Adventures of a prince who came into the world in the form of a pig.
Retold from Hikayat Raja Babi (The Story of the Pig King)
by Usup ibn Abdul Kadir, 12 January 1775
Writer: Heidi Shamsuddin
Illustrator: Evi Shelvia
Publisher: Matahari Books, 2020
Pages: 40
Category: Picture Book
The manuscript for Hikayat Raja Babi in Malay Jawi script was purchased by the British Library from one John Crawfurd in 1842 and now kept in the British Library. According to the colophon of the manuscript, Usup ibn Abdul Kadir was a merchant from Semarang of Indian descent from Cooch in west Bengal, who during a voyage to Palembang was anchored in Sungai Lawang, There being no trade and to amuse himself, Usup sat down to write the Story of the Pig King which he completed in 20 days.
Fortunately, it was revived from the depths of the British Library by publisher Amir Muhammad who commissioned Arsyad Mohktar to transliterate the manuscript into Malay romanised script for the first time ever and published in 2014.
Arsyad went through several steps to transliterate the original manuscript. Although the original text was in old jawi script, Arsyad did not find this a great difficulty. He used the dictionary (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka) to ensure he used the write Malay word for the Jawi. In some cases he just couldn't find the right word and for that he referred to other Jawi manuscript. Arsyad was also tripped by the fact that some pages of the manuscript from the British Library were not in the right order. In addition, there were inconsistencies in Usop's spelling for the same word (bearing in mind, the approximately 109pp manuscript was written in 20 days and not edited).
The task to adapt the 200-odd pages of the Malay Hikayat Raja Babi into a picture book in English then falls to writer Heidi Shamsuddin. In an interview witih a local paper, Heidi said that the 'manuscript which was written for the pure joy and entertainment of the author, ... contains fantastical elements which would rival any epic fantasy book we have today.'
This comic-tragic and swashbuckling tale has been compared to Beauty and the Beast except that the 'beast' in this case did not wait for his lady love to save him but went out boldly into the world to earn his fortune and in the process fought and won several battles, saved a few princesses and found love and his destiny. And the spell that had cursed him was broken not because he had found love but that he had proven himself worthy of true love.
There is so much to this story that one could linger on each page and imagined for example, the battle that involved magic, fairies, djinns, dragons and flying chakra discs. And your imagination would be much aided by the haunting illustrations by Evi Shelvia. Using mixed media including collage, Evi conveyed thrillingly the magical and fantastical world of the story of the Pig King. Usop would have been pleased.
For enquiries on rights, please write to: rights.ygl@gmail.com
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