Text · Malay prose Ramayana
Hikayat Seri Rama
Also known as Hikayat Sri Rama, Malay Ramayana, حكاية سري رام
The Malay prose retelling of the Rama story, a hikayat that kept its Hindu plot inside an Islamic frame: Dasaratha is descended from the Prophet Adam, and while Ravana performs his austerities it is God who sends Adam to ask his wish and grants him rule over the four worlds. In many tellings Laksmana outshines Rama. Its oldest manuscript was in William Laud's hands by 1633, and it is one of the Malay versions against which Juan Francisco read the Philippine Maharadia Lawana.
- Date
- 1200–1633
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered
Worth knowing
Hanuman here is Rama's own son: after Seri Rama and Sita Dewi plunge into a pond, the embryo is massaged from Sita Dewi's womb and carried to Dewi Anjati, who bears him. The Philippine Maharadia Lawana also makes the monkey hero Rama's son.
Its date is uncertain: Wikipedia gives the present form as written some time between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries; the only fixed point is the Bodleian manuscript (MS Laud Or. 291), acquired before 1633. Several recensions exist, and the Wikipedia article is thinly sourced.
Connections (4)
- Ramayana traditionRamayana
The Hikayat Seri Rama keeps the Ramayana's plot but reframes it for a Muslim readership. Dasaratha is a descendant of the Prophet Adam; Ravana, banished to Bukit Serindib, hangs head down in austerity for twelve years until God sends Adam to ask his wish and grants him rule over earth, heavens, seas and underworld. Some versions make Allah the only deity. The oldest manuscript, now in the Bodleian, was acquired by William Laud by 1633.
- TransmissionMaharadia Lawana
When Juan Francisco translated the Maranao Maharadia Lawana in 1968 and 1969, he read it against the Malay Hikayat Seri Rama, the Hikayat Maharaja Ravana and a Malay rhapsodist's tale recorded by Maxwell in 1886. He found shared inventions absent from Sanskrit versions, notably a monkey son born to Rama, and concluded that the story reached Lanao already carrying both Indian and Islamic elements, sometime between the mid-seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.
- AnaloguePhra Lak Phra Lam
Malay and Lao tellings move in the same direction, away from India. Malay storytellers often make Laksmana braver and more admired than a Rama seen as righteous but weak, much like the Lao epic, whose very title puts Phra Lak's name first. Both also make Hanuman Rama's son rather than a servant: in the Malay hikayat he is born of Seri Rama and Sita Dewi through Dewi Anjati, and in the Lao version Houlaman is the son of Phra Lam and Nang Phengsi.
- TransmissionWayang kulit
The Malay Rama story was probably carried to the peninsula by Javanese traders together with their shadow play, and in Malaysia it lives on in wayang kulit as well as in writing. The shadow-play version, the Hikayat Maharaja Wana, shifts sympathy towards Ravana and away from an arrogant Seri Rama. In strongly Islamic Kelantan, the main base of Malay shadow theatre, the puppeteers were all Muslims, while conservative Muslims objected to the rituals surrounding the performances.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, "Hikayat Seri Rama". Juan R. Francisco, "Maharadia Lawana", Asian Studies 7:2 (1969); Malay Concordance Project bibliography (MS Laud Or. 291); W. G. Shellabear (ed.), Hikayat Seri Rama (1915).
Open Hikayat Seri Rama in the repository →