Peran Hutan, a Malay wayang drama
Amin Sweeney’s 1971 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society presents three field-recorded renderings of Peran Hutan, the shortest drama in the Wayang Siam (Malay shadow-play) repertoire, to demonstrate how ritual function, performer identity, and audience context shape the language, presentation, and treatment of a single piece. Drawing on performances by Kelantanese dalangs in Kota Bharu in 1968, Sweeney argues that the drama’s fixed plot coexists with radical variation in delivery, and that this variation is governed less by individual creativity than by the ritual or commercial purpose of the occasion.
Summary
Peran Hutan (“Jungle Clown” or “Jungle Hunter”) is a fifteen-to-thirty-minute drama in which the eponymous protagonist, while hunting on behalf of his teacher Maharisi Mata Api, encounters a tiger, slays it, but cannot exorcize the evil influences (kuong badi bala selokor) emanating from the carcase and must therefore return to his teacher for that task. Sweeney establishes that the drama serves a dual ritual purpose: pelepas panggung (casting away evil influences from the operating box before performance) and, in Kelantan specifically, a component of the berjamu (feasting) ritual in which the dalang enters trance and feeds the spirits of his puppets. The drama also encodes the pupil-teacher relationship: the performing dalang is represented by PH, and his own teacher by Maharisi Mata Api (identified with Shiva through the “eye of fire” epithet and the third eye). Sweeney supports Singaravelu’s (1970) hypothesis that PH is himself a manifestation of Shiva by noting the tiger-slaying motif and the shared dog-names (Langsat, Nibung) with the Hantu Pemburu, another Shiva manifestation documented by Skeat (1900).
The analytical core of the paper is the comparison of three renderings. Two (A¹ and A²) were performed on consecutive nights of a two-night berjamu by pupils (Jusoh and Midin) of the same dalang, Karim of Kota Bharu; the third (B) was a demonstration performance by another dalang, Daud, before an audience of children. Sweeney shows that A¹ and A² are remarkably similar in both plot and presentation—two scenes, nearly identical balance of dialogue, narrative, music, and puppet action—because both were ritual performances carried out under the teacher’s supervision and without regard for audience feedback. Version B, by contrast, is presented largely as comedy: PH puns on the tiger’s name, displays latah (arctic hysteria), insults his teacher (who is portrayed as deaf, mistaking rimau for limau), and struggles comically to learn the exorcism formula. Sweeney explains this divergence by the non-ritual context: Daud was demonstrating to pupils, the audience was children, and his own teacher had long been dead, removing the social constraint that would forbid such treatment in a berjamu performance.
On language, Sweeney demonstrates that wayang speech is not a fixed text but a “heightened” register—distorted morphology, contorted syntax, stringing together of synonyms, and stock phrases (some meaningful, some nonsense) that allow the dalang to collect his thoughts. The clown PH, who normally speaks in peasant dialect when addressing familiars, shifts to formal wayang style when he assumes the dalang’s narrative role or addresses his teacher, but drops to everyday speech only at the moment of battle. In version B, where PH takes over more of the narrator’s function, this contrast is most pronounced, and the dalang speaks for himself only twice in the entire piece.
Key Findings
- Peran Hutan is the shortest drama in the Wayang Siam repertoire, lasting 15–30 minutes, compared with a minimum of nine hours for the shortest other items in the repertoire (p. 79).
- In Kelantan, PH is performed only within the berjamu ritual series (some dalangs on every night, others only on the first or last); in Perak it appears in every series even where the berjamu is no longer performed; in Patani it is often reduced to a few seconds of puppet flourishes (pp. 79–80).
- The exorcism invocation employed to cast away the tiger’s influences is: “Hei Rimau Besar Serjan Kilat Sejalur Wangi, mu jangan lekat rong kuong charai chending badi bala selokor… dalam panggung luar panggung sekalian budak kanak kechil besar tua muda, orang perut besar dendam. Aku nak lepaslah mu dengan kata sa tiga lima tujuh lepas!” The physical act of pelepas involves parting two knotted coconut palm fronds (pp. 100–101).
- In rendering A¹, the uninitiated pupil Jusoh incorrectly hurls the tiger’s carcase himself rather than leaving this task to Maharisi Mata Api; Karim was “extremely annoyed” because the act is reserved for dalangs who have undergone pelimau initiation (p. 103, n. 13).
- The tiger is described in a bilangan (rhythmical prose passage) as “Hulubalang Machan Gerga, Mak Rimau Besar, Serjan Kilat Sejalur Wangi, duduk bertapa dari kandangan baluk, dari Gua Bali” (pp. 88–89).
- PH’s dog is named Anjing Langsat Selumbar Nibung; the Hantu Pemburu’s hunting pack includes dogs named Si Langsat and Si Nibung (Skeat, 1900, p. 117), supporting the identification of both characters as manifestations of Shiva (p. 77).
Conclusion
Sweeney’s definitive takeaway is that the Wayang Siam drama of Peran Hutan operates as a ritual text whose content is relatively stable (the basic plot is invariant across all versions examined) but whose presentation is highly variable, with the degree and nature of variation determined by the performance context—ritual versus entertainment, the presence or absence of the teacher, and the composition of the audience. The drama functions simultaneously as an exorcism, a demonstration of the dalang’s qualifications, and a symbolic enactment of the guru-disciple bond, and it is precisely this multiplicity of ritual functions that constrains tampering with the plot while permitting considerable freedom in language and comic treatment.
Context
- The three renderings were recorded in the field in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, in August and October 1968; the article is the first published presentation of full Malay texts of the PH drama with detailed linguistic annotation.
- The study contributes to the historiography of Malay performance by demonstrating, through controlled comparison, how ritual function (rather than individual artistry) governs textual stability in the Wayang Siam tradition, and by providing the first systematic documentation of the pelepas panggung invocation in its Kelantanese form.