Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai

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tagsdocument, chronicle, malay, pasai, sumatra, atjeh, 15th-century, source, achehnese, muslim, precolonial, aceh
aliasesHikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, Hikajat Radja-Radja Pasai, Hikajat Radja² Pasai, Ht. Radja² Pasai, Hikayat Raja Pasai, Chronicle of Pasai, Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei, Hikayat Pasai, Malay chronicle of Pasai, Pasai chronicle, chronicle of the kings of Pasai

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The Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai is the principal Malay-language chronicle of the sultanate of Pasai, the early-Islamic north-Sumatran pepper-port polity on that “Noordelijkste stuk van Sumatra waarvan de kust nagenoeg O-W. loopt” (northernmost piece of Sumatra whose coast runs nearly east-west), which in the early seventeenth century had to bow to the “machtige Atjéh” of Iskandar Muda (Mahkota ‘Alam). The chronicle is, in Hooykaas’s reading, the Malay counterpart of the Sadjarah Malajoe and the Hikajat Sultan Atjeh Marhoem — a Malay-language chronicle of a non-Malay-speaking Sumatran polity, and a key source for the early history of the Pasai sultanate that Atjeh displaced.

Date and Composition

Hooykaas dates the Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai to the fifteenth century, observing that the text — though it contains no jaartal (year-date) — can only “spelen in de legendarische tijden die daaraan voorafgaan” (play in the legendary times that preceded [the political subjection to Atjeh]). The chronicle is silent on the political subjection of Pasai to Atjeh in the early seventeenth century — “Van de tijden van nog groter politieke afhankelijkheid, nl. van Atjéh, wordt geheel gezwegen” (Of the times of still greater political dependence, namely on Atjeh, there is complete silence) — and so, by its silence, dates itself to the period before the Atjehnese conquest.

The chronicle does, however, record an earlier subjection of Pasai to Siam — “ons werk én de SM duiden beiden even discreet aan, dat Pasai schatplichtig was aan Siam” (both our work and the SM indicate, with equal discretion, that Pasai was tributary to Siam) — and the legend of the sultan of Pasai’s abduction by the Siamese and his humiliation as a chicken-keeper at the Siamese court.

Pasai as Theological Authority to Malacca

A key theme of the Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai, in Hooykaas’s reading, is the place of Pasai as the older centre of Islamic learning to which Malacca repeatedly turned for theological instruction in the fifteenth century, before the rise of Atjeh. “Reeds eerder had het last gehad van Siam, maar het had de glorie gehad van het eerst en best geïslamiseerde staatje te zijn in die wateren, zodat Malakka in zijn glanstijd herhaaldelijk er gezantschappen heenzendt om antwoord te krijgen in theologische vraagpunten” (It had already earlier suffered from Siam, but it had the glory of having been the first and best Islamised state in those waters, so that Malacca in its golden age repeatedly sent embassies there to get answers in theological questions).

This primacy of Pasai as the Sumatran centre of Islamic learning — a primacy that the Sadjarah Malajoe itself acknowledges by recording Malacca’s repeated theological consultations with the ulema of Pasai — was the inheritance that Iskandar Muda’s Atjeh seized in the early seventeenth century, when the ulema of Atjeh (notably Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī and the Sjaich Noeroddin who brought the Sirāṭ al-mustaqīm to Kedah) became the new theological authorities of the Malay-Indonesian Islamic world.

Sources and Analogues

The Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai shares narrative material with the Sadjarah Malajoe: the story of the women’s perkara (legal dispute) in Samudera-Pasai, the legend of Marlik oes-Saleh and the founding of Samudera, and the story of Si Ujut and the conversion of Pasai to Islam, all appear in both chronicles. The two texts also share the legend of the foundation of Pasai from Samudera, and the genealogy of the early sultans. The Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai also contains the legend of the prinses uit bamboe — a princess born from a bamboo — that recurs in the Hikajat Marong Mahawangsa of Kedah and the Hikajat Sēri Rama.

Editions

The Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai is cited in Hooykaas’s survey under the abbreviation Ht. Radja² Pasai, and is preserved in Arabic-script editions. The text is preserved in manuscript in several collections, and is printed in an edition under the title Raja-Raja Pasai (Arab.), $ 3.50. Extracts appear in WINSTEDT & BLAGDEN, A Malay Reader (2nd ed., 1930), pp. 33-39; in PELBAGAI CHÉTÉRA MELAYU (Singapore, 1935), pp. 307-312; and in DE HOLLANDER-SPAT (the lithographed reprint of De Hollander’s anthology).

Significance

For AcehWiki, the Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai is significant as the principal Malay chronicle of the Pasai sultanate that Atjeh displaced in the early seventeenth century. The chronicle’s silence on the Atjehnese conquest is itself a historical datum — the text dates itself to the pre-conquest period — and its record of Pasai’s older primacy as the Sumatran centre of Islamic learning is the background against which the Atjehnese primacy of the seventeenth century (under Iskandar Muda and the ulema of his court) must be measured.

Sources

Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei, edited by E. Dulaurier (Paris, 1849).

Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey, by A. Marre (Paris, 1874). De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 209. 20260707_232246_DLP-54-Een_16de_eeuwse_Maleise_vertaling_van_de_Burda_van_al_Bu_s_i_ri_OCR.txt, page 85.

See Also

Source

Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947), chapter 11 (“Geschiedschrijving in het Maleis”), p. 94.

Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai (Arabic script edition), $ 3.50. Extracts in: R. O. WINSTEDT & C. O. BLAGDEN, A Malay Reader, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), pp. 33-39; PELBAGAI CHÉTÉRA MELAYU (Singapore, 1935), pp. 307-312; DE HOLLANDER-SPAT, pp. 161-168, 173-196.

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