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2002-05-03 - 3:17 p.m. In the fourth chapter of the Malay Annals, or Sejarah Melayu, there is an account of the war waged by the Majapahit empire on the kingdom of Singapore. It began with a winsome challenge on the part of the Majapahit ruler. When he heard of the ascendancy of Singapore, and that its king was not willing to pay homage to him, the Majapahit ruler asked one of his artisans to fashion a miraculous object: a piece of wood, planed to produce an unbroken scroll, measuring seven depa (the unit of length between the outermost fingertips of two arms stretched side-to-side). This wood shaving, tissue-thin, almost transparent, was rolled into the shape of an ear-ring pin, to be presented to the king of Singapore, Raja Paduka Seri Pikrana Wira. The accompanying letter read: 'Witness the genius of the Javanese. Is there anybody in Singapore with such magnificent skill?' The reply of the Singapore king was suitably inflamed: 'Would the king of Majapahit insult the manhood of our kingdom by sending us this ear-ring pin?' The Majapahit delegation was quick to correct his error. 'Your Highness, that was not what our ruler meant. He simply wanted to ask if there was anyone in Singapore who has the ability to shave a piece of wood this finely (as if it was the almost invisible skin a man discards while sleeping?)' Here Seri Pikrama summoned a carpenter, Sang Bintan, and ordered him to remove the hair off a boy's head. Under the firm hands of the carpenter, the boy's head was manoeuvred expertly, and before the boy could take a deep sob to power his next round of tears, he was as bald as the day he was born. The Majapahit delegation beheld the tufts of hair that wreathed the boy's feet, but what fascinated him further was the instrument in Sang Bintan's hands: a beliung, a small axe with a horizontal blade. Thus Seri Pikrama spoke, 'Witness the genius of my people, to smooth the boy's head without drawing a speck of blood, what is it to him to whittle away at a piece of wood? Here, present this axe to your ruler, with my kindest regards.' The Majapahit ruler, upon hearing the Singapore king's reply, was understandably furious. He remarked, 'Perhaps the king of Singapore wishes to invite me over to clean his scalp like that of the boy's.' And thus he summoned his top leftenants and admirals to assemble an armada of a hundred ships (the jong), escorted by various other maritime cavalry (the kelulus, jongkong, melamtang). And here is when the writer of the Annals displays his characteristic breathlessness, evident in other parts of the book: in continuing to describe the might of the navy, he resorts to the phrase, 'beyond all utterance.' Later, in the description of the war between the Javanese and Singaporean forces, he resumes with more speech-starved hyperbole: 'too many combatants, the deafening clash of all the world's weapons, tremendous the roar of palace warriors; also the sound of thunder; the bloody cries of the people unmatched by any other humanly imaginable sound…' And finally, the writer admits to the fatigue of storytelling, the desertion of language: 'the story of the battle between Singapore and Java is too lengthy; if it is retold, it would drive its listeners to boredom, which is why it is told this way, because a story of such ponderous proportions would not find favour with those of sound mind. After Singapore refused to yield to the Javanese, the latter returned to Majapahit.' 390 years since the book was penned in Jawi, I think of its writer, who forsake documentarian rigour in favour of a diction that left so much, perhaps too much, to his reader's imagination. The only words left to him were those of surrender: 'too wild, too varied, innumerable, beyond visualisation.' ************************************************************ In a room, filled with mirrors, I am sitting in a high-backed chair, my head tilted to one side by a man who moves around with a kind of insolent grace. The sign outside the shop reads 'Sri Dewa', archaic but nevertheless exalted, 'dewa' being both the Sanskrit and Javanese for 'god'. The hum of the electric barber's shearers placed close to my ear is senile and comforting. Surrounded by the shuffling of shoes and the drone of the soccer game on the overhead television, I am feeling sleepy. However, unlike the Singaporean boy whose hair was the pride of his country, I do not cry, even though I feel myself visited by voices from the past, by a storyteller's weariness, by my inheritance, simultaneously bony with facts yet voluptuous with poetry, and what the kinds of loss a history locked in oral history means to me, a loss that is 'beyond all utterance.'
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