88 SRI RAMA. 



a hearty welcome, and a good meal await the Malay rhapsodist 

 wherever he goes, and he wanders among Malay villages as 

 Homer did among the Greek cities. 



Being in Perak as Assistant Resident some years ago, I was 

 a witness on one occasion of the talents of one Mir Hassan, 

 a native ofKampar in the south-east of that State, and brought 

 him down to Larut with the intention of having his stock of 

 legendary lore committed to writing. Official occupations 

 interrupted this work, and it is only in this year(1886) that I 

 have been able to have it completed, Mir Hassan having, 

 through the influence of my friend Raja Idris of Perak, been 

 induced to visit me in Singapore. I now offer to the Society 

 the Malay text of a romance called " Sri Rama. - " Like the 

 well-known Malay hikayat of that name, it is founded 

 upon the adventures of some of the heroes of the Ramayana, 

 but an oral legend current among the people has, of course, 

 many points of interest, which are wanting in a written version, 

 compiled by a scribe who may have knowingly borrowed from 

 foreign sources. It may not, perhaps, be easy to trace much of 

 the action of the great Hindu Epic in the somewhat childish 

 narrative of the Malay village-singer, but of the profound 

 influence which the Ramayana and Mahabharata have had in 

 the Farther East — the India extra Gangem and the islands 

 beyond — there can be no doubt. There is not a village-stage 

 in Siam, Malaya or Java, the dramas of w r hich are not directly 

 referable to these sources, while the wrongs of Sita Dewi, the 

 might of the giant Rawana, and the prowess of the monkey- 

 king Hanuman * are household words everywhere. 



Mir Hassan's story was taken down verbatim from his 

 lips by native writers, and I have gone carefully over it, getting 

 from him explanations of obscure passages. Here and there 

 the style is diversified by metrical passages in a peculiar 

 rhythm not unlike the specimens of the Dayak blank-verse 



* I have little doubt that the Andaman Islands owe their name 

 to the fact that their inhabitants were indentified by the Malays 

 with the monkeys of Hanuman. The Malays call the group " Pulau 

 Handuman," or the islands of Hanuman, and this we have corrupt- 

 ed into Andaman. 



