The characteristics of the malay historiography

The characteristics of the classical Malay historical writings are some what different in comparison with other historical writings. As a result, numerous scholars consider many Malay historical texts as "unhistorical texts". Some of these scholars argue that these texts were indeed non-historical texts due to their mythical and legendary contents. While some argue that these texts must be categorized only as "entertainment texts" and not "historical texts" since they were written in literary forms and artistic ways. However, these arguments are oftentimes put forward without a thorough and proper study on the classical Malay historical texts. This paper aims to expose a true understanding of these texts so that we could fairly judge them based on their nature, and not only on the surface. For the purpose of this study, Sejarah Melayu a classical Malay historical text was examined. A comparative analysis has shown that the text was indeed written in the spirit of the Malay historical writing. Therefore the text should be treated as historical texts in their own special characteristics: that is, the characteristics of the distinctive Malay historiograph