Family, Law, and Justice in Creole Malay Translations of the Confucian Four Books in Dutch Colonial Java

The Dutch-educated, Malay-speaking Peranakan Chinese intelligentsia of Java translated the Confucian classics The Great Learning (Daxue) and The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong) into the Malay language at the turn of the twentieth century. The Confucian revivalist movement in the Dutch Indies has often been interpreted as a nationalist attempt to "re-Sinify" China's de-cultured overseas subjects. This paper revises the China-centered nationalist line of argument by re-reading the Malay language translations of the Confucian classics The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean in the context of Dutch colonial law and society. Translating into Malay, the Peranakan Chinese drew from Malay-Islamic traditions of God and law to reconfigure Confucius as a prophetic (Nabi) reformer. Being educated in Dutch, and responding to the colonial civilizing critique, they found in the Confucian concept of Tiandao (The Heavenly Way) an equation with natural science (natuurwetenschap). By unpacking the intellectual positionings the translators chose among the three cultural and philosophical traditions (Malay, Chinese and Dutch), this paper shows how the Confucian revivalist movement in Java began with emergent hybridized concepts of self, God, state, family and law.