Page 59 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

CHAPTER III

THE STRUCTURE OF THE MALAY TEXT
ITS AUTHORS, DATE, LANGUAGE

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE MSS.

It is apparent from what has been said so far that little can be
concluded concerning the authorship, date, origin or textual history of
the Hikayat Patani on the basis of external data and comparison with
other books. It now remains for us to investigate to what extent internal
evidence, i.e. data from the text as it has been handed down to us, can
help us draw some conclusions in this respect.
The MSS. as such do not tell us a great deal. The text, or its first
story, is announced as “a story which has been told by old people” (A),
or as “the story of Patani as it is told by its owner” (B), both of which
expressions are mere cliches, not containing any real information. They
are frequently repeated in other parts of the text.
MS. B does not have a colophon of any kind, but ends abruptly at the
end of part I according to our division of the text. The colophon of the
Abdullah MS. contains one interesting piece of information apart from
the terminus ante quem which is contained in the statement that it was
completed in Singapore on 16th October, 1839, in that in the colophon
the text is called a Kitab Undang-Undang Patani, that is, “Book of the
Laws of Patani”. It is obvious, however, that as a whole this text as
contained in A cannot be termed a lawbook, even in the sense of the
Malay word undang-undangd This characterization only holds good for
the final part of the MS., and more specifically from the last line of p. 88
up to the end. Pp. 1—88 are not a Kitab Undang-Undang at all, but
should rather be called a Sejarah Patani (cf. Sejarah Melayu) or a
Hikayat Patani (cf. the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, Hikayat Banjar). As
B itself uses the term Hikayat Patani we have preferred to use that name
throughout the book (abbreviated as HP).
The discrepancy between the title of manuscript A and its main
1 On Malay undang-undang, see, a.o., Winstedt, 1945, Emanuels, 1964, Hooker,
1968, and below, Chapter VI, section 29.