This article describes stylistic features found in Hikayat Gul Bakawali, an ancient love tale of Indian origin translated into Classical Malay in 1875 from an Urdu prose version composed by Nihal Chand Lahori entitled, “Mazhab-e ‘Ishq, urf Gul-e Bakawali,” (The Religion of Love, or the Rose of Bakawali), published in Calcutta in 1804. Although the original tale stems from within the Hindu world view, the Urdu version of 1804 firmly situates the tale within an Islamic framework. Under study is the first known Malay translation by Munsyi Syaikh Muhammad Ali bin Ghulam Husain al-Hindi, a literary scholar of Indian origin living perhaps in one of the cultural centres of the Malay peninsula, who acquired a fine mastery of Classical Malay literature and translated several religious and linguistic texts directly from Arabic as well. The thrust of the discussion is upon the translation and analysis of specific passages, presented successively with emphasis on certain themes or rhetorical strategies. The power of binary oppositions is emphasized on all levels, from that of the description of the characters, to oppositions on the semantic level in many passages. Of interest is the character development of the hero, a human prince in love with the Fairy Princess Puteri Bakawli. Analysed are the hero’s use of language in describing himself to attract the empathy and assistance of his addressees, as well as the narrator’s description of the hero’s bravery and persistence as a faithful lover never to give up on in his quests.
Dustin Cowell (Tue,) studied this question.