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The Rama story in the Malay tradition

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The Rama story in the Malay tradition

S. Singaravelu of the University of Malaya published this comparative study in 1981, examining how the Rāmāyaṇa narrative has been absorbed, transformed, and restructured across three distinct streams of Malay tradition: the Wayang Siam shadow-play, the penglipur lara oral folk romance, and the literary Hikayat Seri Rama. The overarching thesis is that the Malay Rama story is not a mere translation or derivative of the Sanskrit epic but a highly developed, original body of literature that incorporates localised scenery, Islamic religious influence, Panji-derived sub-plots, and a distinctive system of character relationships forged through unusual birth-story combinations.

Summary

Singaravelu organises his analysis around the three performance and textual contexts in which the Rama story survives in Malay culture. The Wayang Siam shadow-play version, known as Cerita Maharaja Wana (Rawana), is shown to be the product of intermingling Malay and Thai traditions with considerable overlap with Javanese, Laotian, and Khmer versions. A detailed comparative study of over a hundred dalang repertoires reveals that no two shadow-play versions are identical, yet all share a compressed plot pattern drawn from Malay folk-tale conventions—separation, wandering, obstacles, reunion—and a localisation of episodes to places such as Langkawi, Jitra, and Singgora. Characterisation diverges sharply from the literary version: Rama is effeminate and amorous, Laksmana is a celibate ascetic (or papak), and the repertoire is expanded by ranting tales adapted from Panji stories in which Rama assumes the role of Radin Ino Kertapati.

The penglipur lara folk version, documented verbatim by W.E. Maxwell in 1866 from a performer named Mir Hassan of Kampar, Perak, represents a further degree of localisation and Islamic accretion. Rama is ruler of Tanjung Bunga rather than Ayodhya, his consort is Sekuntum Bunga Setangkai rather than Sita, both bear the Islamic title khalipha, and Ravana appears as a golden goat rather than a deer. The folk version’s chief characters have acquired symbolic and magical significance in popular Malay culture: Rama and Sita’s names appear in euphemistic charm syllables and love potions, and Laksmana’s protective circle around Sita has given rise to the pawang’s baris Laksamana ritual.

The literary Hikayat Seri Rama (HSR) is treated as the manifestation of ruling-elite cultural ideals—righteous warfare, undivided loyalty, family fidelity—which made the Ramayana tradition compatible with Islam. Singaravelu surveys the long historiographical debate over HSR’s origins, from Dozon’s 1846 refutation of the Valmiki-translation hypothesis through Juynboll’s Tamil-source theory, Rassers’s Indonesian-source conclusion, Stutterheim’s mixed oral-tradition model, and Zieseniss’s 1928 systematic monograph identifying the text as a composite drawing on Puranic and popular sources from multiple regions of India. The article then identifies HSR’s major distinguishing features: the commencing of the narrative with Ravana’s birth (unlike Valmiki), the Islamic remoulding of Ravana’s antecedents (with Allah replacing Brahma, and the story set during the time of Prophet Adam), the progressive bowdlerisation of Viṣṇu’s incarnation, and most notably the intricate web of birth-story relationships that make Sita simultaneously Rama’s half-sister and Ravana’s daughter, and Hanuman Rama’s son by Dewi Anjati.

Key Findings

  • The Hikayat Seri Rama has survived in at least seven known recensions: two published (Roorda van Eysinga, 1843; Shellabear, 1915) and at least five in manuscript form, all derived from a common older source (p. 136).
  • The oldest extant HSR manuscript is the Bodleian copy, given to Oxford by Archbishop Laud in 1633, yet it contains the youngest recension in terms of Islamic influence (p. 136, n. 25).
  • In the Shellabear text, Allah replaces Brahma as the conferrer of Ravana’s boon of invincibility, and King Dasaratha is identified as the great-grandson of Prophet Adam (p. 138).
  • The archery contest for Sita’s hand requires suitors to shoot through forty lontar palm trees with a single arrow from a divine bow (p. 139).
  • Ravana’s ascetic penance involves hanging head-downwards over a fire for twelve years; Rama’s post-victory asceticism lasts forty years (pp. 138, 146).
  • The Sejarah Melayu records that Hang Tuah was officially conferred the title Laksmana during the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah (1459–1477), placing him in the royal audience hall on equal status with the Bendahara (p. 135).

Conclusion

Singaravelu concludes that the Rama story in the Malay tradition—across its folk, shadow-play, and literary manifestations—constitutes a highly developed and well-balanced narrative body that is neither a passive reception of the Indian epic nor a simple local adaptation, but an original literary achievement in which disparate elements from multiple Indian textual and oral sources, Panji traditions, and indigenous Malay cultural ideals have been moulded into a unified whole reflecting the specific social, religious, and aesthetic values of Malay society.

Context

  • The study draws on manuscript collections held at the Royal Asiatic Society (Raffles Malay MS No. 22), Cambridge University Library (Wilkinson Malay MS, Add. 3756), the Bodleian Library, the Preussische Staatsbibliothek (Berlin), and Leiden University Library, alongside the two published recensions and Maxwell’s 1866 verbatim folk-text.
  • Historiographically, the article extends and synthesises the source-critical debate initiated by Dozon (1846) and developed by Juynboll, van Ronkel, Rassers, Stutterheim, and Zieseniss, while incorporating P.L. Amin Sweeney’s comparative work on Wayang Siam repertoires and J. Kats’s observations on Javanese versions, positioning the Malay HSR as a distinct literary work rather than a translation.

References