S. G. Evenhage was a Dutch philologist and Malayist who edited, translated, and published the 16th-century Malay translation of the Burda in 1955 as Volume XVIII of the Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV).
Editorial Work on the Burda Manuscript
Evenhage obtained photostats of the Burda manuscript from Cambridge University Library through the intermediation of A. Kessen, director of the Leiden University Library. He recognized the text as an interlinear Malay translation of the Kasidatu’l-Burda by al-Busiri, written beneath the Arabic original in a North Sumatran hand. Evenhage’s edition provides: a detailed introduction covering manuscript history, the date of the Hikajat Muhammad Hanafiah, the significance of the Burda translation for early Malay Islamic literature, notes on the kasida form, the legend of Ka’b ibn Zuhayr’s Burda, the popularity of al-Busiri’s poem, and Wahhabi criticism; a synopsis of the poem; codicological description; orthographic and morphological analysis; lists of Arabic loanwords; the Malay text; a Dutch translation; a Malay glossary; an Arabic word index; and an appendix with a fragment of a Malay translation of al-Ushi’s Bad’ al-Amali.
Scholarly Contributions
Evenhage challenged Ph. S. van Ronkel’s negative assessment of the translation’s quality (“very confused”), arguing that the interlinear genre necessarily produces word-for-word renderings that appear awkward but reflect a deliberate pedagogical strategy. He demonstrated that the manuscript’s language is not “older” than classical Malay in a chronological sense but shows North Sumatran dialect features now better understood thanks to advances in Malay dialectology since Van Ronkel’s 1896 description. Evenhage established the translation’s terminus ad quem as circa 1600 based on the manuscript’s provenance via Pieter Willemsz. Floris van Elbingh in Aceh in 1604, making it a foundational document for the historical study of Arabic influence on Malay.
Institutional Affiliation
Evenhage published under the auspices of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) in The Hague. The volume was printed by Martinus Nijhoff. His work built on the earlier cataloguing by Van Ronkel and the manuscript identification by P. Voorhoeve (who recognized the Acehnese Burda fragment in Bataviaas Genootschap MS B.G. 303).
See Also
- 16th-century Malay translation of the Burda
- al-Busiri
- Kasidatu’l-Burda
- Cambridge University Library
- Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
- Ph. S. van Ronkel
- P. Voorhoeve
- Pieter Willemsz. Floris van Elbingh
- Aceh
- Thomas Erpenius
- Martinus Nijhoff
- A. Kessen
- 1955
Source
Een 16de eeuwse Maleise vertaling van de Burda van al-Būsīrī (Arabisch lofdicht op Mohammad), uitgegeven en vertaald door S. G. Evenhage, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Deel XVIII (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955). OCR source: 20260707_232246_DLP-54-Een_16de_eeuwse_Maleise_vertaling_van_de_Burda_van_al_Bu_s_i_ri_OCR.txt, pp. 1–12.