Royal Asiatic Society Research Articles

The making of a naturalist in Manchuria: Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 1885–1922

This article examines the professional identity-building of Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885–1954), a China-born explorer of Anglo descent who was a versatile hunter-sportsman aspiring to become a naturalist. Existing work on Sowerby acknowledges his role as the founder of the China Journal of Science and Arts and as president of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai; yet his pre-Shanghai life and career prior to 1922 has received scant scholarly attention. Between 1907 and 1922, Sowerby joined several expeditions exploring the terrain and collecting animal specimens in the Manchurian and Sino-Mongolian borderland before taking up residence in Shanghai in 1923 until his departure from China in 1946. Sowerby's zoological expedition in Manchuria is discussed as a backdrop against which his subsequent Shanghai career is portrayed. Sowerby's roles as an explorer and fieldworker have not been subject to independent examination. I argue that the making of Sowerby's naturalist identity reflects a career route for amateur practitioners to build a scientific identity via expeditionary fieldwork, writing natural history for popular audiences and curating biological specimens in early twentieth-century China.

Qur’anic readings and verse divisions in 18th-century Banten Qur’ans A.51, W.277 and RAS Arabic 4

ABSTRACT This article examines three Qur’ans that probably hail from 18th-century Banten. The first two, A.51 and W.277, are held in the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia, and the third of which, RAS Arabic 4, is part of the collection at the Royal Asiatic Society in the United Kingdom. It undertakes an analysis of the Qur’anic reading and verse numbering systems applied in these manuscripts, using selected samples from Sūrat al-Kahf to identify the textual relationships between these three Qur’ans. Examination of these three Qur’ans reveals variations in the ways in which each copy treats verse numbering and locates verse endings. On the basis of the textual analysis undertaken here, the author argues that the copyists of Qur’ans A.51, W.277 and RAS Arabic 4 appear to have applied to the respective text a combination of different methods that determined their approach to the reading and verse numbering systems. The Qur’anic textual transmission process is one in which the copyists referred to older copies but also relied on their own knowledge of qirāʾāt literature.

Protestant Missionary Accounts of Chinese Secret Societies in the Beginning of the 19th Century

The paper examines the earliest information by Europeans concerning activities of the secret societies–traditional public organizations that have played a significant role in history of China and continues to be a phenomenon of public life in China and abroad. By analogy with the “colonial school” of the studies of secret societies in China, it is proposed to single out the earliest period of the Protestant historiography of secret societies, tentatively designating it as a “missionary school” of William Milne and Robert Morrison. Amendments are done to the available bio-bibliographic data on Milne’s publications in The Indo-Chinese Gleaner. The authorship and time of the reports on secret societies in China delivered by R. Morrison at the Royal Asiatic Society are clarified. Milne’s reports indicated that the secret societies were anti-government, and some of them were anti-Qing. However, he did not notice the slogans for the restoration of the late Chinese Ming dynasty. The purpose of the destruction of the Qing dynasty is directly expressed in the materials of R. Morrison, which also talked about the hope for help from the spirits of the Ming emperors. It is noted that the ‘Mason paradigm’ of the study of secret societies proposed by W. Milne was based on the similarity of some formal aspects in their activities with the practice of the Freemason Society in Great Britain. At the same time, W. Milne pointed out the differences in the social status and social role of such societies in Europe and in China.

19세기 말~20세기 전반 서양선교사들의 조선문화예술 담론만들기

The article intends to comprehend, reappraise, and criticize how Western missionaries had perceived and interpreted the origins, transformations, characteristics of Korean traditional literature, fine arts, and music by analyzing related articles and essays primarily published in The Korean Repository, The Korea Review, and Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society from the late 19th Century to the First Half of the 20th Century. The author comes up with plausible and/or tentative conclusions as followings: First, Western missionaries contributed to building a solid foundation of Korean aesthetic discourse by drawing a periodization according to artistic achievement, selecting literary·artistic cannons, and classifying·cataloging major works/writers, thus stimulating the launch of the so-called “Choseon Studies Movement” by Korean intellectuals during Japanese colonial era. Second, many concerned Western missionaries agreed that Koreans managed to maintain its own authentic/original aesthetic tradition, distinguished from China and Japan. Third, Korean artistic tradition derives not from a singular but from plural origins and its own peculiarities are an outcome of a hybrid and transnational (re)production among Western missionaries, Japanese bureaucrat-scholars, and native Korean intellectuals.

