A Medieval Russian Description of ‘Java’
In 1466 a merchant from Tver, in what is now Russia, was robbed while on a business trip to Astrakhan, a port on the Caspian Sea. Instead of turning back, the man, whose name was Afanasij Nikitin (Афанасий Никитин), decided to travel to India instead. He ended up spending several years in India and wrote a diary while there that included a description of lands he had visited and those he had only heard about from others. After Nikitin died at Smolensk in 1472, his diary was added to the texts of a number of Russian chronicles, acquiring the title Хоженїе за три морѧ (modern Russian: Хождение за три моря) ‘A Journey Across Three Seas’. A monument to Nikitin now stands in Tver (Figure 1) and his time in India has even been immortalised in film (Figure 2).
In this short article I’m going to take a look at what Nikitin says about Java (or, more likely, Sumatra — see below). Nikitin didn’t visit Java and acquired this information secondhand, perhaps from a speaker or reader of Arabic, while in India, but the account is interesting and seems to preserve some unique features of late-medieval Indian Ocean folklore about the island(s?). This account has already been discussed elsewhere, notably in a useful and interesting article by the Russian Malay specialist Vladimir Braginsky (1998), who was working from a Russian edition of the text. Here, though, I will be using a digitised manuscript of the Troitskij Spisok (Троицкий список) or Trinity Recension, which was copied in 1563. The digitised version can be found here, and a complete translation of A Journey Across Three Seas can be found here. I have included the Cyrillic text from the digitised manuscript below, as well as a translation based in large part on that of Serge Zenkovsky (1974:333–353).
I have put three excerpts from the text below. There are a few more references to Java elsewhere in the text — most of them very brief — but these are the most substantial ones. The first says that the King of ‘Java’ pays men from Khorasan (in what is now Iran/Afghanistan) to settle on the island and marry locally; the second is a short description of the commodities produced in ‘Java’, repeated a number of times in the text; and the third is a strange section in which Nikitin (or his editor) says that Jewish people claim ‘Java’ as their own, but that they are wrong to do so, and that Java’s roads are made unsafe by monkeys and other wild animals.
A caveat: I’m not an expert by any means on Old East Slavic/Old Russian. I can read Cyrillic thanks to Mongolian classes at undergrad and I’ve taken a few Russian classes at various points in my life, and my wife is Russian so I have a general awareness of how the language works — but that’s about it. If you spot any errors in the text or translation, let me know! I’m sure there are plenty. I’m mostly putting this here for fun, and also because it makes an Orthodox change from the usual Latin Christian stuff I’ve been looking at recently.
TEXT
(f.381v, line 17)
[…]а шабайть-
скоe пристаништe ѝндѣйскаго морѧ.
вeлми вeлико . а xоросанцeмъ да-
ють а лафу потeнкѣ на дn͡ь . ѝ вeли-
комoу ѝмаломoу . а кто в нeмъ жe-
нитeѣ xоросанeць . ѝ кн҇ѣzь шаба-
тьскоѝ даeть потысѧчи тeнeкъ .
на жeртву да на ѡлафу . да ѣстъ
(f.382r)
на всѧкyѝ мc͡ь подeцѧти дeнe͡к . да
родитсѧ в шаботe шeлкъ да сандал.
да жeмчюгъ . да всe дeшeво. […]
TRANSLATION
‘And the port of Java [Shabait] (1) on the Indian Sea is very large. There Khorasani (2) soldiers are paid a salary of one tenek (3) a day each, both the great and the lesser. And when a Khorasani marries there, he is granted one thousand teneks for [his?] sacrifice and benefits by the King of Java (4), who pays him ten teneks a month in salary and as much for food. And at Java there are silk and sandalwood and pearls, and it is all cheap.’ (5)
TEXT (Figure 3)
(f.382v, line 9)
[…] в шабайте же-
родитсѧ шелкъ да ѝнци . да же-
мчюгъ, да сандалъ . слоны прода-
ють в локот. […]
Roman Transliteration:
<[…] v šabajte že-
roditsę šelkŭ da jinci. da že-
mčjugŭ, da sandalŭ . slony proda-
jutĭ v loko͡t. […]>
TRANSLATION
‘In Java [Shabait] are produced silk and pearls (6) and sandalwood; elephants are sold by the cubit.’ (7)
TEXT (Figure 4)
(f.383r, line 8)
[…] а cытo жидoвe зoвoуть шаба-
тъ свoѝми жидoвы . а тoлжут .
а шабаѝтe нe ни жидoвe ни бeсeрмeна.
ни xр҇тианe . ѝ на áвѣра ѝндѣѝскаá .
ни сxоуды . низъ бeсeрмeны . ни pи-
ють . ни ꙗдѧть . а мѧса ни какo-
гo нe ꙗдѧть . да в шабатѣжe всe дe-
шeвo . а рoдитсѧ шeлкъ да саxаръ.
вeлми дeшeвo. да poлeсоу оуниx мамo-
ны. да ѡбeзьꙗны . да пo дoрoгамъ
людeи дeроут . ѝнoуниxъ нoчи poдoрo-
гамъ нe смѣють ѣздити . ѡбeзъ-
ꙗнъ дѣлѧ да момонъ дѣлѧ . á ѡт ша-
ѝбатажe .ї҇. мц҇ь . сoyxoмъ . ѝтьти.
