Introduction
Networks of travel and trade have often been viewed as pivotal to understanding interactions among Muslims in various regions of South and Southeast Asia. What if we thought of language and literature as an additional type of network, one that crisscrossed these regions over centuries and provided a powerful site of contact and exchange facilitated by, and drawing on, citation?
Among Muslim communities in South and Southeast Asia practices of reading, learning, translating, adapting, and transmitting helped shape a cosmopolitan sphere that was both closely connected with the broader, universal Muslim community and rooted in local and regional identities.Footnote 1
The examples in the following pages are drawn from a range of texts written in Javanese, Malay, and Tamil between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, and preserved in manuscript and print forms. I look at a series of what I envision as ‘citation moments’ or ‘citation sites’ in an attempt to explore one of the many modes of inter-Asian connections. I wish to highlight how citations—simple or brief, as they may often seem—are sites of shared memories, history, narrative traditions, and in the case of Islamic literature, are also sites of a common bond with a cosmopolitan and sanctified Arabic.
Studying translated circulating texts, written in local languages infused with Arabic words, idioms, syntax, and literary forms, points to contact and interactions not only among particular people but also between and among languages such as the cosmopolitan Arabic and vernaculars like Javanese or Tamil. Such interactions in turn produced works in which pre-Islamic traditions were infused with new meaning as well as compositions that inaugurated an era of new literary expression.
Citation—from the Qur'an, religious treatises, histories of the prophets, and in the form of Arabic expressions—created sites of shared coherence and contact for Asian Muslims from different localities. Retelling, translating, and citing common episodes and beliefs set the stage for connecting through transmission, individual contacts between scribes and translators, and a broad and sometimes elusive sense of belonging to a trans-local community. Citation ranged from direct quotation to more general and less precise forms of adopting and adapting prior sources. The familiarity of shared stories, ideas, and vocabulary contributed to the rise of similar educational institutions, life cycle rites, titles, names, and modes of expression and creativity across great geographical and cultural spaces, and sustained multiple, shifting interactions among languages, individuals, and communities.
Citing sanctity: the shahāda
When we consider citation as a site of contact between Muslim communities across Asia, there is perhaps no citation more pivotal than the shahāda, the Muslim profession of faith. By reciting its two brief sentences, the believer testifies to his or her faith that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger. The shahāda provides a point of contact between human and divine, and between Muslims of all regions, languages, and cultural backgrounds who utter the same words attesting to their ultimate religious conviction.
As a mode of citation the shahāda takes several forms and is, in a way, emblematic of larger patterns of citation.Footnote 2 Most broadly, it can be considered as a trope appearing in narratives depicting early Islamic history whose retelling introduced audiences to a distant past that came to be owned by all Muslims. It is cited almost universally as a component of conversion rituals in depictions of individuals and communities embracing Islam; it is translated into local languages, making its translated citation a site of accessibility and familiarity; and it is cited as an indication of a particular allegiance within diverse Islamic societies.
The shahāda is cited in historical chronicles that recount the struggles, challenges, and successes of early Islam. It is often depicted as a powerful means symbolizing and containing divine power. This trend is apparent in the 1792 Javanese Serat Pandhita Raib.Footnote 3 Here is found a rather fantastic retelling of the Prophet Muhammad's early struggle with the people of Kebar, the oasis (known as Khyabar in Arabic) where a large Jewish population resided, one eventually eliminated by Muhammad. The central figure, Pandhita Raib, is a Jewish leader and teacher who persuades kings already converted to Islam to forsake their new faith and battle the Prophet's armies. One day, when Pandhita Raib is about to go on a journey, a letter falls out of the sky. Upon opening it and realizing that it contains the shahāda, Pandhita Raib is aghast. He commands that a great fort, surrounded by moats, be built around the letter, barring entrance to all. However, when Pandhita leaves for his journey, his son Saib-saib is drawn irresistibly to the fort and, through divine intervention, is able to enter it, finding the letter with the luminous words of the shahāda magically appearing in his hand. From that day onwards he is sick with longing for the Prophet and will not rest until he reaches him and embraces Islam. The narrative contains additional episodes, but the appearance of the shahāda marks a turning point that leads ultimately to Saib-saib's conversion, Kebar's fall, and Pandhita Raib's death. It is a sign of the futility of defying Islam, an object of beauty and light, and a set of words so powerful that it conquers even the most wise, strong, and cunning.
In an undated Malay variant of this story from West Sumatra, Hikayat Raja Rāhib, discussed by Van Ronkel, the king of Kebar's wife gives birth to a son, who, after fasting for three months, swallows a scrap of paper fallen from the sky, upon which the shahāda was written. Knowing that their son is destined to destroy their religion, his father tries to throw him into the sea, but the son is rescued by the angels and survives many adventures, finally reaching Mecca, meeting Ali, and returning to convert his land and his people.Footnote 4
It is noteworthy that in both cases we find the shahāda in written form: although it is meant to be recited—its briefness and frequent use making it easy to commit to memory—in writing it conjures special powers and is associated in this form with a great threat to the non-believers and an irresistible draw. The written shahāda has also long been associated with healing practices, as when a note with its words is kept as an amulet or even ingested as a cure. In Java and Sumatra, where most people could not read or write at the time these manuscripts were inscribed, the power of the written word depicted in these stories must have had particular resonance, magnifying the shahāda's importance.
