Year: 1997
Type: article
Abstract: We Are Playing Relatives' Riau, the Cradle of Reality and HybridityIn a world propelled by disintegration and renewal, 'literature' is still able to offer some of us the ultimate salvation from our anxiety.Is it not tempting, in these days of disquiet, to turn to Hikayat Hang Tuah, that encyclopedia of Malay writing, to soothe our worries, to enlighten our uneasiness about life?Following conventions and subverting them in one and the same movement, the Tale of Hang Tuah is full of irony -and irony is what we may need in order not to be torn apart by our ambivalent desires of intervention and disavowal.Evasive and inconclusive, Hikayat Hang Tuah is exemplary for each and every form of Malay writing.It shows us how to play with love and life, with power and money.One of the many fragments of the Tale that should be able to soothe our anxiety is the one in which Hang Tuah, the merchant's son turned admiral and confidant of the Sultan of Malacca, is expelled from the Malacca court.The expulsion is the result of the slanderous suggestions of Karma Wijaya, the man from Java who has spread a rumor that Hang Tuah has been playing with the ladies in the palace; His Majesty, the Sultan, enraged and humiliated, decides that his most loyal servant should be eliminated.Slander, Malay manuscripts keep warning us, is as destructive as fire.Saying one thing and referring to another, trying to be a truth and a lie at once, it ruins every possible harmony and order.The very ambivalence of the words that are disseminated by Karma Wijaya, the Javanese outsider in Malacca, not only makes Hang Tuah another victim of language, it also brings the Sultan out of balance.!Enraged like a fierce fire, like a tiger', His Majesty does not explore the truth of the allegations as a good Malay ruler should have done.Instead, he immediately gives his Prime Minister royal orders to remove Hang Tuah from the court, expressing himself, as usual, in inconclusive words: 'Banish him immediately -I know he will be dead' (Segeralah buangkan, aku tahukan matinya).Banishment or execution, or both?Hang Tuah accepts his lord's verdict.He is given a ship by the Prime Minister, takes some people and some valuables, and decides to set sail for a place named Indrapura.Of course Tuah has a reason to choose Indrapura.It is the place where Tun Teja, the daughter of the local Prime Minister, is living, and tales about her beauty -here Tuah shares his thoughts with the tale's public in a flashback -have aroused the lust and desire of the Sultan of Malacca some sixty pages before.A man falls in love with a tale, is that not a plot for an
Author: Henk Maier
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W337744528