June 19, 2011
Ungku A.Aziz: Pantun as well as a Wisdom of a Malay Mind
by Dato Johan Jaaffar @www.nst.com.my
ROYAL Professor Ungku Abdul Aziz Ungku Abdul Hamid is a single of a biggest minds a nation has ever known. He is also a male of most achievements, to name one, he is a first target of a Merdeka Award in a preparation as well as village category in 2008. His interest in all things well read is legendary.
He was spooky with a Japanese haiku during a single indicate as well as his latest adore is a Malay pantun. Pantun positively is a most renouned car for a countenance of poetic feeling in between a Malays. Pak Ungku painstakingly assembled, documented as well as studied a little 16,000 of them over a years. He comparison 78 to be enclosed in an engaging harangue organized by a Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) as well as a Malaysian Linguistic Association in 2007 as partial of a Raja Ali Haji Lecture series.
I am celebrated to have been given a opportunity to write a preface for a book Pantun dan Kebijaksanaan Akal Budi Melayu (Pantun as well as a Wisdom of a Malay Mind) based upon a harangue published by DBP. It was a labour of adore for me knowing a male behind a book. It is not mostly we find someone of his status to give such critical attention to a Malay poetical form. It is routinely a domain of well read scholars as well as researchers. Ungku Aziz positively brings a new dimension to well read studies seeking during pantun from assorted disciplines from economics to mental references areas really few would brave tread.
So his celebration of a mass of a Malay pantun would positively be opposite from others. But Ungku Aziz is
It was not a pleasant thing to say during a time but Ungku Aziz common a same view as another monumental thinker in between a Malays, Zainal Abidin Ahmad or Zaba, who was uncharacteristically audacious in criticising a little of a Malay ways. It was, therefore, unsurprising which Ungku Aziz wrote a intense reverence to Zainal Abidins views in a book Jejak-jejak di Pantai Zaman published in 1975.
Not surprisingly, too, it was Ungku Aziz who done a word minda (mind) partial of a Malay lexicon. No alternative Malay well read origination explains a Malay thoughts better than a pantun. For more than 700 years of a life as partial of a Malay verbal tradition, a pantun has regularly been a manifestation of a might of Malay creativity as well as a storehouse of a Malay mind.
Pantun is simple in a form but complex in a texture as well as nuances. It is simply adaptable as well as allows for improvisation. The pantun contains pleasing imagery as well as a delicacy of thoughts. That is partial of a reason why it survives a test of time. Even today, we listen to pantun being read during wedding ceremonies as well as official functions, not to discuss upon a airwaves during a smallest provocation.
The pantun was created anonymously just similar to most of a functions which constitute a Malay verbal tradition. It is engaging to note which a pantun was born out of a largely uneducated Malay populace of old. Life was tough as well as survival was a rule. Far from a lush of alternative well read luminosity as well as theatrical sophisticat! ion nurt ured by a istana (court), lesser mortal! s had to say with folk novel of their own, from cerita rakyat (folk tales) to verses similar to pantun, gurindam (a two-line verse) as well as peribahasa (proverbs).
Literary functions became partial of a socialisation process. Before radio as well as TV, people lived with tukang cerita (story-tellers) as well as penglipur lara (literally, soother of woes) of all kinds. Even nenek (grandmothers) were involved in telling exemplary dignified stories to be emulated as well as fables, myths, legends as well as spook stories. Literary functions perform as well as have been used as tools to educate. They reaffirm social norms as well as village compliance. But creativity is their mainstay.
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