The fall of Singapura: The necessity of unjust violence in the Sejarah Melayu Tan Zi Hao In the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals, the fall of Singapura is widely appraised as an act of divine retribution unleashed upon rulers who have committed injustice. Implicit in this theodicy is the promise of moral justice enshrined in the Bukit Siguntang covenant, which ensures mutual reciprocity between the rulers and the ruled. But a cautious approach to the narrative of Singapura’s demise reveals how justice is suspended, rather than upheld, in service of power. Enabling this suspension of morality is the transformative capacity of violence. This article performs a close reading on three consecutive episodes of unjust violence inflicted on a foreigner, a child, and a concubine, respectively, prior to the sacking of Singapura by Majapahit. In scrutinising the symbolic significance of these victims as persecuted by injudicious rulers, this article posits that violence functions as a rhetorical trope in the retelling of a Malay history. As victims are made scapegoats, unjust violence brings about the fall of Singapura and, by the same token, necessitates the birth of Melaka. Violence impels the forward movement of a royal genealogy by permitting an uninterrupted sequence of reigns through a sequence of crises. Commissioned by the royal court, the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals consists of the genealogy of the Melaka Sultanate, accounts of ceremonial customs, diplomatic missions, and court intrigues. 1 Despite being a work of historical literature, historical Tan Zi Hao is an independent researcher. Correspondence in connection with this article should be addressed to: tanzihao@gmail.com. The author acknowledges the support and comments of Indira Arumugam, Barbara Watson Andaya, Vilashini Somiah and Wang Jiabao in bringing clarity to the ideas made on an earlier draft of the article. The author also thanks the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. 1 Numerous written versions of the Sejarah Melayu exist. This analysis is based on the oldest surviving recension Raffles MS 18. This version is dated to 1612, but its content was very likely written, according to R.O. Winstedt, ‘at least eighty years before 1612’. The text traces the history of Malay rulers until Sultan ‘Alauddin Ri‘ayat Syah II, who ruled Johor in the 16th century. See R.O. Winstedt, ‘The date, author and identity of the original draft of the Malay Annals’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, 3 (1938): 34. On the variant versions, see R. Roolvink, ‘The variant versions of the Malay Annals’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 123, 3 (1967): 301–24; Henri Chambert-Loir, ‘The history of a history: The variant versions of the Sulalat al-Salatin’, Indonesia 104 (2017): 121–77; Henri Chambert-Loir, ‘One more version of the Sejarah Melayu’, Archipel 94 (2017): 211–21; Ahmat Adam, The Sejarah Melayu revisited: A collection of six essays (Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2020), pp. 51–60. In this article, English quotations from the Sejarah Melayu are taken from C.C. Brown’s translation. Published in 1952, archaic spellings in Brown’s translation are modified for Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 54(3), pp 367–388 October 2023. 367 © The National University of Singapore, 2023 doi:10.1017/S0022463423000462 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022463423000462 Published online by Cambridge University Press