William Marsden (1754–1836) was a British orientalist and Malay scholar, the collector of the manuscript of the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* of Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī designated C in Voorhoeve’s apparatus. The Marsden collection — now in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London — supplied one of the principal witnesses to the Tibjān, and one of the oldest. Marsden is the author of the History of Sumatra (1783) and of the Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language (1812), the foundational works of British Malay scholarship.
The Marsden manuscript of the Tibjān
The Marsden manuscript of the *Tibjān* — now in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, no. 12210 (microfilm at Leiden Or. A. 18) — is designated C in Voorhoeve’s apparatus. It is, as Voorhoeve records, “probably the oldest manuscript”: more closely related to the Leiden manuscript B than to the Amsterdam manuscript A — a fact betrayed by errors common to B and C — but where A and C agree against B, they almost always preserve the correct reading. The last pages are added by a later hand, but even with this addition the manuscript is far from complete; it ends at p. 92 r. 14 of B. Unlike A and B, the Arabic in C is fully vocalised. C proves its Achehnese provenance by Achehnese word-explanations in the margin — a fact that places the manuscript within the Achehnese tradition of the Tibjān.
Significance
Marsden’s collection of Malay manuscripts — assembled during his service with the East India Company in Bencoolen, Sumatra, and presented by him to scholarly institutions in London — is one of the foundational collections of European Malay scholarship. The Marsden manuscript of the Tibjān is, after the Leiden manuscript B, the most important witness to the text of Raniri’s Malay encyclopaedia of religions and sects, and is the oldest of the three principal manuscripts collated by Voorhoeve. The fact that an Achehnese manuscript of the Tibjān — copied, perhaps, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century — should have reached the collection of a British scholar in Sumatra is itself a document of the channels by which Achehnese Malay manuscripts entered European collections in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
See Also
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §2d (“Apparatus criticus”), p. 24, where the Marsden manuscript C is described.
William Marsden, The History of Sumatra (London, 1783); A Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language (London, 1812).
William Marsden (1754–1836) was a British orientalist and Malay scholar, the collector of the manuscript of the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* of Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī designated C in Voorhoeve’s apparatus. The Marsden collection — now in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London — supplied one of the principal witnesses to the Tibjān, and one of the oldest. Marsden is the author of the History of Sumatra (1783) and of the Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language (1812), the foundational works of British Malay scholarship.
The Marsden manuscript of the Tibjān
The Marsden manuscript of the *Tibjān* — now in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, no. 12210 (microfilm at Leiden Or. A. 18) — is designated C in Voorhoeve’s apparatus. It is, as Voorhoeve records, “probably the oldest manuscript”: more closely related to the Leiden manuscript B than to the Amsterdam manuscript A — a fact betrayed by errors common to B and C — but where A and C agree against B, they almost always preserve the correct reading. The last pages are added by a later hand, but even with this addition the manuscript is far from complete; it ends at p. 92 r. 14 of B. Unlike A and B, the Arabic in C is fully vocalised. C proves its Achehnese provenance by Achehnese word-explanations in the margin — a fact that places the manuscript within the Achehnese tradition of the Tibjān.
Significance
Marsden’s collection of Malay manuscripts — assembled during his service with the East India Company in Bencoolen, Sumatra, and presented by him to scholarly institutions in London — is one of the foundational collections of European Malay scholarship. The Marsden manuscript of the Tibjān is, after the Leiden manuscript B, the most important witness to the text of Raniri’s Malay encyclopaedia of religions and sects, and is the oldest of the three principal manuscripts collated by Voorhoeve. The fact that an Achehnese manuscript of the Tibjān — copied, perhaps, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century — should have reached the collection of a British scholar in Sumatra is itself a document of the channels by which Achehnese Malay manuscripts entered European collections in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
See Also
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §2d (“Apparatus criticus”), p. 24, where the Marsden manuscript C is described.
William Marsden, The History of Sumatra (London, 1783); A Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language (London, 1812).