The shahāda is also referred to and cited in multiple narratives that depict conversion to Islam and its recital constitutes a prerequisite for anyone who wishes to become a Muslim. At times it is the only element of a conversion ritual that is explicitly depicted, while at others, additional elements like circumcision, a change of name, and prayer are also included. Even when the latter is the case, the shahāda remains the most prominent—and often only—citation that signifies the transformation of the new believer and his entry into the Muslim community. The shahāda doesn't have to be cited in full, and is often only mentioned by the designation ‘shahāda’, ‘kalimah’ or ‘kalimah kalih’, and such mention is sufficient to evoke its two phrases and their multiple resonances in the minds of all listeners.
In a textual example I employ throughout this paper, the shahāda consistently appears. I am referring to a corpus known across languages as the Book of One Thousand Questions, which depicts a question-and-answer dialogue between the Jewish leader Abdullah Ibnu Salam and the Prophet Muhammad in seventh-century Arabia that ends with Ibnu Salam and all his followers converting to Islam. The conversion scene always includes a recitation of the shahāda. The same is true in many other conversion narratives found in South and Southeast Asia.Footnote 5
Next I wish to consider the question of the shahāda cited with or without translation within Islamic texts written in local languages. In an undated Malay One Thousand Questions, known as Hikayat Seribu Masalah, Ibnu Salam asks the Prophet whether all Muslims enter paradise on account of their dedicated religious service. The question refers to a debate about whether Muslims enter paradise by default or must follow certain prescriptions to attain this goal—in other words, a question is raised over the importance of faith versus deeds. The Prophet replies [Malay, Arabic in boldface]:
Hai Abdullah segala orang yang masuk syurga tiada dengan kebaktian. Barang siapa menyebut la ilaha illallah Muhammad rasulullah itulah yang beroleh syurga tiada dengan kebaktian. Jikalau Yahudi dan Nasrani sekali pun jika ia menyebut dua kalimat itu atau orang menyembah berhala sekali pun jika ia masuk Islam syurga baginya.
O Abdullah, all those who enter paradise, it is not due to their religious deeds. Anyone who says la ilaha illallah Muhammad rasulullah will gain [entry to] paradise, without practicing their religious duties. Even if a Jew or a Christian says these two sentences, or even if an idolator embraces Islam [by saying the above], he attains paradise.Footnote 6
Beyond the central doctrinal issue addressed, it is noteworthy that here the shahāda appears untranslated. It is clear from the passage that its two sentences are crucial ones, as they allow anyone who says them—including non-Muslims, even those who bow to idols—to enter paradise. But what do they literally mean? Whereas in Javanese texts (discussed below) special care was taken to parse and translate the confession of faith that allows one to embrace—or, as expressed here, to ‘enter’—Islam, an opportunity of transformative power, in Malay this Arabic phrase is left as it is. Appearing as a mantra, with its power unrelated to semantic meaning, it offers salvation to anyone who commits an act of faith by uttering it. To consider this phenomenon, a word on Malay translation practices is warranted.
Some early translations from Arabic into Malay were interlinear in nature.Footnote 7 As Islam spread, more texts were produced and Malay was more widely used as an Islamic language, interlinear works and short tracts in Malay gradually gave way to texts with varying proportions of Malay and Arabic. Malay became infused with an Arabic vocabulary which appeared in all literary works, including texts of an explicitly non-Muslim nature, like the Ramayana (M. Hikayat Seri Rama). Texts with a focus on Islamic religious ideas or practices, such as the One Thousand Questions, tended to include Arabic vocabulary as well as quotes from the Qur'an, hadith, and other sources, but did not provide a dual-language version as did interlinear translations.
The point of transition from interlinear to Malay translation was not clear-cut and interlinear translations continued to be produced. Perhaps because many readers of the time were exposed to interlinear translations while studying and to the Arabic of daily life in trading towns—or at least to its religious terminology often heard in mosques and Qur'anic recitations—the One Thousand Questions in Malay appears to assume a better knowledge of Arabic on the part of its audience than the Javanese and Tamil tellings do. At the very least, concepts and expressions of great importance, like the confession of faith and God's creative powers, conventionalized ways of referring to both God and the Prophet, and selected quotes from the Qur'an were thought to be familiar enough not to require translation. An additional explanation is that understanding—when defined semantically—did not matter much, or at least was not considered the most crucial form of knowledge. As is often the case presently among non-Arab Muslim communities, a reading knowledge of Arabic among Malay Muslims is quite prevalent, and certain words, phrases, and idioms are used on a regular basis. Some of this vocabulary—and especially where reciting the Qur'an is entailed—would be only vaguely accessible to many readers and speakers if they were asked to explain the literal meaning of single words or complete sentences. Nevertheless, there are important functions to these uses, which are strongly linked to the status of Arabic and to its sanctity, and which are independent of its knowledge in a conventional, scholastic, and semantic sense.
