Translator: Harry Aveling
 
About the Translator
Professor Harry Aveling (PhD, Malay Studies, National University of Singapore; Doctor of Creative Arts, University of Technology, Sydney) holds honorary appointments in Translation Studies at Monash University, and Asian Studies at La Trobe University, both in Melbourne, Australia. He has translated extensively from Indonesian and Malay, and co-translated from Hindi. In 1991 he received the Anugerah Pengembangan Sastera (Literary Development Award) for his “commitment to the international understanding of Malay literature”. His previous publications with Writers Workshop, India, include Arjuna in Meditation: Three Young Indonesian Poets (1976); The Mastadon and the Condors by W. S. Rendra (1981); The Interior Landscape of the Heart: Tamil Poetry from Malaysia and Singapore (1981), with Dr R. Dhandayudham; and Koong, The Story of a Pigeon (1986) by Iwan Simatupang. 

1. Hikayat Seri Rama: The Malay Ramayana 
In his introduction to the book, Professor Aveling writes:
‘The Indian epic known as The Ramayana exists on a grand scale. “Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp,” wrote A. K. Ramanujan in his famous essay on three hundred Ramayanas. These languages include “Annamese, Balinese, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese, Gujarati, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khotanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Marathi, Oriya, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Santali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan.” (1991: 24. The figure of 300 is commonly ascribed to Bulcke 1950). There are translations into English of many of these different versions of the Ramayana, including some from Southeast Asia – Thailand (Olsson), Laos (Sahai), Burma (Toru), and Java (Robson), but none of the Malay Hikayat Seri Rama, “The Story of Seri Rama”. The translation offered here is based on an edition of the Malay manuscript from Acheh in north Sumatra, presented in 1633 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573-1645), to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where Laud was Chancellor. The date makes it perhaps the oldest Malay manuscript to have survived to this day.’ Reviews of the book can be read in The Hindu and Boloji.

2.  Hikayat Pandawa Lima
In his introduction to the book, which may be considered a companion piece to Hikayat Seri Rama, Professor Aveling writes:
“For fifteen hundred years, Southeast Asia has been instructed and entertained by local adaptations of the two great Indian epics, the Mahabharata (MHB) and the Ramayana (RY). The two works have been recited, rewritten, danced, presented as shadow puppet performances, and used to ornament temples. The characters have been honoured as moral exemplars or condemned as dishonest and treacherous nobles and courtiers. There are many versions of the MHB in Southeast Asia. This is not “THE Mahabharata” in Malay. There is no one, definitive Malay version of the MHB; unlike the Hikayat Seri Rama (HSR), which can indeed be described as “the Malay Ramayana”. There are various versions of the MHB in Malay, based on characters and incidents that are sometimes related closely to the original Sanskrit story and sometimes very different. This is a literary translation of one version of the texts, known as the Hikayat Pandawa Lima (HPL), The Chronicle of the Five Pandawas. It includes the war but also comedy scenes, clowns and coarse humour.”

3.  Hikayat Maharaja Rawana
This is the third book in Professor Aveling’s series of translations of the Malay renditions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. In his introduction to the book, he writes:
“It has been estimated that there are over 300 versions of the Ramayana…
This book adds a new Ramayana epic from the Malay world. It may have come to Brunei from the empires of Srivijaya (South Sumatra, 7th-13th centuries) and Majapahit (east Java, 13th-15th centuries), both of which carried Indian culture throughout the archipelago. The Malay version may also have derived from Melaka (1400-1511), which had a rich literary tradition.