Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Michelle Miller, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

ABSTRACT

The community known today (in somewhat of a misnomer) as the Sri Lankan Malays, whose ancestors came to the island predominantly from across present-day Indonesia beginning in the late 17th century, has a fascinating yet little-studied past and a challenging present.

Thinking about the Malays of Sri Lanka means going beyond conventional spatial and temporal categorizations and considering a range of interactions and crossings: Malay exiles and soldiers crossed the Indian ocean to arrive at an unfamiliar land; they “crossed” from Dutch to British rule; they were Muslims in a predominantly Buddhist and Hindu region, preserving their Austronesian language, the lingua franca of Southeast Muslims while living in South Asia and interacting in Tamil, Sinhala and English in their daily lives. As soldiers in colonial armies they lived and fought in Sri Lanka and South India while looking to the Indonesian/Malay ‘heartlands’ and the Middle East for historical and religious inspiration.

In this paper I present some thoughts and findings based on research conducted in Indonesia and Sri Lanka over the past two years. In particular I focus on my British Library-funded project to survey and document surviving Malay manuscripts and books in Sri Lanka, materials that hold a wealth of information about a remarkable diasporic Indonesian community.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ronit Ricci holds B.A and M.A degrees in Indian Languages and Literatures from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan (2006). She is currently a senior lecturer at the School of Culture, History, and Language at the Australian National University. Her book, Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011 and won the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions Award for 2012. Other recent publications include The Ambiguous Figure of the Jew in Javanese Literature (Indonesia and the Malay World 2010), Translation in Asia: Theories, Practices, Histories (co-edited with Jan van der Putten, St. Jerome, 2011) and Citing as a Site: Translation and Circulation in Muslim South and Southeast Asia (Modern Asian Studies 2012).

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