Russell Jones (1926–2019)

Russell Jones was born on 14 April 1926 in Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, as one of five siblings. He attended Bishop’s Castle County High School in Shropshire, leaving in 1942 at the age of 16 to start his first job in Shrewsbury as a junior clerk with the Shropshire Constabulary. Following a chance encounter with a naval recruiting officer in 1943 while hitch-hiking back from London, Russell enlisted in the Royal Marines. After a six-month course at the University of Liverpool and further cadet training, he was commissioned as an officer in June 1945 and sent straight out to Singapore, arriving in December 1945 in the aftermath of the Japanese surrender. In June 1946 Russell was posted to Batavia in charge of a detachment of Marines providing transport and guards, and remembered the first anniversary of the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August 1946 against a backdrop of tensions between the Indonesians and the returning Dutch.

Russell Jones at the 40^th anniversary of the formation of Indonesia Circle, 2013, London.

These experiences in Singapore and Indonesia had a profound impact on Russell, and after having been demobilised as a Lieutenant from the Royal Marines in 1947 he enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for a BA degree in Malay. After completing the first year at SOAS with courses in Malay, Arabic and Dutch, the offer of a job in the Colonial Service led him to interrupt his studies to sail eastwards again. He spent the next ten years in Malaya, with posts in Perlis, Kelantan and Johor, ending up as Senior Assistant Controller of Immigration in Penang. It was during this period that Russell developed his interest in Chinese. He acquired a knowledge of Hokkien dialects, and took the government examinations in spoken Amoy Hokkien. This enabled him to introduce a system of recording Chinese names in the Immigration department, based on the Chinese characters.

Following Malayan independence (Merdeka) in 1957, Russell returned to London and resumed his studies at SOAS in Malay, graduating in 1960 with a BA (Hons) Malay degree. Shortly after commencing postgraduate research in Leiden, in 1961 he left for Australia, where he spent four years as Lecturer in Malay in the Department of Indonesian and Malay Studies at the University of Sydney, replacing A.H. Hill who had died in an air crash in Java in January 1961. In 1965 Russell returned to Leiden to continue his doctoral studies, and in 1966 married Antoinette (Toni) Marie Barrett, a colleague from Sydney University and a scholar of Old Javanese inscriptions, with whom he had two daughters, Rima – who was born in Leiden – and Jacinta. Russell’s PhD dissertation, entitled ‘A study from Malay manuscripts of the legend of the Islamic Sufi Saint Ibrahim ibn Adham’, was submitted to SOAS in 1969, but, as acknowledged in the 1985 publication of his thesis, his main intellectual mentors were two Leiden scholars: G.W.J. Drewes, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, and A. Teeuw, Professor of Malay and Indonesian Language and Literature. During their time in Leiden, Russell and Toni worked together on the English translation of the first edition of Teeuw’s Modern Indonesian literature (1967), which in its expanded second edition (1979) is a standard textbook in the field.

While still studying in Leiden, Russell recalled being ‘head-hunted’ in 1967 by Professor E.H.S. Simmonds, then Head of the Department of Southeast Asia and the Islands at SOAS, for a lecturership in Malay at SOAS. It was Stuart Simmonds – himself a specialist in Thai – who initiated the academic shift at SOAS from the study and teaching of Malay towards Indonesian, and during a subsequent interview in London for the post Russell was asked if he minded if the title was changed to ‘Lecturer in Indonesian’. And so on 1 October 1967 Russell joined SOAS as Lecturer in Indonesian, and in 1970 was sent to Jakarta on a year’s research leave principally to ‘mengIndonesiakan’ his Malay language. At that time SOAS was a place where, in Russell’s words, ‘former colonial servants from Malaya taught Malay to their prospective successors’, and the move to Indonesian was resisted by E.C.G. Barrett, lecturer in Malay and former member of the Malayan Civil Service. It was only after Barrett’s retirement in 1971 that Russell was able to shift decisively the balance of teaching towards Indonesian, resulting in the proposal to the SOAS Board of Studies to change the title of the BA degree course from ‘Malay’ to ‘Indonesian and Malay’, with the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia at its core, which took effect from 1974.

