ABSTRACT: SYMBOLISM AND LEGITIMATION: SOCIO-POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE MALAY STATE (original) (raw)

2020, Gerak Budaya Publishers

This book discusses the mindset of the Malay ruler between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Two key Malay historical works, the Hikayat Raja Pasai and the Sejarah Melayu, are used as primary sources. They are examples of socio-cultural manifestations of the Malay ruling class in the context of political change in the Malay world. The Malay ruling elite utilised historical narrative to reduce the rippling effect of change that resulted from military and political upheavals. In the process, these commissioned histories were focused on legitimising the ruling elites' continued right to rule. These works were a reaction to the political decline of the Malay kerajaan. They were also a deliberate attempt to manipulate Malay society into preserving the royal polity. Myth played an important role in Muslim Malay political culture at the time. In the pre-colonial period, the Malay state ideology was a construct of the royal families. The discourse in this book focuses on aspects of Malay history that were used by the royal household to legitimise their political role at the helm of the Malay state.The apparent a-historical characteristics of the Malay sources was the key to obtaining legitimation from the wider Malay society. The cultural symbols used in the Sejarah Melayu and Hikayat Raja Pasai were projected specifically to indoctrinate Malay society into accepting the political organisation of their state. Cultural symbolism of this nature consisted of various forms of mythical writings centred around flora, fauna, Islam, geopolitics, the cosmos and the Malay ruler. It played a socio-psychological role in the Malay world by casting a positive light on an otherwise depressing reality of terrirorial defeat and moral degradation. The Malay kerajaan historian, whose writings were commissioned by the royal family, perceived history with one main aim in mind: to justify his ruler's continued place as the state's leader amidst political chaos. This work maintains that similar socio-cultural symbolism still exists in current Malaysian polity, suggesting that it is a continuum of pre-colonial elite political legitimation justification for governance.

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