8 THE MALAY PANTUN. 
As regards the Dayaks of Borneo, Gomest mentions several 
kinds of songs often to be heard amongst the people, but he does 
not give any texts from which one can draw conclusions. 
From the Philippines I have been unable so far to obtain any 
information. 
In the Buddhist literature of Siam and Burma Pali verse 
sometimes comes very near the structure of the pantun, as pointed 
out by Marsden and summed up by Wilkinson—“ the first 
pair of lines should represent a poetic thought with its 
beauty veiled, whilst the second pair should give the same thought 
in all its unveiled beauty.” Marsden writes:—“ The first two 
lines of the quatrain are figurative, containing sometimes one, but 
oftener two unconnected images, whilst the latter two are moral, 
sentimental or amorous and we are led to expect that they should 
exemplify and constitute the application of the figurative part. 
They do so in some few instances.” “ Dhammapada” or “ Way 
of Truth,” a collection of Buddhist verses, contains many quatrains 
in which the first couplet contains a picture, the meaning of 
which is applied in the second: 
“As into a house, which is badly thatched, 
The ran will enter. 
Thus into an untrained mind 
The craving will enter. 
or 
“As a beautiful flower, 
Brilliant of hue but yielding no fragrance, 
Thus is the well-spoken word 
Fruttless to him, who does not act (accordingly) .” 
Without the “as” (vatha) and “thus” (evam) there would not 
be much sites between these Pali verses and many a Malay 
pantun. 
Pali is a daughter-language of Sanskrit, and in Sanskrit 
poetry “by far the most frequent and most useful form of verse’ 
‘ds the Sloka.2 The Sloka consists of two lines of sixteen syllables, 
or rather four lines of eight syllables each, only four of which are 
fixed in quantity, the others being at option long or short.* Of the 
Slokas in the Sanskrit Ramayana some in the first two lines have a 
icture or poetic thought, whose meaning is applied in the second 
couplet. The following quatrains are translated by Romesh Chan- 
dra Dutt in‘his condensation of the Ramayana, book IX, Canto 9, 
“ Raindrops fall upon the lotus, 
But unmingling hang apart; 
False relations round us gather, 
But they blend not heart with heart.” | 
1. E. H. Gomes, Seventeen years amongst the Sea-Dayaks of Borneo. 
2. Ralph J. H. ’ Griffith, The Ramayana of Valmiki, Benares 1895, p. 
VIII quoting from Wilson’s Sanskrit Grammar, p. 436. 
D> aD) 
Jour. Straits Branch 