Over the next two decades at SOAS, Russell taught, researched and published on the Malay manuscript tradition. His first published editions of Malay texts arose from his doctoral study of Malay accounts of the Sufi saint Ibrahim ibn Adham, starting with the section of the Bustan al-Salatin – Nuruddin al-Raniri’s univeral history, composed in Aceh in the 17th century – on Ibrahim ibn Adham (1974); followed by the Malay text with English translation of the short version of the Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim (1983); and then a critical edition, also with full English translation, of the longer Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim ibn Adham (1985). In 1987 Russell published a new edition of Hikayat Raja Pasai, the last edition of which, by A.H. Hill, had appeared posthumously and thus without the benefit of the editor’s final approval. At that time this important text, the oldest Malay history which recounts the coming of Islam to Sumatra, was only known from a single manuscript held at the Royal Asiatic Society (Raffles Malay 67). In 1987 the British Library acquired a second manuscript (Or. 14350), insights from which were then incorporated into Russell’s second edition of the text published in 1997. An annotated critical edition accompanied by a full facsimile followed in the Karya Agung series in 1999, and, finally, an English translation, The Pasai chronicle, in 2013. Among Russell’s many other publications on traditional Malay language and literature, early British studies of Malay, and Islam in the Malay world, his article on ‘Ten conversion myths from Indonesia’ (1979) should be noted for the the interest it aroused outside the world of Southeast Asian studies.

Already in late 1972 Russell had begun to plan the founding of an ‘Indonesian Studies Association’ for those with an interest in Indonesia, modelled on a similar very successful society at the University of Sydney, and the proposal was warmly supported by the Director of SOAS, Professor Sir Cyril Phillips. Stuart Simmonds had expressed some concern that the proposed name was too close to that of the newly formed ‘Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the UK’, on so on 12 March 1973 – with a name suggested by Colin Wild, head of the Indonesian and Malay section of the BBC External Services – the Indonesia Circle was formed. It was initially a society whose objects were, among other things, ‘to foster interest in, and knowledge of, Indonesia and its culture’, and for the next decade Russell presided over an active schedule of lively monthly meetings with a speaker, accompanied by drinks and Indonesian food, where those interested in Indonesia could meet and talk. A stencilled thrice-yearly newsletter first appeared in July 1973; by 1977 the newsletter had evolved into an academic journal, and in 1997 this became Indonesia and the Malay World, the peer-reviewed journal currently published by Routledge. In 2013, on the 40th anniversary of the formation of Indonesia Circle, Russell published an article in Indonesia and the Malay World on the history of the journal, and stepped down from the editorial board.

In 1973 Russell was also instrumental in founding the Indonesian Etymological Project, a consortium of international scholars who worked to identify loan-words in Indonesian from both foreign and indigenous Nusantaran languages. Russell was responsible for loan-words from Arabic, Persian and Chinese, and a valuable early output of the project was the handlist Arabic loan-words in Indonesian (1978). Work on the project continued for over four decades, culminating in the publication of Loan-words in Indonesian and Malay (2007), of which Russell was the general editor. Some of the fruits of the project are also hosted on the SEAlang website  < http://sealang.net/lwim/>, including Russell’s lengthy introduction to the Hokkien-English dictionary (2007), a reprint of the 1899 dictionary of Amoy Chinese by the Rev. Carstairs Douglas.

In 1976 Sir Cyril Phillips retired as Director of SOAS, and was replaced by Professor C.D. Cowan, with whom Russell enjoyed a much less warm relationship. When Russell’s detailed proposal for a four-year degree course for the BA in Indonesian and Malay, with a year abroad to be spent at the Universitas Andalas in Padang, was rejected by Cowan, Russell took early retirement from SOAS in September 1984.

Following his divorce from Toni in 1985, in 1986 Russell married Maíre Anne Clancy, who he had met on a CND march in London, and they had a daughter, Saffron. After leaving SOAS, Russell and Maíre moved down to Cornwall, living in Penryn just outside Falmouth. While Maíre taught French and German at a nearby school, Russell happily kept very busy with a number of research projects, and continued to be linked to SOAS as an honorary Senior Research Fellow and through his work on Indonesia and the Malay World.