If we consider this possibility, the appearance of the untranslated shahāda in the midst of a paragraph promising redemption to anyone at all who will recite its words no longer seems surprising. Like the pre-Islamic mantras in Sanskrit, valued for their powers of sound rather than their lexical meaning, in a similar fashion Arabic phrases too gained much esteem. Such phrases were often referred to, in Malay and Javanese, as lapal or rapal. They consisted most often of formulas, prayers or spells that exerted power by virtue of their Arabic sound, even while their meaning was foreign, esoteric or enigmatic.
Arabic, whether understood or not, was clearly a language of power and prestige because of its status as the language in which the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad. When left untranslated, the power of the lapal, quotes from scripture, and the hadith tradition exemplify this well, pointing to the authority residing in the use of Arabic even when listeners were often unable to judge its grammatical correctness or the accuracy of a quote. In this way even an error—an approximated Qur'anic citation, for example—was accepted as potent speech.Footnote 8 In the specific example of the shahāda, a combination of sacred language and meaning probably played a role, as the message of God's oneness and Muhammad's mission was indeed a pivotal one. But in the case of the many other lapal, scattered untranslated in this text and others, Arabic bestowed on the text the authority of God's words. Indeed, such words are often preceded by: ‘As God commanded in the Qur'an’ (M. seperti firman Allah Ta'ala di dalam Qur'an), followed by a lapal-type quote.
Returning to the shahāda, it can also appear in Arabic along with a translation. In the Javanese One Thousand Questions (Serat Samud or Suluk Samud) tradition, it is almost invariably translated. Sometimes it appears in Javanese only, without the Arabic original.
In an 1884 Serat Samud from Yogyakarta, immediately following a reply about Islam as the true religion, the Jewish protagonist Ibnu Salam asks what the word ‘Islam’, in fact, means. The reply is that the meaning of Islam (or becoming, being Muslim) is saying the sadat (A. shahāda). Then the Prophet explains what one must say (Javanese in boldface):Footnote 9
Ashadu ala prituwin
ilaha ilalah lawan
ashadu ana lan maneh
Mukamadarrasul Allah
sun nakseni tan ana
pangéran lyaning Hyang Agung
Mukamad utusan ing Hyang
The profession of faith—the two most sacred sentences attesting to the oneness of God and to Muhammad being His messenger—appears in Arabic but is interspersed with Javanese (in boldface in translation):
I bear witness [that there is] no and also
God but Allah and
I bear witness in addition
Muhammad is God's messenger.
This is the Arabic quote within which—even before reaching the translated portion—the author inserts some Javanese words to parse the two sentences that comprise the sadat, so that it makes more sense to the listener and is more readily memorized. Again, due to its utmost importance, special care is taken that it will be clearly understood—not just its general meaning, but also the specifics of each segment.
The translation into Javanese follows, using the same divisions of meaning:
I bear witness there is no
God but Hyang Agung
Muhammad [is] Hyang's messenger.
The translation is accurate, with an interesting variation: the word Allah is not used for God in the Javanese rendering, but rather it employs two Javanese terms: Pangéran, means God, Lord, and is also a royal title, and Hyang or Hyang Agung, a title often reserved for local or Hindu deities. We find here, to borrow A. K. Ramanujan's terms, a translation that combines the iconic mode (retaining structural and content elements of the original) with an indexical one (the translated text is embedded in a locale, a context, refers to it and would not make much sense without it).Footnote 10
Looking to the example of the confession of faith, as was done for Javanese and Malay, in the 1572 Tamil Book of One Thousand Questions (Āyira Macalā), we find it appears several times, either in its complete form in Arabic without translation, or mentioned as the kalimā without further detail.Footnote 11 For example, the angels, standing in rows, are described as endlessly reciting lā ilāha illallāhi Muhammatu ṟacūlullā. Ibnu Salam, when embracing Islam, is said to have recited the kalimā along with his 700 followers.Footnote 12 Interestingly, despite the Tamil text's general emphasis on local context to convey the story and its message, there is no instance of the shahāda translated into Tamil.
Since the One Thousand Questions is an early example of Muslim writing in Tamil, it is likely to have inspired writers of subsequent periods. Discussing the later, undated, Tamil Muslim text Tamīmancāri Mālai, David Shulman notes the impressive ‘infiltration of Arabic, Persian and Urdu words into the Tamil text’, finding it more striking than the reverse trend, the use of non-Muslim Tamil terminology to convey Muslim concepts.Footnote 13 Tamil literary tradition links the One Thousand Questions with Umāṟuppulavar and his famous Cīṟā (biography of the Prophet), written a century later in the mid-seventeenth century. Many of the miracles only hinted at in the One Thousand Questions were depicted at length in the Cīṟā, some expanded to fill entire chapters, and much of the same Arabic terminology used in the One Thousand Questions was incorporated into the writing of the later text. Umāṟu, author of this most prominent of Tamil Muslim literary works, is known as a direct descendant of the One Thousand Questions’ author Vaṇṇaparimaḷappulavar.Footnote 14 This example shows how early citations—of Arabic phrases, stories, figures, and events—continued to circulate and to be cited anew in later works, their meaning reinforced and rearticulated.
