Reconstructing the Tale of The Princess of Mount Ledang

The story of the Princess of Mount Ledang holds an enduring fascination among Malaysian writers and there have been a number of retellings and reimaginings of her story in the last decade or so. Writers who have published stories about the Princess of Mount Ledang, each added their own perspective. 

From the single tale about the attempt by the Sultan of Malacca to woo her, we now have a 

plethora of sources to reconstruct the story of her life, beginning with her parents (and even 

her grandfather) and that of the only man she ever loved, Nakhoda Ragam. This is not surprising

because when it comes to Malaysian folklore, the most celebrated love story revolves around 

the Fairy Princess of Mount Ledang.  

Readers might want to explore the subject further by revisiting the following short stories: 

The Princess of Mount Ledang by Leela Chakrabarty and Girl on the Mountain by 

Preeta Samarasan, both stories appeared in The Principal Girl, Edited by Sharifah Aishah 

Osman and Tutu Dutta; and also Princess, by Daphne Lee which appeared in her collection 

of short stories, Bright Landscapes.

1. The Principal Girl - Edited by Sharifah A Osman and Tutu Dutta

The Principal Girl is an anthology of mostly folklore based tales written by Malaysian and Singaporean writers. We learn about the origin of this mysterious princess in Leela Chakraborty's story, entitled, The Princess of Mount Ledang. Told in straightforward old school style, it appears that her mother is the daughter of a hunter-gatherer who lived in Mount Ledang. an accident brought them to the attention of a clan of were-tigers (harimau jadian) who lived in a hidden vale on the mystical mountain. The daughter of the hunter was given in marriage to the prince of the clan of were-tigers and their only child was Puteri Embong, who later became known as the Princess of Mount Ledang.

A second story in the collection, Girl on a Mountain, by Preeta Samarasan draws a very different picture of the Princess from what we imagine her to be, from folklore.  Instead of a mysterious magical princess living in a rarefied world, Samarasan depicts her as a fiercely independent wild child; a young woman who holds sway over people by the force of her personality (and not by magic) and her power over nature (which is of course, magical, even if the narrator claims otherwise.) The story proved to be one of the most popular in the anthology. In a way, Samarasan's story tally with Chakraborty's story of a wild carefree princess raised by a clan a shapeshifting weretigers.

2. Bright Landscapes by Daphne Lee

After her childhood, is a coming of age story. According to legend, the Princess met the love of her life as a young woman, on her first trip downriver on a magical skiff which carried her to the sea. The eagle-eyed Nakhoda Ragam spotted her from his perahu and fell in love with her. They were married soon after and spent their honeymoon sailing on the Straits of Melaka. But tragedy struck, the Princess accidentally stabbed him with her  golden needle and he died in her arms. She had not known, he was cursed to die from the prick of a needle...

Daphne Lee's collection of folklore based tales has two stories about the Princess of Mount Ledang. the first one, Princess, is an overwhelmingly sensuous reimagining of the story with a shocking ending, told in the style of a folktale crossed with a steamy romance novel. Although I was shocked at the fate which befell Nakhoda Ragam, my favourite character in all of Malay folklore, the story was intriguing and seemed to be another piece of the puzzle in the story of the legendary Princess of Mount Ledang. In fact, in this tale the narative acknowledged and expanded on the Princess' link with the clan of weretigers in Chakraborty's story.

3. Eight Jewels of the Phoenix retold by Tutu Dutta

The final chapter in the saga of the Princess of Mount Ledang is retold in Eight Jewels of the Phoenix. This story is based on the famous legend, where the Sultan of Malacca, tries to win her hand in marriage in order to acquire "a wife who would outshine all the wives of the princes of the world" took place centuries after the death of Nakhoda Ragam. We all know that the Sultan failed miserably to win over the morose beauty. 

As for the princess, according to legend, "To this day, the princess is said to reside in a magical cave in Gunung Ledang, where she transforms from a beautiful young girl in the morning to an old hag at night." (parts in quotation came from an article by Joane le Roux, In pursuit of a were-tiger, which appeared in the Nov 2, 2014 issue of the New Sunday Times.)

 

Bright Landscapes by Daphne Lee - A Commentary

 

(This is a commentary and not a review because I'm analysing the stories as a writer as well as a reader.)

Bright Landscapes by Daphne Lee. This is a collection of short stories by the celebrated former columnist for The Star. Lee is widely regarded as an authority on Children's Literature in English in the region; however this collection is adult fiction. Although Lee has published two other books as an Editor, this is her first book as an author. This slim volume of 150 pages contain 10 dark tales, most of which were entertaining but a few not quite fleshed out. What she succeeded in doing was to create contemporary stories with  the hybrid/fusion of culture and folklore which is Malaysia. 

I've noticed that Malaysian writers who write stories set in Malaysia tend to stick to their own cultural milieu, i.e. Chinese Malaysian writers tend to write stories set within Chinese community and culture, Malay Malaysians write about characters in their own community, Indian Malaysian writers write stories based on Indian culture, with Sri Lankans narrowing this down even further and so forth. When characters of different races appear in the stories, they tend to be token representations. Well Lee has actually broken this mold - her contemporary stories feature characters from the diverse communities which make up our country who take on the cultural tropes from different cultural traditions to produce their own unique hybrid culture.

Common threads which run through these stories include children and family, marriage, births and deaths, and oddly enough tigers.

