Field research and the teaching of early Malayan history

Abstract

Galileo, the great 17th century Italian mathematician and astronomer, is said to have had an argument with some of the learned doctors of Padua University over his claim to have dis Galileo saw the moons covered that the planet Jupiter had moons. through his telescope. The doctors, who had all read the works of Aristotle, knew that Jupiter had no moons. When Galileo in- vited them to look through his telescope and see for themselves, they refused on the grounds that this would only be a waste of time. In some ways the history of Malaya before the founding of the Malacca Sultanate in the early 15th century has been written by scholars in the tradition of the Padua doctors. Texts have been given great weight; the equivalent of telescopes have been ignored. The conflict between the Padua doctors and Galileo was really the conflict between two quite different kinds of research, field research and library research. Such a conflict, to some degree, exists in the interpretation of the early history of the Malay Penin- sula and neighbouring regions in Southeast Asia. It ought not to exist, since the two methods of research in collaboration can produce results which neither can yield on its own; and in recent years in- creasingly intelligent use has been made of the methods of field research by archaeologists, anthropologists and the students of related disciplines to amplify and confirm the picture derived from the texts. Difficulties, however, have tended to arise from the fact that, all too often, field men do not understand the materials and methods of the library men, and vice versa.