Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/142

 renders it easy to pass them in review. We rest content with giving the first place to those hikayats the principal scene of which is laid by the Achehnese within the limits of their own country.

Malém Diwa (XV).

Malém Diwa was the son of Raja Tampōʾ, a prince who ruled in the gampōng of Piadah on the kruëng (river) of Pasè, commonly known as Pasei. His mother was Putròë Sahbawa. He was at first called Malém Diman, but the teacher to whom he was sent to school in his 7$th$ year, changed his name to Diwa. Dalikha, the daughter of this pandit, was his destined bride, for when the marriages both of Raja Tampōʾ and of the pandit had long remained unblessed with issue, the prince had made a vow that if children were vouchsafed to them both, they should if possible be united in wedlock with one another. But when the boy came to her father’s house, Dalikha greeted him as "younger brother". This was considered as rendering marriage impossible, and Dalikha, who in after years married a certain Malém Panjang, continued to watch over Malém Diwa as a faithful elder sister. As soon as the hero has completed his schooling he begins his wanderings, which are destined to bring him into contact with three princesses in succession, Putròë Bungsu in the firmament, Putròë Alōïh in Nata (= Natal) and Putròë Meureundam Diwi in Lhōʾ Sinibōng on the river of Jambō Ayé.

It was a dream which gave the impetus to his quest of the first; it seemed to him that while bathing he came across a princess's hair. The princess of the skyey realm, the youngest daughter of Raja Din, dreamed at the same time that she was encircled by a snake. Not long after, Malém Diwa, changed for the moment into a fish, swam about in the water where Putròë Bungsu with her sisters and their attendants were bathing. He stole her upper garment and thus she lost the power to fly back with her companions to her father's aërial kingdom. Hero and heroine are brought together by the agency of Ni Keubayan, a well-known figure in Malay tales, and soon the lovers are joined in wedlock.

They settle in Malém Jawa, the abode of Malém Diwa's mother, close to Piadah. Here a son named Ahmat is born to them. As this child