Project MUSE®: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 83 (2010) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic SocietyTWOProject MUSE®Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society2180-43380126-7353Latest articles in Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Feed provided by Project MUSE®In Memorium: Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Ahmat Adam (1941–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979545
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Photograph courtesy of Saidah Rastam.Emeritus Professor Datuk Ahmat Adam occupies a distinctive place in Malaysian historiography for the depth, courage, and originality of his scholarship. Trained during a formative period in Malaysian academic development and active across several decades, he approached Malay history with a rare combination of linguistic mastery, textual precision, and intellectual independence.Ahmat Adam hailed from Melaka, where he completed his early schooling. Like most Malays of his generation, he began his formal education in a Malay-medium school. After two years, he moved to an English-medium school and later completed his secondary education at the Melaka High School. In 1967, he entered
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallIn Memorium: Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Ahmat Adam (1941–2025)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USIn Memorium: Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Ahmat Adam (1941–2025)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®187572026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Salleh Ben Joned: Truth, Beauty, Amok and Belonging by Anna Salleh (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979543
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A book lovingly curated by a daughter in memory of her father, Anna Salleh's effort is deeply touching and merits praise. It is hard to review this book in the formal, customary tone of most reviewers because Salleh's life and works invite us into the realm of personal reflection. When he joined the Department of English, I was doing a Master's degree under the late Professor Lloyd Fernando, a staunch supporter and fan of Salleh's creative work. After long months of reading and rereading this fascinating book, many aspects of Salleh's life and works transfix my gaze. Yet I shall not indulge in shallow praise nor descend into hypocritical critique. I believe that Salleh, who loathed the divisive binaries which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallSalleh Ben Joned: Truth, Beauty, Amok and Belonging by Anna Salleh (review)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USSalleh Ben Joned: Truth, Beauty, Amok and Belonging by Anna Salleh (review)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®100132026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13In the Malay World: A Spatial History of Bengali Transnational Community by Gazi Mizanur Rahman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979544
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This book is, in many ways, a groundbreaking work which makes a significant contribution to the history of the Bengali community. The history of Indian migrants has long suffered from the colonial construction of a homogenised 'Indian' identity, and so, in the spirit of Sunil Amrith's seminal efforts to identify the Tamils as a distinct ethnic group,1 the author sets out to trace the unique story of Bengali migrants in the Malay World, located within contemporary Southeast Asia. By combining archival research, biographical studies, travel writing, oral histories, interviews with descendants of the Bengali diaspora (who mainly originated from what is now West Bengal in India and present-day Bangladesh), and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallIn the Malay World: A Spatial History of Bengali Transnational Community by Gazi Mizanur Rahman (review)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USIn the Malay World: A Spatial History of Bengali Transnational Community by Gazi Mizanur Rahman (review)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®71292026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Archives of the British Association of Malaysia and Singapore Relating to the Second World War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979546
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One of the most significant and heavily used collections in the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) holdings housed at Cambridge University Library is the archive of the British Association of Malaysia and Singapore.1 The archive comprises some 24 boxes of material documenting virtually all aspects of British settler life in Malaya and Singapore, from senior administrators to the ordinary men and women who settled in Southeast Asia from the late-nineteenth century to the time of the Malayan Emergency, resulting in a rich series of personal recollections and an impressive photograph collection.2 This research note specifically highlights material relating to the Second World War, particularly accounts of the invasion
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallArchives of the British Association of Malaysia and Singapore Relating to the Second World War2026-01-13text/htmlen-USArchives of the British Association of Malaysia and Singapore Relating to the Second World War2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®268332026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13The Bukit Choras Inscriptions and the Significance of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Verses to Ancient Kedah
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979547
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Kedah is presently a Malay Sultanate and modern state located in northwest Peninsular Malaysia, bordering Thailand to its east and northeast. The state looks out at the Strait of Melaka, a busy maritime trade route between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea since antiquity. From the second to the fourteenth centuries CE, Ancient Kedah existed as a network or confederation of coastal and riverine polities located on the northwest coast of the Thai-Malay Peninsula, one which was connected to other economic and cultural regional hubs through long-distance trade.2 These polities functioned as centres for producing, collecting, and distributing foreign and local goods. Mount Jerai, a peak towering to a height of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallThe Bukit Choras Inscriptions and the Significance of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Verses to Ancient Kedah2026-01-13text/htmlen-USThe Bukit Choras Inscriptions and the Significance of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Verses to Ancient Kedah2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®1431032026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Counter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise by Joanne Leow (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979548
