The Study of Traditional Malay Literature

I WOULD LIKE FIRST OF ALL TO THANK THE PRESIDENT of the Royal Asiatic Society Malaysian Branch and the Society itself for the invitation to give the Annual Lecture this evening. I propose to spend this one hour or so to talk about some general problems regarding the study of Malay literature, in particular the older or traditional-literature. It is a subject which is very close to heart for the Society for it was in the pages of this Society's journal that early attempts were made to study this interesting but very much neglected literature. And it was in the pages of this Society's journal that the most important work on Malay literature was published, that is, Richard Winstedt's A His·tory of Malay Litetatute (1940), an extremely important work that created such a demand that, in 1960, it was found necessary to reprint it. When the Malay Studies Department was established in the University of Malaya in 1953, Richard Winstedt's work became the basis and the starting point for the study of Malay literature. As one reads and rereads the book one could not but admire the extensiveness and the depth of Richard Winstedt's understanding of Malay culture. Although later in this talk I shall give some criticisms of Richard Winstedt's work, they are criticisms directed more towards the weaknesses of his time rather than his personality. Anybody writing at the time that Richard Winstedt was writing, with all the shortcomings of his period, would probably have fallen into the same error, if one may call it an error at all.