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Sundanese by Dr. Engelmann[1], but the details are entirely different. In the Achehnese the plandōʾ poses both as the murderer and as the assessor of king Solomon who helps the latter to decide the issue of the interminable lawsuit. In this respect the Achehnese version much more closely resembles the Batak tale of "the otter and the roebuck" (see the Batak Reader of H. N. van der Tuuk, part 4, pp. 86 et seq.).
Bhaïh 3. The man, the crocodile, the pestle, the rice-mortar, the winnowing basket and the plandōʾ (Ingratitude the reward of kindness). A similar fable appears in the Javanese Kanchil[2].
Bhaïh 4. The plandōʾ and the elephant out fishing; the elephant slain by men.
Bhaïh 5. The tiger cheated by the plandōʾ, who palms off on him buffalo’s dung as Raja Slimeum's[3] food, a lhan-snake as his head-cloth, a wasp's nest as his gong, and two trees grating against one another as his violin. Part of this is the same in Jav.; the deceit with the wasp's nest, which is wanting in the Javanese versions, appears in another form in H. C. Klinkert's Bloemlezing (Leiden 1890), pp. 50–54. The Sundanese dongeng which I mentioned under Bhaïh 1, puts the ape in the tiger's place, and the tortoise in that of the mouse-deer. The dung in there represented as the boreh[4] of Batara Guru and the snake as his girdle, and in the conclusion the ape misled by the voice of the tortoise becomes so enraged against his own person that he mutilates himself and dies. According to another version he did not die but the result of his violence was that his descendants were born emasculate[5].
Bhaïh 6. The heritage of steel and salt, the king, the plandōʾ and the burning sea. This is a variant of what we find in the Kalila dan Damina ed. Gonggrijp, p. 128 et seq., but the Achehnese version is prettier.
Bhaïh 7. The plandōʾ, the ram, the tiger and the bear. The tiger is
- ↑ In the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Ned. Ind. Instituut, 3° Series, Vol. II, p. 348 et seq.
- ↑ See Dr. J. Brandes' notes in Notulen Batav. Genootschap Vol. XXXI, p. 78 et seq.
- ↑ The prophet king Solomon is elsewhere always called Sulòyman by the Achehnese, even in this hikayat where the mouse-deer appears as his assessor; but in this one fable the form Slimeum is invariably used.
- ↑ A yellow cosmetic with which the skin is smeared on certain ceremonial occasions.
- ↑ With this may be now also compared the tales numbered IIb and IIf in Dr. N, Adriani's Sangireesche teksten (Bijdragen Kon. Inst. voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde for the year 1893, p. 321 et seq.). As we see, the tale of the wasps' nest is not, as the above-mentioned author supposed, a Sangirese innovation.
