Page 66 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

STRUCTURE, AUTHORS AND DATE 57

rule of the bendahara Cerak Kin will remain a hypothesis as long as no
outside information is available. The possible historical implications of
this hypothesis are discussed elsewhere in this book. There is, however,
one mention of this bendahara which seems to be in downright contra­
diction with our conjectures about him, namely the Thai rendering of
the Malay text, where it says, after dealing with the rule of Alung
Yunus (T 43): “When sultan Long Yunus died, Dato’ Charakan (of
unknown parentage) became ruler of the town. Not much later he died.”
This would be a very brief rendering indeed of part IV of our text,
but in itself it is not unusual for the Thai editor to omit fragments of
the Malay text which he did not consider relevant for his purpose. In
this particular case, however, several points are remarkable about this
one single line in T: (a) it says that D. C. became ruler of the town
(instead of bendahara, as the Malay text says); (b) it tells that he did
not rule for long (the Malay text does not specify the duration of his
bendaharaship); (c) it says that he is “of unknown parentage”, whereas
in A his parentage is much more elaborately related than even that of
the Patani rulers themselves; (d) it mentions him as the successor of
Alung Yunus, whereas in actual fact, according to the chronology
worked out above, he cannot have been in office after 1680.
How do we explain these differences? It is possible that for this section
the author of T based himself on different sources from the ones to
which we have access, and particularly not on A. If so, we have to
assume the side by side existence of two contradictory stories about
Bendahara Carakan or Cerak Kin, as long as we have no other inform­
ation to prove either wrong. It seems possible, though, that T was based
on a text which was largely similar to A. Some of the differences between
A and T might then perhaps be explained as follows. The Thai author
may have skipped the seemingly irrelevant story about the elephant
doctor (including the long genealogy), which to him as a Thai historian
was familiar anyway in other contexts where it did seem to make sense
(p. 279). By skipping such a superfluous genealogy he may have over­
looked the information — which lies somewhat concealed — that Datuk
Carakan was one of the grandchildren of the doctor. Turning again to
his Malay model where it seemed to deal with the next ruler of Patani,
at the beginning of section 27, he was unable to link him genealogically
to the last mentioned ruler, and hence added “(of unknown parentage)”,
calling him ruler of the town, moreover, in view of the absence of any
other person acting as such.
Again this is a hypothesis built on certain assumptions for which no