MALAY PANTUNS by A W Hamilton

MALAY PANTUNS 

A W Hamilton

This is another book of the special order made via Amazon this year (2012 ) on Feb - Mar together with books  related to Malaysia
Pantun in this book  is described as " the popular vehicle for the expression of poetic feeling among Malays in a vesicle which is called in their tongue as Pantun , pronounced as pan toone '

Looking a bit  on these pantuns i recognize that :
1. Pantun is actually a quatrain
2. There is a uncommon rhyme , the first and the third line have the same rhyme . same happens with the 2 and 4 th line

Consider this pantun  shown in the back of this  rhyme

Berapa tinngi pucuk pinang
    tinngi lagi asap diri
berapa tinngi GUnug Lendang
'   tinngi lagi harap hati

translated as

however high the palm he stretches
   higher is the smoke of fire
however the Mount Ophir reaches
    higher still is my heart's desire


So i can suppose the Malays have a good tradition for rhyming their lives

As for the structure of the book , afer the introductory test , there are 150 quatrains presented. The main txt is shown in the right pages while  a caption (with the main meaning ) and the translation is shown in the left part
On the end of the text there is a vocabulary  of 900  word

This book is written by AW Hamiton and is a re-edition of 1987. Due to the structure of the tect i can suppose that this possibly has been written more than 1 century as another book of him is now on public domain . Look at the next posting !(Malay proverbs )