Cocos Malay Pantun

One of the accounts in 30 Stories, 30 Years is a history written by Adiismah Mansa from the Year 8/9 class, who interviewed James Bin Jamin about his captivating poetry. This is Adiismah Mansa’s entry in the book:

Cocos poems are composed of four lines which are based on real life situations. I spoke to my great uncle, Benjamin James, about these pantun, as they are called. He told me of a time when he was stuck in a forest for seven days. Based on this experience, he made this poem:

Tuju hari di dalam utan,

Air tak minum nasi tak makan

Sehari hari tak lihat tuan

Rasa kusut tubu badan

 

Translation:

Spent seven days in the forest

Had no water to drink and no rice to eat

Day to day I didn’t see the master (John Clunies-Ross)

My body felt tangled

When James and his friends accidentally arrived on West Island he made this poem.

Seninit terebang[sic.] melayang

Paro paro kain tegilis

Suda tesala di negeri orang

Tau tau bawak diri

Translation:

A seringgit (bird) soaring across the sky

 (This sentence can’t be translated due to old style Cocos Malay.)

Already mistakenly arrived at someone’s land

Now it’s up to him to behave himself.

Every time James creates a poem, he recites a special verse called doa tenang hati. He recites this verse in the belief that he will recall the newly-made poem clearly later. This might be why he is the only person on Cocos who remembers so many of these poems.

James made poetry so he wouldn’t get bored while working. Pantun were once so popular that almost everybody made them and, occasionally, battles would be held. Whoever had the best poem(s) would win. The rules were simple: the poem had to make sense, it had to have a meaning behind it, it had to be based on a true story and the audience had to like it. It was the audience who judged the poems and declared the winners. James won many of these battles, but his brother, Capstan, would win almost every time he competed.

When James was a young man, he didn’t have pen or paper. He could not write his poems so he created and recited them orally. It is amazing to us now how he can remember many of these poems, given that he did not write his poems down and especially since he is now 94 years old!

The pantun form of poetry is common through the Malay world.

Pantun battles to were also noted by Carl Gibson-Hill, an English medical doctor and later curator of Singapore’s Raffle’s Museum. Gibson-Hill was stationed at the Cable Station on Pulo Tikus (Direction Island) in the early 1940s. Among his insightful records on the Cocos Malays, he describes the Selon rituals which occurred as part of wedding and other ceremonies:

The Selon was usually danced only by men…During the course of it one of the performers would quote or compose pantuns, which had to be answered by the other (though responses sometimes came from the audience). The pantuns were generally introduced by the lines,

Raksaksa yang sayang he!

Raksaksa yang sayang he!

Liah nona yang jau,

Raksaksa yang sayang he!

A considerable number of these verses were written down for me but unfortunately the texts are now lost. (Gibson-Hill, "Notes", 174)

So much for the context, but what about the meaning of James’ poetry? Deeply metaphorical, pantuns can also be funny, ribald, sentimental, ironic, serious, whimsical, and even nonsensical. So, though Jame’s pantun is ‘based on a real life situation’, it is impossible for any person of sound body and mind to be ‘literally’ lost on these tiny isles where lagoon and ocean are rarely more than a couple of hundred yards away. Similarly, in the second pantun, negeri orang is translated well as “someone’s land” but it might also mean something like “foreign shores” or simply overseas. Perhaps it refers to Christmas Island (700 miles away), Keeling Island (15 miles to the north) or simply West Island (a short sail across the lagoon). However, Cocos men of James’ generation would not accidentally get blown to West Island where, since WWII, ‘foreigners’ have lived. Did he think of West Island as another realm or was he hinting at something else? I could only guess at what James is alluding to and what his audience understood in these 

I want here to focus particularly on the reference to his tuan, the last ‘King’ of Cocos, Clunies Ross V. Tuan can simply mean "mister" (as a term of address for European man) or can have more hierarchical connotations of "master". Although intriguing, the reference to the ‘master’ is not unprecedented. Consider Abdullah bin Abdul al Kadir (1796–1854). Abdullah one of the more famous figures in Malay literature. Among other things, Munshi was a scribe for Stamford Raffles, a man famous as the founder of Singapore. Indeed, Raffles features in one of Abdullah’s poems:

Singapura negeri baharu,

Tuan Raffles menjadi raja

Bunga melur, cempaka biru,

Kembang sekuntum di mulut naga.

This could be translated as:

Singapore is a new realm,

Master Raffles reins as king,

Jasmine and frangipani flowers

blossom as one in the dragon’s mouth

Although Munshi was not a Cocos Malay, he may well have an incidental connection. Munshi was Raffles’ scribe. Raffles was friends with Alexander Hare. And Alexander Hare was the first ‘king’ of the Cocos Malays. So I’d like to imagine that Munshi met Hare. This would establish only a few degrees of separation between Munshi and our Cocos Malay poet, James bin Jamin. 

Interesting though these discursions may be, even larger questions demand answers. How did generations of self-styled Cocos ‘masters’—whether called tuan” or otherwise— maintain rule over them? What were the larger historical developments that allowed this all to happen? This is something I attempt to answer in my book The Cocos Malays: Perspectives from Anthropology & History.

Notes

Gibson-Hill writes:

During the course of it one of the performers would quote or compose pantuns, which had to be answered by the other (though responses sometimes came from the audience). The pantuns were generally introduced by the lines, Baksaksa yang sayang he Î Raksaksa yang sayang he Î Liah nona yang jau, Eaksaksa yang sayang he ! A considerable number of these verses were written down for mer but unfortunately the texts are now lost. A great many of them were verv similar to, or identical with, pantuns that have been pub- lished from the Malay Peninsula. A few had definite local allu-sions, and would seem to have been produced on the island. Some certainly were, as they contained references to events on Pulo Tikus, of which details had reached the kampong. Two, which were explained to me with great delight by my boatman, brought in my peculiar habit of collecting bird skins, and putting dead fish in glass jars. (Gibson-Hill, "Notes", 174)