á моpeмъ .д҇. мц҇a . áoyкикoвъ . […]
TRANSLATION
‘And the Jews call Java their own, but that is a lie (8). The people of Java are not Jews, Muslims, or Christians; they have a different religion, the Hindu faith. They do not eat or drink with Hebrews or Muslims, nor do they eat meat. Everything is cheap in Java, and silk and sugar are made — [both] very cheap! And in the woods there one finds baboons and monkeys (9) and they attack people on the roads, so that no one dares journey at night because of the monkeys and wildcats. And from Java to Cathay it is ten months by dry land and four months by sea on a big ship.’ (10)
NOTES
(1) The text uses several different versions of the name of Java: шабат, шабайт, шабот, and even шибайт. These all seem to be corruptions of the Arabic name of the island as found in e.g. Ibn Battuta’s Rihla: Jāwa(h) (جاوۃ), where the tāʼ marbūṭah (ۃ) at the end of the word has been pronounced as [t] rather than [h]. Old East Slavic has no way of writing the sound [dʒ] in Java, so Nikitin seems to have resorted to <ш>, pronounced [ ʃ]. The name looks peculiar but it almost certainly refers to Java — or Sumatra.
Here’s the problem: Jāwa(h) referred to both Java and Sumatra in the Arabic texts. Is Nikitin talking about Java, Sumatra, or both? I don’t think there’s a way to know for sure; certainly Nikitin’s comments shouldn’t be taken as direct commentary on the island we know as Java. A similar problem occurs in the Latin Christian material, and indeed the problem goes all the way back to the first western Afro-Eurasian text on island Southeast Asia. All of these references feed into a debate about the etymology of ‘Java’ which has been rather fiery in the past.
(2) Khorasan is a historical region encompassing much of eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia. There are only a few indications of links between the area and island Southeast Asia in the Middle Ages, but it is notable that iron or steel from Khorasan seems to have been valued quite highly in the archipelago. This steel is mentioned (as besi kuraysani) in the oldest extant Malay manuscript, the late-fourteenth/early-fifteenth-century Tanjung Tanah manuscript from Kerinci, Sumatra, and it appears sporadically and often in corrupted forms in other texts from the region (e.g. the besi purasani in the fifteenth-century Old Sundanese narrative poem, Bujangga Manik).
(3) The Russian word tenek came from tanga, originally meaning ‘seal’ or ‘stamp’, derived from a word in a Turkic language (cf. Crimean Tatar tamğa). It came to refer to the taxes demanded by the Russians’ Tatar overlords and eventually, it seems, to a certain amount of money. Michell and Forbes (1914:xlii, 95n1) translate the term as ‘a tax levied by the Tartars; properly a seal on merchandise’. I’m not sure how much a tenek would be worth today — let me know if you have some information on this!
(4) It is perhaps not coincidental that many people on the coasts of Java were converting to Islam at this time — Muslim soldiers from Central Asia could well have been in demand on the island, although I’m not sure there’s much other evidence for this.
(5) Variants of this list recur elsewhere in the Journey, as you can see in the second section. Why these items in particular were singled out isn’t clear; one could certainly get them all elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. The best white sandalwood came from Timor but inferior stuff grew further west; people dived for pearls all over the ocean; and silk, of course, was being produced in Greece, India, Italy, and in many other places by the late Middle Ages.
(6) Two words for ‘pearls’ are used here, ѝнци and жемчюгъ, both of them ultimately from the same Chinese source (珍珠 zhēnzhū) by way of different Turkic languages.
(7) Literally: ‘by the elbow’ (в локот).
(8) Precisely why anyone would think this a reasonable claim isn’t clear, but the confusion here may well have resulted from Nikitin’s name for the island, шабат (vel sim), which is very similar to the Hebrew שבת (shabát), meaning of course ‘Sabbath’.
(9) Monkey attacks figure fairly frequently in accounts of Java in the Middle Ages, including in several Chinese texts — a brief trip to the woods in Java is sufficient to show you why this is so. (Again, caveat: Nikitin’s Java may well be Sumatra.) The Old East Slavic word here, мамoны, comes from the Arabic maymūn (ميمون), which literally means ‘baboon’. The other word, ѡбeзьꙗны, is of Persian origin and also means ‘monkey’ (as @Ratnadhrk pointed out to me on Twitter). Translators and editors usually seem to opt for ‘wildcat’ or something similar for this section — certainly Java used to abound in tigers and other big cats — but both words refer to simians of some kind, so this translation choice is a little mysterious. Java abounds in monkeys, including lutungs, surilis, and macaques, and the latter, at least, would not hesitate to attack a human if they thought they could get away with it.
(10) This word, áoyкик (aukik), is apparently believed to be a corruption of the Arabic junuk (جنك), which comes from the Malay word jong ‘junk’, probably ultimately from a southern pronunciation of 船, the Chinese word for ‘ship’. Zenkovsky translates it simply as ‘big ship’.
REFERENCES
Braginsky, Vladimir. 1998. Two Eastern Christian sources on medieval Nusantara. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 154(3):367–396.
Michell, R. and Forbes, N. 1914. The chronicle of Novgorod. 1016–1471. London: Royal Historical Society.
Zenkovsky, Serge A. (ed) 1973. Medieval Russia’s epics, chronicles, and tales. New York: Meridian.
I have a Ko-Fi account, in case you’re interested in showing your appreciation for this and other Medium stories: https://ko-fi.com/P5P6HTBI
A. J. West, December 2019.
