A Potentially Harmful Malay Romance: Some notes on a six-volume manuscript of the Hikayat Koris Mengindra

Abstract

This article describes a six-volume Malay manuscript containing the Hikayat Koris Mengindra (HKM), once belonging to Dudley Hervey (1849–1911). As it long remained in private hands, kept in Jakarta, Indonesia, hardly known to students of traditional Malay literature, this article wants to draw attention to this unusual item. The HKM contains many pantun, but contrary to R.O. Winstedt’s suggestion, this feature is of little use in reconstructing the time and place of the ‘original’ version of the HKM. Addressing the question of its voluminosity, it is argued that as a soother of sorrows, this romance may have functioned as a kind of soap opera, much to the chagrin of some famous Islamic scholars.