AN EPIC HERO AND AN “EPIC TRAITOR” IN THE HIKAYAT HANG TUAH

AN EPIC HERO AND AN
“EPIC TRAITOR” IN THE
HIKAYAT HANG TUAH
The study of the Hikayat Hang Tuah, the most monumental product of late medieval Malay literature, has raised many controversial questions.
One of them is, no doubt, the prpblem of the social tenor of the HHT, whose principal hero, as is already announced in its wordy heading, “showed great loyalty to his sovereign and renderedhim many great services”. Some fifteen years ago, in a paper read at the 25th Oriëntalist Congress, the present author called attention to the utter ingratitude of the raja of Malacca towards the bravest of his heroes, and expressed the opinion that the written version of the HHT which has come down to us, represents a court adaptation of a popular epic containing “a new Malay version of the conflict between a hero and a monarch, the conflict
which is so typical for a feudal epic”. That paper, having been translated into English, drew a great deal of attention from Malayists, among whom the most explicit critic was Teeuw. Profound study of the text of the HHT, such as Teeuw emphatically calls for, makes it possible to abandon the support of an oral epos of Hang Tuah which has not been transmitted to us, and provides, in my opinion, new arguments in favour of my viewpoint, which probably was not expounded too convincingly.
I pose the question: what is the function of the episodes in which the raja punishes die innocent Hang Tuah, leaves him at the mercy of his enemies or, in order to satisfy his personal whims, allows die hero to risk his life which is so valuable both to the raja himself and to all his subjects? The author of the HHT remains true to the rules of epic narration and does not comment upon these episodes. Of the foreign students only two have paid attention to the ugly role of the raja in these episodes. Teeuw, who considers the “Story of Hang Tuah” a grand and well thought out apotheosis of “the Malay as subject”, restricts himself to the categorie statement that the author of the “Story” does not bother to whitewash the raja “because the Malay story-teller did not need to justify the actions of a prince whose absolute sovereignty extends even to the right to do wrong”. De Josselin de Jong points out that in Malay literature there are many examples of a highly critical attitude towards certain rulers, and mentions the “divine judgment” which falls upon sinning princes in a number of works. But he merely comments that the immoral character of the sultan does not relieve Hang Tuah of the duty to obey him as long as he is his lawful ruler.Numerous typological correspondences suggest that these episodes where the “collision” comes to the surface are of a type, as W. W. Bartold has put it, found in every epic work in which “the magnanimity and the disinterestedness of the hero is opposed to the egoistic policy of the ruler”. It is precisely this inner “collision”, in addition to the constant resistance of Hang Tuah against “the foreign enemies” of Malacca, which constitutes, in my opinion, the Leitmotiv of the “Story of Hang Tuah”, and which allows us to interpret it as a finished and conceptually complete product. If it had not been for the prophetic dream of Hang Tuah’s father, the situation with which the “Story” opens could hardly have led to the idea that the vicissitudes of the descendant of a celestial being — Sang Maniaka — and of the son of a petty tradesman and woodcutter were combined. Only the train of events — the successful fight with similar adventurers like them and the rescue of the prime minister of Malacca (the bendahara) — opens the gates of the royal palace for Hang Tuah and his four comrades. As a result the initial situation “becomes a collision which leads to reactions and thus forms a starting point as well as a transition to action in the true sense of the word”. From that moment on every exploit of Hang Tuah is subjected to a doublé judgment: a check on his implacability with regard to the enemies of Malacca and a test of his loyalty towards the frivolous and cruel prince who is for Hang Tuah the exponent of the daulat, the sacrosanct principle embodied in the reigning monarch. Hang Tuah’s duel, after his return from regular exile, with his closest friend and brother in arms Hang Jebat, who had rebelled against the raja, can be regarded as the culminating scène of the HHT. After a desperate fight Hang Jebat died by his brother’s hand. Hang Tuah, who had put the state’s interests before personal emotions, feit bitter compassion. The dénouement of the “Story” has two stages. The beginning of the dénouement is an episode full of profound meaning: during a pleasure trip at sea the raja of Malacca looked down at a little fish with golden scales which was swimming beside his ship, and he lost his crown. Hang Tuah dived after the crown in vain, collided with a huge white crocodile, and lost forever his own magical kris which made him invincible. As Teeuw rightly points out, “to Hang Tuah, to the king and to every Malay story-teller it was clear that this spelled ruin for the entire kingdom”. And in fact, after Hang Tuah’s illness and his last visit to Rum (the Turkish empire) he went away as a hermit. The raja, having become a dervish, disappeared after receiving a reproof from the Nabi Khidir, and Malacca was conquered by the Portuguese. Agreeing with Hooykaas and Teeuw that the HHT represents an integral product of art, I believe that the dénouement of the “Story” must be the decisive moment of an artistic idea which permeates the work. This idea is that neither the boundless courage nor the unshakable loyalty of its subjects can save Malacca, which is ruled by a weak, ungrateful and cruel ruler. Thus, in my opinion, the heavy historical defeat of the Malays, the downfall of their entire brilliant kingdom, finds its explanation in the “Story”. Similarly in the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai the killing of his sons and the other crimes of Sultan Ahmad explain the conquest of Pasai by the troops of Majapahit. In the Malay Annals the humiliating execution of the royal concubine leads to the fall of Singapore, and the conquest of Malacca by the Portuguese was “When the shah plants a tree of wickedness, he loses his well-being and his throne” provoked by the murder of the bendahara of MaJacca and of his relatives by order of Sultan Mahmud.
