The intriguing `stone’
By Shukor Rahman
New Straits Times (Malaysia)
Nov 22, 2004
THE new Islamic Museum in Penang is now exhibiting a replica of the
Batu Bersurat or Terengganu Stone, which is the earliest known record
of Malay words in the Arabic script. SHUKOR RAHMAN writes.
A REPLICA of the famous Batu Bersurat or Terengganu Stone has finally
come to Penang. It is occupying pride of place in the lobby of the
new Islamic Museum at the Syed Alatas Mansion in Lebuh Armenian.
The real stone, a 90cm squared off chunk of grey gneissic granite
bearing Arabic inscriptions, is a tangible piece from Malaysia’s past,
and was discovered in Ulu Terengganu almost 120 years ago.
It is the earliest known record of Malay words in the Arabic script
and its secrets, dating over 600 years, still intrigue scholars.
Only experts can read the inscriptions, part of which have been
eroded by time. The flowing Arabic script carries the edicts of a
ruler whose identity is lost, perhaps forever.
Who was the enlightened sultan who published his laws in stone and
left to posterity proof of his devotion to the cause of Islam? The
patient scribe who toiled by the banks of the Sungai Tersat centuries
ago, chiselling imperishably on rock, would most likely have been an
unsung craftsman.
There are hardly any clues to help you pry its secrets. Perhaps the
best you can do is to travel through time to 14th-century Terengganu.
The place is near Kuala Brang, where three rivers meet.
Historians and scholars believe this was once a state capital.
The people of Kuala Brang probably did not know then that among their
contemporaries were Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. The great Khan, who
was lord of Tartary, had his court at Cambaluc, present-day Beijing.
Terengganu of the 14th century must have had a thriving Muslim
community that had accepted Islam as the official religion almost a
century before the Malacca Sultanate was established.
The Terengganu Stone is indeed proof as the opening sentence of the
inscription is an injunction to the ruling chiefs (Mandalikas) to
“expound and uphold the faith”.
The traditional route of Islam to Peninsular Malaysia is generally
believed to be from Arabia to India and Sumatra but there is evidence
that Islam reached China in the 8th century AD and spread to Cham,
Cambodia and Pattani.
For a new religion to be declared as the state religion, there must
be widespread acceptance by the local communities within the state.
We have to allow for at least three generations to pass from the
time the first converts embraced the new faith. If the date of the
Terengganu inscription is 1303 AD, then the evangelising traders
must have been on the east coast at least 100 years earlier, roughly
1200 AD.
This puts the advent of Islam in Peninsular Malaysia 200 years earlier
than the conversion of Parameswara, who founded the Malacca Sultanate
and took the name Sultan Iskandar Shah, and more than 70 years before
Marco Polo stopped at Perlak, Sumatra, and noted the existence of a
Muslim community there.
As for the Terengganu Stone, what is its origins? Unfortunately,
the top part, which could have been onethird of the whole, had broken
off when it was found.
It is nearly 1.2 metres wide at the top and tapers like a wedge. After
it was inscribed, it was most likely planted on the ground, probably
on the river bank near Kuala Brang. It was found 32km upriver from
Kuala Terengganu in 1887.
Annual monsoon floods that year had eroded part of the river bank. When
the waters receded, the mud-encrusted stone was deposited not far
from the village mosque.
Somebody carried it to the mosque where it served as a foot-rest for
worshippers until a prospector from Riau called at the mosque.
It was well past noon when Syed Hussin Ghulam Al-Bukhari, who was
in the district seeking precious minerals, went to the mosque for
prayers. As he was taking his ablutions, his fingers ran gingerly over
the surface of the unusual foot-rest and he felt the indentations,
with a regular and repetitive pattern.
He then asked his assistant Engku Pengiran Anum to scrub away some
of the mud concealing the lettering.
Realising he had made an exciting discovery, he asked the penghulu
and mosque bilal to carry the stone to his boat.
He then presented the stone to the Terengganu ruler, Sultan Zainal
Abidin III. But it was only several years later before the inscriptions
could be deciphered by scholars.
There is something strikingly familiar in the underlying message
of the Terengganu Stone – belief in God, respect the laws and be of
good behaviour and morality. It was a timeless code of conduct for
a medieval community, and which is today enshrined in the Rukunegara.