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A.

Johns
Tuhfat al-Nafis; not a precious gift?

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 148 (1992), no: 2, Leiden, 319-323

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Korte Mededelingen 3 19

-, 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

TUHFAT ALNAFIS: NOT A PRECIOUS GIFT?


For G.W.I. Drewes
In Grateful Memory
The Toyota foundation has an excellent record of support to academic
research and publishing, particularly in relation to Southeast Asia. A recent
addition to its program is the generous support it gave to the publication
of the facsimile edition of a remarkable Ms. of an important 19th-century
Malay history, the Terengganu Manuscript of the work known as Tuhfat
al-Nafi, with an excellent introductory essay by three scholars, Shaharil
Talib, Ismail Hussein and Michiko Nakahara.' This introduction, a valu-
able study of the work in its own right, is presented in Japanese, English
and Malaysian. It draws attention to the fact that the existence of this Ms.
of the Tuhfat only came to light in 1986, and gives an account of its history.
The authors' conclusion is that the Ms. offers a new and fascinating
perspective on the history of the Malay states by highlighting the import-
ante of Terengganu, and so 'negating the historical myth of Johor being
the resting place of the great Malay Melakan Empire' (p.xxx).
It is not the purpose of this note to explore at greater depth the historica1
importance of the Ms. Other scholars are more qualified to explore its
value from this point of view. Rather, it is to discuss the meaning of its
Arabic title, Tuhfat al-Nafi, which this facsimile reproduction offers a new
opportunity of considering in context. At least since the time of Winstedt's
publication of the Jawi text of the work together with an English summary
under the title 'A Malay History of Riau and Johore' (JMBRAS X-2, 1932,
I Tuhfat al-Najìs: Naskhah Terengganu [Tuhfat al Nafis: Terengganu Edition], Kuala
Terengganu: House of Tengku Ismail, 1991, 326 pp. ISBN 983-99662-0-0 (hardcover),
983-99662-1-9-9 (paperback). Introductory essay (in Malaysian, Japanese and English)
by Shaharil Talib, Ismail Hussein and Michiko Nakahara.
320 Korte Mededelingen

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

mül al-kathïr - abundant wealth; shay'un nafi, ca~irnu'l-qïmatyurghabu


flhi - something of great value, highly desired; rajulun nafi, hüsid - an
envious man. Another dictionary, the well-known al-Munjid (Beirut 1975),
long popular in Indonesia, adds a little to the explication of shay 'un nafi
- shay'un yurghabu wa yutanäfasu$hi - something desired and competed
for.
This range of meanings may be supplemented by reference to Lane's
Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 2 Vols,
1984, S.V.nafi). His survey of the older Arabic lexicographic tradition
yields the following: nafi: A thing high in estimation; of high account;
excellent; highly prized; precieus; valuable; and therefore desired with emu-
lation.
Given that n a f i here is a noun, it is necessary to decide whether it means
a person (to whom the gift is presented) or a thing. Since as an attributive
adjective qualifying rajul - a man - in the example from the Mu Cjam cited
above it means 'envious' (hüsid), it is unlikely to be a person. But if it is
a thing, what might this 'thin ' be? Part of the answer to this question lies
in the prepositional particlef which follows the title, i.e. tubfat al-nafifi
ahwäl bayna'l-mulük;this is the Same preposition by which the Arabic verb
raghiba - to wish for, desire - governs its object in the examples from the
Arabic dictionaries given above, e.g. shay u n yurghabu wa yutanäfasu$hi.
Thus the title might be glossed tuhfat al-marghübfihi - the gift made to
the thing highly desired. If this appears at first sight obscure, the problem
lies in the nature of English expression, not in the Arabic, as a reading of
the title in the setting of the exordium readily makes clear, thereby sup-
plying the remainder of the answer. The author, after the conventional
eulogies to God and the Prophet, describes the goal he has set himself. It
is to wnte a concise account of the genealogies, the journeys and dates of
the Bugis and Malay kings, an account of which he says sammaytuhu -
I have named it - Tuhfat al-Nafi. It requires little reflection to realize that
this goal - the writing of such an account - is the thing much to be desired
and highly valued. The thing which is nafi, then, i.e. al-marghüb$hi, is
the task that he has set himself, the preparation of a concise history of the
Malay and Bugis kings.
The title is both onginal and apposite. An acceptable English rendering
might be 'Dedication to the Splendid Endeavour' (of recording the circum-
stances of the Malay and Bugis Kings), or words to that effect. Such an
equivalent does not slide off the tongue quite as mellifluously as 'The
Precious Gift', but it avoids imputing to Raja Ali Haji unlikely errors in
Arabic, and attributes to him a clearer perception of what he was about
in writing his book, why he gave it the name he did, and a greater respect
for the task he had set himself, than does the traditional understanding of
the words.
If the solution is so straightforward, why then has this title - admittedly
unusual - occasioned such difficulties, in fact more apparent than real?
The answer is threefold. In the first place, scholars concerned with the
work have been more familiar with Malay than with Arabic and have
tended to rely on modern bilingual Arabic Dictionaries; in the second, the
title has been considered in isolation, outside the context of the exordium
Korte Mededelingen 323

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

THE ORIGIN OF THE DUTCH WORD 'TIJFEREN' AND


THE PORTUGUESE 'TIFAR'
In the edition of Tontémboan texts by Schwarz (1907:120-6) we come
across two Minahasan narratives, the first of which deals with a palmwijn-
tapper (toddy tapper) and the second with a h~feraar(tapper). The connec-
ted verbs used here are palmwijn tappen and hjferen respectively, which
have the same meaning, 'to tap toddy'. In his Tontémboan-Dutch diction-
ary (Schwarz 1908:135), Schwarz defines the Dutch meaning of the
Tontémboan verba1 forms maké'ét, kuméët (under the entry ké'ét) as 'tij-
feren, palmwijn tappen uit den mannelijken bloemkolf van de Arenga
saccharifera' (to tap, to tap toddy from the male spadix of the Arenga
saccharifera).
From a superficial glance at this word alferen we get the impression that
it is a pure Dutch word. However, we wil1 look for it in vain in the different
editions of Koenen's dictionary. It is, on the other hand, still to be found
in Van Dale's Dutch dictionary of 19481 (p. 880), where it is listed with
the qualification '(Ind.)', signifying that it is an Indonesian loanword, and
where its meaning is defined as 'palmwijn door insnijding uit een boom
tappen' (to tap toddy from a tree by cutting notches in it). The word is als0
found listed in the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal of 194 1, where
it is classified as an active, weak verb.
According to the early Dutch natural historian Rumphius (1741, 1,
5:60), the word h~feren comes from the Portuguese verb tifar, which,
however, one only finds in Rumphius (aside from the languages of the
various Moluccan islands; see De Clercq 1876356b). If this assumption
were correct, then it might ultimately derive from the word tiva (Malay
tivan), 'palm tree cultivator', which the Portuguese were believed to have
borrowed from Sanskrit dvipá, 'island'. This is based on the belief that palm
tree cultivators generally came from the island of Ceylon (see Dal-
And, as I'm informed, later editions of this dictionary at least down to Van Dale's Nieuw
Nederlands Handwoordenboek of 1982.

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