HIKAYAT SI-MISKIN OR MARAKARMA. 45 
ing thrown overboard but rescued, and coming to a land where he 
is recognized and honoured, is found in numerous Indian tales 
(Steel and Temple’s ‘“ Wide-Awake Stories,” p. 138; F. A. Steel’s 
“Tales of the Punjab,” p. 129; Swynnerton’s “ Indian Nights’ En- 
tertainment,” p. 276; Knowles “ Folk-Tales of Kashmir,” p. 167) 
which all commence with the banishment of two princes owing to a 
step-mother’s cruelty. In a Sinhalese tale with a similar beginning 
(Parker op. cit. I, No. 7) it is a dried fish he had restored to the 
water which rescues the prince and put him on a sand-bank near 
to a “ flower-mother’s” house; the flower-mother discovers that 
the fellow who threw the prince overboard is about to marry the 
princess; the prince interrupts the wedding’; his oppressor’ is 
quartered and the prince becomes a king. It is pretty clear that 
this Indian tale with its many variants is connected with the more 
elaborate composite Malay romance. 
The comic interludes, in which Ninek Kebayan “ the flower- 
mother ”.1s twitted, remind one of a passage in Raja Donan (J. R. 
A. 8., S. B. XVIII, p. 242) and of the passage in the Hikayat 
Mahareja Bikrama Sakti (or Nakhtoda Muda) where the princess’ 
maids are frightened by the parroquet. ‘The description of the 
demon faksasa is spirited. 
There are a few pantun in the romance, but to discuss the 
occurrence of such verse profitably it is necessary always to collate 
all available MSS. and determine if copyists have followed one 
original or preferred to substitute verses they happened to fancy. 
In quoting parallels from Sinhalese folk-lore, one must re- 
member “that stories which are current in central India, or the 
lower part of the Ganges Valley, or even the Panjab, as well as 
tales of Indian animals such as the lion, may have been brought 
direct to Ceylon by immigrants from Kalinga or Magadha or 
Bengal. Apparently it is in this manner that the evident con- 
nexion between the tales of Ceylon and Kashmir is to be explained, 
the stories passing from Magadha or neighbouring districts, to 
Kashmir on the one side, and from Magadha or Kalinga to Ceylon 
on the other ” (Parker, op. cit. vol. I, pp. 38-39). 
It will be of interest to students of local folk-lore to learn 
that according to Perak legend Marakarma, the hero of the romance 
dealt with in this paper, built a fort of cockle-shells on the plain 
Anta-Beranta at the mouth of the Bruas River (ef. McNair’s 
“Perak and the Malays,’ pp. 23-24)! A Chinaman is said to 
have removed the shells to Penang and burnt them for hme. 
' R. A. Soc., No. 85, 1922. 
