Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh

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tagsdocument, text, edition, religious, literature, atjeh, atjehsch, damste, 1939, bki, seven-sleepers, hikajat, vernacular
aliasesHikajat Eitia Toedjoh, Eitia Toedjoh, Hikayat Tujuh, Hikajat Tujoh, Atjehsch Seven Sleepers text, Tekst A of the Seven Sleepers legend, Damsté Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh, Seven Sleepers Atjehsch text

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Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh — “The Tale of the Seven” (Atjehnese Eitia Toedjoh, from Acehnese tujōh, “seven”) — is the Atjehnese vernacular text of the legend of the Seven Sleepers, published in 1939 as Tekst A of H. T. Damsté’s edition De legende van de heilige zeven slapers in het Atjehsch, issued as a separate offprint (overdruk) from deel 98 of the B.K.I. by M. Nijhoff of ‘s-Gravenhage. The text is recorded as No. 570 in Van Meurs’s Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 (The Hague, 1940), and No. 561 is a cross-reference to it.

The text

The Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh is the Atjehnese-language rendering of the legend of the Seven Sleepers — the Christian and Islamic legend of the youths who, fleeing persecution, took refuge in a cave and slept there for centuries, miraculously preserved. The legend is known in Islam from the eighteenth sūrah of the Qurʾān (Sūrat al-Kahf, “The Cave”), and it spread throughout the Muslim world, naturalised in many vernacular literatures. The Atjehnese form Eitia Toedjoh — literally “Seven” — gives the legend its local title; the term Hikajat (from Arabic ḥikāyah, “tale, narrative”) is the standard Malay and Acehnese literary-genre designation for a prose romance or historical tale. The text thus belongs to the Atjehnese hikajat tradition — the same tradition that produced the Hikajat Radja-Radja Pasei and the Hikajat Prang Kompeuni — and it is one of the principal published Atjehnese vernacular texts of the inter-war period.

Publication as Tekst A

The text was published as Tekst A of Damsté’s edition. The designation “Tekst A” indicates that Damsté had before him more than one manuscript of the legend, and that the published text represents one chosen manuscript presented in full; the edition proper (the B.K.I. article, No. 560) contains, beside the text, the Dutch translation and the scholarly apparatus. The text was issued as a separate offprint — Overdr. uit dl. 98 der B.K.I. — by M. Nijhoff of ‘s-Gravenhage in 1939, so that scholars working on the Atjehnese language could have the text in a handy form. The practice of issuing vernacular texts as separate offprints was standard for the B.K.I. and for Nijhoff, and it reflects the place of Atjehsch text-edition in the contemporary philological enterprise.

Editor and venue

Damsté — already known in the AcehWiki corpus as one of the principal authorities on Atjeh, cited by Piekaar in the Bibliography of Atjèh and the War with Japan alongside Snouck Hurgronje, Kreemer, Jongejans, and Zentgraaff — published the edition in the B.K.I., the quarterly journal of the Koninklijk Instituut. The B.K.I. had by 1939 reached deel 98, and the Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh took its place in a long series of Atjehsch text editions published in the journal over the preceding half-century.

Place in the 1939 Literatuur-Overzicht

The text is No. 570 in the Sumatra chapter (Hoofdstuk III, Nos. 548–658) of Van Meurs’s survey, where it is recorded as: Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh. Tekst A van “De legende van de heilige zeven slapers in het Atjehsch” door H. T. DAMSTÉ. (Overdr. uit dl. 98 der B.K.I.). ‘s-Gravenhage 1939. No. 561 is a cross-reference: “zie bij Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh.” The separate recording of the text — distinct from the article (No. 560) — reflects the bibliographic care with which Van Meurs treated the separate offprint publication.

Significance

For AcehWiki, the Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh is significant as a published Atjehnese vernacular text of the inter-war period, and as the standard edition of the Atjehnese version of the Seven Sleepers legend. The text furnishes primary material for the study of Atjehnese language and literature, and it complements the corpus’s existing entries on Atjehnese vernacular texts — including the Hikajat Radja-Radja Pasei and the Hikajat Prang Kompeuni. The text also illustrates the place of the Islamic legend-cycle in the Atjehnese literary imagination, and the work of Damsté in making that literature available to Dutch colonial scholarship.

See Also

Source

Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 van de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde en Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië, door H. van Meurs (‘s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1940), Hoofdstuk III (Sumatra en naburig gebied), Nos. 561, 570. Citing: Hikajat Eitia Toedjoh. Tekst A van “De legende van de heilige zeven slapers in het Atjehsch” door H. T. Damsté (Overdr. uit dl. 98 der B.K.I.; ‘s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1939).

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