# Peranakan literature in Indonesia


My problem with doing research is that I come across so many interesting
topics, and it is hard not to pursue them, and get lost. Sometimes I
write books down in my “books to read” list, or download pdfs meaning to
read them later. Sometimes I spend hours on things that I absolutely do
not have time for. But that’s probably how I learnt most of what I know.
Even when I went to school in Italy, I could never study in the library,
because I would always just grab a book from the shelves and start
reading - unrelated to what I was actually trying to get done.

Tonight I am reading [“Literature in Malay by the Chinese of
Indonesia”](http://worldcat.org/oclc/7875678&referer=brief_results), a
wonderful piece of research by [Claudine
Salmon](http://www.budpar.go.id/page.php?ic=611&id=3229), because it has
some important passages about early lending libraries in Indonesia
started by the Chinese. Here are two great quotes that are really useful
in my research:

> p 93 *“It seems undeniable that at one time in the history of Java,
> members of communities of Chinese origin played a determining role by
> spreading the habit of reading, through taman bacaan or lenidng
> libraries, and then by being the first to take advantage of printing,
> recently spread by Europeans. Lastly, they suddenly confronted Malay
> speakers with a considerabl volume of historical, philosphical,
> technical and literary information, translated from both Chinese and
> European languages.”*

> p 112 *“Confronted by these rivals [Chinese publishers], Balai Pustaka
> became so anxious that in 1936 those in charge of the official
> publishing house sent a mission to inspect all the taman bacaan or
> “lending libraries” in Java. The mission found that the most
> frequently borrowed works all came from private publishing houses.
> Consequently, during the following year, Balai Pustaka launched a
> campaign to advertise the taman bacaan which bought its
> publications.”*

Through the sources in her book, I came across some Chinese articles
about early libraries in the Ming and Qing dynasties in China (one I was
able to download through WangfangData, one I will pick up at the library
tomorrow). I also find the topic of early literature in Indonesian very
fascinating, it’s amazing to think about the Chinese peranakan living in
Batavia and Weltevreden in 1870-1900 and writing these little snippets,
some examples:

> *“Dengan boeroe soeda di karang,\
>  Biar di batja djoega sekarang;\
>  Kabar itoe mendjadi girang,\
>  Boeat semoea la orang-orang”*\
>  (the last four lines in a poem about the visit of the king of Siam
> (Thailand) in 1872, apologizing for the poor quality, and explaining
> that he wanted his poem finished so people could read it quickly - p.
> 20)
>
> *“Hamba bernama ABDUL KARIM,\
>  Di negeri Ambon tempat moekim,\
>  Anak piatoe lagipoen miskin,\
>  Bahagian borgor tiada lain.*
>
> *Satengah orang ada pangilan,\
>  Majoor TJI ia seboetkan,\
>  Nama jang benar kaloe soeratkan,\
>  ABDUL KARIM TJIAT itoelah soenggohkan”*\
>  (self-description of a Chinese, head of the Chinese community in
> Ambon, written in 1890 - p. 25)

They wrote lots of original literature describing both Chinese
(Peranakan) and different local ethnic cultures, marriage and love,
morals and crime. It would be incredible to be able to read some of
these earliest descriptions of Indonesia - however it seems that most of
these books now only exist in one or a few copies each, spread out over
several libraries in Indonesia, and of course KITLV in Holland. In fact,
when talking about an early attempt of literary adaption, when a French
novel is translated into Indonesian, but set in China, and with Chinese
names, Salmon mentions that it would be great to be able to examine the
original titles and the translations side by side, but that this will be
very difficult, since they exist in different libraries.

We are used to classical texts in English being made available online,
whether earlier by the [Gutenberg project](http://gutenberg.org), or now
by [Google Books](http://books.google.com) and [The Open Content
Alliance](http://www.opencontentalliance.org/). However, nothing like
this exists for Indonesian. I really wish some Indonesian magnate (god
knows there are enough of them) would fund a huge book scanning project
to preserve this early Indonesian literary heritage, and also enable far
more research and scholarship around them.