Hikayat Panglima Nikosa and the Sarawak Gazette: Transforming Texts in Nineteenth Century Sarawak

Abstract

Hikayat Panglima Nikosa (HPN) is one of northwest Borneo's earliest available texts. First published in 1876, its importance is enhanced by the relative paucity of other written material and still limited progress in the collection and transcription of the region's rich corpus of oral literature. Although written material survives from the Lingga River area, the Oya and Limbang districts, as well as from the courts of Brunei and Pontianak, the HPN is the earliest known Malay document from the Sarawak River region itself. HPN was uncovered among a group of pamphlets in Rhodes House Library in 1981. The previously unnoticed work was republished in 1983, together with a transliteration and translation by P. L. Thomas, and an ‘Introduction’ by Reece and Thomas.