Hikayat Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak

bibliography

text notes

list of words

list of rhyme words

illustrations

Bibliography

title:		Hikayat Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak
edition:		Henri Chambert-Loir (ed.), Sapirin bin Usman, Hikayat Nakhoda Asik [dan] Muhammad Bakir, Hikayat Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak, Jakarta: Masup Jakarta / Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient / Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, 2009.  Naskah dan Documen Nusantara Seri XXVI.
manuscript:		Ml 249, Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta.
dates:		text:  after 1883;    manuscript:  1887.
provenance:		text & manuscript:  Batavia, author and copyist: Muhammad Bakir.
words:		49974 words, including 725 verses.
references:		to the pages (ftp, tp, 1-271) of the manuscript, indicated in the printed edition.

 

This text was kindly provided by Henri Chambert-Loir

 

Editorial notes and bibliography

The text is taken from one of the manuscripts in the lending library run by Muhammad Bakir until about 1910.

Its style is an entertaining mix of tradition and innovation.  According to Chambert-Loir, its playful transgressing of conventions must have greatly amused the audiences to whom the text was read.  Thus, although the style remains conventional, there are plenty of contemporary references in the plot (e.g. steam ships and a factory, Mpt 169-172) and some disturbance of literary conventions, especially with the insertion of Batavian dialect words and forms, and in the modern twists given to old clichés (e.g. thunder sounding like hail on a tin roof, Mpt 211).  The style is lively, using much reduplication; pantuns are sprinkled through the conversations; and the text is now and then decorated with incidental pictorial images.

Language and script conventions are extensively analysed and illustrated by Chambert-Loir in pp.307-316 of his edition. For images of the script and pictures he provides, see the illustrations page.  On the other hand, to make the text more accessible to modern readers, its spelling has often been assimilated to standard Indonesian: for example by normalising the Batavian usage of final -h (so rumah appears in the printed edition while the manuscript has ruma), and by expressing kh as k, gh as g (kabar, gaib, but gharib), etc.

The edition by Henri Chambert-Loir takes care to convey the format of the manuscript.  Much of this structure is lost in the concordance form, though words and phrases emphasised in the manuscript, represented in bold capitals by Chambert-Loir, are here shown as highlighted.  For consistency with other texts in the MCP, about a dozen cases of the Batavian/Sundanese verb suffix -in have also been indexed as -kan.

The notes refer to dictionaries with the following abbreviations:

AC — Abdul Chaer, Kamus dialek Melayu Jakarta - Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Nusa Indah, 1976.

Wlk — Wilkinson, R.J. 1959   A Malay-English Dictionary (Romanised), London: Macmillan & Co, 2 jil.

Kl — Klinkert, H.C. 1947   Nieuw Maleisch-Nederlandsch woordenboek, 5de druk, Leiden: Brill.

KBBI — Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia 2001   Edisi ketiga, Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.

SS — Stevens, Alan M. & A. Ed. Schmidgall-Tellings 2004   Kamus Lengkap Indonesia-Inggris, Athens: Ohio University Press.

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”, dalam J.J. Ras and S.O. Robson (eds), Variation, Transformation and Meaning; Studies on Indonesian Literatures in Honour of A. Teeuw, Leiden: KITLV Press, h. 87-114.

Hikayat Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak, 1984   Jakarta, Proyek Penerbitan Buku Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah.

Mu'jizah, Sri Sayekti & Zaenal Hakim 2000   Tiga Karya Penyalin Betawi Muhammad Bakir: Analisis Struktur dan Makna (Hikayat Nakhoda Asyik, Hikayat Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak, Hikayat Sultan Taburat II), Jakarta: Pusat Bahasa.

Suryadi 2008   “Syair Lampung Karam: Images of the 1883 eruption of the Krakatau Mountain in a classical Malay literary text”, paper for the 24th ASEASUK Conference, Liverpool, June 2008.

 

Preparation

Added:  Mar 2009

A full digital text was provided by Henri Chambert Loir.  The MCP text has been prepared on this basis.

 

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