The Singapore Stone is a fragment of a large sandstone slab which originally stood at the mouth of the Singapore River. The large slab, which is believed to date back to at least the 13th century and possibly as early as the 10th or 11th century, bore an undeciphered inscription. Recent theories suggest that the inscription is either in Old Javanese, Sanskrit or in Tamil, which suggested a possibility that the island was an extension of the Majapahit civilization in the past. It is likely that the person who commissioned the inscription was Sumatran. The slab may be linked to the legendary story of the 14th-century strongman Badang, who is said to have thrown a massive stone to the mouth of the Singapore River. On Badang's death, the Rajah sent two stone pillars to be raised over his grave "at the point of the straits of Singapura". The slab was blown up in 1843 during British colonial rule to clear and widen the passageway at the river mouth to make space for a fort and the quarters of its commander D.H. Stevenson. The Stone, now displayed at the National Museum of Singapore, was designated by the museum as one of 11 National Treasures of Singapore in January 2006, and by the National Heritage Board as one of the top 12 artefacts held in the collections of its museums.
Sandstone slab
Discovery In June 1819, a few months after the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) in Singapore, a sandstone slab about 10 ft (3.0 m) high and 9 to 10 ft (2.7 to 3.0 m) long was found by labourers clearing jungle trees at the southeast side of the mouth of the Singapore River. It stood at a promontory known as the Rocky Point, and later as Artillery Point, Fort Fullerton and the Master Attendant's Office. (In 1972, a short projection from the slab's site was constructed and a statue of an imaginary beast called the Merlion placed on it. The statue has since been relocated.) According to papers from the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal which were collected by Sir William Edward Maxwell and republished in 1886, one Dr. D.W. Montgomerie said that the rock was brought to light by some Bengal sailors employed by Captain Flint, R.N., the first Master Attendant: You remember the situation of it [the sandstone slab] on the rocky point on the south [sic: southeast] side of the entrance of the Singapore Creek. That point was covered with forest trees and jungle in 1819, and the stone was brought to notice by some Bengal clashees who were employed by Capt. Flint, R.N. (the first Master Attendant); the men on discovering the inscription were very much frightened, and could not be induced to go on with the clearing, which, if I recollect right, was completed by Chinese under the stimulus of high wages. The slab was inscribed with 50 or 52 lines of script, but by the time of its discovery the meaning of the inscription was already a mystery to the island's inhabitants.
Appearance John Crawfurd (1783–1868), who was Resident of Singapore, described the slab in his journal on 3 February 1822 in these terms:
On the stony point which forms the western side of the entrance of the salt creek, on which the modern town of Singapore is building, there was discovered, two years ago, a tolerably hard block of sand-stone, with an inscription upon it. This I examined early this morning. The stone, in shape, is a rude mass, and formed of the one-half of a great nodule broken into two nearly equal parts by artificial means; for the two portions now face each other, separated at the base by a distance of not more than two feet and a half, and reclining opposite to each other at an angle of about forty degrees. It is upon the inner surface of the stone that the inscription is engraved. The workmanship is far ruder than any thing of the kind that I have seen in Java or India; and the writing, perhaps from time, in some degree, but more from the natural decomposition of the rock, so much obliterated as to be quite illegible as a composition. Here and there, however, a few letters seem distinct enough. The character is rather round than square. James Prinsep (1799–1840), a scholar and antiquary who started the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, published a paper in the Journal in 1837 by a Dr. William Bland of H.M.S. Wolf, which stated that he had made a facsimile of all that remained in any way perceptible on the slab. Dr. Bland described the slab thus:
On a tongue of land forming the termination of the right bank of the river at Singapore, now called Artillery Point, stands a stone or rock of coarse red sandstone about ten feet high, from two to five feet thick, and about nine or ten feet in length, somewhat wedge-shaped, with weather-worn cells. The face sloping to the south-east at an angle of 76° has been smoothed down in the form of an irregular square, presenting a space of about thirty-two square feet, having a raised edge all round. On this surface an inscription has originally been cut, of about fifty lines, but the characters are so obliterated by the weather that the greater part of them are illegible. Still, there are many left which are plain enough, more particularly those at the lower right-hand corner, where the raised edge of the stone has in some measure protected them. The inscription was engraved in rounded letters about three-quarters of an inch (1.9 cm) wide.
Destruction About January 1843, on the orders of the acting Settlement Engineer, Captain D.H. Stevenson, the slab was blown to pieces to clear and widen the passageway at the Singapore River mouth to make space for Fort Fullerton and the quarters of its commander. Some sources claim that the Superintendent of Public Works, George Drumgoole Coleman, was responsible for the Stone's destruction, but he was on leave and not in Singapore at the time of its blasting. Lieutenant-Colonel James Low had petitioned to have the sandstone slab spared, but had been told that it was in the way of a projected bungalow. On the explosion taking place, he crossed the river from his office and selected fragments that had letters on them. As the fragments were very bulky, he had them chiselled into small slabs by a Chinese man. He selected some of the smaller fragments bearing the most legible parts of the inscription and sent them to the Royal Asiatic Society's museum in Calcutta (now known as the Indian Museum) for analysis, where they arrived in about June 1848.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
