Hang Tuah is Chinese? Hang on a second…

Whether Hang Tuah really existed in 15th Century Melaka is still debatable, but we should not simply let others distort history and facts.

by Faiq Khalifa, Free Malaysia Today

A friend of mine went to Melaka a few months ago, and when he came back, he told me an interesting “fact” he learned during his visit to the historical state.

While there, he was told by a friend that the legendary Malay warrior, Hang Tuah was actually a Chinese from mainland China. The same went for all four of his comrades – Hang Jebat, Hang Lekir, Hang Lekiu and Hang Kasturi.

The reason he gave was the name “Hang”, that was identical to the name of the princess from China sent to become the wife of Sultan Mansur Syah of Melaka, Princess Hang Li Po (Hang Liu).

Actually this is not the first time someone has told me about this historical “fact”.

I have never felt compelled to write about this until I came across an internet forum where many Malaysians were discussing this topic. The one who began the discussion started by revealing a piece of “research” by some “professors” claiming that Hang Tuah and his friends were Chinese.

The professors said “Hang” was not a common name in Malay society, as you could not find a Malay person with such a name nowadays.

It was revealed that Hang Tuah’s real name was Hang Too Ah, Hang Jebat was Hang Jee Fatt, Hang Lekir was Hang Lee Ker and Hang Lekiu was Hang Lee Kiew – I know it’s funny, its like saying Robin Hood’s real name was Lau Pin Hu, but don’t laugh yet.

The name ‘Hang’ explained

Well, let me start with a simple answer. The five figures whose names begin with “Hang” from the historical record that most of us are familiar with, are believed to be five Malays and one Chinese – Hang Li Po.

So logic dictates, if there are more Malays – in that particular story, or record – with the name Hang, and only one Chinese in that record with the name Hang, it is more likely that the Chinese person was actually a Malay, and not the other way round.

Say if there is a historical record mentioning five Malay girls whose names begin with “Siti” – Siti Payung, Siti Intan, Siti Kembang, Siti Kembung, Siti Kos, and there was also a girl all the way from mainland China whose name was Siti Cincin. Wouldn’t it be more believable to say that Siti Cincin might be a Malay rather than all the other five Sitis were Chinese?

Secondly, there were not just those fives warriors named “Hang” in Malay historical records. If you read one of the most prominent records – the Sulalat As-Salatin – Perteturun Segala Raja-raja or the Malay Annals, you can find dozens of people with the name Hang; Hang ‘Isa Pantas, Hang ‘Ali, Hang Aji Maris, Hang Alamat, Hang Berkat, Hang Embung, Hang Hamzah, Hang Hasan, Hang Hasan Cegang, Hang Husin, Hang Isak, Hang Iskandar, Hang Khalambak, Hang Mahmud (Hang Tuah’s father), Hang Nadim, Hang Usuh and many more.

It will be very amusing to hear the Chinese version of all these names.

However the funniest part of that piece of research was trying to explain Hang Kasturi’s name, since his is too strange even for the Chinese.

Three “hypotheses” was offered.

First, that Hang Kasturi was a Malay but befriended the other “Hangs” from China.

Second that his name was not “Hang” but he was actually known as Hang Kasturi by all his friends since they were all ‘Hangs’.

Lastly, that Hang Kasturi was a Chinese, but his Chinese name was too difficult to be pronounced by local Malays, so they gave him a local name, Hang Kasturi.

My only hypothesis would be that some smarty couldn’t come up with a good Chinese name for Hang Kasturi without making himself look like a complete idiot.

‘Hang’ common in classical Malay society

“Hang” in classical Malay society, was a common name. Apart from “Hang”, there was also “Sang”, “Awang”, and “Si” and as for women, they were called “Dang” or “Dayang”, like these names from Sejarah Melayu and other records: Dang Anum, Dang Albiah Bendahari, Dang Bida, Dang Bunga, Dang Raya Rani, Dang Kumala, Dang Merduwati (Hang Tuah’s mother), Dang Bandang and Dang Insum.

So now we know that Hang, or Sang, or Dang and the rest, were used in classical times in Malay society to refer to commoners, but nobody uses these nowadays, instead we use Encik, Cik, Tuan, Puan, etc.

