16 THE MALAY PANTUN. 
A Palace Story. 
“A network handkerchief contains no tear. 
"Tis dawn at court, ere wine and music sate. 
The rich red crops no aftermath awatt. 
Rest on a screen, and you will fall, I fear.°— 
In the above-named “ Kin Ku RK’i Kuan,” verses similar to 
the epigrammatical séloka or to the pantun are used much in the 
same way as similar verses are used in Indian literature, at the be- 
ginning, in the middle and at the end. Perhaps Chinese scholars 
can tell us whether there are quatrains of a similar kind used in 
daily life as the pantun is used in Malaya. ‘Chinese literature is 
a bad collecting-ground for popular ditties, on which university 
literates look down with even more contempt than yee already do 
on the popular novel, the “ Hsiao Shuo.” 
It seems rather far out of the way to look for something akin 
to the Malay pantun in Chinese poetry, but between the two lan- 
guages there is a certain affinity in idiom. Common to both lan- 
guages are the “ classifiers,” certain words used in addition to the 
numeral, different according to the class of objects referred to, as 
in Malay ekor, ‘tail’ for animals, buah ‘fruit, for countries, 
houses, ships and so on. No such classifiers are to be found in - 
the Javanese or Sundanese language. In one of his lectures on 
“ Language and Letters ” Dr. Graebner drew a comparison between 
Arabic as a most subjective and Chinese as a most objective lan- 
guage. The Chinese, he said amongst other things, in expressing 
himself, shows us a picture, a sort of cinematographic film, which 
he has before his mind’s eye and which he describes and explains 
to us by degrees. Hence the usual co-ordination instead of our 
subordination of sentences, hence the frequent use of the posses- 
sive and of the demonstrative pronoun, and hence possibly the use 
of the classifiers. All these characteristics are to be found also. 
more or less in the Malay idiom. The co-ordination of sentences 
is much more frequent than subordination, the possessive suffix 
-nya is to be found in nearly every sentence, and the demonstra- 
tive pronouns imi, itu and pun are used much more frequently 
than in any European language, and much in the same way as in 
Chinese. 
Is it possible that to Chinese influence may be attributed the 
fact that the connection between the first and last couplet in the 
Malay pantun is often so very loose? 
In the Indian sloka, to judge from translations, the rule that 
the picture given in the first hnes must absolutely agree with the 
thought conveyed in the second lines, is always strictly observed. 
In all Indian verses the picture is quite clear; it is always an 
obvious illustration of the thought which cello and not 
merely as in the Malay puntiun an impressionist sketch, whose 
connection with the following lnes a European mind often fails 
to understand. In Chinese poetry we have just this very loose- 
Jour. Straits Branch 