Malaysian Branch of the The Royal Asiatic Society

Malaysian Branch of the The Royal Asiatic Society

The Singapore Mall Generation: History, Imagination, Community ed. by Liew Kai Khiun

Reviewed by: The Singapore Mall Generation: History, Imagination, Community ed. by Liew Kai Khiun Linda Lim and Pang Eng Fong The Singapore Mall Generation: History, Imagination, Community, edited by Liew Kai Khiun. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2022, 304pp. ISBN: 978-981-5009-39-2 This collection of 10 essays and a foreword by 12 academics, arts and cultural studies researchers and practitioners, traces ethnographically the evolution of Singapore malls and their place in shaping memories and communities. It focuses on ‘older’ malls of the 1980s and 1990s, whose strata-title ownership—where different entrepreneurs own particular spaces in the mall—enabled and encouraged what might be termed a ‘bottom-up’ evolution of shop types and ancillary mall activities according to the eclectic interests of individual shop-owners, local customers and other mall participants. Most interestingly, the book peels back the veneer of shopping malls as primarily icons of the materialist consumption which dominates Singapore’s proudly pragmatic society, to reveal a more complex reality. Mall merchandising both facilitated and was shaped by community and artistic ‘fringe activities’ that spontaneously emerged to eventually define both the character and the commercial appeal of particular malls. Unintended and unplanned, art installations, indie music, dancing, and various youth and migrant worker subcultures sprung up to occupy the interstices and sometimes the main thoroughfares of certain malls. Lodging themselves in the collective memory of both locals and transients, many downtown malls like Far East Plaza, Peninsula Plaza, Takashimaya, Lucky Plaza, Tanglin Shopping Centre, and Orchard Towers can claim to be part of the national heritage. The book mentions, but does not explore in depth, the more recent transformation of Singapore’s malls as strata-title ownership gives way to S-REITS (real estate investment trusts) owned and operated by GLCs (government-linked corporations) and large global or foreign conglomerates. These employ a ‘top-down’ model of planned use, thematic unity and price-point conformity aimed at maximizing rental revenues. This usually means modernist architecture housing the luxury transnational chains found in other expensive global cities catering to a target market of high-end and international customers. Rising rental costs, together with competition from online shopping preferred by young people who also increasingly socialize and find recreation online, exacerbated by the remote working trend which reduces downtown and even suburban ‘foot traffic’, are already eroding the commercial fortunes of heritage malls and erasing their evocative past. The redevelopment of Funan Centre from a hub selling computers and component parts into a gleaming glass palace (with dedicated space for community-oriented activities), and a wide selection of eateries, provides an example of corporate ambition in line with new values, but not with people with fond memories of the old Funan. This reflects the ambivalence in [End Page 141] many Singaporeans’ hearts — we are captivated by the new while longing for an imagined simpler communal past. As economists who personally experienced the entire trajectory of Singapore’s malls, and as members of what the authors call ‘the mall generation’, we would have liked to see more analysis of the reasons for, impact, and implications of this transformation in the context of Singapore’s entire socio-economic development. What has been the relative role of ‘top-down’ public policy and corporate globalization versus ‘bottom up’ market forces and local entrepreneurs in mall evolution? Looking to the future, what are the commercial as well as cultural implications for national identity, heritage and the ‘Uniquely Singapore’ branding once purveyed by the Singapore Tourism Board? Perhaps the lack of thematic unity, beyond nostalgia, among the book’s chapters is an unconscious reflection of respect for the messy yet vibrant, spontaneous ‘co-creation’ of ‘authentic’ localized spaces and voices that inhabited Singapore’s malls in our recent past. Linda Lim University of Michigan Pang Eng Fong Singapore Management University Copyright © 2022 Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Reflections on the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Reflections on the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Tan Sri Dato Haji Mubin Sheppard and Paul H. Kratoska Publication is one of the principal activities of most scholarly associations, including the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The Society's mission is to collect, disseminate, and preserve information about Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, and to fulfil this goal, it publishes a journal, original monographs, and reprints of older publications. Tan Sri Dato Haji Mubin Sheppard (1905–94) was an officer of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and served for many years as editor of its journal. In September 1985 he presented a paper about the journal at a conference on 'Academic publishing in ASEAN: problems and prospects'. The paper, which was printed in the conference proceedings,1 provided a useful summary of the journal's history and some of the problems it faced. His concerns included printing, marketing, and distribution (both overseas and in Malaysia), and how to ensure that back issues of the journal remained available and accessible. The points Sheppard mentioned in 1985 would have been familiar to Carl Gibson-Hill, who edited the journal 30 years earlier. Gibson-Hill complained of substandard printing and difficulties getting printers to make corrections. Editors needed to visit printing offices, and Sheppard notes that when the society's offices relocated from Singapore to Petaling Jaya, a satellite city of Kuala Lumpur, printing of the journal also moved from Singapore.2 Gibson-Hill also expressed concern about preserving back issues of the journal and keeping them available to the public. In connection with a possible donation of back issues to a library, Gibson-Hill wrote: if possible the back numbers should be bound, and arrangements made to bind each subsequent volume as it is completed. … We mention the matter [End Page 95] of binding as experience has taught us that loose parts of journal are much more liable to disappear from libraries than are bound volumes.3 When Sheppard wrote his article, authors submitted typed manuscripts and communicated with the journal editor through the postal service. Processing articles for publication involved keying them in on a linotype machine, which produced slugs of type used for printing, and proofreading took place on "galley proofs", long sheets of paper that would later be broken down into pages. Corrections required physical replacement of lines of metallic type, and changes had to conform to the number of words and letters in the corrected passage to fit the space taken up by the original text. At the time of printing, the editor ordered extra copies of the journal that were used to prepare offprints, copies of an article sent to the author for distribution to friends and colleagues. Thirty years later, when I assumed the editorship in 2015, every step in the process had changed. This article begins with Sheppard's paper, edited to remove details that have fallen out of date. Following his account, I have added an update explaining changes in the way manuscripts are submitted, published, and read. The History, Publications and Distribution of JMBRAS in Ancient and Modern Times By Tan Sri Dato' Mubin Sheppard History A meeting was held in Raffles Library, Singapore, on November 4th 1877 at which a resolution was presented and approved reading 'that the gentlemen present form themselves into a Society for collecting and recording scientific information in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago. The said Society to be, for the present, called The Straits Asiatic Society.' Those present included Archdeacon G. F. Hose, who presided, W. E. Maxwell, who was then the Colonial Secretary, A. M. Skinner, who was then the Colonial Treasurer, W. A. Pickering the Protector of the Chinese, C. J. Irving, the Resident Councillor Malacca, and D. F. A. Hervey, a Magistrate. Mr. Skinner, who was the first Honorary Secretary, wrote to the Royal Asiatic Society in London asking if the new body could be accepted as a Branch of the older Society (which had been founded in 1826). Approval was received from London in March 1878 and the Society was then renamed The Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The Governor of the Straits...

