World Making with Malay-Indonesian Manuscripts

What new framings emerge when we revisit the vibrant world of Malay-Indonesian manuscripts, looking beyond the boundaries imposed by colonial and nationalist scholarship? This volume revitalises manuscript studies by using texts in entirely fresh ways, situating them as dynamic instruments of knowledge and meaning-making and cultural transformation. Through contextual readings, it uncovers multiple historical and cultural narratives within and between manuscripts, challenging established understandings of power, identity, and authorship. Chapters explore themes ranging from the origins of kingdoms and intellectual traditions to the reinvention of contemporary lives through politicised readings of older texts. Social actors in the manuscript world engaged in a remarkable array of practices: they wrote, illustrated, copied, exchanged, and performed texts; they travelled with manuscripts, wielding them to assert authority, resist domination, or celebrate the sacrality of the written word.

By foregrounding the diversity and versatility of Malay-Indonesian textual traditions, this book recentres manuscripts as vital agents in shaping Southeast Asian histories, decentres fixed notions of a singular "Malay" worldview, and reveals the fluidity of cultural memory across time and place. This study will prove indispensable to scholars and students of Southeast Asian studies, decolonial studies, and anyone interested in the broader dynamics of knowledge production and cultural reinvention in the region.

Sher Banu Khan is a historian of the Malay World in the pre-colonial period focusing on gender and manuscript studies, political culture and Islam.

Maznah Mohamad is currently Honorary Fellow and formerly Associate Professor with the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore.