You can bind local data type to jqGrid using array.
For this purpose you will need to build the column model manually and then put some data
into the grid using array. Refer to PHP code to see how this can be achieved.
The data can be put at once or row by row depending on the settings in addRowData method
In this example we add data at once.
<?php 
require_once '../../../tabs.php';
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
    <title>jqGrid PHP Demo</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../../../themes/redmond/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../../../themes/ui.jqgrid.css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../../../themes/ui.multiselect.css" />
    <style type="text">
        html, body {
        margin: 0;            /* Remove body margin/padding */
        padding: 0;
        overflow: hidden;    /* Remove scroll bars on browser window */
        font-size: 75%;
        }
    </style>
    <script src="../../../js/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="../../../js/i18n/grid.locale-en.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    $.jgrid.no_legacy_api = true;
    $.jgrid.useJSON = true;
    </script>
    <script src="../../../js/jquery.jqGrid.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="../../../js/jquery-ui-custom.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
      <div>
          <?php include ("grid.php");?>
      </div>
      <br/>
      <?php tabs(array("grid.php"));?>
   </body>
</html>
grid.php.
<?php
require_once '../../../jq-config.php';
// include the jqGrid Class
require_once ABSPATH."php/jqGrid.php";

// Create the jqGrid instance
$grid = new jqGridRender($conn);
// Lets create the model manually
$Model = array(
    array(
"name"=>"Integer","width"=>80,
        
"formatter"=>"integer",
        
"formatoptions"=>array("thousandsSeparator"=>","), "sorttype"=>"integer"),
    array(
"name"=>"Number","width"=>80,
        
"formatter"=>"number""formatoptions"=>array("decimalPlaces"=>1), "sorttype"=>"number"),
    array(
"name"=>"Currency","width"=>80,
        
"formatter"=>"currency",
        
"formatoptions"=>array("decimalPlaces"=>1,"thousandsSeparator"=>",","prefix"=>"$","suffix"=>" USD"), "sorttype"=>"currency"),
    array(
"name"=>"Email","width"=>120,"formatter"=>"email"),
    array(
"name"=>"Link","width"=>120,"formatter"=>"link"),
    array(
"name"=>"Checkbox","width"=>50,"formatter"=>"checkbox")
);
// Let the grid create the model
$grid->setColModel($Model);
// Set grid option datatype to be local
$grid->setGridOptions(array("datatype"=>"local"));
//We can add data manually using arrays
$data = array(
    array(
"Integer"=>200000,"Number"=>60000000.73,"Currency"=>34.2,"Email"=>"john.smith@yahoo.com","Link"=>"http://www.yahoo.com","Checkbox"=>"Yes"),
    array(
"Integer"=>1600000,"Number"=>75200000.23,"Currency"=>245.2,"Email"=>"joe.woe@google.com","Link"=>"http://www.google.com","Checkbox"=>"Yes"),
    array(
"Integer"=>652693,"Number"=>34534000.33,"Currency"=>18545.2,"Email"=>"julia.bergman@bing.com","Link"=>"http://www.bing.com","Checkbox"=>"No"),
    array(
"Integer"=>1237,"Number"=>3450.30,"Currency"=>55597545.2,"Email"=>"roy.corner@msn.com","Link"=>"http://www.msn.com","Checkbox"=>"No")
);
// Let put it using the callGridMethod
// Integer in the array acts as id column
$grid->callGridMethod("#grid"'addRowData', array("Integer",$data));
$grid->renderGrid('#grid','#pager',truenullnulltrue,true);
?>