Page 34 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

CHAPTER II

THE HIKAYAT PATANI AND RELATED TEXTS

THE HIKAYAT PATANI SINCE 1838

In the West the Hikayat Patani has been known to exist ever since
1838. In that year Lieutenant Newbold published a “Note on Malayan
MSS. and Books presented to the Society” in the Madras Journal of
Literature and Science, Vol. VII. “The Society” was evidently the Royal
Asiatic Society, and more specifically its Madras Branch, and the list
of Malay manuscripts included ten items, some of them consisting of
several parts. As No. 6 Newbold mentions the “Hikayet Patani”, and
goes on to say:1 “This is a history of the Malayan principality of Patani,
now a province of Siam”. He then summarizes briefly what the text has
to say about the founder of the state of Patani and his descendants,
giving the names of the sultans of the first dynasty mentioned in the
text, followed by the so-called Kalantan dynasty, which came to an end
with the rule of “Alung Yunus”. After his death Patani fell into a state
of anarchy and has never had a Raja or Bendahara since. “With a brief
account of an invasion from Siam, and some curious instructions touching
the Noubet and the twenty-four Ragams or musical modes, the work
closes.” Newbold’s survey of this manuscript ends with a “tolerably literal
translation” of the beginning of the MS., namely the description of the
foundation of the city of Patani, and he concludes with the observation
that this story of the foundation of Patani differs from that of the
Sejarah Melayu.
The next year, in 1839, Newbold published his well known Political
and Statistical Account of the British Settlements in the Straits of
Malacca, viz. Pinang, Malacca and Singapore; with a history of the
Malayan States on the Peninsula of Malacca. In the second volume of
this work he gives a detailed account of the Malay States, including
Patani to which Chapter VII is devoted. He repeats the information
taken from the “MS. history of Patani, in the Malayan language, in my
1 Newbold, 1838, pp. 85—87.