An Excerpt from Carl Gibson-Hill: Boats, Birds, Photography, and History in Late-Colonial Malaya

An Excerpt from Carl Gibson-Hill: Boats, Birds, Photography, and History in Late-Colonial Malaya Brendan Luyt Ed. Note. Carl Alexander Gibson-Hill edited JMBRAS throughout the 1950s, and made notable contributions to photography, ornithology, museology, and the writing of Malayan history. In another era, Gibson-Hill might have been accounted a major figure in colonial scholarship, but he lived in Singapore at a time when British authorities were putting an end to British rule and overseeing the localization of their own positions, and the achievements of this somewhat eccentric individual went unheralded. As Brendan Luyt shows in his biography, Gibson-Hill found many opportunities in Malaya and took full advantage of them, becoming director of the Raffles Museum in Singapore, helping initiate a photographic society, surveying the boats plying Malayan waters, studying Malayan birds, editing the journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and conserving information about the region's past. But the Malaya he inhabited as a member of the colonial elite was crumbling, and independence marginalized both the colonial past and those who served it. The Federation of Malaya became independent in 1957, and while Singapore remained a colony until it joined Malaysia in 1963, the powers and authority associated with colonial rule were eroding. Gibson-Hill's work at the museum gave him influence and access to information, shaping not only his daily activities but also his very identity. In August 1963, at the age of 52, facing the prospect of early retirement and suffering from failing eyesight and bouts of depression, he took his own life. The following excerpt from Luyt's biography is part of a chapter discussing Gibson-Hill's work as a historian. Gibson-Hill anticipated the Asian-centric history that began to emerge in the 1960s, but a second transition in the discipline—a shift in the 1950s towards the institutionalization of history writing in the hands of the academy—diminished the impact of his work. Those employed in the history department of the University of Malaya all had advanced degrees in the subject, and the Museum could no longer claim to be the centre of knowledge production for regional history. Furthermore, other publications competed with the JMBRAS for submissions, including the Far Eastern Quarterly (renamed the Journal of Asian Studies in 1956) and Pacific Affairs, while locally the Department of History at the University of Singapore launched the Journal of Southeast Asian History in 1961. Similarly, academic publishers began to handle greater amounts of material on Southeast Asian history.1 Gibson-Hill showed little interest in new approaches to history. As we have seen, he did not publish a monograph with a major university press, contenting himself with the Memoirs series of the Raffles Museum for a few of his larger works. Neither did he bother to publish in journals other than JMBRAS. In the field of historical writing, he was entirely reliant on the publishing resources of the Museum that he ran from 1955 to 1963, not a good way to win wider recognition in any discipline, especially when the JMBRAS itself [End Page 89] was under something of a cloud, with John Gullick reporting that at the London School of Economics it was always the target 'of a jibe or two at its superficiality'.2 His focus on character, biography, and genealogy also had limited appeal for mainstream historians, who were abandoning these earlier forms of history writing in favour of studies that subordinated individuals to social forces. Gibson-Hill remained fascinated by individuals in history, something he made very clear in a 1952 piece on John Clunies-Ross and Alexander Hare where he observed that in dealing with Hare, he had to discipline himself to write empirical history. 'I have tried to keep the fragments of him on a 2-D plane, presenting only the facts so far apparent and the conclusions that can legitimately be drawn from them. Anything else would have been fatal: had Hare been allowed one breath he would have bulged out from the page, taken possession of the pen, and turned the whole into the picaresque novel to which he really belongs'.3 These are the words of a...

The Story From Islamic Architecture To Modern Architecture: In Context of ‘‘Aasaar.us.Sanadeed’’

In 1847, the Muslim educationist Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) published an Urdu text entitled Aaasar-us-Sanadeed, listing and describing all notable buildings and monuments of Delhi. His work so impressed British scholars in Delhi that he was invited to join the Royal Asiatic Society and to write a second, improved edition intended for translation into English. Unfortunately, the translation was never written. Aaasar-us-Sanadeed was nonetheless a landmark text in the field of Indo-Islamic architectural history. Sir Sayyed was one of many local Indian scholars producing architectural and archaeological histories of the Subcontinent in the nineteenth-century. Yet their names are generally unknown and their research lost in obscurity.Early twentieth-century western scholarship paid them little attention and an image formed which saw decades that this belief has been contested nineteenthcentury historiography only serving an Orientalist vision of Indian art and archaeology. This article represents an outlook, describing major monuments of Delhi architecture as examined by Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan in the mid nineteenth-Century.

The Honorary Editor's preface to the Maududi special collection

The special collection appearing in this issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society makes a valuable contribution to lively ongoing discussions centred on explorations of the concept of the sovereignty of God within contemporary Islamic traditions. As its Guest Editors Humeira Iqtidar and Oliver Scharbrodt highlight in their introductory essay, the concept of divine sovereignty has come to occupy a key place in Islamist thinking, with the writings of Abul A‘la Maududi playing a hugely significant role in its twentieth- and twenty-first century articulations. Comprising articles based on papers first presented in September 2019 at an ERC-funded workshop organised jointly by King's College London and the University of Birmingham, it offers cutting-edge scholarly reflections on how Maududi's articulation of ḥākimiyyat-i ilāhiyya has been received in a multiplicity of Muslim contexts and communities. Hence, their authors—Humeira Iqtidar, Oliver Scharbrodt, Usaama Al-Azmi, and Simon Wolfgang Fuchs—grapple with how far Maududi's thinking can be understood as a response to perceived challenges of ‘modernity’, as well as to the ways in which ideas linked to this notion connect with debates going back much further in time.

