| | | | | | | | TERENGGANU HERITAGE : | Batu Bersurat or Terengganu Inscribed Stone |
| | | | | |  | DISCOVERY It was in 1902 that Syed Hussin Gulam al-Bukhari, an Arab prospector from Riau (in Indonesia) who had come to Kuala Berang looking for gold and tin, first discovered the Terengganu Stone. While washing his feet in readiness for midday prayer at the Kampong Buluh mosque near Kuala Berang, Syed Hussin noticed that the stone he was standing on had been inscribed with Jawi words. He was curious and immediately got the penghulu (chiefi's permission to take the stone back to Kuala Terengganu. There he presented it to the sultan (Zainal Abidin Ill). The sultan had it placed in the fort on Bukit Puteri, and there it remained until 1922 when a British colonial official had it sent to the Raffles Museum in Singapore for examination. |
| | | The museum sent photographs of the inscription to C. 0. Blagden, a colonial scholar of Malaya. Blagden deciphered the contents of the Jawi inscription. The translation was subsequently published in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society~ The Terengganu Stone was sent back to Malaysia following the opening of the National Museum (Muzium Negara) in Kuala Lumpur in 1963. Then, in the late 1980s, the stone was returned to the Terengganu state government, and it is now on display in the recently opened State Museum. |
| | | DETAILS Kampong Buluh was not the stone's original home. The locals had found the stone jutting out of the bank of a small stream nearby after a flood in 1887 and had carried it to the mosque to serve as a platform for them to do their ablutions. The inscription turned out to be a proclamation issued by the "Sri Paduka Tuan" of Terengganu, urging his subjects to "extend and uphold" Islam and providing 10 basic laws for their guidance. Four of the laws are either missing or illegible. The other six deal with debtors' obligations, sexual offences, the bearing of false witness, and types of penalties in default of payment of fines. But more significant is the date on the first face of the inscription, which is given as the month of Rejab, 702 AH or the year 1303 AD. | 
| Above How the Terengganu Stone was discovered. (From Early History, The Encyclopedia of Malaysia, 1998: 129). |
| The laws were not fully Islamic in nature. They were the local laws of the Malays and Javanese at that time, and Javanese and Sanskrit legal terminologies are largely used in the inscription. To the linguist the inscription and the laws provide proof that the Malay language could be and was used for legal purposes.
The granite stone on which the inscription was chiseled is unpolished. It is 84 cm in height and weighs 214.8 kg. The stone was probably chosen because of its convenient shape. It is slightly wider at the top with flat faces on the front, back, and sides. This gave sufficient space for the edict. The top part has long since been broken off (most writers assume that there are writings on the missing part), thus affecting the inscriptions on the lateral sides. These appear to run up one side, over the (missing) top, and down the opposite side. Efforts to locate the missing part of the stone have been unsuccessful. The inscriptions on panels A and B are fortunately unaffected by the breakage. |
| | | | | | HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE The contents of this inscription are of the greatest historical significance for the coming of Islam to Malaysia. Not only is it the oldest Jawi inscription yet found in this country, but it also proves that an Islamic principality existed in Terengganu almost 100 years before Melaka's foundation. The inscription is also historically significant in the development of written Malay. Russell lones, formerly of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, regarded the inscription on the Terengganu stone as "the first Islamic writing in the Malay language" found in the Malay Archipelago. According to Zakaria Ali, a scholar on Malay literature, Arabic script replaced Tamil, Nagari, or Kawi scripts in the 14th century. The Naskh style of Arabic calligraphy was probably chosen because of its clarity and is akin to the one used with pen and ink on ordinary paper. Chiselling a pen-and-ink script onto a hard medium required impressive skill and had two advantages. First, the script retains much of the flowing quality of handwriting. Second, the resulting grooves function both as inscribed words and as areas to be coloured or painted to highlight the text more prominently. But that appears not to have been done in this case. | | |  | Comparing the writing with similar inscriptions on other stones, S. Q. Fatimi, who had studied the coming of Islam to Malaysia, wrote: "The Malays tried to copy the forms of writing used by the people of Champa.' Although the Terengganu stone is of a later date, it is similar to stone inscriptions of Phan-rang (Vietnam) in what was then part of Champa territory. But the inscription reflects the court culture of the Javanese capital. | Panel of Terengganu Stone |
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| | | It is a culture of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit empire with its pantheon of deities, including Kali (the goddess of destruction) to whom the Terengganu populace pleaded for protection, and this was a not altogether incongruous picture of the 14th century Malay world. Based on linguistic evidence, however, Terengganu was probably converted to Islam via Sumatra rather than Java. The use of the Malay language for the Terengganu inscription would point to the Malay kingdom of Srivijaya in Jambi, Sumatra. The inscription hints at a literary tradition centered on the court, which was concerned with preserving the old (Hindu-Buddhist) teaching as well as adapting to the new one (Islam). The ruler, or Mandalika, was trying to impose basic Islamic teaching upon his newly-converted people: to deter them from stealing, adultery, and rebellion. It also points to Islamic law couched in Sanskrit terms such as Dewata Mulia Raya (God), Mandalika (lawgiver). derma (penalty), balanchara (adultery), adi-pertarna (the first) and tamra (regulation). However, with our current state of knowledge, who the Mandalika really was is anybody's guess. | | In fact the stone itself is still shrouded in historical mysteries. What happened to the first Islamic kingdom of Terengganu? What indeed was its origin and why did this kingdom subsequently disappear? We do not know, but the answers might eventually come from archaeologists and other scholars. It is likely that Terengganu was attacked and overrun by foreign forces, possibly even from Java. The Terengganu stone may be the only surviving artifact of an important era and polity. The Kuala Berang or Terengganu stone is a historic Islamic contribution to the people of the Malay- Indonesian Archipelago within the field of ancient writing and language. It is a most treasured heritage. |
| | | OTHMAN YATIM is a Professor of Islamic Art at the Academy Of Malay Studies of The University Malaya, and the Director of the Museum of Asian Art, also at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. |
| | | | TERENGGANU HERITAGE : | Batu Bersurat or Terengganu Inscribed Stone |
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