of Linguistics and
Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware.
Institute of International Education, and the Fulbright FLTA Program.
KUCR 88.3 fm, Coachella Valley Art Scene, Quita Penas, Orkes Pantai Barat,
Inner Prisms, New Straits Times Press, Mukha, Camwerk.
My immediate and extended family especially my mother, Sharifah Zahrani Ali
and my sister, Suraya Al-Attas, who relentlessly and kindly supported my leaving home
in search of knowledge and wisdom beyond the confines of familial, familiar borders,
whose patience in waiting for me to find my way in the world has been undescribably and
consistently soothing. And the rest of my brothers and sisters – Syed Hadi, Syed Ezzat,
Sharifah Nadiya, Syed Helmi, your love has always been a wall of comfort. And of
course, my lovely nephews and nieces, inspiring in their own spontaneous, playful ways.
All my dear friends, in particular my Malaysian and American friends, too many
to mention, who have been helpful at one point or another during the course of my travels
and research.
v
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Playing Along Infinite Rivers: Alternative Readings of a Malay State

by

Syed Husni Bin Syed Abu Bakar

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Comparative Literature
University of California, Riverside, August 2015
Dr. Hendrik Maier, Chairperson

This dissertation deals intimately and critically with the fundamental question of
Malay statecraft. It presents texts that have been uncritically considered ‘cartographic’,
‘historical’ and ‘literary’ on Perak a step into the different possible ways of navigating
and thinking about a Malay geopolitical entity beyond prescribed Cartesian maps and
boundaries, by first exploring the context of the cartographic encounter between 18th
century European and Malay paradigms, ones which underlie the different modes of
representing the world in map-making, writing and reading. These two maps – an 1876
Malay map and a 1792 British map - could be considered as prototypical products of
map-making technologies prevalent then, showing distinctive mechanisms of selective
representation that make certain places/points/aspects/people present while obscuring
others. It provides an introspective and comparative analysis of these maps with other
contemporaneous visual (maps) and textual (narratives) in English and Malay to address
the looming descriptive questions of how the maps came to be, and how they came to be
as such. In other words, what stories do the maps tell of the processes involved in their
making and how the world (of which the state of Perak is a small, yet for the purpose of
this study, the most immediate and interesting part) was seen from the eyes and in the
vi
minds of their makers? Literary perspectives of early scholars/authors of texts on the state
exhibiting manners in which Perak and its population have been written about and
languaged by way of stories, anecdotes, and historical narratives are thoroughly
examined. In the process of cultural and textual translation, from one into the other, and
the ‘other’ into mainstream historical texts during the inception of modernity in the
region, unilateral impositions of labels, laws and ideals correspond with ones that had
already been long institutionalized in Europe. The construction of a historical reality
through the acts of compiling, reading, writing about and translating Malay texts, the
British historical and literary paradigms (and their supposed biases for primitive,
fantastic, enchanting tales that befit the stereotypical notion of people living in villages in
previously uncharted tropical land) decided which Malay texts would be printed,
reprinted, and incorporated into it. Ultimately determining the logical and cultural
grounds on which the people of Perak might be understood through long-accepted
discourses such as ‘history’ and ‘literature’, this dissertation offers methodologies and
critical paradigms of seeing beyond the constraints of discursive practices, and into the
silences buried between the lines of canonical histories.
Central to alternatively archaeologizing these silences are the syair in Misa
Melayu, and maps that have been considered irrelevant to factual historiography, as well
as other Malay syairs, namely Syair Bahr An-Nisa, Syair Perahu 1 and Syair Perahu 2
with similar thematic foundations of aquatic navigations, ships, and rituals involved in
linguistic/literary/historical representations of the Malay world. Based on the underlying
notion of the ‘cosmos’ as the fundamental stuff being represented in the texts, the main
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foci points of this dissertation are the metaphorical and physical correlations between the
syairs and meaningful embodiments of these texts in the historical reality of Perak
specifically and more generally the Malay world. A further step into the realm of the
oral/aural world of Malay narratives necessitates an intricate discussion on the
communities of imagination from which these fluid texts were recited and heard,
produced and read. Reflecting nuanced Malay gnoses/noetics of the past, literary artifacts
like the syair carry with it ethereal poetic elements that have been long buried under the
dust of history. Also put into consideration are religious texts that circulated
contemporaneously with the hikayats and were the earliest to be recited, translated, and
read, and therefore relationally connected as they provide early bases for the first Malay
lexicons used in translations of any hikayat. Rather than imposing any definite status on
the hikayat as religious or non-religious, it is more practical to examine the fact that the
hikayat, and texts that have been considered religious and exegetical were circulating in
the same literary space, and thus deserve a more refined and attentive reading. In short,
all throughout these pages, hopefully meaningful, poetic connections between the world,
the reader and texts beyond prescriptive, familiar concepts could be drawn by readers
other than myself.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments………………………………………………..…….…… iv – v
Abstract …………………………………………………………………… vi – viii
List of Maps ……………………………………………………………….……..xi
List of Figures …………………………………………………………….……. xii
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………... 1
CHAPTER 1:
Playing along the Perak river: readings of an 18th century Malay state
Perak: a summary ……………….……………….…………………….……....….16
Readings of strange maps: mythology of/on the peninsula…………….…….…....19
Playing with strange texts ….…………………………………………….….…… 39
Misa Melayu & the quandary of translation ….…………………………..……… 48
CHAPTER 2:
Reimagining narrative paradigms: reading beyond the historico-literary.
Translating a terra incognita …………………………………………….……..... 60
On narrativizing a state …………………………………………………… .…..... 65
Between ‘representations of/in factual literature’ and ‘the true language/language of
truth’ ….……………………….……………………………………..… …..……76
Reading doubles, or the ‘cognate effect’ ….…………………………….……….. 80
The two ‘Riversides’ as false friends ….……………………………….………… 83
Reading deaths as historic-literary exuberances .………………………….…....... 90
Reading the ‘fictive’ and the ‘poetic’ in/of a state ….……………………….....…109
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