Voices of Southeast Asia: essential readings from antiquity to the present /

252 Pages·2014·4.928 MB·English

by  George E. Dutton, editor.

VOICES of
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Also Available from M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Voices of South Asia
Essential Readings from Antiquity to the Present
Edited by Patrick Peebles
VOICES of
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Essential Readings from Antiquity to the Present
George E. Dutton,
Editor
RO Routledge
U
TLEDG Taylor & Francis Group
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2014 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Voices of Southeast Asia (Dutton)
Voices of Southeast Asia : essential readings from antiquity to the present / edited by
George E. Dutton.
pages cm.
In English, chiefly translated from Southeast Asian languages.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7656-3666-9 (hardcover: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-7656-2076-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Southeast Asia—Civilization. 2. Southeast Asia—History—Sources. 3. Southeast Asian
literature—Translations into English. I. Dutton, George Edson, editor of compilation.
II. Title.

DS625.V65 2014
959—dc23 2013035419
ISBN 13: 9780765620767 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765636669 (hbk)
Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................vii
Map of Southeast Asia ........................................................................xv
Kawi Inscription from Java • Anonymous
(894, Indonesia) .................................................................................3
Shwegugyi Pagoda Inscription • King Alaungsithu
(1141, Burma) ..................................................................................10
Viet Dinh U Linh Tap • Ly Te Xuyen
(1329, Vietnam) ...............................................................................16
The Maniyadanabon • Shin Sandalinka
(Fifteenth Century, Burma) ..............................................................25
Truyen Ky Man Luc • Nguyen Du
(Sixteenth Century, Vietnam) ..........................................................34
Sejarah Melayu • Tun Sri Lanang
(1612, Malaysia) ..............................................................................44
Prince Samuttakote • Phra Maharatchakhru
(Seventeenth Century, Thailand) .....................................................52
Reamker • Anonymous
(Sixteenth–Eighteenth Century, Cambodia) ....................................67
Tale of Kieu • Nguyen Du
(1810s, Vietnam) ..............................................................................80
Glass Palace Chronicle • Burmese Court Historians
(1829, Burma) ..................................................................................88
v
vi
Babad Dipanagara • Pagneran Dipanagara
(1830s, Indonesia) ...........................................................................99
Rantjak Dilabueh • Anonymous
(Nineteenth Century, Indonesia) ....................................................110
Noli Me Tangere • José Rizal
(1887, Philippines) .........................................................................117
Letters of a Javanese Princess • Raden Adjeng Kartini
(1899, Indonesia) ...........................................................................125
Dumb Luck • Vu Trong Phung
(1936, Vietnam) .............................................................................134
Oil • Thein Pe Myint
(1938, Burma) ................................................................................144
Return • Miao Hsiou
(1950s, Malaysia) ..........................................................................153
Not Out of Hate • Ma Ma Lay
(1955, Burma) ................................................................................162
Letters from Thailand • Botan
(1969, Thailand) ............................................................................172
Sacrifice • Outhine Bounyavong
(1980s, Laos) .................................................................................181
Tales of the Demon Folk • Sri Daoruang
(1984, Thailand) ............................................................................189
An Umbrella • Ma Sandar
(1990, Burma) ................................................................................199
The Water Nymph • Nguyen Huy Thiep
(1992, Vietnam) .............................................................................207
Painting the Eye • Philip Jeyaretnam
(2002, Singapore) ..........................................................................221
Bibliography .....................................................................................231
About the Editor ...............................................................................235
Introduction
A survey of Southeast Asian literature such as this begs the question of
whether such a body of writing exists. Are there sufficient geographi-
cal, cultural, and even temporal links that give such a body of literature
genuine coherence? This question grows out of the long-standing de-
bates about whether Southeast Asia is a meaningful label rather than an
academic or geopolitical convenience. In literature, as in other areas of
culture, Southeast Asia features several significant divisions that would
seem to doom attempts to impose coherence upon a place strongly in-
fluenced by a series of historically significant cultural inflows. These
influences have reflected first the cultures, languages, and literatures
that arrived in the region from the Indian Subcontinent, followed not
long thereafter by those emanating from the Chinese world to the north.
Subsequent influences that dramatically shaped the cultural landscape
came first from the Arabic world, sometimes directly and sometimes re-
fracted through a culturally changed subcontinent, and later from Europe,
first in the form of merchants and missionaries, and later as full-blown
colonialism. This series of successive and overlapping cultural flows
