Galgal. NQ 4
W. E. Maxwell, a British Assistant Resident in Perak, published in 1886 the verbatim Malay text of an oral romance called Sri Rama, taken down from the lips of a Perak village storyteller named Mir Hassan of Kampar, accompanied by an extensive English commentary titled “Penglipur Lara: The Soother of Cares.” The work documents a living oral tradition of Malay legendary storytelling rooted in the Hindu Rāmāyaṇa, preserving the performance context, linguistic register, and narrative structure of a genre that Maxwell argued was rapidly disappearing under the pressure of print culture and European colonial influence.
Summary
Maxwell’s primary contribution is ethnographic as much as literary. He situates the penglipur lara—the Malay professional storyteller—within the social architecture of village life, describing how the bard would perform in the balei of a chief or on the verandah of a private house after the evening meal, with the male audience outside and women listening from behind curtains. The storyteller, often illiterate, inherited his repertoire from his father and ancestors, and performed in a monotonous chant that could extend far into the night before being suspended for continuation the following evening (pp. 87–88). Maxwell compares the Malay rhapsodist to Homer wandering among Greek cities, and notes that a small reward, a hearty welcome, and a good meal were the bard’s standard compensation.
The narrative itself follows the broad contours of the Rāmāyaṇa but diverges significantly in detail. Sri Rama, king of Tanjong Bunga, is childless after three years of marriage to the Princess Sakutum Bunga Satangkei. His elder brother Raja Laksamana performs a divination ritual (identical in procedure to that of a contemporary Malay pawang) and prophesies an heir, but warns that a lake on a coastal hill will transform anyone who bathes in it into a monkey. The Princess disobeys, both she and Sri Rama are transformed, and their child is born as an infant monkey named Kra Kechil Imam Tergangga. Banished to the forest by his ashamed father, the monkey-son wanders to the court of Shah Numan, then to the kingdom of Bandar Tahwil where the Princess Renek Jintan takes him as a plaything. He eventually becomes king of the monkey tribes at the plain of Anta-ber-anta. Meanwhile, the sorcerer Maharaja Duwana, from the island of Kachapuri, abducts the Princess Sakutum Bunga. Sri Rama and his brother journey to find their son, who reveals his true identity and, with the aid of a seven-headed Jin, rescues his mother. After a great battle in which Duwana is defeated, the monkey-prince marries Renek Jintan, his monkey-skin is burned by the Princess’s watchful nurse, and he is transformed into the human prince Mambang Bongsu, who ultimately inherits the throne of Bandar Tahwil (pp. 89–113).
Maxwell is careful to emphasize that this is an oral version, not a written hikayat, and that the differences from the Sanskrit epic are themselves evidence of the profound but indirect influence the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata have exercised across the Far East. He notes that the wrongs of Sita Dewi, the might of Rawana, and the prowess of Hanuman are “household words everywhere” in Siam, Malaya, and Java, and that no village-stage drama in these regions is directly referable to other sources (p. 88). He also offers a etymological hypothesis 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).
Key Findings
- The text was recorded verbatim from the oral performance of Mir Hassan, a native of Kampar, Perak, who was brought to Singapore in 1886 through the intervention of Raja Idris of Perak; Maxwell had first witnessed his talents while serving as Assistant Resident in Perak (p. 88).
- The divination scene performed by Raja Laksamana—using a candle, tepong tawar (sacred water), bertik (parched rice), bras kunyet (yellow rice), and white cloth, with the performer enveloped in the cloth from sunset to daybreak—is described by Maxwell as “exactly those of a Malay pawang at the present day” (p. 92).
- The narrative contains a metrical passage describing tropical daybreak that Maxwell translates into English verse, noting it is “not without some beauty of expression”; the passage uses the conventional Malay formula for the approach of dawn, including the image of the puntong (ember) reduced to two fingers’ length as the sign that day is near (pp. 89–90).
- The description of Sri Rama’s kris, called “sampana ganja iras,” is said to be made of a metal superior to the iron of the Kaaba’s door, struck by the son of Adam, and gilded with water from flowers and Chinese porcelain, with venom descending from the sky (pp. 92–93).
- The transformation of the monkey-prince into the human Mambang Bongsu occurs when his wife’s nurse burns his shed monkey-skin; the smoke turns into white cloth and the ashes are found to be gold—a motif Maxwell does not compare to any specific written source, suggesting it belongs to the oral tradition’s own symbolic logic (p. 113).
- Maxwell identifies at least four other oral romances in his collection at the time of writing: Raja Ambong and Raja Donan (also from Mir Hassan), Raja Budiman or Naga Mas (from Dollah of Balik Pulau, Penang, learned from a blind man of Situl), and an unnamed romance heard sung by a woman of Brunei and being transcribed at Sarawak (p. 113).
Conclusion
Maxwell’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Malay oral romance constitutes a living, distinct literary form whose value lies precisely in its orality—its performance context, its formulaic language, its metrical digressions, and its local adaptations of pan-Asian epic material. He frames the publication as an act of urgent preservation, warning that the present generation of storytellers was dying out and that without immediate collection, these traditions would be lost. The Sri Rama text stands as evidence that the Rāmāyaṇa’s influence in the Malay world operated not through direct textual transmission but through centuries of oral reworking, producing narratives that are recognizably derivative yet irreducibly local in their imagery, social detail, and religious syncretism.
Context
- The publication appears in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 17 (June 1886), pp. 1–48 and 87–115, placing it within the Society’s early commitment to documenting Malay literary and linguistic heritage during the period of expanding British administrative presence in the Straits Settlements and the Malay states.
- Maxwell’s position as Assistant Resident in Perak gave him direct access to the court and village culture of the state; his collaboration with Raja Idris of Perak to secure Mir Hassan’s cooperation illustrates the typical colonial-era dynamic in which European officials depended on Malay aristocratic intermediaries to access indigenous knowledge systems.