Panjat. 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 Malay transcription of an oral romance recited by the Perak storyteller Mir Hassan, accompanied by an extensive English analytical summary. The work documents the penglipur lara (soother of cares) tradition of professional Malay narrative performance and demonstrates the deep structural influence of the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa on indigenous Malay legendary literature.
Summary
Maxwell, then serving as Assistant Resident in Perak, first encountered Mir Hassan of Kampar and arranged for his legendary repertoire to be committed to writing. Official duties interrupted the work for several years until 1886, when Mir Hassan was brought to Singapore through the influence of Raja Idris of Perak, and the transcription of the Sri Rama romance was completed (p. 88). The Malay text, running to forty-eight pages, was taken down verbatim from Mir Hassan’s lips by native writers, with Maxwell subsequently reviewing it and obtaining explanations of obscure passages from the storyteller himself (p. 88). The narrative is set in the kingdom of Tanjong Bunga, ruled by Sri Rama, whose wife the Princess Sakutum Bunga Satangke is transformed into a monkey after bathing in a forbidden lake, and who subsequently bears a monkey son, Kra Kechil Imam Tergangga, who is banished to the forest, becomes sovereign of the monkey tribes, and ultimately rescues his mother from the sorcerer-king Maharaja Duwana of Pulau Kachapuri (pp. 89–113).
Maxwell’s English summary is not merely a plot paraphrase but a sustained exercise in comparative literary analysis, drawing explicit parallels between the Malay oral version and the Sanskrit epic. He identifies the monkey prince as the functional equivalent of Hanuman, the captive princess as Sita Dewi, and Maharaja Duwana as the analogue of Ravana, while noting that the oral version introduces elements absent from the written hikayat tradition, such as the episode of the seven-headed Jin and the transformation of the monkey prince into the human Mambang Bongsu (pp. 109–113). Maxwell argues that the oral legend, transmitted from father to son in village settings, preserves points of interest “wanting in a written version, compiled by a scribe who may have knowingly borrowed from foreign sources” (p. 88).
The story’s structure follows the conventions of Malay oral performance: repeated formulaic phrases for travel (deri jauh sesar-kan dekat, sudah dekat hampir-kan tiba), elaborate catalogues of courtly assembly, metrical passages describing natural phenomena, and the characteristic Malay narrative device of the langkah (ritualised travel incantation) (pp. 90–95). Maxwell notes that anachronisms—cannon and muskets in a mythic setting—do not shock the Malay audience, and that the storyteller’s art consists substantially in piling up similes and synonymous descriptive phrases (pp. 90, 95).
Key Findings
- The penglipur lara was a professional oral storyteller who performed in the balei of a Raja or chief after the evening meal, intoning romances in a monotonous chant, often continuing far into the night and resuming the following evening; the performer was typically illiterate and inherited his repertoire from his father and ancestors (p. 87).
- Mir Hassan, the source narrator, was a native of Kampar in south-eastern Perak; his Sri Rama text was transcribed verbatim by native writers and represents one of many cheritras extant orally among the Malays, alongside Raja Ambong, Raja Donan, and Raja Budiman or Naga Mas (pp. 88, 113).
- The transformation motif—Sri Rama and his wife turned into monkeys by bathing in a forbidden lake—has no direct parallel in the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa but functions as the narrative engine that produces the monkey hero, paralleling Hanuman’s origin as a divine monkey (pp. 96–97).
- Maxwell identifies the Andaman Islands as likely deriving their name from the Malay Pulau Handuman (Islands of Hanuman), suggesting that the inhabitants were identified by Malays with the monkeys of the epic hero (p. 88, n.).
- The episode in which Kra Kechil leaps from Sri Rama’s shoulders and is caught by Raja Laksamana, who hurls him across the sea, closely mirrors the Rāmāyaṇa episode in which Hanuman is shot by Indrajit and carried to Lanka, while the destruction of Kachapuri by fire parallels Hanuman’s burning of Lanka (pp. 108–109).
- The story concludes with the monkey prince’s transformation into the human Mambang Bongsu through the burning of his monkey-skin, after which he marries Princess Renek Jintan of Bandar Tahwil and eventually succeeds her father as Raja—an ending with no equivalent in the Sanskrit epic (pp. 111–113).
Conclusion
Maxwell’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata have exercised a “profound influence” across the Farther East, from India extra Gangem through the islands, such that “there is not a village-stage in Siam, Malaya or Java, the dramas of which are not directly referable to these sources” (p. 88). The Sri Rama of Mir Hassan demonstrates that this influence operated not through literary transmission but through oral performance, producing hybrid narratives that retain the epic’s structural skeleton while incorporating indigenous Malay elements—Islamic formulae, local geography, and the specific conventions of the penglipur lara art form.
Context
- Maxwell’s collection was facilitated by Raja Idris of Perak, who induced Mir Hassan to travel to Singapore for the transcription; this reflects the collaborative relationship between colonial administrators and Malay royalty in the production of ethnographic knowledge during the 1880s (p. 88).
- The publication appeared in the JSBRAS at a time when the Society was actively commissioning and publishing primary-source transcriptions of Malay oral literature, establishing an archival record of performance traditions that Maxwell himself warned were at risk of extinction with the passing of the current generation of storytellers (p. 113).