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Located on Maxwell Road in downtown Singapore, the Urban Redevelopment Authority Centre serves not only administrative functions, but also combines them with public exhibitions in its physical and digital galleries. These detail both urban history and contemporary projects, showcasing the city-state's narrative of a well-ordered, efficient, and liveable global metropolis. Amongst its more outstanding displays is the Central Area Model. Measuring around 10 by 11 metres, this meticulously sculptured 1:4000 scale model, complete with detailed miniature buildings, provides a bird's-eye view of the republic's Central Business District. But for Joanne Leow, an associate professor of English at Simon Fraser University
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallCounter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise by Joanne Leow (review)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USCounter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise by Joanne Leow (review)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®110282026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13In the Mirror: New and Selected Poems of Wong Phui Nam ed. by Brandon K. Liew and Daryl Lim Wei Jie (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979549
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This volume of the late Mohamed Razali Wong Phui Nam's (1935–2022) poetic and critical oeuvre invites a reinterpretation and re-evaluation of the pioneering Malay(si)an writer's work. Its editors, Liew and Lim, have organised Wong's texts from 1960 to 2022 into three main parts divided by time period, juxtaposing his creative and critical works against each other. This editorial decision contextualises Wong's personal growth as a writer within postcolonial cultural and political contestations. Earlier works, such as How the Hills are Distant, are reproduced, while Part III is especially relevant to literary scholars (especially the section 'In the Mirror'), which contains previously unpublished poems written
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallIn the Mirror: New and Selected Poems of Wong Phui Nam ed. by Brandon K. Liew and Daryl Lim Wei Jie (review)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USIn the Mirror: New and Selected Poems of Wong Phui Nam ed. by Brandon K. Liew and Daryl Lim Wei Jie (review)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®148422026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Muddy Waters: The Lost Sungai Lumpur
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979550
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Place names are like mooring poles, grounding us in the history of a place. But sometimes, their etymologies become lost in the murky waters of time. This seems to have been the case with the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's federal capital. A common explanation for its name (loosely translated as 'muddy confluence') comes from the city's nineteenth-century founders' description of the place 'where the Klang and Gombak rivers meet.'1 This line of thinking suggests that 'Kuala Lumpur was only brought into existence by tin miners who came upriver from Klang in about 1856.'2 In contrast, this article attempts to resolve speculation about the existence of a 'Sungai Lumpur' (Mud River: the Malay word 'sungai,' formerly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallMuddy Waters: The Lost Sungai Lumpur2026-01-13text/htmlen-USMuddy Waters: The Lost Sungai Lumpur2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®2073182026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13An Account of Several Inscriptions found in Province Wellesley on the Peninsula of Malacca
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979551
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The following article by Lieut.-Col. James Low, M.A.S.B. and C.M.R.A.S., was published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 17(2) (Jul.–Dec. 1848): 62–65. Inscriptions (A)-(E) referred to in the text are not reproduced. The last three paragraphs of the original article, which segue into a discussion about an inscription found in Singapore, have been omitted.(A) Consists of a group of seven inscriptions now extant on the rather weatherworn and sloping side of a granite rock at a place named Tokoon,1 lying near to the center of the Province, or almost directly east of Penang town. The whole probably appertain to one period and the same subject.The rock was pointed out several years ago to Mr Thomson the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallAn Account of Several Inscriptions found in Province Wellesley on the Peninsula of Malacca2026-01-13text/htmlen-USAn Account of Several Inscriptions found in Province Wellesley on the Peninsula of Malacca2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®111822026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier By Melissa Macauley (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979552
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The activities of the Chinese overseas in the 'Nanyang' region (南洋, loosely, Southeast Asia) have a long history, with a sizable Chinese community gradually forming on the Malay Peninsula after the rise of the Malacca Sultanate in the fifteenth century. Since long ago, settlements on the coastal area of the Peninsula have maintained contact with China. Historical records from various periods in China have offered later generations a basic understanding of early Sino—Malay commercial exchanges, civil interactions, and political formations. This shows that not only is Chinese migration to Nanyang an ancient phenomenon, but one which also historically involved small-scale settlement in addition to trade. From the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallDistant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier By Melissa Macauley (review)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USDistant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier By Melissa Macauley (review)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®142902026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Persatuan Asia Diraja Bahagian Malaysia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979553
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DYMM Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah Ibni Almarhum Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Alhaj, Sultan Selangor, D.Y.T.M. Paduka Seri Pengiran Perdana Wazir Sahibul Himmah Wal-Waqar Pengiran Muda Mohamed Bolkiah, Chan Sek Keong, Esq.The 143rd Annual General Meeting was held on 29 June 2024, a hybrid meeting, at Dean's Meeting Room, Faculty of Arts and Society Sciences, University Malaya and via Zoom. Dato' Henry S Barlow, Honorary Treasurer of the Society, chaired the meeting. 6 members of the Society were present in person, 8 members via Zoom and 1 proxy form was received.The following members of the Society, having been nominated under Rule 20, were elected to the Council.Gomez & Co were re-appointed as the Auditors
