The cannibal king in the “Kedah Annals”
C. O. Blagden’s short note compares the cannibal king narrative in the “Hikayat Marong Mahawangsa” (Kedah Annals) with the similar tale in Fausboll’s Maha-Sutasoma-Jataka (No. 537), arguing that the Kedah version was borrowed from a Siamese source.
Summary
Blagden identifies the principal differences in the two tales’ openings—the Indian king develops cannibalism through Buddhist transmigration (a previous life as a Yakkha) and first tastes human flesh when a cook substitutes corpse meat for stolen meat, while the Kedah king is the son of an ogress and first tastes human blood when a cook accidentally cuts her finger into a curry (p. 47). After these divergent beginnings, the narratives converge in numerous details: the king’s pleasure in the meal, the cook’s threat of death for non-confession, the escalation to kidnapping innocents, the popular uproar, the ministers’ warning, and the king’s expulsion (p. 47–48).
The endings diverge again: in the Jataka the king is converted by Sutasoma (a previous incarnation of the Buddha) and welcomed back, whereas in the Kedah tale the king mates with a girl in exile and his son is restored to the throne through an elephant’s sagacity and a Siamese warrant (p. 48). Blagden concludes that the coincidence of small details demands a more specific explanation than generic folk-tale uniformity, and infers borrowing from a Siamese source, given the popularity of Jatakas in Buddhist countries (p. 48).