Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra85861922roya).pdf/97

 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 "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 Kebayau "the flower- mother" is twitted, remind one of a passage in Raja Donan (J. R. A. S., S. B. XVIII, p. 242) and of the passage in the Hikayat Maharaja Bikrama Sakti (or Nakhoda Muda) where the princess' maids are frightened by the parroquet. The description of the demon Raksasa 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 Magadlia 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 (cf. McNair's "Perak and the Malaya," pp. 23-24)! A Chinaman is said to have removed the shells to Penang and burnt them for lime.