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Johns
Tuhfat al-Nafis; not a precious gift?
In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 148 (1992), no: 2, Leiden, 319-323
-, 1939, Spraakkunsten taaleigen van het Maleisch, Vol. 3, Oefeningenbij Deel I en II, Batavia:
Visser. [Fifth printing.]
Kee Kum Ping and James T. Collins (Compilers), 198 1, Bibliografi dialek Melayu dan bahasa
serumpun dinusantara, Bangi: Perpustakaan Tun Seri Lanang, Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia.
Poeze, H.A., 1984, 'J. Kats 1875- 1945', in: J.J. Ras and H.A. Poeze (eds), De wajangpoema;
Een vorm van Javaans toneel, pp. xiii-xxiii, Dordrecht: Foris.
-, 1984, 'Bibliografie', in: J.J. Ras and H.A. Poeze (eds), De wajang poema; Een vorm van
Javaans toneel, pp. xxv-xlvii, Dordrecht: Foris.
Ras, J.J., and H.A. Poeze, eds, 1984, De wajang poema; Een vorm van Javaans toneel,
Dordrecht: Foris.
Sabaruddin Ahmad, 1948, Seluk-beluk Bahasa Indonesia, Medan: Saiful. [Second edition.]
-, 1950, Seluk-beluk Bahasa Indonesia, Medan: Saiful. [Fourth edition.]
-, 1953, Seluk-beluk Bahasa Indonesia, Medan: U.P./Saiful..[Fifth edition.]
-, 1958, Sari Paramasasrera Indonesia, Medan: Saiful. [Sixth edition.]
A.H. JOHNS
p.l), it has been widely known in English as The Precious Gift, and
subsequent scholars, when they have felt a need to supply an English
rendering of the title, have regarded this soubriquet as sufficiently time-
honoured to accept without further question. There is a ring to it that seems
to establish its legitimacy. Indeed, it appears in the English-language
version of the introductory essay. The Malaysian introduction, in its ac-
count of the history of the Ms., relates that on the death of Sultan Zainal
Abidin 111 in 19 18, it was handed over as an heirloom to his successor,
Sultan Muhammad, who reigned from 1918 until 1920, when he was
deposed by the British. It notes, however, that he 'terus menyimpan naskhah
yang indah ini'(p.xvi) - he nevertheless retained possession of this beauti-
ful manuscript. The English version has transmuted the phrase naskhah
yang indah ini to 'this precious gift' (p.xxx).
The allure of the phrase as a title is clearly strong, but acceptance of it
involves difficulties. If the work was a gift, to whom or what was it
dedicated? There is a slight cultural dissonance in the author describing
the gift that he offers as 'precious'. 'Unworthy' might wel1 be a more
appropriate word in such a situation. Moreover, a tuhfa by definition is
-precieus, so there is the whiff of a pleonasm in describing it as precious
- this point is to be taken up later. But there are other, more serious
difficulties.
The correctness of the rendering 'The Precious Gift' depends on the
assumption that the title as it stands has two mistakes in Arabic grammar.
One is the omission of the definite article al- before the noun tuhfa, the
other is the masculine form of the adjective n a f i - if here it is an adjective
- qualifying the feminine noun tuhfa. Thus to mean 'The Precious Gift',
the title would need emendation to al-tuhfat al-nafia. It is unlikely that
the author (or even copyists) could have made two such egregious errors.
The suggestion that Malays have a rather cavalier attitude to the Arabic
definite article and might be ignorant of the gender of the word tuhfa is
hardly credible, given the author's knowledge of Arabic, and the fact that
he had written an Arabic grammar in Malay.
Perhaps the following considerations may contribute to a solution to the
problem. The Arabic title is intended to give status to the work as an
Islamic history. As such, it is prefaced by an Arabic exordium consisting
of conventional Arabic formulae in praise of God and the prophet with
phrase by phrase equivalents in Malay. Then follows, also in Arabic and
Malay, a statement of the goal the author has set himself in writing it and
the title that he has accordingly given to his work: 'wa sammaytuhu tuhfat
al-nafifiahwäl bayna'l-mulik2 al-rnalayu ma Ca'l-Buqis';in Malay: 'Dan
kunamai akan dia tuhfat al-nafipada menyatakan kelakuan danpada raja-
raja Melayu serta Bugis' - and I have named it Tuhfat al-Nafi, giving in
it an account of the deeds of the Malay and Bugis kings. The words Tuhfa
al-Nafi, it may be noted, are not rendered in Malay.
