A Literary Device Common to Homer and the East

Extract

There is a once popular Malay romance, the Hikayat Indraputra. It and the Malay recension of the Ramayana are cited in a Malay work of Muslim theology in a.d. 1643 as examples of infidel works suitable for sanitary purposes unless the name of Allah occurred in them. Probably the romance was compiled in fifteenth century Malacca, and to its author, as to so many Malay authors of romance, may be appositely applied Virginia Woolf's delicate analysis of Sidney's Arcadia: “He had no notion when he set out where he was going. Telling stories, he thought, was enough—one could follow another interminably. But where there is no end in view, there is no sense of direction to draw us on. Nor, since it is part of his scheme to keep his characters simply bad and simply good without distinction, can he gain variety from the complexity of character. To supply change and movement he must have recourse to mystification. These changes of dress, these disguises of princes as peasants, of men as women serve instead of psychological subtlety to relieve the stagnancy of people collected together with nothing to talk about. But when the charm of that childish device falls flat, there is no breath left to fill his sails. Who is talking, and to whom, and about what we no longer feel sure.” Nor does even the Malay of to-day care any longer. But to the comparative student of Oriental literature the Hikayat Indraputra, like many other Malay pastiches, has an interest from the varied sources of its interminable tapestry.