Five pious ladies on the swing: Some considerations about Hikayat si burung pingai

This paper will discuss some aspects of the Malay Sufi composition Hikayat Si Burung Pingai, the ‘Tale of the Yellow (or pure) Bird’. There are two recensions of this work. The first of them includes three manuscripts in Jawi script which are held in Leiden, Jakarta and Paris. The second recension of the Yellow Bird tale, which bears the title Andai-andai Si Burung Pingai, is also known in three manuscripts, although in Rèncong script, which are kept in London (SOAS), Amsterdam and Coburg. The manuscripts of the Rèncong recension originate from Bengkulu and Lampung. The London manuscript, which is the earliest among them, was acquired by Marsden in the late 18th century. What is examined below is, however, only the hikayat of the Yellow Bird, that is its Jawi recension. The earliest manuscript of the Jawi recension was copied in Ambon between 1707 and 1712 by Cornelia Valentijn, the wife of the well-known missionary Franciscus Valentijn. The Paris manuscript which in 1822 belonged to the missionary G.H. Huttman, originates from Malacca (Voorhoeve 1973: 55, 47; Van der Linden 1937: 239). About the Jakarta manuscript we only know that it was acquired by the Batavia Society in 1868 and comes from Gorontalo (Van Ronkel 1909: 444). The Leiden and Jakarta manuscripts are quite close to each other in their content and wording, whereas the Paris manuscript differs from them somewhat. All three manuscripts abound in scribal errors and lacunae of various lengths. In addition, in the Paris manuscript – which is generally better than the others – two fairly long and important passages appear in the wrong order. As manuscripts of the Yellow Bird tale are spread across the Archipelago from Ambon and Gorontalo to Bengkulu and Lampung it is difficult to establish the place of origin of this tale. We can, however, guess that the Jawi recension, which seems to be the earlier of