Now, let us examine the “real” names of those “Chinese” warriors who sacrificed their lives to protect the Malay Sultan and his people, even though their own Emperor and people were constantly under threat by rebellions and warring clans.

They were known as the famous Admiral Hang Too Ah, Hang Jee Fatt, Hang Lee Ker and Hang Lee Kiew.

I would like to challenge any Chinese to tell me with a straight face that these names do not sound strange to the Chinese people, let alone to say that those names were from the 15th Century.

It is like when you come across a name in a Chinese historical record called Mu Han Mo De, you can straightaway tell that this is not a Chinese name, but an Arabic name “Muhammad”, written in Chinese.

If you speak Mandarin and/or other Chinese dialects like Cantonese, Hokkien or Hakka, you can tell that these names (like what is written in that article), are strange and totally made up since some of them sound like Cantonese, some sound like Mandarin, and some probably sound Hokkein.

Let’s take Hang Jee Fatt for instance. It sounds Cantonese, but there is no word Hang in Cantonese, most likely it should be Hon, so the correct name is Hon Jee Fatt not Hang Jee Fatt, but Hon Jee Fatt is still a very strange name for a Chinaman especially for one who lived in that era.

Bai Du – Chinese Wikipedia to the rescue

After checking with Bai Du, the Chinese Wikipedia, I found that Hang Tuah’s name in Chinese (mandarin) is Han Du Ya while Hang Jebat is Han Jia Bo.

The way to pronounce “Du” in Han Du Ya sounds more like “Tu” rather than “Du”, but that is how you write it in Ping Yin (Romanised Chinese writing).

So can you imagine when Han ‘Tu’ Ya proudly announced his name to the Malay people in Melaka his name is Han ‘Tu’ Ya, and those people would likely have whispered to one another: “Alamak, nama dia Hantu” (Oh dear, his name is Hantu…) – Hantu in Malay means ghost! But I think Han Jia Bo will be more embarrassed than Han ‘Tu’ Ya if he knew what his name sounded like in Malay.

My further reading in Bai Du revealed that the name Hang Li Po had a number of variations in the way it was written and pronounced in Chinese – Han Li Bao, Hang Li Bao, and Wang Li Bao.

Interestingly, it mentions that all these names are transliterations of the name mentioned in the Malay Annals, Puteri Hang Li Po which also means that, there was no record of the Chinese Princess Hang Li Po, who was married to the Sultan of Melaka.

So, if one is to speculate that there was no Chinese princess by the name Hang Li Po, who was sent to Melaka at that time, it will then destroy the “theory” that Hang Tuah and his friends were Chinese altogether, since the reason behind that “theory” is the similarity of the names of those warriors and the princess.

Another blow to that “theory” is what if the real name of Princess Hang Li Po was different from what was recorded in the Malay Annals? What if the real name was Wang Li Bao like the one mentioned in Bai Du?

The article also mentions a team of researchers who did a so-called scientific DNA test on the remains of Hang Tuah which indeed proved that Hang Tuah was Chinese.

Are we to believe that a team of researchers somehow managed to dig up the 500-year-old grave of the legendary admiral, which was located beside a main road in Tanjong Kling, Melaka, which was under supervision of the local authority, without any coverage from the media, and not a single person to witness the important event, which was located at a tourist attraction in the state?

DNA tests are inconclusive

Anyhow, a DNA test on 500-year-old human remains cannot indicate the race of that person. This is what I found on the internet:

“DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans.

“While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair colour can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another.

“There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.

“Indeed, it has been proven that there is more genetic variation within races than exists between them.” (Resource: Genomics.Energy.Gov)

“Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,” said Dr J Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md.

“We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonised the world.”

Whether Hang Tuah really existed in 15th Century Melaka is still debatable, but we should not simply let others distort history and facts for whatever reason they have in the back of their minds.

It is important for us to know about our history and tradition, which will guide us to understand ourselves and that we can learn from the past.

I couldn’t help but feel sad to see how some people can so easily be fooled by others about their own history due to their own lack of understanding of it.

Wallahu a’lam.