Page 36 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

THE HIKAYAT PATANI AND RELATED TEXTS 27

portance for his research. He then goes on to say: “Maka diantaranya
penulis telah dapati adalah sebuah naskhah tulisan tangan yang lebih
hampir dengan kebenaran dan boleh dibuat panduan dalam usaha
menyusun buku ini”. (Now the author discovered that amongst these
there was a manuscript which is closer to the truth and which can be
used as a basis in the work of compiling this book.) The author explains
that he has made grateful use of this manuscript, has checked other
information, both written and unwritten, against it and on this basis
compiled his present work.5 * Below we shall try to establish whether
Syukri really had at his disposal a version of the same Hikayat Patani
which was known to and used by Newbold.
A few years later new evidence of the existence of the, or of a, Hikayat
Patani came to light. In August of 1966 D. K. Wyatt mentioned to Nai
Kachom Sukhabanij in Bangkok that he was considering taken up anew
the search for the lost text. Nai Kachorn, who was on an official tour
of South Thailand, promised Wyatt to make enquiries, and during that
tour found a typescript of a Thai history of Patani in the possession of
a retired Thai government official in Songkhla. Wyatt thereupon visited
this gentleman who allowed him to photograph the typescript, which
consists of sixteen foolscap pages the last of which bears the date Novem­
ber, B.E. 2471 (1928). It was suggested to Wyatt that the text originally
came from a Muslim court and that the Thai translation was compiled
for King Rama VII, who visited Patani in 1928.®
This history can be divided into three distinct parts. The first part,
paragraphs 1—43, relates the history of Patani up to the death of Sultan
Long Yunus in 1729 and the Thai invasions in the 1770s. The second
part, paragraphs 44—57, begins a connected narrative of a Thai invasion
in 1785, and continues through to the re-organization of the province
in 1901; while the third part, paragraphs 58—61, consists of a series of
disconnected episodes added to the end of the narrative to draw the
history out to the time of composition in 1928.
Only the first part is relevant for the present book, as it is definitely
a translation and/or abridgement of a Malay manuscript, and is most
definitely Patani-centric. This first part has been translated into English.7
It was obvious from the beginning that it was very close to Newbold’s
version, in fact, close enough to be called a Hikayat Patani, even though

5 Syukri, Pendahuluan.
0 Wyatt, 1967, pp. 16—17.
7 Wyatt, 1967.