Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/97

 the Gayòs dreams of him, and the story ends by Pò Amat's winning her hand and becoming the ruler of the Gayòs.

Pò Jambòë (V) is the hero of a hikayat ruhé which has not been reduced to writing and which is known to me by name only.

The heroic poems of the Achehnese, original both in form and subject-matter, stand indisputably higher in all respects than any other part of their literature. It is in the two most ancient of these hikayats that we are especially struck by the poets' calm objectivity, their command of their subject, their keen sense of both the tragic and comic elements in the lives of their fellow-countrymen, and the occasional masterly touches in which they sketch, briefly but accurately, genuine pictures of Achehnese life.

Achehnese epic poetry has without doubt taken time to reach the level at which we find it. The heroic poems with which we are acquainted must have been preceded by others whose loss we deplore, since their place in the estimation of the Achehnese themselves has been taken by works of a lower standard imported from abroad.

We shall now give a resumé of the contents of those which still survive, taking them in their chronological sequence.

The Hikayat Malém Dagang (VI). This epic celebrates an episode from among the great achievements of the Achehnese under their most famous ruler Éseukanda (Iskandar) Muda (1607–36), called after his death Meukuta Alam, against the ruling Power in the Malay Peninsula ; or it might rather be said to furnish in rhyme and metre a specimen of an Achehnese tradition (now degenerated into unrecognizable forms) of that golden epoch.

It is indeed impossible to determine with certainty what the facts really are which are presented to us in so fantastic a form, so widely does the story diverge from reliable historical facts.