It was after the completion of the Indonesian Etymological Project with its landmark publication in 2007 that Russell turned back, in earnest, to a subject with which he had been preoccupied for much of his academic life: the study of the paper used in Malay manuscripts, and their watermarks. The vast majority of Malay manuscripts are anonymous and undated, with only a few containing information about the place and date of writing of the manuscript, or the name of the scribe. However, most Malay manuscripts were written on European paper, usually of Dutch, British or Italian manufacture, which generally contains a watermark identifying the maker, and which may also be used as a guide to the date of the manuscript. Russell was the first to draw attention to the value of the study of the codicology or material aspects of Malay manuscripts, and to highlight that the study of watermarks could help to establish the date that a manuscript was written or copied.

Russell soon found that this science of paper watermarks, or filigranology, has a way of becoming an all-consuming passion for those who take it up. Many a scholar or student of Malay mansucripts, when talking animatedly about a rare Malay text or even other material features of a manuscript such as the binding, illumination or handwriting, would be brought to book sternly by Russell’s single-minded focus with the question ‘But what about the paper?’. From as early as 1973, he published a series of pioneering articles which remain the only serious contribution to the study of the writing supports of Malay manuscripts, and was also consulted by many other scholars about the Malay manuscripts they were studying. Russell was delighted to earn from Cyril Skinner the sobriquet ‘the “Sherlock Holmes” of the world of Malay manuscripts’, for his comments on the watermark of Ahmad Rijaluddin’s autograph manuscript of Hikayat perintah negeri Benggala (British Library, Add 12386) (Skinner 1982: 19).

In the final decades of his life, aware of the unique value of the material on watermarks of Malay manuscripts he had collected throughout his scholarly career, Russell set about, with passion and vigour, formulating a plan for the transmitting of this knowledge to a new generation of filigranologists of the Malay manuscript world. Perhaps appositely, for one whose doctoral research was on a Sufi saint, Russell remained convinced of the overriding merits of the murshid-murid relationship, the one-to-one engagement of teacher and student. He believed firmly that the best format for the passing on of his knowledge would be a hands-on workshop, ideally to be held in Southeast Asia, at which he could impart his knowledge first-hand to a select group of students. To this end, at the age of 83 he visited Indonesia in 2010 – during which visit he was hosted with great solicitude by his younger former SOAS colleague Amin Sweeney (who then sadly and unexpectedly predeceased him just a few months later, see obituary in Indonesia and the Malay World, 2011, 39 (114): 317–325) – to explore the possibility of holding such a workshop in Jakarta, and he also entered into discussions with the National Archives of Malaysia and the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur. Despite much interest and support, none of these plans for a workshop in Southeast Asia came to fruition, and at the age of 90, accepting that he was no longer able to travel long distances, with characteristic indefatigability Russell even began exploring the possibility of holding a workshop at his house in Cornwall.

Right to the end of his life Russell remained deeply engaged with all his various fields of interest and study, and also began to put his books and papers in order. He deposited with the Royal Marines Museum items from his service during 1944–47 including extracts from his diary and his letters home, and his small collection of Islamic manuscripts in Arabic and Javanese, which he had acquired in Yogyakarta in the 1960s, found a home in the British Library (Or. 16873-16878). He always had a warm welcome for any friend with Malay interests who was able to venture down to the depths of the Cornish countryside, and was pleased to be recognised by the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society as their longest-serving life member (since 1949). He took great pleasure in his daughter Saffron’s musical accomplishments, and becoming a grandfather to Jacinta’s two daughters. Russell Jones passed away in hospital in Truro on 6 June 2019 at the age of 93.

Even though Russell’s mind had been set on a workshop rather than the traditional scholarly format of a publication, he did eventually come round to the latter idea, and in his final years had begun plans for a volume in which all his published articles on the study of the paper of Malay manuscripts could be brought together. Indonesia and the Malay World hopes to bring out this volume shortly as a tribute to its founding member.

Editorial Board Indonesia and the Malay World