I have explored the way in which the shahāda has been cited as a potent message, able to overcome great kings and warriors with its powers and to draw non-believers to Islam in narratives of the religion's early spread; its consistent appearance in conversion narratives, often as the single most important element of the ritual; and its full, partial, and non-translation in local contexts. Finally, the citation of the shahāda could also point to a particular affiliation among diverse Muslim communities. For example, Pijper notes a copy of the One Thousand Questions in Persian which contains a shahāda stating that ‘Ali is God's wali’, its inclusion suggesting Shi'i allegiance.Footnote 15 In all these instances, as well as in the frequent recitation of the shahāda in prayer and Qur'anic reading, it became a shared site of memory and identification for Muslims in Asia.
A cosmopolitan script—contact and interaction through shared orthography
Yet another site of citation, in a very literal sense, is found in the adoption of the Arabic script by Muslim communities in South and Southeast Asia to write their own languages, a strategy that was of paramount importance to the emergence of a shared Muslim affiliation in these regions. It was a critical aspect of contact with Arabic, one that transformed local languages and defined them anew, as changing a script has far-reaching cultural implications. As A. L. Becker observed in the context of transliterating Burmese into Latin script, ‘writing systems. . . are among the deepest metaphors in a language. . . they resonate richly throughout a culture, and so for us to substitute one technology of writing for another is not a neutral act, a mere notational variation. It means to re-imagine language itself.’Footnote 16 Writing in the cosmopolitan Arabic script was an act of reimagining and reformulating the languages of Malay-, Javanese-, and Tamil-speaking Muslims.
The employment of Arabic script for writing these languages significantly enhanced other aspects of translating Islamic materials into these languages. Known as jawi for writing Malay, pégon for Javanese, and arwi for Tamil, using Arabic script allowed for an easier and more accurate rendering of important Arabic terminology. It sustained—as far as possible, considering the vastly different sound systems—a correct pronunciation of Arabic words, thus decreasing the chance of misunderstanding and error, and it bestowed upon these South and Southeast Asian languages a presence that echoed that of the most sacred of languages, placing them on a par with many other Islamic languages and making their texts, including translated works, into revered objects.
In some instances, like Persian, the Arabic script replaced an earlier form of writing. Malay was written in local scripts that were gradually overshadowed by Arabic writing until they all but disappeared around the sixteenth century. In many other cases—of which both Tamil and Javanese are examples—an older script continued to be used alongside the new Arabic script. Whether Arabic script came to be used exclusively or not, the shift from a prior writing system was significant. Scripts are embedded in particular cultures and histories, and are often associated with creation narratives, mystical calculations, and educational and social practices. Many of these are lost or transformed with changes in script. With the adoption of the Arabic script by communities in South and Southeast Asia, older writing traditions were lost or marginalized, while a certain degree of standardization was achieved. As the cross-regional use of Arabic terms gave rise to a shared religious vocabulary, so the use of a common script across cultural and geographical distance contributed to the consolidation of an orthographically unified religious community.
The adoption of the Arabic script, wholesale or in part, by Muslim speakers of Tamil, Javanese, and Malay, constituted a pivotal element of their literary cultures, including citation and translation practices. The script adopted in all three cases was somewhat modified by using existing Arabic letters with diacritics for the purpose of expressing the particular sounds of each language. Although the three scripts differed somewhat from one another, they allowed for many similar or identical Arabic citations to appear within Javanese, Tamil, and Malay works. They also facilitated the production of multi-language volumes written in Arabic script. An untitled collection of anonymous mystical poetry and praise for the prophets and saints, written circa 1800 and used as a textbook for performing dhikr, provides an example. Several copies, resembling one another in content and sequence, were written in Indonesia: a copy from Banten includes a text in Arabic and Persian; a copy from Aceh contains sections in Arabic, Persian, and a single page in Malay; a third copy has notes in Malay accompanying poems in Arabic and Persian. Yet a fourth copy includes many poems in Arabic, some in Persian and a few in Urdu, Tamil, Malay, and an unidentified (possibly Indian) language.Footnote 17
Among the three languages mentioned, the one most profoundly influenced by Arabic was Malay. The Dutch scholar Van Ronkel studied an additional—and significant—dimension of Arabic's influence on this language, discussed in his pioneering study On the Influence of Arabic Syntax on Malay.Footnote 18 It is not enough, Van Ronkel argued, to examine how Arabic vocabulary has changed Malay: in order to better understand the impact of the contact between the two languages on Malay, we must also look beyond vocabulary to its deeper syntactical structures, which were so significantly shaped by Arabic.