The inner “collision” in the “Story of Hang Tuah” makes it possible, as we have already said, to connect it with the extensive cycle of popular epic products. It is characteristic of these epic “collisions” that they never develop into a decisive clash. W.Ya. Propp has written that “Ilya’s protest does not remain within the limits of demonstration, it also takes more active forms”. But it is difficult to describe Ilya’s table boast, mentioned by Propp, as an active form of protest.
Drink you poor, do not doubt
Tomorrow I shall be in Kiev to be prince,
and with me you will be leaders.
In the words of E. M. Meletinskii the unity of hero and epic community is, as a rule, represented by the certain, though more unstable, unity of hero and epic “prince”. When trying to apply a Standard for that “unstable unity”, which also appears in the Iliad (Achilles with his “lowly counterpart” Thersites on one side, and Agamemnon on the other), the “collision” between Hang Tuah and the raja of Malacca appears to be very dissimilar to the violent clashes of Rustam with Kaikawus, especially when the hero emphatically exclaims:

I am no slave of the Shah, and slave I shall not become!
Only before God I stand as slave.
Equally far removed from Hang Tuah, who has the deepest respect for his ruler, are Guillaume d’Orange of the Old French epic “Cycle of Garin de Monglane” and Marco Kraljevié, the hero of the Serbian epic, who occasionally frighten their rulers and do not give a pin for them. In his behaviour towards the monarch Hang Tuah is more like El Cid, “who bites the fieldgrass”, going down on his hands and knees before King Alphonso, who disgraced him because of slander. The subject of what is in my view the culminating episode of the “Story”, as W. M. Zhirmunskii has formulated it, “the ruler unjustly throws into jail (or banishes from his kingdom) the best of his knights. The knight, set free (or recalled) when the enemy attacks, becomes the saviour of the kingdom” is also widely known in world epics. The principal and specific feature of our epic lies, however, in the fact that Hang Tuah is compelled to fight not with foreigners who invade his native country, but with his own close friend and brother in arms, Hang Jebat. I shall, in this connection, present a closer view of the character of Hang Jebat,who plays an important part in the “collision” of the HHT. “Another one, called Hang Jebat, is also of good appearance, has a fair complexion and curly hair, and is sharp in speech”; in this manner the Batin Singapura described Hang Jebat as he told the bendahara of Malacca about the five boys who overcame the pirates from Siantan.
Since childhood Hang Jebat had been the foremost of Hang Tuah’s friends (only Hang Kasturi is comparable with him to some extent). In the HHT Hang Jebat often speaks. He thinks aloud about what will become of the Malay delegation after the “Magnificent Five” profaned the forbidden garden of the ruler of Majapahit. He threatens to reduce Majapahit to a scorched desert if something happens to Hang Tuah. Together with Hang Kasturi he prepares an assault on the ruler of Majapahit and his chancellor Gajah Mada in case the warrior secretly sent by them deals a blow to Hang Tuah. Hang Jebat and Hang Kasturi
take it upon themselves to guard the entrance to Hang Tuah’s room in Majapahit; they even protect him against assault when he goes to relieve himself. The description of Hang Tuah returning from the battle-field, staggering and embracing Hang Jebat and Hang Kasturi, is difficult to forget. Already during the five friends’ first struggle Hang Jebat’s fighting spirit stood out when he answered the enemy warrior who threatened him: “No, it is you who must bow to me so that I may forgive your offence”. His ardour does not weaken even when he volunteers to settle with the general who prepared the attack on Malacca. “Just say so, sir”, he says, addressing Hang Tuah, “and to-morrow your slave will slay Megat Trengganu at the raja of Indrapura’s reception”.
