Book review :sejarah Melayu

From John Leyden with preface by Stamford Raffles

Hmmm I think every Malaysian  knows these Englishmen. I have read too much 10 years ago abot this book when i read the history  of Malaysia .  

One of the interesting books read this summer! Although i have found the book in online form , i also added to my book list his year with the hope that it uses a different format as the scanned online version was a column-full  without spaces  between stories.

This version comes from Silverfish publications ,but keeps  the original text format exactly as the posiby more original edition of 1821 .(and fancy! 1821 by coincidence is the year Greeks revolted against the Ottoman dominance)

Reading it the language is a bit archaic as there are several not so common words as whither, Passages are rather easy to read but not always easy to understand .Word wise regarding to my vocabulary the vocabulary  is relatively easy with 2-6 max  unknown English words per page ie 2 out of 500 words  though there are several malay words written in simple English with c  for the k if ejaan baru ,eg lacsa instead of laksa  ,creese out of kris, all of them formed in italics

One of the reasons used to read was to testify between some well known stories as Hang Nadim and the swordfish (though really his name is not referred in this story ,but also the committee of bendaharas asked the raja to kill the boy instead of on bendahara as  noticed in most other books including a children book  ) while another Hang Nadim referred in the book who 'stole' a beautiful to be princess (with her consent!! ie Tun Tiji ch 27)  and another Hang Nadim on the end if the book who is descendant of Sr Tuah.

Other interesting story is the  story of princess of Mt Ophir on ch25 and of Li Poh on chapter 15 as well Badang on ch6 (full story much more than i read in S'pore myths book!!)    

And also in the start of the book the rather fiction of the two sisters riding the hill where grains of paddy became golden grains   and of the raja who visited the city on the under the sea     These are also stories i told my daughter who is now 5.5 year old

An interesting reading 3/5