How texts were translated from Arabic to Malay provides key evidence for what Van Ronkel saw as a systematized translation method, through which various works, whether theological or more narrative in form, employed the same syntactical constructions to convey Arabic prepositions, gender, tense, and plural markers in Malay. Although translations existed in several forms (inter-linear, partial, Malay text with some Arabic citations), translation of specific Arabic constructions was consistently followed, creating uniform usage that deeply influenced Malay grammar and syntax.Footnote 19
For example, Van Ronkel found that the Arabic preposition bi was consistently translated as Malay dengan. Thus when writing the phrase dengan nama (rather than the grammatically conventional atas nama), Malays were borrowing the Arabic phrase bi ism (‘in the name of’). The Malay term setengah orang (literally ‘half a person’ or ‘half the people’, meaning ‘many people’) derives from Arabic ba'd al-nas.Footnote 20 In some cases there is an intrinsic similarity in the way in which both languages use a preposition or other grammatical marker. In most cases, however, the Arabic form was foreign to Malay and was adopted in an attempt to imitate the Arabic as precisely as possible in translation. In this manner Arabic citation was internalized and absorbed into Malay, gradually transforming it.
Another site for assessing this process of internalization and accommodation, and quite concretely at that, is in the pages of both Arabic script and transliterated (rumi) Malay works. Reading the Malay One Thousand Questions in transliteration, with Arabic quotes italicized by the editor and thus ‘jumping out’ of the page, is the print equivalent of Arabic words—or, more commonly, quotes or expressions—appearing in ink of a different colour (usually red or grey) among Malay words written in black, as was the case in many manuscripts. These techniques allowed for a differentiation—by scribe, reader, and reciter—of the perceived linguistic identity of certain words and whether the scribe considered them to be Arabic or Malay, since the two languages were written in scripts that were almost identical. Both methods—in manuscript and print—allow an examination of the way in which many words of Arabic origin appear side by side with the highlighted quotes, unobserved, taken as an integral part of the Malay language by the time the One Thousand Questions manuscript was inscribed. A similar analysis can be carried out for Javanese manuscripts written in Arabic script.
Beyond the realm of manuscripts and books, Arabic script was to be found above all in the Indonesian Archipelago on tombstones, with the earliest instance in Java dating from the fourteenth century.Footnote 21 In the Tamil region, Arabic epitaphs in Kayalpattinam, dating from the fifteenth century, record names and Hijri death dates. Some include sections of religious text, genealogies, and occupations like qāḍī (judge), amīr (military title), and tājir (learned merchant), employing the Arabic titles of the kind routinely adopted by rulers, members of the nobility, and literary figures in both southern India and the Archipelago.Footnote 22 These citation sites, within and beyond the textual sphere, point very concretely to the ways in which a shared script linked Muslims across divides of language and place.
Paratexts as citation sites
In his monumental book, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, literary scholar and critic Gerard Gennette explored those bits of text such as the author's name, the title, preface, and illustrations—to name a few—that surround and extend the text, present it to its readers, and act as a threshold for those who consider whether to enter it or step back.Footnote 23 For example, a provocative title may cause a potential reader to pick up a book by an obscure author, while a translator's note may shape readers’ interpretation of a novel by introducing them to the author's life history and her circumstances of writing.
Certain oft-used citations that accompany Islamic texts can be read as paratexts. The bismillah al-rahman al-rahīm (‘in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful’) is prominent among them. The bismillah opens every surah of the Qur'an (except the ninth),Footnote 24 and tradition ascribes to the Prophet Muhammad the saying that any work not begun with it will remain incomplete or ephemeral.Footnote 25 Well-known traditions in Arabic tell of letters sent out by Muhammad to kings and leaders of his era, including Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor, the governor of Bahrain, and the king of Persia. The letters began with the bismillah greeting, mentioned that the Prophet was the sender, and invited the leaders to accept Islam, promising rewards if they did and hardship if they refused.Footnote 26 Small wonder then, that with such a history and aura, the phrase appears as a matter of course as the opening line of many Islamic texts in South and Southeast Asia, and especially in those composed in a local language but written in the Arabic script. In such instances it not only provides a fitting frame in terms of its content and religious significance but also blends in orthographically in a seamless manner. The bismillah can appear in Arabic, in both Arabic and translation, or in translation only, but in all these cases it maintains its prominent initial position in a text, the very first words to be read or heard by its audience.
The 1884 Serat Samud provides an example of how the bismillah (in a somewhat Javanized form) is highlighted and negotiated in translation. In this case it appears as the opening line of a text within a text—a letter addressed by the Prophet to the Jews—reminiscent of his letters to other leaders and communities:Footnote 27
Wit ing surat bismillahi rahmani rakimi ika.