We turn now to Hang Jebat’s last meeting with Hang Tuah before the intended execution of the latter. In tears the brothers in arms, Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat and Hang Kasturi, embrace and kiss each other, and then part. On leaving, Hang Jebat and Hang. Kasturi, at the command of the raja, take with them Hang Tuah’s kris which makes him invincible. The raja hands over the kris to Hang Jebat, and the latter “was extremely happy to get the kris and thought to himself: ‘Apparently I shall become laksamana”. The appointment of Hang Jebat as laksamana, the commander in chief of the Malacca navy, was in the circumstances not in the least surprising inasmuch as Hang Jebat was considered the natural successor of Hang Tuah and the latter himself
had predicted his appointment to that post. This proves to be the exposition of the central episode of the HTT with which we are concerned, and Hang Jebat, so it would seem, proves himself to be the loyal subject who is at the same time by no means without human feelings. While he deplores the fact that his friend was innocently condemned to death by a higher authority in the state, he maintains discipline and does justice to the tokens of appreciation received frora that very authority.
Then follows the description of the rapid rise of Hang Jebat. The king réwards his new favourite in every possible way and bestows on him the rank which up to then had only been awarded to the bendaharas. The hero, however, misuses these august favours. With incredible audacity he openly accepts the overtures of the palace beauties and wickedly mistreats the courtiers (“sirs, you need not come into the palace and make noise here”,thereby provoking the strong disapproval of his close friends and prejudicing the beloved royal consort Tun Teja against himself. Within a short time the royal palace is changed into Hang Jebat’s
pleasure garden, where he feasts, amuses himself, and revels with the royal concubines and other occupants of the palace who please him. Under the cover of night the raja, accompanied by his body-guards and those wives and concubines remaining loyal to him, leaves the palace. Pleased, Hang Jebat unhesitatingly washes in the royal bath, dresses in the royal clothes, and sits on the royal throne. Feasting continues incessantly in the palace, and only from time to time Hang Jebat laughingly rises from the royal seat in order to crush new bodies of men sent by the king to regain his place. It appears that the rebel is quite satisfied
with the wholly absurd situation of reigning over women and being the master of a palace emerging, like a lonely island, out of a sea of enmity, hate and fear. Let us hear what Hang Jebat himself has to say concerning these turbulent events. As long as Hang Jebat was still in the raja’s good graces he dismissed the matter airily and avoided giving a straight answer to Hang Kasturi’s question. Having treated the dignitaries like dirt, he suddenly adds, as if for their edification, that the times of Hang
Tuah are gone. But then he again complains to Hang Kasturi that the bendahara envies him, Hang Jebat, and possibly even hides Hang Tuah somewhere [we recall that in the eyes of Hang Jebat the bendahara was Hang Tuah’s murderer, and so Hang Jebat adroitly throws doubt upon the loyalty of the bendahara, not suspecting that the accusation fully corresponds with the facts.
When Hang Jebat becomes master of the situation, however, he begins to sing a totally different tune. Thus, when his comrades come at the head of the royal host and threaten his refuge, and when Hang Kasturi challenges him to a duel, he answers Hang Kasturi straightforwardly: “I have done all that because of my grief over the death of the laksamana. His blood I avenge on the raja of Malacca and his envious officials. Why did the raja not send the enviers of Hang Tuah after my soul, for they would be without their heads by now. As for you, my.three brothers, you are not my enemies, and against you three my hand will not be raised. Allah and His Apostle are my witnesses that I do not wish to fight my brothers”. To this Hang Kasturi replied: “Oh Jebat, I understand you but what can I do, I have. not come here of my own f ree will but I have been sent by my king…”. Hang Jebat says much the same to the three elder courtiers devoted to Hang Tuah, who headed the following detachment that advanced against the palace. In both cases Hang Jebat, who beat the besiegers left and right, does not even lay a finger on the friends and sympathizers of Hang Tuah among them. When he recovers from his surprise at the sight of Hang Tuah
returning from secret exile, Hang Jebat swears by Allah that he would never have revolted if he had known that Hang Tuah’ was alive. I note a little further down that Hang Tuah, in answer to Hang Jebat’s repeated explanations, says: “Your words are true, but we, royal servants, must consider carefully every step”. Hang Tuah suggests that he regret his actions but Hang Jebat answers: “There is nothing for me to regret, nor do I fear death. I know that I am meant to die at your hands and one cannot avoid one’s fate. Only you must first see how the rebel Jebat fights: it will take fourty days to rid Malacca of dead bodies, and there will be nothing to breathe but the stink. ‘If once you’re bad, then do be bad, and don’t be shy about
it’ — thus I go on”). Again Hang Jebat does not wish to be the first to attack his friend, but Hang Tuah goes up into the
palace and the fatal duel begins in which Hang Jebat fights with the same determination with which he had acted against the exponent of the sacrosanct principle of Malay state authority and had profaned the attributes of the royal power in the palace.
