An Inscribed Stone on Pulau Pangkor?

Near the Dutch Fort, there is a Dutch inscribed stone located about 100 meters from the beach. Carved into the stone is an image of a tiger devouring a child. There are two leaf-shaped circles as well as Dutch and English words that read “If Carlo 1743”. The year recorded marks the Dutch re-occupation of Pulau Pangkor after being expelled by locals led by Panglima Kulup around the 1690s.

Other carvings present may be the names of the carvers, indicated by initials such as ‘IK’, ‘R.O’, ‘BVH’, ‘PVL’, ‘VM’, ‘PP’, and VOC, which refers to the abbreviation for Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company. There is no authentic further explanation provided here, so tourists will not be able to find any information about what is interesting about this stone. It is by asking the local residents that we can hear several versions of the story regarding this stone.

The first version, according to local sources, is that this image was carved by the Dutch as a memorial to the child of a Dutch official who went missing while playing near the stone in 1743, during the reign of Sultan Muzaffar Syah III (1728-1756). The Dutch believed that the child had been eaten by a wild animal.

For the second version, it is said that the Bugis and Malay people kidnapped and killed the Dutch official's child to take revenge for the Dutch cruelty towards the local population. When Dutch soldiers searched for the child, the locals made up a story claiming they saw a tiger carry the child away. However, other Pulau Pangkor residents believe it was not a tiger that took the child, but a Malay leader who was dissatisfied and wanted to free Pangkor from the Dutch. That is why the Dutch soldiers drew the picture of a tiger, which symbolized the ‘Malay people’. This stone is also known as ‘Tiger Rock’ because of the tiger image.

The third version tells of the Dutch claiming that the child of a Dutch official went missing and was believed to have been mauled by a tiger. However, according to local sources, this story was merely a fabrication by the Dutch to cover up the shame that the official's child was actually kidnapped by pirates.

Local residents also say that this stone used to be smaller than it is now and indirectly believe that the stone is alive because it is capable of growing from its original, relatively small size. The length of this stone is now 10.7 meters, its width is 4.6 meters, and its height is 4.3 meters.