Beliefs in spirits and demons. NQ 4
W.E. Maxwell published “Sri Rama: A Malay Fairy Tale, Founded on the Rāmāyaṇa” in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1886, presenting a verbatim transcription of an oral Malay romance as performed by the village storyteller Mir Hassan of Kampar, Perak. The work documents the profound and enduring influence of the Indian epics—the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata—on Malay oral literary tradition, demonstrating how these narratives were adapted, localized, and transmitted through generations of professional penglipur lara (“soothers of cares”) in the Straits Settlements and the Malay Peninsula.
Summary
The narrative opens in the kingdom of Tanjong Bunga, where Raja Sri Rama, childless after three years of marriage, summons his elder brother Raja Laksamana to perform a divination ritual identical in its implements and procedure to that of a contemporary Malay pawang. The seer prophesies an heir but warns that a green lake on a coastal hill will transform any bather into a monkey. The princess disobeys, both she and Sri Rama are transformed, and their son is born as a monkey—Kra Kechil Imam Tergangga. After three months of the king’s grief, the infant is banished to a remote forest, where he wanders for three months and ten days before reaching the court of Shah Numan, who sends him to Mount Inggil-ber-inggil. There he encounters the sun, falls unconscious, and is discovered by the Princess Renek Jintan of Bandar Tahwil, who takes him as a plaything. Eventually the monkey-prince establishes himself as sovereign of the monkey tribes at the plain of Anta-ber-anta, commanding chiefs such as Janggit, Nila Kamala, and Raja Marjan Singa (pp. 97–104).
Maharaja Duwana of the island Kachapuri, enchanted by reports of the princess’s beauty, uses magic to abduct her to his own kingdom. Sri Rama and Raja Laksamana journey for three months and ten days to find their son, who helps them locate Kachapuri from the mountain summit. The monkey-prince leaps to Kachapuri, destroys Duwana’s sacred trees, is captured and burned but survives unscathed, and carries his mother back to her husband. A great battle follows in which Duwana’s seven thousand men are reduced to seven hundred; he is finally defeated and withdraws to his own kingdom (pp. 105–112).
The monkey-prince marries Princess Renek Jintan of Bandar Tahwil. On the third night after the wedding, his bride’s nurse burns his monkey-skin, transforming him permanently into a human named Mambang Bongsu, who becomes king of Bandar Tahwil. A final episode involves the Jin with seven heads demanding the princess in marriage, resolved peacefully through the magic ring the Jin had given Kra Kechil on the mountain, confirming the princess is already wed (pp. 111–113).
Key Findings
- The text was transcribed verbatim from the oral performance of Mir Hassan, a native of Kampar in south-eastern Perak, who was brought to Singapore in 1886 through the influence of Raja Idris of Perak; Maxwell had first witnessed his storytelling while serving as Assistant Resident in Perak (p. 88).
- Maxwell explicitly identifies the divination ritual performed by Raja Laksamana—using a candle, tepong tawar (sacred water), bertik (parched rice), bras kunyet (yellow rice), and eight cubits of white cloth—as “exactly those of a Malay pawang at the present day,” linking the narrative to living shamanic practice (pp. 91–92).
- The narrative contains direct parallels to the Rāmāyaṇa: the monkey shows the captive princess a ring (as Hanuman shows Sita), destroys sacred trees in the enemy’s kingdom (as Hanuman tears up the asoka grove in Lanka), and is set on fire but survives (as Hanuman’s burning tail ignites Lanka) (pp. 109–110).
- Maxwell proposes that the Andaman Islands derive their name from the Malay identification of their inhabitants with the monkeys of Hanuman, the Malays calling the group “Pulau Handuman” (p. 88).
- The story-teller’s art is characterized by the piling up of similes and synonymous descriptive phrases, metrical passages in a rhythm Maxwell compares to Dayak blank-verse, and the casual use of anachronisms (cannon and muskets) that do not shock the Malay audience (pp. 88, 90, 95).
- Maxwell records that two additional romances (Raja Ambong and Raja Donan) were also transcribed from Mir Hassan, and a third (Raja Budiman or Naga Mas) from a storyteller named Dollah of Balik Pulau, Penang, who had learned it from a blind man of Situl in north Kedah (p. 113).
Conclusion
Maxwell’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata have exercised a “profound influence” across the Farther East, with no village-stage in Siam, Malaya, or Java whose dramas are not directly referable to these sources. He argues that the oral tradition preserves elements of interest “wanting in a written version, compiled by a scribe who may have knowingly borrowed from foreign sources,” making the village-singer’s narrative a uniquely valuable document of indigenous literary adaptation and cultural transmission.
Context
- Maxwell was serving as Assistant Resident in Perak when he first witnessed Mir Hassan’s storytelling; official duties interrupted the transcription, which was only completed in 1886 when Mir Hassan visited Singapore (p. 88).
- The publication occupies pp. 1–48 (Malay text) and 87–115 (English introduction and narrative summary) of JSBRAS Vol. 17 (June 1886), representing one of the earliest systematic colonial-era attempts to document Malay oral literary heritage in written form.