The description of Hang Jebat’s last actions create a great impression. The mortal wound Hang Tuah inflicted upon him leads to terrible and long-drawn-out agony: Hang Jebat was ruined… Af ter a three-day seclusion for purification Hang Tuah goes out into the street, sees countless bodies of Malaccans killed by Hang Jebat, and calls on him. “And his voice reached Hang Jebat. And then he went towards the voice and saw the laksamana. And the latter said: ‘Eh, Jebat, enough of your killing thousands of people, for you yourself are no more of this world!’ And when Hang Jebat heard these words he knelt before him
and said: ‘O, my lord, quickly kill your slave, I would rather die by your hand than fall under the blows of strangers.’ And when the laksamana heard this he took Hang Jebat by the hand and led him away. He wiped off the blood covering Hang Jebat from
head tb foot and then took him to his own house. And the laksamana asked: ‘Oh, my brother, won’t you eat a litde rice?’ And Hang Jebat answered: ‘No, my lord, but may the Almighty God reward you for your kindness which I have not the strength to repay. But if you would do me a favour, I have only one request.’ And the laksamana asked: ‘What is
that request?’ And Hang Jebat said: ‘Your slave has had intercourse with Dang Baharu, a servant girl from the house of the bendahara Paduka Raja, and now she is seven months pregnant by me. If a child is born to her, take it into your house and educate it or make it your servant, whichever you wish. That is all I ask from you.’ And the laksamana said: ‘Very well, my brother, with God’s will your child will become my child.’ And, having granted Hang Jebat’s request, the laksamana served him
betel, and he accepted the betel and tasted it. And Hang Jebat began to unwind the bandage which protected his wound. The laksamana understood that Hang Jebat wished to die and without hesitation he undid the rest of the bandage. And when it was off, the blood rushed to Hang Jebat’s face and spouted out of his eyes, his ears and all the pores of his body. Hang Jebat feil into the arms of the laksamana and died”
Even after his death, however, Hang Jebat did not sink into oblivion. Appearing before the raja, Hang Tuah requests that Hang Kasturi be able to go with him to see the dead rebel, “because he was a friend and very like a brother to us ever since childhood — formerly the five of us were inseparable. You know yourself, my prince, all in life is notsimple”. Hang Kasturi wept at the sight of the bloody body of Hang Jebat, lying before Hang Tuah’s house, and he exclaimed: “Poor Jebat, my poor brother, your death was so senseless! If only you had met this end in the cause of our king, I would have died together with you!”. Hang Jebat is not forgotten when his body is dragged to the market-place at the command of the raja, nor when Hang Tuah sends his new-born son to the father-in-law of the Malaccan raja, at Indrapura (according to the Kelantan version, Hang Tuah thereby saves the child from death, because the king had ordered it to be thrown into the sea) , Even today Hang Jebat is still remembered because he draws the attention of writers and scholars. In Malaysia he became a symbol of the young radical intelligentsia and was interpreted in many products of literature and art as the noble rebel who takes action against arbitrariness, liberation movement and a fighter against feudal absolutism. At the same time, however, Teeuw does not wish to believe one word of Hang Jebat’s and describes him as a man “who, feeling his impunity and pursuing his own interests, deliberately violates binding laws, and then, seeing that he cannot avoid punishment, decides to go on witb his crimes to the end. In this work we are concerned with concrete Malay standards: obedience to the prince with all the consequences which follow thereupon, a basic principle of Malay society. But those standards apply not only to some specific, and in this case feudal and therefore,
perhaps, in our eyes reprehensible, society. The artistic force of this work lies, above all, in the fact that those binding standards have a considerably more universal character, and in this connection Hang Jebat is an offender in the broadest sense of the word. His conduct is, even from a western point of view, . . . extremely bad. He is durhaka in the true sense of that word: drohaka, ‘a public enemy’, ‘a socially harmful man’ “. However strange it may seem, the contradictory judgments concerning
Hang Jebat help to point out that basically he is the very epic hero pur sang of whom Bowra writes. The surplus of vital energy, the worry about personal glory, and the belief in one’s own “ego” often lead this hero to a severe clash with public interests, force upon him a tragic choice between different value-systems, and lead him to a “tragic mistake”, ending in his death. It is also true that “the splendour which irradiates a hero in the hour of his defeat or death is a special feature
of heroic poetry”.