미국-영국 선교사와 외교관이 주도한 근대한국학 전문화와 시스템 만들기, 1900-1940년

The article aims to reappraise the characteristics and legacy of Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch(RASKB) and its official Journal, Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in the historiography of modern Korean studies. By analysing its membership, interpreting the contents/subject-matters, and examining the new mode of writing strategies of the Transactions published from 1900 to 1940, the author is very convinced that both RASKB and Transactions had played a critical and indispensable role in professionalizing and systematizing the field of Korean studies. The Transactions, a forum dominated by British and American missionaries and diplomats, demonstrates the maturity of modern Korean studies in the first half of the 20th century, thus standing at the apex of “the First Wave of Modern Korean Studies.” Imperial Japanese scholars imitated and appropriated the Western-made First Wave and had established “the First and Half Wave of Modern Korean Studies” for the purpose of legitimizing colonialization of Korea. And “the Second Wave of Modern Korean Studies” during the 1930s, which emphasized the Korean Studies by Koreans and for Koreans, was to a certain degree the extended and reinvented outcome founded on the previous two Waves. The author concludes that modern Korean studies is a hybrid (re)production of multiple nationalities and that transnational perspectives would shed an alternative light to disclose non-nationalist and post-colonial peculiarities of ‘Knowledge/Power’ usually known as ‘the discourse on Korea.’ (Chung-Ang University)

Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary. Global Encounters via Southeast Asia ed. by H. Hazel Hahn (review)

Reviewed by: Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary. Global Encounters via Southeast Asia ed. by H. Hazel Hahn Nicolas Weber Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary. Global Encounters via Southeast Asia, Edited by H. Hazel Hahn. Singapore: NUS Press, 2019. 310 pp, ISBN 978-981-3250-06-2 (paper) Bringing together ten case-studies from across Southeast Asia, this engaging and thought-provoking edited volume offers new perspectives and insights into the social and cultural history of colonial and post-colonial Southeast Asia. The contributors address a wide range of questions and addresses the issues of cross-cultural exchange, cultural integration, adaptation, appropriation and resistance. They go beyond the usual research questions revolving around ideas of transmission and influence in a colonial context and question the binary of colonizer and colonized. The contributions are distributed into three broad categories: knowledge exchange, material and architectural exchange, and leisure exchange. Chapter 1, 'Nineteenth-century Portugal Through Other Eyes: The Diaries of Philiphê Bỉnh' by George Dutton (pp. 25–48) examines the diaries of a Vietnamese Jesuit priest, Philiphê Bỉnh, who resided in Portugal—mainly Lisbon—from 1796 to 1833. In his diaries, Bỉnh provides unique and dispassionate accounts of Portugal, [End Page 210] its institutions and foodways in particular, as seen from the perspective of a young enlightened Northern Vietnamese. Unlike his Western counterparts, Bỉnh wrote to educate his readers with a very practical purpose and to serve as a travelogue for future Vietnamese visitors. Chapter 2, 'Collecting Malay Heritage: Scholarly Societies and Imperial Policy in British Malaya in the Early Twentieth Century' by Matthew J Shauer (pp. 49–74) examines the role played by a network of local and global intellectual societies in Malaya. These societies, such as the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, were dedicated to the preservation of Malay culture through the collection and sharing of ethnological information. The work of intellectual societies played a role in not only the preservation of the culture of the colonized but also in raising awareness among the circles of colonial power and promoting more 'culturally sensitive' governance. Chapter 3, 'Rituals and Power: Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Contestation of Colonial Hegemony in Indonesia', by Arnout H. C. van der Meer (pp. 75–104), examines how cross-cultural exchange both supported and undermined Dutch legitimacy in late colonial Java. The article illustrates how the Dutch adopted and employed elements of Javanese culture (such deference traditions, dress, symbols of power and architecture) to legitimize colonial authority in early 20th century Java. The subsequent rejection of this hybrid cultural system by young nationalists and their adoption of Western ways, speech and dress represented efforts to modernize and to challenge colonial authority. Chapter 4, 'Chinese' Screens in the Dutch East Indies' by Dawn Odell (pp. 107–130) examines an example of cultural appropriation in Indonesia: the Chinese screens known as yingpi and heaping. Transposed in European Batavian homes and challenging traditional East Asian conventions, these screens acquired a whole new meaning. They helped in defining a uniquely Batavian style. Chapter 5, 'Absent Narratives and Missing Jewels: Cultural Heritage of a Tamil Temple in Ho Chi Minh City' by H. Hazel Hahn (pp. 131–161) reconstructs the history of the Hindu Tamil Sri Thendayuthapani temple. This temple was established around 1880 by the Chettiar money lenders hailing from Tamil Nadu, India. With its startling syncretic characteristics and unusual vimana (tower over the sanctum), this temple encapsulates the rich and complex history of cross-cultural exchange in colonial Saigon. The article explores the impact of Tagore's visit to Saigon (1929) and changes in the perception of heritage and identity alongside Vietnamese and Indian perceptions of the temple, concluding with its contemporary use and status. Chapter 6, 'French Nhà Rường and a Vietnamese Palace for the Governor? Architectural Exchange in Colonial Vietnam' by Caroline Herbelin (pp. 162–186), examines the complex cultural exchanges between the colonizers and the colonized, and the mechanisms of cultural appropriation and cross-cultural exchanges through two case-studies: the Governor General's palace in Hanoi, and Vietnamese adaptation of 'French style' architecture by wealthy families...

