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Persia by way of India. Here too fuller data are required for a more exact analysis of the relation of Achehnese fiction with its sources; what we have just said may simply serve to prevent anyone from being misled by the sight of well known Persian names, into speaking of the "influence of Persia on the Achehnese".
Certain works which have been known in Acheh within the memory of men way probably have been borrowed directly from the common South Indian source, without the intervention of Malay. At present we may safely say that it is Malay literature alone that supplies the Achehnese market with fresh material. This is indeed what might have been expected; the mental intercourse of Acheh with more distant countries was bound to decrease when the trade relations, once so flourishing, were reduced to a minimum.
The better educated of the Achehnese, who are not scholars in the strict sense, read Malay hikayats which are either entirely new or not formerly known in Acheh. Such as suit their taste are disseminated as haba[1] until some poet or rhymster thinks it worth while to make of them an Achehnese hikayat. And so lacking in refinement of taste have the modern Achehnese become, as for the most part to find more pleasure in these flavourless impossibilities than in their own historical epics.
Tales of foreign origin are however, not only dressed in the attire of the Achehnese sanja, but so modified and added to as to suit the comprehension of their Achehnese readers. Wherever the opportunity has occurred, the compilers have given to social and political relations an Achehnese colouring.
Belief in the reality of the stories.To comprehend the significance of these romances in the mental life of the Achehnese, we must remember one thing which is too often forgotten in discussing Native literature. Although the readers and hearers are not all blind to the fact that composers and editors occasionally modify their materials a little to suit their own taste, still they are in the main firmly convinced of the truth of the stories told them. Nothing short of absolute conflict with the teachings of religion makes them doubt the genuineness of a poet's representations; and in any case, all these heroes flying and striding through air, sky, sea and forest, with their miraculous palaces and magic armies, are for the Achehnese actual persons of an actual past.
- ↑ See pp. 88–9 above.
