100 
HIKAYAT PUSPA WIRAJA. 
Antaraja, the usurper, dies and Java Chiudra the younger son 
of Puspa Wiraja is raised to the tlirone in the city of palaces. 
There is another Malay version of the story in that pastiche, 
the Ilikayat Maharaja Ali, but details differ. 
Maharaja Ali and his queen were banished because of an un- 
ruly son. Twelve thieves robbed the royal fugitives as in a tale 
of the Hikayut Bayern Budiman. The unruly son is lost and be- 
comes later keeper of the prison into which his two brothers are 
thrown for execution. The queen begging alms at a mosque is 
carried off by Raja Serdala king of the country and delays his 
advances by relating how Solomon detected and sentenced thieves 
who tried to steal a dream princess from her husband : when the 
king persists, she pfays that his arms may be shortened so that he 
may not embrace her, and her prayer is fulfilled. Meanwhile 
Maharaja Ali has been devoured by a crocodile and bis two sons 
adopted by a ferryman. Maharaja Ali’s skull rolls at the feet of 
the Prophet Jesus and its owner is restored to life, (an episode 
borrowed from the Hikayast Raja Jumjumah ) and placed by Jesus 
on his former throne, unrecognfeing and unrecognized by his people 
who had banished him. Raja Serdala comes to Maharaja ‘Ali for 
medicine for .his shortened arms, bringing the chaste queen in his 
ship. Her two sons are put to guard the ship, talk of their origin, 
are embraced by their mother and sentenced to death. The keeper 
of the prison proves to be their eldest brother. He takes them 
before the king and all comes right, as in the other version. Raja. 
Serdala is kindty treated and married to a vizier’s daughter. 
In this recension the incident of the crocodile bears some 
relation to a Kashmirian version ( vide infra). 
There is yet another Malay version of the tale in the Ilikayat 
Bahli tiar , which is far closer to that of the Ilikayat Puspa Wiraja. 
It is shorter and omits the names of people and places, trees and 
birds. One fisherman, not two, rescues the two young princes. 
Their mother jells her story to the sea-captain and is honoured and 
respected. There are three gate-keepers, not four: the order of the 
tales they recite as a. warning against hasty action (te different, and 
the tales differ slightly in detail. The first gate-keeper tells the 
story of how a baby killed by a snake was avenged by a cat, not 
a mongoose; and the baby is motherless. The second tells the story 
of the dog killing a faithless wife and her lover: it is not stated 
that the husband is a sailor. The third watchman tells the story 
of the palace 'which did not turn golden ; and this version is 
clearer in that it is related how the old man whose plantain did 
turn golden deliberately arranged to plant his sucker at the exact 
moment prescribed by the astrologer for commencing to build the 
palace and how the builders of the palace /in their excitement were 
just too late. The plot of a queen being caught kissing a tall son 
by a previous husband or lover occurs in the Persian, “Tales of a 
Parrot” and in the BakhMar Kama (Clouston’s “Tales from a 
Persian Garden,” pp. 166-172). 
Jour. Straits Branch. 