The letter opens with bismillahi rahmani rakimi
This line is directly followed by a translation, or rather an explanation, of the Arabic phrase:
Tegesé miwiti ingong
anebut naming suksma
ingkang murahing dunya
nora nana kéwan luput
tembé asih ning akérat
This means I begin
by speaking the name of God
who is merciful in this world
towards all living creatures
[and] compassionate in the next world.
Here the Javanese author expands and expounds on the literal meaning of this important and familiar Arabic phrase. In the translation not only is God described as merciful and compassionate, as in the Arabic original, but these attributes are infused with context and life, stressing that all creatures are beneficiaries of His mercy and inserting, quite subtly but forcefully, the notion that human existence does not end with death but rather continues in another world where God's compassion reigns. In the context of Muhammad sending his letter within the narrative framework, this depiction is important as it stresses for the Jews the omnipotence of Muhammad's God; in the larger context of a Javanese audience listening to the Serat Samud, the bismillah is recited in Arabic, translated, and given meaning that is relevant, on several levels, to all present. This small paratext—a common citation echoing the Qur'an and hadith—functions as a guide to Muslim letter-writing codes, a reminder of God's powers, and a brief lesson in Arabic's sacred terminology.
In the Tamil rendering of the same narrative, the Āyira Macalā, the letter to the Jews opens similarly with the bismillah. The archangel Jipuṟayīl (Gabriel) arrives as Muhammad is sitting with his companions and tells him to write a letter to the wise Jewish leader Ipuṉu Calām. Muhammad immediately asks that a scribe be summoned so that the letter, dictated by Jipuṟayīl, can be inscribed and delivered.Footnote 28
The letter is then dictated by the Prophet, who has already received its content from the archangel:
First write: bismillāhi rahumānil rahīm
the words of God's messenger are written
I am Muhammad
I [teach] God's exalted way
In this world, to all.
All will be blessed
Those who take the right path – that of the mustakīm, steadfast in it
Will gain prophet and sorkkam
Listen to my words and you will succeed.Footnote 29
At the other end of such texts is found yet another, even briefer, paratext: many Malay hikayat (from A. ḥikāya)—a broad genre that encompasses romances, adventures, theology, and history—end with the statement tamat al-hikayat: thus ends the hikayat, or simply ‘the end’. Other typical endings for Malay writing are tamat al-qalām and tamat al-kitāb. Tamat ends Javanese works as well. Although these phrases are not endowed with any of the sanctity of the bismillah they are nevertheless Arabic phrases, and as such carry an echo of a distant, foreign literary culture—its genres, idioms, and sounds—that has come to be experienced as familiar and close to Muslim audiences in Asia. The tamat phrase is sometimes followed by brief mention of a manuscript's author or the name of the scribe who copied it, and the time and place of writing. Even when these identifying details do not appear, there is often mention of the blessings to be incurred on those engaging with the text, through writing, copying, listening or storing it. The following three examples are intended to point to the prevalence of this brief paratext, a citation that is repeated across cultures and sites, connecting them through its multiple appearances, always in a text's significant closing lines.
In the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century Samud, a Javanese manuscript likely written along the north coast of Java:
Tamatcarita nira Samud tinulis
yèku tandha nira
yèn nabi utusan luwih
saking sakèhing dumadya
Thus ends the story written about Samud
it is your sign (it signifies)
that the Prophet (and) Messenger is best
Among all living creatures.Footnote 30
In the late nineteenth century Hikayat Tuan Gusti, a Malay manuscript from Sri Lanka:
TamatHikayat Tuan Gusti tengari bulan Sa'aban 21 bulan Inggris 22 Januari hijrah 1897 menulis Subidar Mursit pension Selon raifil rajimit jua adapun aku pesan pada sekalian tuan yang suka membaca hikayat ini jangan saka qalbunya supaya dirahmatkan Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala dari dunya sampai keakirat
Thus ends Hikayat Tuan Gusti at midday on the 21st of Sa'aban the 22nd of January 1897. It was written by Subidar Mursit, a retiree of the Ceylon Rifle Regiment. I ask all those who found pleasure in reading this hikayat: do not (let it fade) from your hearts so that you will be granted mercy by Almighty God – praise be upon Him – in this world and the next.Footnote 31
In Hikayat Patani, copied in Singapore in 1839 by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir on behalf of the missionary Alfred North, and likely to have been based on a manuscript from Kelantan in Northeast peninsular Malaysia, near the border with Thailand:Footnote 32
Tamatalkalam. Bahawa tamatlah kitab Undang-Undang Patani ini disalin alam negeri Singapura kepada sembilan hari bulan Sya'aban tahun 1255 sanat, iaitu kepada enam belas hari bulan Oktober tahun Masihi 1839 sanat. Tamat adanya.
