Bringing ‘La Galigo’ Home

For more than 25 years, Nurhayati Rahman has poured all her energy and attention into La Galigo, an ancient epic from South Sulawesi.

KOMPAS/RENY SRI AYU

Nurhayati Rahman

Nurhayati Rahman, 60, beamed when director general of culture Hilmar Farid of the Culture and Education Ministry said that the government, through his directorate general, would fund the publication of La Galigo, volumes 4-12. Hilmar made the announcement at the 40th anniversary commemoration of noted publisher Penerbit Obor on Sept. 26, 2017 at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in Jakarta. “Finally, we don’t need to search for any more sponsors,” Nurhayati said.

The announcement brought Nurhayati to tears. For more than 25 years, she has poured all her energy and attention into La Galigo , or I La Galigo, an ancient epic from South Sulawesi. It is the longest literary work in the history of the world, longer than the Mahabharata or Homer’s Odyssey. La Galigo has 360,000 stanzas while the Mahabharata only has 156,000.

Written in ancient Buginese using old Lontara script, La Galigo was at first thought to be a sacred song. Experts said that La Galigo, which served as a sociocultural record of the lives of the ancient Buginese, was written between the 3rd and 7th centuries.

Nurhayati, who is also called Siti Galigo due to her in-depth knowledge of La Galigo, said she was grateful for the government’s commitment. “This means that we can bring La Galigo back to its homeland,” she said.

The world-renowned manuscript and is now at Leiden University in the Netherlands. It has been turned into a critically acclaimed musical theater that was performed from 2004-2011 in 13 cities of several countries. Meanwhile, in its South Sulawesi homeland, it is less popular. Thanks to the musical theater directed by Robert Wilson, adapted by Rhoda Grauder and produced by Restu Imansari Kusumaningrum, Franco Laera and Elisabetta di Mambero, La Galigo now belongs to the world.

In the process of publishing three volumes of La Galigo in 1995, 2001 and 2017, Indonesia was only involved in publishing the third volume. Nurhayati said that the long gap between the publication of each volume was because the publisher was waiting for sponsors. She hoped the Indonesian government’s commitment would help smooth the fourth volume’s publication. Its commitment to bringing the ancient manuscript home would prove the government’s appreciation for local ancestral work and the roots of the nation’s many cultures.

“The editing process can be completed within two years,” Nurhayati said. With funding commitment for volumes four through twelve, the remaining two-thirds of the La Galigo manuscript cataloged as NBG 188 (Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap, or the Netherlands Bible Society) will finally be complete. The catalog code was based on Benjamin Frederik Mattes’ 19th century mission of translating the Bible into the Buginese and Makassarese languages. The manuscripts were then submitted to the NBG, which then lent them to the Leiden University Library. It is this manuscript numbered NBG 188 that is being transcribed, translated, edited and published.

Coincidence

In 2011, UNESCO named La Galigo a world heritage. However, the general public is mostly familiar with the tale of Sawerigading, La Galigo’s central character. The public commonly views La Galigo as a song instead of a highly unique piece of literature.

Accompanied by Basiah, a former student and co-editor of La Galigo’s third volume, Nurhayati explained how she became deeply interested in the ancient manuscript, and why. “It was all a coincidence. After completing my undergraduate degree in literature at Hasanuddin University, I enrolled in the philology master’s program at Padjadjaran University. For my research proposal, I used an episode of La Galigo. All the senior literature professors at Hasanuddin University advised me against it. They said that La Galigo was very complicated and that I would not be able to finish it. They told me to use something else for my research,” Nurhayati recalled.

However, she was firm in her choice. The warnings from her professors gave her more motivation. She believed that the ancient manuscript comprised various traditions, norms and concepts of the lives of the Buginese and should be preserved as a world heritage. The manuscript’s wealth as a literary work existed in its linguistic, literary, metre and plot conventions.

For her research, Nurhayati interviewed elders in South Sulawesi who were capable of reading the ancient Lontara script that was used in the Buginese language. Once she completed her master’s degree, she received an offer from library director Noorduyn Roger Tol at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), who was in the process of compiling the La Galigo manuscripts to be republished in book form.

Nurhayati was called to Leiden due to her ability to translate La Galigo into literary prose. As a co-editor of the first two volumes, Nurhayati was tasked with editing the manuscripts that had been transcribed and translated by Muhammad Salim and edited by Fachruddin Ambo Enre, who has edited all 12 volumes. Thanks to the help of Sirtjo Koolhof and Roger Tol, who were members of the editorial team, the first two volumes were published. Nurhayati served as editor and Basiah co-editor for the third volume. Tol was also on the editorial team.

At first, La Galigo only existed in verbal form and comprised 50 episodes. It was transcribed as a written manuscript by Retna Kencana Colliq Pujie Arung Pancana Toa (1812-1876), the daughter of a Barru king in what is now South Sulawesi. Retna Kencana Colliq Pujie was known as a warrior and a literary writer. It was her La Galigo manuscript that was processed for the 12 La Galigo volumes.

“It was a difficult job,” Nurhayati said, reminiscing her two years of working at Leiden. She did not miss the opportunity of transforming La Galigo into literary language when she enrolled in Leiden’s doctoral program. Upon returning to Indonesia, she continued her studies at the University of Indonesia’s philology department. She obtained her doctoral degree after defending her dissertation, titled “Sompeqna Sawerigading ke Tana Cina” (Sawerigading’s Journey to the Land of China), on an episode from La Galigo.

In the process of translating La Galigo volumes four through twelve, Nurhayati prepared the next generation. She chose Basiah and Faisal Oddang to continue her work. Basiah was chosen for her ability to understand ancient Buginese, and because she was Nurhayati’s teaching assistant. Faisal, on the other hand, impressed Nurhayati with his ability to translate La Galigo into compelling literary prose.

“The most difficult work for us is adjusting every single word that was translated by our predecessors into the original La Galigo text and arranging the text into easily readable passages. I am preparing two successors right now, as there is still a long way to go,” Nurhayati said.