Page 37 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

28 HIKAYAT PATANI

the exact relationship between the Thai and the Malay texts was difficult
to establish due to the summary nature of Newbold’s resume.

THE TWO MALAY MANUSCRIPTS
Meanwhile, two Malay manuscripts which apparently contain the
long lost text have at last appeared, one in Washington D.C. and one in
Oxford. The following may serve as a short account of the discovery
of these manuscripts and of their nature and relationships.
During a short trip to Washington D.C. in August, 1967, A. Teeuw
visited the Library of Congress and discovered among a collection of
contemporary Indonesian newspapers two shelvesful of old Malay
material, mostly old texts printed in Singapore in the first part of the
nineteenth century, but also at least eight Malay manuscripts, most if not
all of them written by none other than Abdullah Abdulkadir, the famous
Munsyi (language teacher) and collaborator of Raffles and other British
scholars of Malay in the early part of last century.8
The identification of these manuscripts was not particularly difficult,
as they all bore a neat label on the inside of their cover, stating the name
of the text and sometimes a few other particulars as well. One of these
labels read: “History of Patani, a kingdom on the east coast of the Penin­
sula of Malacca, near the Siamese boundary. — Copied by Abdullah ben
Abdulkadir, a learned and accurate native of Malacca, at Singapore,
1839”.
The question which immediately arises is whether indeed this is
Newbold’s own manuscript. The date precludes this possibility, however,
as Newbold’s manuscript was already in his possession early in 1838,
according to the paper published in the Madras Journal of Literature
and Science. The manuscript itself contains a colophon which confirms
the information given on the label, and gives an interesting piece of
additional information. In translation it runs as follows:
Here ends the text. The copying of the book of the laws of Patani was
completed in the town of Singapore on the ninth day of the month
Sya’ban of the year 1255, i.e. on the sixteenth of October of the year
A.D. 1839. This is the end. The owner of the manuscript is Mr. North.9

This Mr. North is known from other sources as well. He was an
American missionary with the American Board of Commissioners of

8 Teeuw, 1967, pp. 517—520.
8 Malay text below, p. 94.