
Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
A History of Classical Malay Literature
$15
Author: Sir Richard Winstedt
Pages: 262
Type: Hardcover
Anyone who surveys the field of Malay literature will be struck by the amazing abundance of its foreign flora and the rarity of indigenous growth. Malay folklore, even, is borrowed, most of it, from the vast store-house of Indian legend, an early crop garnered in the Hindu period, and later in the Islamic. When literature flowered on the written page, Malay became the cultural language of every Indian traders and pundits at every port in the Malay Archipelago. The most prolific ‘Malay’ authors were Indians or Malays of mixed blood, like Shaikh Nuru’d-din a’r-Raniri and Munshi Abdullah.
note: this book has slight defects