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The Raja of the bamboo. NQ 4

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Raja of the bamboo. NQ 4

W.E. Maxwell, serving as Assistant Resident in Perak, published in 1886 a verbatim transcription of an oral Malay romance called Sri Rama, as performed by the village storyteller Mir Hassan of Kampar. The work documents the penglipur lara tradition of professional Malay narrative recitation and demonstrates the profound, if heavily localized, influence of the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa on Malay oral literature in the late nineteenth century.

Summary

Maxwell first encountered Mir Hassan’s storytelling talents during his posting in Perak and subsequently arranged for the romance to be committed to writing by native scribes. The transcription was completed in 1886 after Mir Hassan, through the influence of Raja Idris of Perak, visited Maxwell in Singapore, where Maxwell personally reviewed the text and obtained explanations of obscure passages (pp. 87–88). The resulting document comprises both the full Malay text in Jawi script and a detailed English narrative summary with selected quotations, making it one of the earliest scholarly recordings of a Malay oral cheritra in the colonial period.

The story itself follows Sri Rama, Raja of Tanjong Bunga, whose childless marriage to the Princess Sakutum Bunga Satangkei prompts a divination by his elder brother Raja Laksamana. The prophecy foretells an heir but warns against bathing in a green mountain lake, which transforms anyone who enters it into a monkey. Both Sri Rama and his wife disobey and are transformed; their son, born as an infant monkey, is named Kra Kechil Imam Tergangga. Banished to the forest by his ashamed father, the monkey-king eventually encounters the sun, befriends a seven-headed Jin on Mount Inggil-ber-inggil, and gains command over vast monkey armies. When the sorcerer Maharaja Duwana abducts the Princess from Tanjong Bunga, the monkey-king rescues her through a series of supernatural feats, ultimately burning the enemy’s island of Kachapuri. The narrative concludes with the monkey-king’s transformation into the human prince Mambang Bongsu, his marriage to the Princess Renek Jintan of Bandar Tahwil, and his accession to that throne (pp. 88–113).

Maxwell frames the publication within a broader ethnographic argument about the persistence of oral storytelling in the Malay world despite the spread of print culture. He draws explicit parallels between the Malay penglipur lara and the Homeric bard, noting that the tradition was inherited patrilineally and performed at village festivals and domestic celebrations, with audiences of both sexes listening from separate quarters (p. 87). He also situates the Sri Rama within the wider sphere of Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata influence across Siam, Malaya, and Java, observing that village-stage dramas in all these regions are directly referable to these Indian epics (p. 88).

Key Findings

  • The text was transcribed verbatim from Mir Hassan’s oral performance by native writers, with Maxwell providing editorial oversight and eliciting explanations of difficult passages; it represents a genuine village-singer’s version rather than a literary hikayat compiled by a scribe (p. 88).
  • Maxwell proposes that the Andaman Islands owe their name to Malay identification of their inhabitants with the monkeys of Hanuman, the Malays calling the group “Pulau Handuman” (p. 88, n.).
  • The story contains a detailed description of Malay royal dress, including a kris “sampana ganja iras” whose iron is said to be harder than the iron of the Kaaba’s door, and a turban inscribed with love-charms and invocations (pp. 92–94).
  • The narrative employs a characteristic Malay metrical style in which a tropical daybreak is rendered in a passage Maxwell translates as free verse, noting its “beauty of expression” (pp. 88–89).
  • Maxwell identifies the divination scene performed by Raja Laksamana as exactly matching the proceedings of a contemporary Malay pawang (shaman), with the same implements: candle, tepong tawar (sacred water), bertik (parched rice), bras kunyet (yellow rice), and white cloth (pp. 90–91).
  • Beyond Sri Rama, Maxwell reports having secured transcriptions of two further Mir Hassan romances (Raja Ambong and Raja Donan) and a third, Raja Budiman or Naga Mas, from a teller named Dollah of Balik Pulau, Penang, who learned it from a blind man of Situl in Kedah (p. 113).

Conclusion

Maxwell’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata exercised a “profound influence” across the Far East—what he terms India extra Gangem and the islands beyond—so pervasive that no village-stage in Siam, Malaya, or Java performed dramas not directly referable to these sources, and that the wrongs of Sita Dewi, the might of Rawana, and the prowess of Hanuman were “household words everywhere” (p. 88). The Sri Rama as told by Mir Hassan exemplifies how these Indian epic elements were absorbed into a distinctly Malay oral idiom, filtered through Islamic sensibilities, local geography, and the conventions of the penglipur lara performance tradition.

Context

  • Maxwell’s collection was facilitated by his colonial administrative position in Perak and the patronage of Raja Idris, illustrating how British Residents in the Straits Settlements and the Malay States served as intermediaries between indigenous knowledge-holders and European scholarly institutions such as the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
  • The document is held in the MBRAS collection under the identifier jsbras-017-maxwell-sriramamalay-1886 and is accessible via JSTOR (stable URL: 41607043).

References