Hikayat Seri Rama: The Malay Ramayana
The Indian epic known as The Ramayana exists on a grand scale. “Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp,” wrote A. K. Ramanujan in his famous essay on three hundred Ramayanas. There are translations into English of many of these different versions of the Ramayana, including some from Southeast Asia – Thailand (Olsson), Laos (Sahai), Burma (Toru), and Java (Robson), but none of the Malay Hikayat Seri Rama, “The Story of Seri Rama”. The translation offered here by Harry Aveling is based on an edition of the Malay manuscript from Acheh in north Sumatra, presented in 1633 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573-1645), to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where Laud was Chancellor. The date makes it perhaps the oldest Malay manuscript to have survived to this day.
“What a pleasure it is to read the Ramayana’s Malay version, Hikayat Seri Rama, in this new translation by Harry Aveling. His translation makes the text elegant and accessible, but the story of Rama in the Malay region is truly a wonder. For those of us who know the story already, the Hikayat is full of surprises. At the same time, it offers the comfort of well-loved characters and familiar episodes.” Arshia Sattar
RM90.00
Out of stock
Description
The Indian epic known as The Ramayana exists on a grand scale. “Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp,” wrote A. K. Ramanujan in his famous essay on three hundred Ramayanas. There are translations into English of many of these different versions of the Ramayana, including some from Southeast Asia – Thailand (Olsson), Laos (Sahai), Burma (Toru), and Java (Robson), but none of the Malay Hikayat Seri Rama, “The Story of Seri Rama”. The translation offered here by Harry Aveling is based on an edition of the Malay manuscript from Acheh in north Sumatra, presented in 1633 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573-1645), to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where Laud was Chancellor. The date makes it perhaps the oldest Malay manuscript to have survived to this day.
“What a pleasure it is to read the Ramayana’s Malay version, Hikayat Seri Rama, in this new translation by Harry Aveling. His translation makes the text elegant and accessible, but the story of Rama in the Malay region is truly a wonder. For those of us who know the story already, the Hikayat is full of surprises. At the same time, it offers the comfort of well-loved characters and familiar episodes.” Arshia Sattar
Publisher: Writers Workshop
Hardback
2021
ISBN: 9788194674061
Related products
-
Dancing on Thin Ice
Marina Mahathir continues to make her mark as a community leader, writer and outspoken commentator on social and political affairs Marina has for...RM39.90 -
The Vegetarian
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife...RM60.00 -
The Little Prince
All grown-ups were children once (but most of them have forgotten) A pilot who has crash landed in the desert awakes to see an extraordinary...RM45.90 -
The Farming of Bones
It is 1937, and Amabelle Desir is a young Haitian woman working as a maid for a wealthy family in the Dominican Republic, across the border from her...RM69.90