Jacques de Morgan's Explorations in the Malay Peninsula, 1884 ed. by Andrée Jaunay (review)

Reviewed by: Jacques de Morgan's Explorations in the Malay Peninsula, 1884 ed. by Andrée Jaunay Kirk Endicott Jacques de Morgan's Explorations in the Malay Peninsula, 1884. Edited by Andrée Jaunay, with contributions by Christine Lorre, Antonio J. Guerreiro, and Antoine Verney. Kuala Lumpur: Monograph 51, Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020. 254 pp, ISBN 978-967-9948-78-3 In early 1884, Jacques de Morgan, a 26-year-old French mining engineer, went to Malaya to look into the possibility of setting up a tin mining enterprise for a group of French businessmen. He concentrated his exploration in Perak state, where several Chinese- and Malay-run tin mines already existed. After three months of exploration (April through June), he found a promising location in the Kinta valley and made preliminary preparations for setting up a mining operation. He approached Frank Swettenham, the Acting British Resident of Perak, and applied for a mining concession, but Swettenham granted him only half the size he wanted. However, Morgan, learning that Swettenham wanted a topographic map of the then-uncharted interior of the state, offered to produce such a map if Swettenham would double the size of the concession, an offer Swettenham readily accepted. Morgan eventually produced the map, which included the major mountains, rivers and watersheds. When he returned to France, he found that his business associates had abandoned the mining venture, and the proposed mine was never established. In later years, Morgan carried out mineral prospecting expeditions in Armenia, archaeological research in the Caucasus and Persia and he served as Director General of Antiquities in Egypt. He never returned to Malaya, but his maps and journal from 1884 remain as invaluable records of 19th century Malaya. This book combines an English translation of Morgan's detailed journals of his mapping expedition (16 July to 4 September 1884) with excerpts from his later scholarly articles, including his findings on the cultures of the indigenous peoples he met (now termed Orang Asli, Malay for "original people"), the mining methods of the Chinese and Malays, and the soils, minerals, plants and even the molluscs he encountered. Morgan's journal reveals him to have been an amazingly knowledgeable, skilled, energetic, motivated, and self-disciplined person. His Malay porters nicknamed him 'strong man'. Early on, his crew included 22 Malay porters and potential guards, a Malay guide, a young French assistant from Province Wellesley (Emile Hardouin), a Chinese cook, and an Indian servant, and later added two elephants and up to 33 indigenous porters and guides. It ended with a few porters, almost no food, his malaria-stricken assistant being carried, and Morgan struggling along on infected legs and bare feet after his shoes rotted away. His procedure was to climb the nearest hill or mountain, clear any obstructing vegetation at the summit and take readings of the elevation and the direction of all other visible mountains. His group then marched on to the next significant mountain and repeated the process. As they hiked along rivers and across ridges between valleys, he plotted [End Page 201] the twists and turns of the rivers on his preliminary maps. In his spare moments, he drew pencil drawings and collected plant, mineral and mollusc specimens. His group spent nights in the houses of indigenous peoples whenever possible, but they sometimes found themselves having to sleep in make-shift leaf shelters in the forest, often in pouring rain. When staying in settlements, he spent time learning all he could about the local people. Morgan began as a mining engineer with broad interests in natural history, and he became a skilled ethnographer as he went along. During his preliminary search for a mine site, he studied the Malay language, the regional lingua franca, and, with some help from Hardouin, he could communicate with Malays, Chinese and many indigenous people. He was able to find some Malay-speakers in all but the most remote indigenous communities. He took special interest in the indigenes and recorded details of their groupings, histories, and ways of life. Unlike most Malays and Europeans of the time, he did not regard them as social inferiors or subhuman savages. He treated them...

Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Persatuan Asia Diraja Bahagian Malaysia: Annual Report for the period 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020

Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Persatuan Asia Diraja Bahagian Malaysia: Annual Report for the period 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020

The Bugis Chronicle of Bone transed. by Campbell Macknight, Mukhlis Paeni, and Mukhlis Hadrawi (review)

Reviewed by: The Bugis Chronicle of Bone transed. by Campbell Macknight, Mukhlis Paeni, and Mukhlis Hadrawi Salina Hj Zainol The Bugis Chronicle of Bone. Translated and edited by Campbell Macknight, Mukhlis Paeni, Mukhlis Hadrawi. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2020, 153 pp. ISBN: 9781760463571 The preparation of this meticulously edited book has undergone quite a long journey i.e. since 1975 until its publication in 2020. It started with research conducted by Macknight in Leiden on the version of the Bugis Chronicle published [End Page 225] by B. F. Matthes in his Boegineesche Chrestomathie (1864–1872). During his research, Macknight was fortunate enough to have been assisted by a team of prominent scholars and experts including local Bugis scholars such as Mukhlis Paeni and Mukhlis Hadrawai, and a number of his other Buginese friends. Finally in 1980, Macknight and his team decided to choose NBG 101 as the version of the Bugis Chronicle to work on. Since then, a lengthy, multi-layered procedure began, first of transcribing the chronicle from Bugis Lontara characters to romanised text, followed by the process of translating the chronicle from the Bugis language to English. At the same time the team also worked on identifying place names mentioned in the chronicle with their modern equivalents in South Sulawesi especially in Bone. Publication of the book after so much toil is a testament to rigorous scholarship and perseverance. The translators and editors are well known scholars in the history of South Sulawesi as well as Bugis language and culture. Macknight has written a number of works on the history of South Sulawesi. Mukhlis Paeni has contributed to the cataloguing of South Sulawesi manuscripts, while Mukhlis Hadarawi is a local scholar researching on the language and culture of South Sulawesi. The manuscript at the heart of this volume, the Chronicle of Bone, NBG 101, was originally found in the house of Besse Kadjoewara, the ruler of Bone later known as Arung Pasempe, at Pasempe on 9 December 1859 during the Bone war of 1859–60. It contains the chronicles of the rulers of Bone beginning with the rule of Tomanurrung until the reign of Matinroe ri Bontoala or Arung Palakka. The present book is important because it not only discusses the contents of the manuscript but also provides insight into other important aspects related to manuscript research such as principles of transcription and of translation, as well as listing previous editions of translations of the same manuscripts. The editors also provided vital information on other versions of the chronicle found in various institutions. The book's most significant contribution is in facilitating access to nonBugis speaking scholars to the contents of the manuscript by translating it into the English language. Apart from that, the editors offer an understanding of the content of the manuscript to scholars who are unable to read Lontara, a Bugis writing, by thoughtfully providing a romanised transcript. The editors also compare the chronicle with other related manuscripts, in addition to identifying and synchronizing place names found in the manuscript to modern geographical locations in South Sulawesi. This is helpful as it enables readers to understand the background and early history of Bone based on the manuscript. The Bugis Chronicle of Bone is an important work for specialist readers who want to understand indigenous sources as well as history written by and for local populations. The editors and translators of this book have rendered great service in making otherwise inaccessible local Bugis lontarak script available to non-lontarak users. Such painstaking efforts, coupled with scholarship of a very high order, would suffice to commend this book to scholars researching on the early history of South Sulawesi and especially on the kingdom of Bone. [End Page 226] Salina Hj Zainol University of Malaya Copyright © 2021 Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

