162
Bhaïh 25. The plandōʾ, the jackfruit and the oil-seller; the gardener who plants dried peas, and the deer.
Bhaïh 26. Contest between the plandōʾ and a jén (Arab. jinn) as to who can keep awake the longest. (The conclusion of this fable is lacking in the only copy I have seen).
In the Javanese Book of the Kanchil we find a similar contest in wakefulness between a wild cat and a night-bird. A Javanese dongeng makes this night-bird (chabaʾ), which according to popular belief flies and cries in its sleep, hold a contest in keeping awake with the sikatan (wagtail). The latter abandons the duel as his opponent keeps on making a noise. In the above-quoted Sangireesche teksten of Dr. N. Adriani we find a similar contest between an ape and a heron (IVa) and two samples of such contests between an ape and a sheitan (IVb and VI).
In the Achehnese just as in the Javanese kanchil-tales, the mouse-deer appears as the assessor (waki[1]) of the prophet-king Sulòyman or Solomon.
His title is thus always Teungku Waki, and he also bears the names or nicknames Si Anin, Tuan Chut (Master Little one), Waki Saba (after Saba the kingdom of the queen who had relations with Solomon), Waki Buyōng ("mannikin").
The style of the hikayat is somewhat defective. The author is no master of the sanjaʾ; he treats his readers over and over again to the same rhyming words and thus finds himself constantly obliged to alter the syllables which rhyme.
Not only in the orally transmitted, but also in the written literature of the Achehnese, the plandōʾ appears in various other stories which are not included in this hikayat.
Hikayat Nasruan adé.Hikayat Nasruan Adé or Kisah Hiweuën (LIV).
Under these names[2] is circulated the Achehnese version of that
- ↑ He thus stands to the prophet-king in the same relation as the waki of an Achehnese gampōng (see Vol. I. p. 67) to his keuchiʾ.
- ↑ Nasruan is the Ach. form of the Persian royal name Anōsharwān, with the epithet adé (ʾadil) i.e. the just. The other name is the Achehnese pronunciation of the Arab. words aiççah ḥaiwan, stories about beasts, but the meaning of these words is understood by none in Acheh save the pandits.
