#raja babi

[malaysianfolklore]

Raja Babi (راج بابي) is of a prince cursed from birth as a wild boar. His features were repulsive to his father, causing the king to abandon his son as a baby in the rainforest despite his overshadowed blessings. The epic goes on to feature the prince’s hardships alienated from society without losing his morality.

[tedxubud]

Annabel Gallop at TEDxUbud 2014

In the last year Annabel Gallop has been writing a weekly blog granting one of the British library’s recently digitized Malay manuscripts its 15 minutes of fame.

Reaching a dedicated readership of 300-400 people a week, Annabel was surprised to discover that almost overnight her readership went up to 5,000! All because she blogged about a prince who comes to earth in the form of a pig.

Handwritten in 20 days in 1774, Hikayat Raja Babi (The Pig King) is a 200 year-old manuscript penned by Usup bin Abdul Kadir, a merchant who turned to storytelling when business was slow. Annabel’s new readership consisted of fascinated Malay and Indonesian teenagers who’d never come in contact with a manuscript before.

For these young readers living in Muslim Indonesia, a story written in Arabic script in the classical Malay language about a noble hero who happens to be a pig is nothing short of astonishing! (Pigs are shunned as unclean in Muslim culture).

The online collection continues to surprise those who have the curiosity to explore. Filled with letters and early travel accounts, it offers nuggets of information about the cultural practices of bygone days.

A Malay man writes about an 1810 visit to Calcutta where he details the enormous variety of courtesans he glimpsed, he assures us, through the windows of the city’s brothels. A Rajah writes to a neighbouring ruler to offer him a gift of a black horse and a five-year-old slave called Ketut. While for Annabel, it’s the drawings in the margins that capture her imagination.

John Crawfurd, the collector who sold the Pig King to The British Library, drew a a sketch of his family in the margin of a manuscript, she muses, to entertain his daughter Flora.

Evidence for her that authentic voices in any form, a father entertaining his daughter, an account of Calcutta prostitution or the story of a pig king, are invaluable treasures because they are real voices from the past.

By Melita Rowston