How then should the title be construed? As it stands, it is an example
of a construction that in Arabic grammar is called i(tafa. It is characterized
One would expect in the light of the Malay bayän ahwäli'l-mulük. This note, however,
is concerned solely with the title.
Korte Mededelingen 32 1
by an inseparable relationship between two terms, the first tuhfa, called al-
mudäf, and the second al-nafi, al-mudäf ilayhi. This construction is rich
in nuances. A number of grammars describe it as the genitive, and much
of its protean character may be overlooked due to the connotations of this
term, since in English.it is usually understood solely as indicating pos-
session. The $ijfa,however, is more nuanced than this. In Arabic grammar
the relation between the mu&f and the mu#äf ilayhi may be expressed by
the preposition li, 'belonging' or 'intended to belong to', min, 'deriving
from', fl, 'in' or 'of. In some grammatica1 parsing, the two words are
understood as in a subject-object relationship.
Let US consider the lexica1 meaning of the two words. In Wehr's Dic-
tionary of Modem Standard Arabic (Otto Harrassowitz, 196 l), the defini-
tions iven to tuhfa include 'gift', 'present', 'gem (fig.)' and 'work of art'.
NU& is a word form that is often adjectival. Accordingly, Wehr gives
only adjectives as English equivalents: 'precious', 'costly', 'valuable',
'priceless'. However, it should be remembered that in Arabic there is no
clear distinction between nouns and adjectives, so that the word might
equally mean 'something precious' or 'something valuable'. Indeed, if the
word is, as appears to be the case, the second term of an däfa construction,
it must be a noun.
The word tuhfa, without the definite article, i.e. as the first member of
an däfa construction, frequently occurs as the first word of the title of a
book. The rationale behind this is not hard to seek. A book may wel1 be
conceived as something given of one's self, to students, to a task one sets
oneself, or to a discipline. Instances of literary works designated as gifts
for al1 such purposes are to be found in Brockelmann's Geschichte der
Arabischen Literatur (Leiden, 1949, Supplement Band 111, index S.V.),
which includes at least three hundred works with tuhfa as the first word
of the title. A few examples suffice: tuhfat al-adib - The gift to the man
fl
of letters; tuhfat al bayän hzz abdän al-insän - The gift [dedicated] to
explaining care for the human body; tuhfat al-jiqh - The Gift to the
Discipline of Jurisprudence; tuhfat al kabir - The Gift to the Great One.
It is in the light of such examples that the meaning of the title Tuhfat al-
Nafi needs to be considered. And here another difficulty raises its head.
If this is done on the basis of the English equivalents of the Arabic words
given in Wehr's dictionary, the result is something like 'The gift to the
precious', which has little sense and no obvious relationship to the author's
declared intention. Wehr's, however, as any bilingual dictionary, only
offers a selection of the semantic spread of the Arabic roots and their
derivatives that it lists, and inevitably, does not follow through al1 the
semantic relationships and connotations developed within the root.
The authoritative Arabic-Arabic dictionary al-Mu 'jam al- Wasi! (two
vols, Cairo 1973) is accordingly more helpful. It defines tuhfa tout court
i as tuga (something precious), 'said of something with artistic or historica1
value', which strengthens the suspicion that to qualify it with the attributive
adjective nafi(a) could be pleonastic. In any case this does not exclude
the meaning 'gift', which is amply attested elsewhere. As for nafi, the
Mu Cjam offers a number of meanings not included in Wehr: al-nafi, al-
322 Korte Mededelingen
to which it is the climax and the conclusion; in the third, this exordium is
broken up int0 Arabic and Malay segments. This interrupts the natural
flow of the Arabic, and impedes a clear perception of the relationship
between the clauses of which it is constituted.
If the Malay renderings are omitted and the Arabic text of the exordium
is read as an independent Arabic pericope in its own right, it is self-evident
that nafis refers to the task to be undertaken. There is no need for any
continuing uncertainty or any justification (alas?) for translating the title
as 'The Precious Gift'!
F.S. WATUSEKE