A. Marre was a French orientalist whose 1874 Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey — a French rendering of the Malay chronicle of the kings of Pasai — made the historical tradition of Samudra Pasai, the early Muslim kingdom on the north coast of Atjeh, available in French a quarter-century after E. Dulaurier’s 1849 edition of the same text. Marre’s translation is cited in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 209, footnote) in connection with the Minangkabau buffalo-fight founding legend, for which the Pasai chronicle is among the early Malay textual witnesses, and is listed in the Lijst van geschriften (bibliography) of De Karbouw (p. 264) as “MARRE, A., Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey, 1874.”
Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey (1874)
Marre’s 1874 Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey was a free French rendering of the Malay *Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei*, the chronicle of the Muslim kings of Samudra Pasai on the north Atjeh coast. The Pasai sultanate, founded (on the chronicle’s own chronology) in the late thirteenth century, was the principal Muslim polity of northern Sumatra before the rise of the Atjeh sultanate centred on Koetaradja, and was absorbed by Atjeh under Iskandar Muda in the early seventeenth century. Marre’s translation, appearing a quarter-century after E. Dulaurier’s 1849 edition of the Malay text, brought the chronicle to a French-reading public and remained, alongside Dulaurier, the principal European-language access-point to the Pasai tradition through the late nineteenth century.
In De Karbouw (p. 209, footnote), Kreemer cites Marre’s Histoire des rois de Pasey at pp. 100 vg. and 125 vg. in a list of authorities for the famous Minangkabau buffalo-fight founding legend — the story that the conflict between Java and Minangkabau was decided by a single combat between a Javanese and a Minangkabau buffalo. The list, which also includes E. Dulaurier’s 1849 edition of the Pasai chronicle, Brandes’s Pararaton (2nd ed., p. 149 vg.), Westenenk’s Minangkabau writings, and Jasper’s Padangsche Bovenlanden (p. 854), shows the textual cross-currents between the Pasai-Malay, Javanese and Minangkabau historical-literary traditions in which the buffalo-fight motif circulated.
Significance
Marre’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as the second of the two nineteenth-century French translators of the Pasai chronicle, and as one of the authorities cited in the comparative study of the buffalo in archipelagic historical-literary tradition. His translation, alongside E. Dulaurier’s edition, anchored the Pasai material in European scholarship through the period in which the great Dutch ethnographic syntheses of Snouck Hurgronje (1893-94) and Kreemer (1922-23) were being composed.
Sources
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), pp. 209, 264.
See Also
- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
- E. Dulaurier
- Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei
- J. Kreemer
- Kreemer’s De Karbouw (1956)
- [[Pasei]
A. Marre was a French orientalist whose 1874 Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey — a French rendering of the Malay chronicle of the kings of Pasai — made the historical tradition of Samudra Pasai, the early Muslim kingdom on the north coast of Atjeh, available in French a quarter-century after E. Dulaurier’s 1849 edition of the same text. Marre’s translation is cited in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 209, footnote) in connection with the Minangkabau buffalo-fight founding legend, for which the Pasai chronicle is among the early Malay textual witnesses, and is listed in the Lijst van geschriften (bibliography) of De Karbouw (p. 264) as “MARRE, A., Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey, 1874.”
Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey (1874)
Marre’s 1874 Sumatra, Histoire des rois de Pasey was a free French rendering of the Malay *Hikajat Radja-radja Pasei*, the chronicle of the Muslim kings of Samudra Pasai on the north Atjeh coast. The Pasai sultanate, founded (on the chronicle’s own chronology) in the late thirteenth century, was the principal Muslim polity of northern Sumatra before the rise of the Atjeh sultanate centred on Koetaradja, and was absorbed by Atjeh under Iskandar Muda in the early seventeenth century. Marre’s translation, appearing a quarter-century after E. Dulaurier’s 1849 edition of the Malay text, brought the chronicle to a French-reading public and remained, alongside Dulaurier, the principal European-language access-point to the Pasai tradition through the late nineteenth century.
In De Karbouw (p. 209, footnote), Kreemer cites Marre’s Histoire des rois de Pasey at pp. 100 vg. and 125 vg. in a list of authorities for the famous Minangkabau buffalo-fight founding legend — the story that the conflict between Java and Minangkabau was decided by a single combat between a Javanese and a Minangkabau buffalo. The list, which also includes E. Dulaurier’s 1849 edition of the Pasai chronicle, Brandes’s Pararaton (2nd ed., p. 149 vg.), Westenenk’s Minangkabau writings, and Jasper’s Padangsche Bovenlanden (p. 854), shows the textual cross-currents between the Pasai-Malay, Javanese and Minangkabau historical-literary traditions in which the buffalo-fight motif circulated.
Significance
Marre’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as the second of the two nineteenth-century French translators of the Pasai chronicle, and as one of the authorities cited in the comparative study of the buffalo in archipelagic historical-literary tradition. His translation, alongside E. Dulaurier’s edition, anchored the Pasai material in European scholarship through the period in which the great Dutch ethnographic syntheses of Snouck Hurgronje (1893-94) and Kreemer (1922-23) were being composed.
Sources
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), pp. 209, 264.