The story of Kherudin
G.M. Laidlaw published “The Story of Kherudin” in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1906, presenting a Malay folk tale of the magic-ring type in both English translation and original Malay orthography. The narrative was transmitted orally through a chain of custodians—Penghulu Mat Nordin from Mohamed Unus bin Mohamed Arip, a man of pure Perak descent—and was recorded as part of the early colonial-era effort to document Malay oral literature before its further transformation.
Summary
The tale follows the youngest son of a wealthy merchant, Kherudin, who is set apart from his six elder brothers by a paternal will that predicts his future fortune. During a trading voyage, Kherudin spends his allotted hundred dollars on three animals others intend to destroy: a mangy dog, a mangy cat, and a snake—each purchased for thirty dollars. The snake proves to be the king of all snakes, whose ministers reward Kherudin with a fairy ring of unlimited power before carrying their king home. Upon returning to his own country, Kherudin uses the ring to fulfil the king’s impossible conditions for the hand of Princess Shamsiah: a palace of gold and silver with a diamond cupola, a golden landing to the sea, and a golden road to his own house, all completed overnight.
After the marriage, the ring is stolen by a Chinese jeweller who was sent to re-set it. Kherudin falls into a swoon, and the mangy cat and dog undertake a long quest across seas and foreign lands to recover it. The cat captures the king of the rats, who commands his subjects to gnaw through seven nested boxes to retrieve the ring. The dog accidentally drops the ring into the sea while carrying it, but it is recovered from the belly of a dead fish on a beach. The cat returns the ring to Kherudin’s breast at midnight, and he recovers. The king eventually abdicates in Kherudin’s favour, who is styled Sultan Kherudin Shah and appoints his eldest brother chief minister while assigning the other five to menial livestock roles.
The article presents the tale in two parallel versions: an English rendering (pp. 27–42) and the original Malay text (pp. 43–57), the latter written in a romanised orthography that preserves archaic and dialectal features. Laidlaw intersperses brief editorial notes on Islamic marriage law (the ijab kabul formula, p. 51) and on the Malay honorific gesture of raising ten fingers (mengangkat kadam jari sepuluh, p. 47), situating the narrative within its religious and social context.
Key Findings
- The tale’s provenance is traced to Mohamed Unus bin Mohamed Arip, identified as being “of pure Perak descent,” and was mediated through Penghulu Mat Nordin (p. 27).
- The magic ring grants its bearer the power to materialise any wish; the king snake’s ministers offer it as a substitute for the return of their king, whom Kherudin refuses to surrender (pp. 30–31).
- The king’s three conditions for the marriage are: a palace with pillars of mingled gold and silver, walls of pure gold, and a diamond cupola; a golden landing from the palace to the sea; and a golden road from the palace to Kherudin’s house, all to be completed in three days (pp. 32–33).
- The Islamic marriage ceremony is described in detail, including the kadi’s reading of the khutbah nikah, the ijab kabul formula, and the specific dower of “enam puloh tengah tiga ringgit” (sixty-three dollars) recorded in Laidlaw’s footnote (p. 51).
- The ring is concealed in seven nested boxes (peti seven layers deep) in the Chinese jeweller’s house, and the rat-king’s subjects bore through each layer to extract it (pp. 39–40).
- The tale concludes with Kherudin’s elevation to sultan and the demotion of his five younger brothers to keepers of buffaloes, cattle, goats, sheep, and fowls, while the eldest becomes chief minister (p. 42).
Conclusion
Laidlaw’s publication serves as an early ethnographic record of a Malay oral narrative of the “magic ring” type (ATU 563/549 variant), preserving both the story’s plot structure and the linguistic register of its Perak-speaking informant. The tale’s moral architecture—reward for compassion toward the despised, the failure of the envious elder brothers, and the ultimate legitimisation of the youngest son’s rule—reflects a social logic familiar across Malay and broader Southeast Asian storytelling traditions.
Context
- Laidlaw was a colonial administrator in the Straits Settlements; the article appears in a journal whose primary audience was the European administrative and scholarly community, and the dual-language presentation (English translation alongside romanised Malay) was designed to make the text accessible to readers without Malay proficiency while preserving the original for linguistic study.
- The romanised Malay text retains archaic spellings and dialectal forms (e.g., kuching for cat, chinchin for ring, mahligai for palace) that are of value to historical linguists, and Laidlaw’s footnotes on Islamic legal terminology indicate an attempt to contextualise the narrative for a non-Muslim readership.