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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
There are several recensions of the Hikayat Seri Rama or Malay Ramayana. There are three folk-versions: Seri Rama of Sumatran origin, edited with an outline in English by W. E. Maxwell (JRAS. Straits Branch, 17, 1886); Hikayat Maharaja Ravana, by H. Overbeck (JRAS. Malayan Branch, xi, pt. ii, 1933); and a Patani version, of which an outline was given by me in the Royal Batavian Society's Feestbundel, Batavia, 1929. Of literary recensions the best known are Archbishop Laud's text in the Bodleian, ed. W. G. Shellabear (JRAS. Straits Branch, 71, 1915, with outline, ibid., 70, 1917) = Sh. in this article, and that printed by Roorda van Eysinga (Amsterdam, 1843) = Ro. in this article. The last two have been compared by A. Zeiseniss in his Die Rāma-Sage bei den Malaien (Hamburg, 1928), which has a fairly complete bibliography except for the folk-tale versions. But beyond a few lines in van der Tuuk's catalogue (reprinted in Essays on Indochina, 2nd series, vol. ii) nothing has been written of Raffles Malay MS. 22 in the Library of this Society, which for various reasons is of unique interest. Throughout my description I retain the Malay forms for Sanskrit words.