The Illustration of Mīrkhwānd's Rauḍat al-ṣafā, RAS Ms. P. 38

AbstractThe celebrated universal Islamic history, Mīrkhwānd's Tārīkh-i Rauḍat al-ṣafā, written in Herat in the late Timurid period, became a model for later Persian histories, but has not yet been the subject of any substantial critical analysis as a work of historical literature, or in terms of its manuscript transmission. Although numerous copies exist of different volumes of the text, only a handful have been illustrated, providing another dimension to the reception and ‘reading' of the chronicle. This paper focuses on the fourth volume of Mīrkhwānd's history, on the Persian dynasties up to the rise of Timur, four copies of which have been illustrated, among them the Royal Asiatic Society’s manuscript no. P. 38. After detailing the ten pictures in the manuscript, the article concludes with a discussion of their character and purpose.

A Note on Sufi Snakes and Ladders

AbstractThis article discusses a number of nineteenth century playing boards for the Sufi form of the traditional Indian board game of gyān caupar̩ (the Chaupar of Gnosis), from which modern Snakes and Ladders derives. Usually comprising 100 squares inscribed in Persian, the playing area conducts the players hazardously upward from lower spiritual states to the final goal of heaven, according to the throw of dice and sudden demotions or promotions through snakes or ladders. Most surviving examples are held in British collections, including that of the Royal Asiatic Society. Detailed attention is given to a unique, expanded version of the standard Sufi board which came to light a few years ago. Innovative and elaborate in its structure, method of play and nomenclature, it seems however to have been a late and short-lived experiment.

The Orchid Flora of Gunung Ledang (Mount Ophir), Malaysia - 120 Years after Ridley

A comprehensive assessment on the orchid flora of Gunung Ledang, Johor, Malaysia was carried out from 2012 to 2018 with the aim to re-evaluate the presence of orchid species listed by Ridley in his “Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 35:1–28”, published in 1901, after more than 100 years. The relevant account for comparison is also listed, noting that Ridley’s historical collections were for the isolated group of hills commonly known as Gunung Ledang (Mount Ophir), while the collated item in Orchidaceae is part of catalogues for the whole of Peninsular Malaysia. After Ridley, no account on the orchid flora of Gunung Ledang has been properly given, particularly from the uppermost peak of the mountain, where many interesting plants and orchids are to be found there. This study identified 26 species or 67% were the same as those recorded by Ridley (1901), and 65 species or 83% of Turner (1995) checklist of 270 species of orchids for the state of Malacca and Johor, including the common and widespread species to Peninsular Malaysia. By contribution, this paper provides an updated account on the diversity of orchids in Gunung Ledang, listing 122 species of orchids, of which eight are endemic to Peninsular Malaysia, two are hyper-endemic known only from Gunung Ledang, and 30 were recognised as new records. A comparison table of the current findings against Ridley (1901) and Turner (1995) is provided which shows only 16 species were the same in all three studies.

Edward William West and the Pahlavi codex MK

Abstract This article discusses some manuscripts copied and described by E. W. West in his Notebooks held at the Royal Asiatic Society, with special reference to the texts contained in the Pahlavi codex MK.

The official and personal seals of Tipu Sultan of Mysore

AbstractThis article looks at all the known seals of Tipu Sultan of Mysore (r. 1782-1799) particularly those found in the manuscripts which formed his Library collection, disbanded in 1799 after the fall of Seringapatam and subsequently divided between the East India Company London (now in the British Library), and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Kolkata. By focussing on the British Library collections certain patterns of usage have come to light, possibly indicating Tipu Sultan's linguistic and literary preferences.It gives me great pleasure to dedicate this article to Barbara Brend as a mark of appreciation for her patience and help, whose knowledge and advice has been of such benefit to a non-art historian. At the end of this article I highlight an important manuscript from the Royal Asiatic Society's collection which thanks to her sponsorship has now been digitised and is available on the web as part of the RAS digital collections.