The End. Thus ends the Patani Book of Laws copied in Singapore on the ninth of Sya'aban AH 1255, namely the sixteenth of October AD 1839. The End.Footnote 33
As Genette emphasized, the paratext is a kind of ‘undefined zone’ between inside and out, an edge or fringe of the text that in fact controls one's whole reading of it. We might consider the bismillah and tamat phrases in light of Genette's words: ‘Indeed, this fringe, always the conveyor of a commentary that is authorial or more or less legitimated by the author, constitutes a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that—whether well or poorly understood and achieved—is at the service of a better reception of the text and a more pertinent reading of it.’Footnote 34 The paratexts in a work's beginning and end (printed or otherwise) are of special importance in that they frame it for the reader or listener, setting the tone at the outset, and highlighting a particular message or mood in the closing lines. In the cases I have explored, texts of diverse linguistic and geographical provenance were framed by, or contained within, shared Arabic sounds and phrases. These reminded audiences of their broad affiliation with a trans-regional community.
Defying translation: sites of untranslated citation
Despite the somewhat different approaches to incorporating Arabic and employing translation within the texts, in all three languages mentioned, certain words defied translation. I have already noted the appearance of the untranslated shahāda but there are many additional examples. There is room for speculation on why certain Arabic words were adapted verbatim into these languages, while others were rendered in the local language. It is likely that some words expressed concepts novel to the society into which they were introduced, so word and idea were accepted together. A certain power associated with the incomprehensible can also explain why some words were left untranslated. This includes both the idea that words can effect change and alter reality regardless of their semantic meaning and the notion that foreign concepts subordinate local ones through the retention of the foreign terminology. The Arabic word munāfiq that appeared as such, untranslated in the Malay, Tamil, and Javanese Book of One Thousand Questions, provides an example.
The munāfiqūn—mentioned over three dozen times in the Qur'an—were residents of Medina in the seventh century who ostensibly converted to Islam but did not adhere to the Prophet and his new religion. Officially Muslim, but in fact ridiculing and disobeying the Prophet, they constituted a threat and a nuisance. Commonly translated into English as ‘hypocrites’, the term in the Qur'an is stronger and has a wider semantic range. In surah 63 the munāfiqūn are described as liars, obstructers, ignoramuses, enemies, arrogant, and deviant. They were clearly dissenters within the umma, the emerging Muslim community, refusing to fight at the Prophet's side and deserving of hellfire.
In contrast to the mostly general terms in which the munāfiqūn are referred to in the Qur'an, later Islamic literature in Arabic tended to ascribe the term to specific persons and groups, and used the word in a sense that came closer to ‘hypocrite’. Still, the best English approximation of the term may be ‘dissenter’, dissent being possible both in private and public, and carrying the connotation of religious schism.Footnote 35
In the One Thousand Questions tellings discussed, this group, referred to as munapik, appears as a category of people who are surely destined for hell. In all three languages a question arises as to their nature and the same reply is offered by the Prophet: a hypocrite is outwardly Muslim but inwardly an infidel (kapir, from A. kāfir, another untranslated term). Clearly, even many centuries after the historical munāfiqūn betrayed the Prophet, this group—or anyone resembling its members—still connoted deceit and hypocrisy, and was portrayed in the most negative light. The torments they will suffer were vividly depicted in the One Thousand Questions tellings. But why was a Tamil, Malay or Javanese word not used to name this group? It may be that certain terms remain untranslated because they are so deeply embedded in a particular historical and cultural event that their mention arouses an entire set of images and reactions that would no longer be accessible in translation.
This phenomenon of the untranslatability of certain words or terms is related in turn to the notion of ‘prior text’ as discussed by Becker: the ways in which thoughts, writing, and speech derive from, or draw upon, texts that are shared by members of a particular culture.Footnote 36 Many Muslims are familiar with important Qur'anic quotes and scenes, of which the citations on the munāfiqūn are examples. The scenes of the Prophet's conflicts with the munāfiqūn or their approaching doom would not be evoked in the same manner in the minds of listeners familiar with the Qur'an if a (more neutral) Javanese word were substituted for the Arabic. The importance of conveying the full weight of the original term was in part due to the fact that the text dealt with conversion and was likely to have been discussed with the recently converted, for whom it was crucial to understand that their acceptance of Islam must not be in appearance only, but total.
The second explanation is more culturally specific: the notion of religious hypocrisy or dissent, of believing inwardly in one thing but posing externally as another, was foreign to the three local cultures before the arrival of Islamic notions of faith. Earlier belief systems in the Archipelago included indigenous systems, in addition to Hindu and Buddhist traditions that had acquired a local character. Similarly, that which is today referred to as Hinduism in the Tamil region, as well as worship of local warrior gods, goddesses, and saints, prevailed at the time the text was composed. The strict Judeo-Islamic notion of a single, clearly defined belief that must be followed exclusively and must not conflict with appearances or words was not a component of these earlier and concurrent traditions and, therefore, a word conveying the charged significance of munapik was unlikely to have existed.
Leaving words like munāfiq, kāfir (infidel), nabī (prophet), qiyāma (Judgment Day), and others untranslated (although their spelling and pronunciation were somewhat modified) contributed to the creation of a trans-regional, standardized Islamic vocabulary across South and Southeast Asian Muslim societies. Such standardization, along with the common use of titles, epithets, and stories, in turn helped shape a religion-based community that was culturally and linguistically diverse. It allowed Muslims from places distant from the Muslim ‘heartland’, like Java, to take part in and belong to the life of a global community that was defined, in part, by its adherence to the Arabic language.
