DR. BRANDSTETTER'S RESEARCHES 215 



researches as these may lead to very interesting- discoveries, 

 quite apart from the merely technical details of philology. 



These last I shall not pretend to deal with here, only re- 

 ferring the reader to these two valuable monographs, where he 

 will find them set out and very skilfully handled. 



I have left myself little space to notice the other numbers 

 of the series to which I would draw particular attention. Of 

 the Hikayat Hang Tuah I will merely say that it is an historical 

 romance of the life of the well-known Malacca hero, and that 

 while it is probably of no great value from the point of view of 

 history strictly so called, it is a highly interesting picture of 

 Malay life and manners and by no means deserves the unmixed 

 contempt which Crawf urd thought fit to pour upon it. It dates 

 probably from the early part of the 17th century and is a recog- 

 nized specimen of the best type of Malay classical prose litera- 

 ture. 



The only other of Brandstetters' works which I propose to 

 mention here is his essay on the Malay appreciation of the 

 beauties of nature (and their aesthetic sense in general) as 

 evidenced in their literature. Here he lays a good deal of 

 Malay prose and poetry under contribution and by a number of 

 well selected examples reveals a side of the Malay character 

 which is not, I think, in their every day life at least, very 

 obvious to the ordinary observer. He has confined himself to 

 literary works older than the 19th century, to the exclusion of 

 all modern productions, and perhaps therefore European influence 

 may be discounted : the question of the imitation of India models 

 is more difficult, but on the whole Brandstetter is disposed to 

 regard the mental attitude which he illustrates as being really 

 original to the Malay mind, and he has not to take his examples 

 from works, like the Si*i Mama, which are avowedly based on 

 Indian originals. Even in these, however, it may be remarked 

 that the local colouring is distinctly Malay ; and one need only 

 look, for instance, at the beautiful passage quoted and translated 

 by Maxwell on pp. 89 and 90 of No. 17 of this Journal, to be 

 convinced that the Malay rhapsodist from whom Maxwell 

 derived his version of the story has not servilely copied any 

 Indian model but has given the rein to his own fancy and freely 

 exercised bis own descriptive power. 



B, A, Soc., No. 42, 1904. 



