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For the present we must limit ourselves to collecting the data which will eventually assist us to solve these problems.
Elsewhere I propose to publish a few of these Achehnese haba; here I must rest content with giving the reader some idea of their character.
The "crafty Mouse-deer."The Achehnese stories about the "crafty Mouse-deer"[1] will shortly be presented to the reader, epitomized from a native manuscript. Besides this rather rare work, however, we find all these tales and many others relating to the plandōʾ kanchi ("crafty mouse-deer") in the form of haba. The Hikayat plandōʾ kanchi, as the written work is called, is nothing more or less than haba in rhyming verse.
The native Eulenspiegel.Just as popular in Indonesian fable as the crafty Mouse-deer is a certain character which even on the most superficial acquaintance exhibits unmistakeable traces of relationship with the German Eulenspiegel, the Arabo-Turkish Juḥa or Chōjah Naçr ad-dīn; it has caused me some surprise that no one, as far as I am aware, has hitherto given any attention to this remarkable type.
Si Kabayan.I am myself best acquainted with the Native Eulenspiegel in his Sundanese dress; my collection of 70 dongèngs from Preanger, Bantěn and South Chirěbon give a picture of his character. He is there pretty generally known as Si Kabayan; but in some places and in some of the tales told of him he appears as Si Buta-Tuli (the Blind and Deaf), while in certain localities sayings and doings which are elsewhere put down to Si Kabayan's account, are here narrated under another name. Such for example is the dongèng of Aki Bolong published by Mr. G. J. Grashuis;[2] this story is current under the name of Si Kabayan amongst the majority of the Sundanese.
Kabayan's tomb is pointed out at Pandeglang and other places in Bantěn, usually under mango-trees. This plurality of graves need not be considered an impossibility, in view of the varied accounts of the manner of his death. Some of the tales of Kabayan are at least as pretty as the best of those of Eulenspiegel; others owe their interest more to the rough specimens of popular pleasantry which they contain, while many are, according to European ideas, unfit for translation. Like Eulenspiegel, who as coachman greases the whole of his master's carriage
- ↑ Mouse-deer is pělanduk in Malay. For an English version of the Malayan tales about this little creature see Skeat's "Fables and Folk-tales." The qualities attributed by Indonesians to the pělanduk are somewhat similar to those with which we endow the fox. (Translator).
- ↑ Soendaneesch Leesbock, (Sundanese reader), Leiden 1874, pp. 58 et seq.
