Hikayat Purasara
bibliography
text notes
list of words

Bibliography

title:

Hikayat Purasara

edition:

Khalid M. Hussain, Hikayat Purasara, Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1992.

manuscript:

Ml 178, Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta.

dates:

text & manuscript:  >1890.

provenance:

text & manuscript:  Batavia, written by Muhammad Bakir, kampung Pecenongan.

words:

27131 words.

references:

to the pages (1-150) and approximated lines of the manuscript.

 
Editorial notes and bibliography
This is a wayang story taken from the Adiparwa.  The manuscript includes illustrations of wayang figures on pages 132 and 133.
It is one of the texts formerly belonging to the lending library run by Muhammad Bakir.  Its dating and authorship are fully discussed by Khalid Hussain (pp.1-5).   The background to the library-scriptorium is provided by Henri Chambert-Loir.  
Khalid characterises the language of the text as Melayu Betawi.   This explains why the eponymous hero is named Purasara rather than, in Javanese, Parasara.  A few Javanese words have not been included in the main indexed, but may be found in the List of words.
References:
Braginsky, V.I. 2002   “Malay scribes on their craft and audience (with special reference to the description of the reading assembly by Safirin bin Usman Fadli)”, Indonesia and the Malay World, 30-86: 37-61.
Chambert-Loir, Henri 1984   “Muhammad Bakir. A Batavian author and scribe of the nineteenth century”, RIMA, 19: 44-72.
——— 1991   “Malay Literature in the 19th century; the Fadli Connection”, in J.J. Ras and S.O. Robson (eds), Variation, Transformation and Meaning; Studies on Indonesian Literatures in Honour of A. Teeuw, Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 87-114.
 
Preparation
Added:  Sept 2009
The transcribed text was scanned in Canberra by the MCP using Abbyy™ Finereader OCR.