The striking similarity between Hang Jebat and the typological description by Bowra is the more surprising since Bowra, who is unacquainted with the Hikayat Hang Tuah, regards “the epic traitors” such as Ganelon or Vuk Brancovic (recall how Ganelon explains to the barons of Charlemagne that his malice against Roland “is not treason”) as the real heroes. The traditional epic traitor, such as Hang Jebat, cannot be called a man of the future in the strict sense of the word. But it is also clear that he does not deserve the verdict Teeuw passes on him in the name of law-abiding mankind. Teeuw does not take into consideration historical and literary data which must be known to him, and absolutizes by no means unreserved medieval. Malay social ideology. “The all-conquering, stone-like feeling of justice, characteristic of the people of the Middle Ages”, and the “indestructible belief that every deed requires retribution”, were typical of medieval Malays as well as of Europeans. But in accordance with the ethical rules prevailing at that time, the subject could not with impunity blame the raja for the
wrong he had done (the general revolt against the cannibalistic raja in the Hikayat negeri Kedah is an exception which is perhaps explained by the fact that this work was written at a relatively late date, in the 18th century, and that the crimes of the raja in this case were already of a totally exceptional nature). The official ideology gave the discontented the right to leave the country of the undesired monarch or to wait until providence punished the criminal ruler (and of ten his subjects
with him!) for his sins. Leaving one’s residence is not an easy matter, however, and providence is usually in no hurry to pass judgment on criminals. Therefore, some related sentiments naturally arose in the public conscience of the Malays. There were dynamic symptoms carrying “a clearly expressed negative charge against this or that aspect of the former way of life” which were
“always actively directed not only towards something but even more against something.” These sentiments that cropped up in a soil that had been fertilized by the remnants of local patriarchal notions and the ideas of Islam, easily spread in those spheres of art, religion and ethics where emotions have preponderance over rational and logical ways of thinking.Thus within the preserved framework of the prevailing ideology a distinct ambivalence develops with regard to the institution of monarchy, an ambivalence which can be regarded not only as the dialectic contradiction between the official ideology and psychology but also, according to the position of the investigator, as the result of the struggle “between the prevailing tendency of the feudal culture that had been formed and the opposite tendency which often has not sufficiently taken shape and has not quite been stripped of a thin feudal coating”; as the presence of different axiological systems, a dominating one and “lateral” ones, in the framework of the disintegrating society or as the result of experiences connected with the early fase.of infancy.
These social feelings often came to light not only in Malay literature, but also in the literature of the Javanese and Balinese for whom the monarchy was an even more charismatic institution than for the late medieval Malays. In some cases these sentiments took a frankly traditional shape, serving as a suitable lightning-conductor for public passions. Thus during the performances of the “Balinese opera” (arja) the peasants “with explosions of pornographical laughter” reacted time and time again to the tricks of the jesters -— shield bearers who parodied the court etiquette which was so full of sacrosanct significance. During wayang purwa performances Javanese village spectators reacted similarly to the jokes of panakawans who, according to Aveling, expressed frustration and subconscious dreams of the society, some of whose members formerly were forced to follow “subtle” patterns of conduct and become traitors (menderhaka) in the true sense of the word in order to foster the progress of the human personality in this society. Similar emotions were also experienced by the readers of the Malay Hikayat Pelanduk Jinaka, in which the deceitful and roguish mouse-deer becomes the ruler of the animal kingdom and receives the homage from animals bearing pompous and absurd titles. In other cases anti-aristocratic sentiments find satisfaction in stories which are in agreement with the official ideology but describe kings who are punished by God or by fate.
In Bali, for instance, the poems about Bagus Diarsa and Jaya Prana may be included among such stories.39 The same feelings may be present in the veiled form of the Javanese wangsalans (a type of riddle in which the part that is expressed must call to mind the part that is concealed) or in the Malay pantuns which sometimes admit of precisely the opposite interpretation.

Ray Redzuan ( Dance Choreographer, Actor and Performer)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
ALIASKHAL PHOTOGRAPHY © US&THEM