Hikayat Binatang - the first modern Malay school textbook by Abdullah Munshi et al.

INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY BAHARUDIN AHMAD Hikayat Binatang: Natural History in Malay (The Chronicle of Animals) One of the most important historical events that took place in the Malay world in the early nineteenth century was the transformation of the education system from the earlier mode of teaching through memorisation and the understanding of religious texts, to a newly introduced system established by the colonial administration with the great help of the missionaries. Through this system, children were expected to attend schools regularly, use prescribed school textbooks, and study under the guidance of trained teachers. Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi,6 who is the focus of our discussion here, was a teacher in a Malay school that was established by the Christian movement with the financial assistance from The London Missionary Society (LMS) and The American Missionary Society (AMS), based in London and the United States respectively. The main purpose of the establishment of these schools was to provide a modern system of education by installing modern knowledge into the Malay society which was considered by the British as the ‘unlearned’ during the colonial period.7 Abdullah and his school principal, Reverend Keasberry, together with Alfred North who was a missionary and a Malay language teacher before Abdullah, worked to produce school textbooks for subjects such as science, geography, history, literature and other subjects which constitute the modern contents and approach to knowledge. However, it was Abdullah,8 who bore the greatest responsibility for creating those original textbooks with the materials perhaps supplied by his colonial colleagues such as North and Keasberry. This was a pivotal historical moment in which modern knowledge was introduced to the Malay children and members of the society. We think that this phenomenon in the Malaysian education system has not received much attention presently even though this period has coloured an event of change and a crisis of civilisation in this part of the world. It is; therefore, by introducing one of these textbooks, readers can get a clearer picture of what was happening during this time period and the importance of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi not only as a literary man as he is known presently but furthermore, a writer well versed in literature, science, geography, history, and other subjects. Furthermore, Abdullah can be considered among the first Malay reformers who embraced modern knowledge as a tool of change and transformation of the Malay society. Abdullah through those chronicles as well as the other textbooks that he had composed and his criticisms of his own people as can be seen in the chronicles (hikayat), can be considered the first Muslim reformer preceding even well-known figures such as Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida in the Muslim modernist and reformist tradition.