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallThe Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Persatuan Asia Diraja Bahagian Malaysia2026-01-13text/htmlen-USThe Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Persatuan Asia Diraja Bahagian Malaysia2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®659412026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13A Late-nineteenth-century Report on the Orang Asli in the Kuala Lumpur District
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979554
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The following report by E.J. Roe was published in the Selangor Journal, 5, 25 (1897, August): 413–4. In turn, it was published in Part VII (People: Aborigines) of MBRAS's Selections from the Selangor Journal (Reprint No. 26): pp. 592–4.Kuala Lumpur District: Report Forwarded to Government by Mr E.J. Roe, Acting Assistant District OfficerThe number of Sakeis [sic]1 in the Kuala Lumpur district whose habitations are known, and more or less permanent, does not exceed 125, including women and children. The greater part of these are to be found in the mukims of Ulu Klang and Petaling; there are also a few in Ulu Batu. They are distributed as follows:MUKIM OF PETALINGBukit Prual, situated near the 7th mile of the old
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallA Late-nineteenth-century Report on the Orang Asli in the Kuala Lumpur District2026-01-13text/htmlen-USA Late-nineteenth-century Report on the Orang Asli in the Kuala Lumpur District2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®77732026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia by Seng Guo-Quan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979555
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Seng Guo-Quan's Strangers in the Family is an innovative work of scholarship and an absorbing read. The book's theoretical framing (using the concepts of 'the stranger' and 'creolization') is complex but not unnecessarily complicated; its source base is substantive and original; and, most importantly, it offers new information and a fresh perspective on a much-studied population: the creole Chinese-Malay community of colonial Java. Seng's argument is that creole Chinese community-formation in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century colonial Batavia hinged upon the continual remaking of Confucian patriliny within Dutch legal, racial, and sexual regimes, where the women who were structurally marginalised by that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallStrangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia by Seng Guo-Quan (review)2026-01-13text/htmlen-USStrangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia by Seng Guo-Quan (review)2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®109032026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13The Genesis of Malayan Chinese Civil Society's Struggle for Constitutional Equality, in Particular Jus Soli
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979556
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This article explores the origins of Chinese civil society's mobilisation over the Federation of Malaya's constitutional issues, especially the question of citizenship, when the formation of the Reid Constitutional Commission (henceforth Reid Commission) was announced in early 1956 to draft the Federal Constitution. In fact, the basic principle underlying the four key issues raised—namely citizenship, the special position of the Malays, language, and culture—was that of equality between Malaya's ethnic groups. Among these, nationality and citizenship rights were the fundamental issues: without these rights, the other issues were rendered less relevant by default.In mainstream historiography, the Chinese community's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallThe Genesis of Malayan Chinese Civil Society's Struggle for Constitutional Equality, in Particular Jus Soli2026-01-13text/htmlen-USThe Genesis of Malayan Chinese Civil Society's Struggle for Constitutional Equality, in Particular Jus Soli2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®1492312026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Clementi and the Colonial Office: Tensions over Decentralisation Policy in the Malay States, 1930–34
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979557
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On 20 August 1931, Colonial Office (CO) officials in the United Kingdom (UK) were surprised upon reading that morning's copy of The Times. The headline, 'The Malay States Decentralization Plan,' headed a report on changes of 'farreaching importance' that had just been announced by High Commissioner Sir Cecil Clementi (GCMG KStJ FRGS, 1 September 1875–5 April 1947), following a Durbar held on 18 August with the Sultans of the four Federated Malay States (FMS).1 Surely, the officials thought, this was not what had been agreed upon with Clementi.This article looks at the events leading to this headline's publication, and at the subsequent tensions that developed between Clementi and the CO, through a fresh analysis of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallClementi and the Colonial Office: Tensions over Decentralisation Policy in the Malay States, 1930–342026-01-13text/htmlen-USClementi and the Colonial Office: Tensions over Decentralisation Policy in the Malay States, 1930–342026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®998952026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979558
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The issue begins by paying respect to a longstanding Council member of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Professor Emeritus Datuk Dr Ahmat Adam, who passed away recently, A profilic scholar on old Malay literature, he courted both respect and controversy due to his fearless criticism of what he saw as the lack of rigour in the use of historical sources. The four research articles published in this issue span the whole stretch of Malayan history in chronological order. The first primarily examines two Sanskrit inscriptions which were recently unearthed from a seventh-to-ninth-century CE Buddhist stūpa situated at the Bukit Choras archaeological site in Yan District, Kedah. The analysis of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/480/image/coversmallEditor's Note2026-01-13text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2026-01-132026TWOProject MUSE®49572026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-13