Southeast Asian Epics

Liaw Yock Fang calls this 1885 history is often regarded the second greatest work of classical Malay lit after Sulalatus Salatin/Sejarah Melayu/The Malay Annals. It actually begins with a summary of all the legendary narratives of Alexander the Great and Sang Nila Utama, but the bulk of it takes place in the colonial age, describing how the courtly intrigues of the Sultanates of Johor, Riau and Siak weathered Dutch and British colonialism. It's kind of difficult to follow with all the different dynasties and personalities—though there is a central Bugis band of brothers, and this translation contains some family trees—still, it's clearly a more modern work than Sulalatus Salatin: it cites dates and sources; political roles of women are mentioned a little more—and sadly, almost nothing miraculous happens after the early bits. (The story of Sultan Mahmud getting his wife pregnant by cumming on a floormat while looking at his fairy consort, and ordering her to eat the spunk.

Not sure if I should've spent my time on this. It's a bit technical; best for folks who already know Southeast Asian classical lit AND Indian epics inside out.  In "Drona's Betrayal and Bima's Brutality: Javanaiserie in Malay Culture" by Bernard Arps, we do get the cool idea that Malay folks may have been purposefully using Javanese elements for exoticism, not just out of derivativeness.  And in "The Death of Salya: Balinese Textual and Iconographic Representations of the Kakawin Bharatyuddha", we have some nice Balinese paintings of King Shalya reluctantly leaving his wife in bed (post-coitally snoozing) so he can go off and die in war. Plus in "The Illustrated Astabrata in Pakualaman Manuscript Art" by Edwin P Wieringa, images of the Hindu gods Indra, Surya, Yama, Candra, Bayu, Wisnu and Baruna in Javanese wayang kulit art. But not much that's useful for my project right now.

Finally finished this 500 page book which Annaliza Bakri recommended. It's less a guide to the subject than a condensed library: maybe a hundred summaries of epics and mythic histories and religious treatises and legal codes and botanic allegories of romance, which makes it ditficult to skim. But now that I'm done, I daresay certain sections ought to be compulsory for anyone who wants to be an authority on Singapore Literature: instead of saying our foundations are the first few chapters of the Sulalatus Salatin/Sejarah Melayu, we need to know that there were dozens of parallel sagas about princes born as children of nagas or chosen by elephants, that it's perfectly normal to have tales of people dying and coming back to life and switching genders so they can fight in battles or become the King of Constantinople so as to win back their long lost husbands. Oh, and Nila Utama seems to be much more common as a name for women. Fairy women. God, the wealth of eccentricity