Hikayat Seri Rama

bibliography

text notes

list of words

list of proper names

Bibliography

title:		Hikayat Seri Rama
edition:		Achadiati Ikram, Hikayat Seri Rama: Suntingan Naskah disertai dengan Telaah Amanat dan Struktur, Jakarta: Penerbit Universitas Indonesia, 1980.
manuscript:		MS Laud Or. 291, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
dates:		text:  unknown;    manuscript:  before 1633, when purchased by Laud.
provenance:		text & manuscript:  unknown.
words:		96123 words.
references:		to the pages (1-807) and approximated lines of the manuscript.

 

Editorial notes

Achadiati Ikram takes the Laud manuscript as her base, but corrects it against the Marsden manuscript (see Bibliography) and occasionally other manuscripts, with significant emendations noted in her Apparatus Criticus.  These emendations are not noted in the MCP version.

The other principles underlying Achadiati Ikram's edition are that:

- archaic spellings using tashdid are not reproduced;

- proper names are given in the form most strongly witnessed across the 4 major text recensions;

- clear errors of transcription are corrected without notice.

Two features of the text create difficulties of access:

- some vocabulary is not found in the Dewan Bahasa dictionary, and therefore lacks a canonical form.
- a large number of personal names occur in slightly variant forms.  An example is:  Kemedataka / Kemedetaka / Kemadataka / Kemakata / Kemendataka / Kamdataka / Kemdataka.  The word divisions applied to names are also not consistent.  Little attempt has been made to resolve these variations.  Instead, a list of List of Proper Names occurring in the text is provided.  The most effective way to retrieve these items may be pattern-match searches, but even here patience is required to deal with variant word divisions. 

 Bibliography:

MS 12902, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

from the Marsden collection;  copied 1791 from a manuscript dated 1793.

R. Greentree & E.W.B. Nicholson, Catalogue of Malay manuscripts relating to the Malay language in the Bodelian library, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.

cols. 1-3 -- description of the Laud manuscript.

W.G. Shellabear (ed.), Hikayat Seri Rama, Singapore: Methodist Mission Press, 1915. [= Journal of the Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, no. 71]

Shellabear gives the complete text of the Laud manuscript in jawi script;
He indicates the leaves, not the pages, of the manuscript, and numbers the leaves from 3.  
To convert Achadiati Ikram's pages into Shellabear's leaves:  round up to the next round number, divide by 2, and add 2

 
Preparation 

Added:  1999 - April 2000

The Dewan Bahasa 1992 edition was scanned for the MCP in Canberra using Recognita™ OCR.  This proved a difficult process, which may affect reliability.