Dr. C. Hooykaas

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tagsperson, scholar, dutch, malay-literature, colonial, aceh, source
aliasesC. Hooykaas, Christiaan Hooykaas, Hooykaas, Dr. Hooykaas

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Dr. C. Hooykaas was a Dutch scholar of Malay literature, Hoogleraarte Batavia (Professor at Batavia), and the author of Over Maleise Literatuur — the second edition of which was published by E. J. Brill in Leiden in 1947, and which is a key secondary source for the AcehWiki corpus on the literary-historical connections between the Malay-speaking world and the sultanate of Atjeh.

Career and Method

Hooykaas was, by his own account in the introduction to Over Maleise Literatuur, a scholar who had “nooit op Sumatra of Malakka kon verblijven” (never been able to stay on Sumatra or Malacca). His survey of Malay literature was thus not the work of a field-collector but of a synthetic scholar — one who, in the three years of “verandering in mijn doceertaak” (a change in his teaching duties), compiled the work from the printed scholarship and the texts themselves. He acknowledges, in his introduction, his dependence on the earlier generation of Malay scholars — Overbeck, Rassers, van Ronkel, Rouffaer, Wilkinson and Winstedt — “aan wier enthousiasme en speurzin, ijver en vormgevend vermogen zo belangrijke studies het aanzijn danken” (to whose enthusiasm and ingenuity, industry and formative power so many important studies owe their existence).

The book’s method is, accordingly, the synthetic-comparative one. Hooykaas constantly triangulates a Malay text against its Indian, Persian, Arabic, or Javanese analogues, and against the secondary literature. The result is a survey that, while not based on fieldwork, draws the literary-historical connections between Atjeh, Pasai, Malacca, Johor, and the wider Malay-Indonesian Islamic world with considerable authority.

Contribution to Atjehnese Literary Studies

Hooykaas’s principal contribution to the study of Atjehnese literature, in Over Maleise Literatuur, lies in his treatment of:

  • The Hikajat Sultan Atjeh Marhoem — a Malay reworking of the Atjehnese epic — which he places in the chapter on Malay historiography alongside the Sadjarah Malajoe and the Hikajat Raja-Raja Pasai.
  • The Hikajat Malém Dagang itself — the Atjehnese chronicle-epic — which he identifies as the original of which the Malay Hikajat Sultan Atjeh Marhoem is a “ietwat droge proza-omwerking” (somewhat dry prose reworking).
  • The Tādj us-Salāṭīn — the Atjehnese-composed “mirror for princes” of 1607 — which he treats as one of the two principal Atjehnese contributions to the Malay-language “mirror for princes” genre.
  • The Boestan oes-Salāṭīn of Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī — the second of the two Atjehnese “mirrors for princes”, composed in 1638 — which he treats in detail, singling out the historical chapter on Atjeh as occasionally more reliable than the Sadjarah Malajoe.
  • The Sirāṭ al-mustaqīm — the Malay fiqh handbook begun by ar-Rānīrī in 1634 — whose diffusion to Kedah Hooykaas records in his chapter on Malay historiography.
  • The Atjehnese Hikajat Malém Diwa — the Atjehnese version of the Malim Déman romance cycle — which Hooykaas identifies as the closest cousin to the Malay Hikajat Malim Déman.
  • The Atjehnese folk-tale tradition — the Pa’ Pandië or Si Gasiën Mēsēkin of the Atjehnese tradition — which Hooykaas identifies, on the authority of C. Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers, as a participant in the pan-archipelago “Pandir” cycle of folk-tales.
  • The genealogy of the sultans of Malacca and Djohor — Hooykaas’s third appendix — in which the 1613 and 1615 Atjehnese attacks on Batoe Sawar and the captivity of the Bendahara in Atjeh are set out in chronological order.

Acknowledgements

In his introduction, Hooykaas acknowledges the support and encouragement he received “van zo vele zijden” (from so many sides) during the three years of the book’s composition. He singles out, in particular, the contents-opgave of the Boestan — which he credits to “Dr. P. VOORHOEVE” — and notes that “ware er al niet zo veel geschreven over allerlei werken der Maleise letteren, dan had ik, die nooit op Sumatra of Malakka kon verblijven, dit werk ook niet in deze tijd kunnen samenstellen” (had not so much been written about all kinds of works of Malay literature, I, who have never been able to stay on Sumatra or Malacca, would not have been able to compile this work in this time either).

Significance

For AcehWiki, Hooykaas is significant as the author of Over Maleise Literatuur — the Dutch-language survey of Malay literature that is the source of every AcehWiki entry that draws on Hooykaas’s treatment of the Atjehnese-Malay literary-historical connections. His synthetic-comparative method, his dependence on the earlier generation of Malay scholars, and his acknowledgement of the limits of his own fieldwork-experience all shape the way the Atjehnese material in his survey is to be read.

See Also

Source

Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947), Inleiding, pp. VII-XII.

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