A History of Classical Malay Literature

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