created numerous fissures that run across a region ostensibly linked by
geography and historical experience. A brief survey of their impacts
may help to clarify.
Chronologically, the earliest influence that penetrated the region was
that which flowed from the Indian Subcontinent beginning about 500
BCE. These cultural forces crossed the seas and followed the monsoon
winds, making their way into and across what is today the Indonesian
archipelago. Visible reminders of this process of “Indianization” are to
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
be seen in monuments such as Borobudur in central Java, but in other
regions of the island world as well. These forces also took root on the
mainland of Southeast Asia, where Hindu and Buddhist practices and
literatures traveled with Brahman priests and the merchants who trans-
ported them. Not long after the earliest arrivals of these flows from
South Asia, the northeastern perimeter of the region saw the beginnings
of Chinese cultural inflows. While the reach of this cultural penetration
was limited until the end of the first millennium, the seeds had been
planted for a slow expansion and southward migration of this literary
influence. The third great flow of literary influence came hand in hand
with the arrival of Islam, following the same oceanic trading patterns
that had earlier brought Hindu-Buddhist influences. The arrival of Islam
began in the thirteenth century in northern Sumatra and the religion and
its ancillary culture gradually expanded across the entire island region:
reaching as far as what is today the southern Philippines, parts of the
eastern Indonesian archipelago, and even the central Vietnamese coast,
whose seaward orientation made it a de facto part of the island world of
Southeast Asia. Particularly in the Indonesian archipelago, this Islamic
literary and cultural tradition substantially displaced the existing Hindu-
Buddhist literary base, though elements of the earlier tradition continued
to survive.
The result of these multiple cultural flows was a broad tripartite divi-
sion of the literary landscape, with a Sinicized literary tradition strong
in the Vietnamese realm, an Indianized literature dominating in the rest
of the mainland world, stretching from Burma through Cambodia, and
an Islamized literary tradition defining writing and texts in the island
world, encompassing territory from Sumatra across the Malay Peninsula
throughout most of the Indonesian archipelago and into Mindanao. Not
surprisingly, one finds complex literary hybrids throughout this region,
reflecting cultural intersections, and an absence of cultural dogmatism
that has long defined Southeast Asia. In short, in literature, as in other
realms, Southeast Asia was, to use a long-standing cliché, a crossroads,
a place that was cross-fertilized by multiple cultures across a long span
of time. Nonetheless, as a starting point for understanding the broad
historical literary patterns across the region, this tripartite schema should
be borne in mind.
The influences of these multiple literary and linguistic forces mani-
fested themselves in many ways. Some were as simple as expanding
the vocabulary of local literatures. New words were introduced that
INTRODUCTION ix
described imported concepts and ideas, and these terms were gradually
indigenized, picking up local inflections. Other influences were broader,
including the introduction of entirely new literary genres and traditions,
ranging from Buddhist pedagogical texts to Confucian morality poems
to Islamic genealogical narratives and eventually to the European novel.
These new genres typically arrived in the form of literary examples
from their places of origin, and subsequently inspired local writers to
produce their own materials in emulation of these forms. Thus, as with
most other external cultural influences, Southeast Asians domesticated
these new literary forms, making them distinctly their own. It was not
merely genres, but also storylines that were brought into the region and
then transformed and localized. Examples abound, but two will suffice
to illustrate this pattern.
The first example is the Indian epic the Ramayana, a tale of princes,
princesses, demons, and anthropomorphized monkeys. This tale was taken
up in numerous parts of Southeast Asia, though especially among the
mainland peoples, where its characters and storyline were retained, but
its locale was indigenized, and numerous references to local personalities
were also included. At times, one even sees drastic changes in the main
characters, including a Lao version in which the demon Ravana becomes
not the villain as in the original story, but the hero, in the form of a refined
Lao prince.1 The second, and much later, example can be found in the
early nineteenth-century Vietnamese epic masterpiece the Tale of Kieu.
This extended poem, by Nguyen Du, was an adaptation and retelling of
a minor Chinese tale that Du had read while serving as an emissary to
the Chinese court in the early 1800s. The resulting verse thus rested on
a substructure of Chinese literature, even as the tale itself was distinctly
Vietnamese, both in terms of its sensibilities and even more significantly
in its written form, which combined an indigenous script with a distinc-
tively Vietnamese poetic meter. It achieved widespread popularity in the
nineteenth century, its circulation primarily oral, for the vernacular poetic
form made its transmission relatively straightforward. This was very much
in keeping with long-standing Vietnamese oral traditions. These examples
are but two of the innumerable instances of Southeast Asian literary bor-
rowing and transformation. Such patterns of literary transmigration and
transformation are hardly unique to the Southeast Asian context, of course,
for the adaptation and localization of literature is an ancient tradition. And
yet, these types of literary borrowings are a particularly significant aspect
of the Southeast Asian cultural landscape.