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Our separation of heroic poems from romances would thus have no raison d'être in their eyes. All that they could see in it would be a distinction between hikayats which chronicle past events in Acheh, and those which tell in verse the history of the people of other lands or of the skies, the country of the jéns and the like.
The scene laid in Acheh.Several even of those romances which are most closely akin to Malay works or resemble them in all respects, have the scene laid in Acheh. Similarly we find the Javanese translating to their own country a number of the personages of the Indian mythology.
The hikayat of Malém Diwa for instance, is composed of the same materials as a well-known Malay tale which is also current among the Bataks. This does not prevent the Achehnese from representing their hero as being born, growing up and performing most of his exploits in Acheh, or from imagining that he still exists, wandering about in the highlands of the North and East Coasts. They are convinced that anyone who has practised the science of invulnerability with success may enjoy the privilege of a meeting with this invincible immortal[1]. They point out in more than one locality the traces of Malém Diwa's activity, just as they show on the West Coast the former haunts of Banta Beuransah, and see in the romances of Éseukanda Ali and Nun Parisi a fragment of the history of Timu ("the East", the name they give to the North and East Coasts of Acheh).
Achehnese method of arrangement of the hikayats.Did we wish to conform to Achehnese ideas, we should have to assign Malém Diwa a place above Malém Dagang in the chronologically arranged list of Achehnese heroic poems. So long as the scene of a narrative lies outside Acheh, the Achehnese are entirely indifferent to accurate definitions of place and time. The only chronological rule to which they occasionally adhere, is that stories in which the heroes soar and fly carry us back to an ante-Mohammedan period, for ever since the appearance of the Seal of the Prophets the art of flying has been denied to human beings[2].
All the works which we have placed under the head of 'fiction' are composed in sanjaʾ, and thus bear the name of hikayat, like the fourteen we have already described. Their contents furnish us with no basis for arrangement; but apart from this their comparatively small number