In light of the tendency to leave certain words untranslated, it is tempting to suggest a typology of words that continued to be used in Arabic rather than translated into the local languages. Following the ‘munapik paradigm’, there would be a host of terms that could be expected to remain untranslated within the texts. The situation, however, is far from consistent: many words that fit into the munapik category of novelty, forcefulness, and linkage to prior texts, did in fact appear in translation. Not only were they translated but, as in the case of using Tamil maṟai (veda) for the Qur'an or Javanese hyang for Allah, they were expressed through the use of religious concepts belonging to a different belief system.
A clear example is found in the case of the terminology for paradise and hell, both key concepts in Muslim thought which are discussed and portrayed in many texts. Often teachings and warnings regarding life in this world in fact focus on the prospect of residing in either hell or paradise in the future. In the case of such central concepts, an adoption of Arabic terminology that would powerfully enhance the depictions impressed upon the faithful might be expected. However, in the Tamil, Malay, and Javanese One Thousand Questions, the older, Sanskritic terms swarga (paradise) and naraka (hell) are employed exclusively and consistently.
Notions of swarga and naraka in non-Islamic texts differ markedly from their use within a Muslim context. Swarga was the world of the gods and demi-gods who enjoyed lives of pleasures before recurring rebirths; naraka, often depicted as a netherworld of suffering, was teeming with demons and other creatures and was, yet again, a temporary stop in the cycle of reincarnation. In contrast, in Muslim teachings, these two realms came to signify the two mutually exclusive, eternal fates for the good and the evil. This prospect meant that the terms swarga and naraka assumed new, dramatically loaded meanings with the transition to Islam. Keeping old terminology within the context of a new system—religious or otherwise—carries the risk of misunderstanding, confusion, and conflation. Creating a neologism or bringing in foreign, and sacred, vocabulary—as was often done with Arabic—allows for a distancing from old ideas and a more detached introduction of the new. The break with the past is not necessarily smooth but is more radical.
The cases of Javanese, Tamil, and Malay are interesting precisely because of an inconsistency, a combination of terminology and metaphors that does not fully relinquish the old for the new. For every case where an Arabic word entered these languages and was cited untranslated, a counter-example is found of a term associated with earlier (or concurrent) beliefs, seemingly without anxiety about possible confusion and blurring of definitions. In some texts, like the Javanese Babad Jaka Tingkir, explicit mention is made of how names of categories of learned religious persons of an earlier age were exchanged with the new, rising Islamic names. The change in roles and attitudes was reflected in a shift in terminology.Footnote 37 But in much of the literature, terminologies of old and new seem to blend effortlessly without authorial comment. In the case of the terms swarga and naraka an older Sanskrit citation system—prevalent for centuries in the Indonesian-Malay world and India, and gradually coming to overlap with, or at times be replaced by, the Arabic-Islamic system—continued to exert its influence on terminology, even as meanings and affiliations had shifted.
Concluding thoughts
Various forms of citation—whether single Arabic words, direct quotes from the Qur'an or paraphrases of well-known histories of the prophets, episodes from Muhammad's life or commonly used hadith—appeared widely within Islamic literary sources in Tamil, Malay, and Javanese. I have examined such practices of citation as creating and sustaining sites of connection and interaction across Muslim societies in Asia and beyond.
The shahāda (in Arabic and in translation), for example, as well as famous sayings of the Prophet, can be viewed as loci of authority that exerted power and bound readers and listeners from all walks of life to a shared core of ideas, stories, and beliefs. These—and additional citations—formed the basis for common educational models, authority structures, a shared imagination, and historical consciousness.
Citations in the textual sources discussed were not always ‘correct’.Footnote 38 Rather, they were often truncated, had words missing or sounds misrepresented in local scripts or pronunciation. Their appearance in such forms represented the many interactions—across time and place—that had transpired prior to the moment they were put down in writing in towns along the Coromandel coast, Java or Sumatra. In the case of the Book of One Thousand Questions, my main textual example, I proposed that much significance lay in the fact that citations sounded familiar and authoritative, and were also embedded within an important story set in the Prophet's time and proclaiming his victory over an earlier religion.
These connections occurred at several, sometimes overlapping, levels: through a familiarity with the same words, terms, and phrases; a common use of the Arabic script for writing diverse languages; a shared repository of names and titles as they appear in books, on tombstones and mosques, and in lived experience. These enhanced contact between individuals, communities, languages, scripts, and ideas. Translators, scribes, patrons, and audiences of readers and listeners all participated in various ways in these multiple processes, bringing about profound linguistic and cultural change. One way to articulate the richness and variety that resulted from these processes is to consider, as I have suggested, the prevalence of literary networks with citation-sites along their paths.
