Malay Science: A Study on the 17th Century Dictionary

This paper discussed the 17th century Malay civilisation specifically in science. This century was the golden age of Malay as the influences of the Arab and Western regarding technology, science, and literature had given the positive impact on the development of Malay language, especially since they brought together the printing technology to documenting knowledge of the Malays at that time. Immigrants who came to the Malay world were not only carried out trading activities but also conducting research and documenting the language, place, culture, and specific knowledge that is owned by the community. Thomas Bowrey was the first Englishman to make a note on the Malay nation through the dictionary entitled ‘English-Malayo Malayo-English’ which published in 1701. This dictionary is one of the documents produced in the golden age of Malay which describes in details about Malay civilisation of the 17th century. This study uses review method to the vocabulary in the domain of religion, geography, trade, mathematics and astronomy. The study found that vocabulary in the domain of religion contains the Arabic vocabulary such as ‘Allah’ god, ‘syaitan’ devil, ‘Islam’ Islam ,‘Nasrani’ Nazirite. Vocabulary related to geographical such as ‘barat daya’ south-west, ‘barat semata selatan’ south-west, ‘barat semata utara’ north-west. Vocabulary in the domain of trade such as the word ‘lanzan’ almond, ‘mazejon’, bitter almond, ‘saffron’ saffron. Vocabulary in the field of mathematics such as ‘satu setengah’ one half, ‘tiga perempat’ three quarter, ‘codee’ twenty. Vocabulary in the field of astronomy such as the word ‘bintang utara’ the north star, ‘bintang siang’ the morning star, ‘bintang zahar’ the evening star. The vocabulary in Bowrey dictionary meets all the specified fields and show that Malay people in the 17th century already have substantial knowledge of science and it is still relevance until now and even being used at the international level.