My favourites were: After The Funeral, All Was Still and On Jugra Hill. After The Funeral is a chilling tale of abuse and abandonment perpetuated by the patriarch of a traditional Chinese family, told from the point of view of the teenaged granddaughter. The supernatural entity, created by the grandfather, who 'gave away' a severely  handicapped child, is from Malay folklore. After the death of the grandfather, the creature is set lose and starts to haunt the family. The granddaughter searches for a way to put the creature ton rest and finds it in her own Chinese traditions. It should be noted that the story is so indirect and subtle, one has to connect the dots. But this is a matter of style.

All Was Still is an evocative and haunting tale, again featuring a female protagonist from a Chinese family (I think;) however the story draws on Malay folklore. It features at least three tiger spirits, and I felt grief and outrage at the acts of human cruelty which created them.  It is beautifully written and I love the descriptions of the little girl in the story. As with After The Funeral, one has to connect the dots to piece the narrative together; the story also has an ambiguous ending which nevertheless will leave you feeling bereft. 

On Jugra Hill is a hair-raising black comedy which has the potential to be developed into a lock door murder mystery. Fans of detective fiction will recognise the setting - a group of people stranded in a posh house in the middle of nowhere with a storm brewing in the horizon - although there is no dead body in this story. The characters have oddly familiar names of people in real life; I only wish they were more likeable. As for the plot, for some reason, I completely missed the clues the writer dropped and had a 'what just happened here?' jaw dropping moment! Still the story will carry you along on a wild ride and was hair raising fun!

The stories which didn't work for me were: Orang Minyak - can a woman be more lacking in agency and commonsense? I would have expected her maternal or survival instinct to kick in if only to save herself. Perhaps She is another story which I failed to understand, it seemed to be about a woman who abandoned her family and life in general, and had nightmares of being buried or being reborn by the earth. The third story called The Dead, was a woman who presumably died during childbirth and could not accept her fate; which was understandable enough. 

The stories which could have done with a bit of tweaking were: The Pontianak, Princess, and The Tiger Bridegroom. In Pontianak, the narrator tells her two dinner guests the story of her uncle who married a pontianak. One gathers that the uncle had an affair with a bar maid, who may have died in childbirth.  Two things bothered me about the story - one is the fact that the dinner guests, a gay couple, were so unlikeable but more importantly did not seem to serve any real purpose in the story. In settings like this, usually one or both guests knew something the narrator wanted to unearth, or trap them into admitting.  

The second thing which bothered me were the errors in folklore. In the story, the uncle trapped the pontianak with a needle and red thread, in the purple heart of a banana tree. In traditional folklore, the pontianak is associated with the sundal harum malam (possibly the champaca or the pala tree) and not the banana grove; it is the orang minyak who haunts the banana grove. Also, traditionally, the pontianak does not feed on the body parts of men, she looks for the placenta of the newborn and also the fresh blood spilled during childbirth. The story would have been a lot more suspenseful, with more 'showing' and less 'telling.' 

Princess is told in the style of a folktale crossed with a steamy romance novel. Although I was shocked at the fate which befell Nakhoda Ragam, my favourite character in all of Malay folklore, the story was intriguing and seemed to be another piece of the puzzle in the story of the legendary Princess of Mount Ledang. If you are interested in following the journey of the Princess, The Principal Girl has two tales relating to her: Girl on a Mountain by Preeta Samarasan and The Princess of Mount Ledang by Leela Chakrabarty. You can follow the trials and tribulation of Nakhoda Ragam in these three books of mine: Eight Treasures of the Dragon, Eight Fortunes of the Qilin and Eight Jewels of the Phoenix.

The Tiger Bridegroom is also told in the style of a folktale, and is quite an amusing and entertaining story. My only complaint is that the characters appeared to be caricatures, but that is a matter of personal preference. 

The last story, Endless Night, is a story I've read before. And it is still as powerful and evocative as ever, on rereading.   

The True Identity of Nakhoda Ragam... and the Princess of Mount Ledang

While researching Malay folklore about a decade ago - for my first collection of folktales, Eight Jewels of the Phoenix - I came across this fascinating character known as Nakhoda Ragam. This dashing seafarer, also known as the Singing Captain, is described as having long wavy hair, tied in a knot behind his head. Unfortunately there are absolutely no images of him on the World Wide Web, not a single one. All I got were pictures of a Malaysian naval ship named Nakhoda Ragam!

A gorgeous depiction of Lela Menchanai or
Chanai Lela by Yokinoshee.
http://yukinoshee.deviantart.com/art/Puteri-Lela-Menchanai-506532356

This larger than life personage was undoubtedly handsome as legend has it that he won the heart of an extraordinary beauty. However, there is some confusion about the exact identity of Nakhoda  Ragam and the woman he is supposed to have wedded. The first legend is that of Lela Menchanai or Chanai Lela. Nakhoda Ragam took her for his wife but their marriage was tragically short-lived. While sailing on his perahu, Lela Menchanai accidentally stabbed Nakhoda Ragam with a gold sewing needle and he bled to death. A few sources even claimed that the needle was poisoned or that it was cursed. This is nonsense, of course. Nakhoda Ragam, like Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty,  was cursed to die from the prick of a needle. The broken-hearted Lela Menchanai took her own life; by stabbing herself with a sword, according to some sources or by drowning when she jumped into the sea.

The Malay Archipelago, used to be known as the East Indies or the Spice Islands.

To this day, Nakhoda Ragam is associated with many places throughout the Malay Archipelago: Sumatra, Malacca, Johor, Singapore, Brunei, Sarawak, Sulawesi and Java but he is most closely associated with Penang, where every cove and island seemed to hold a memory of him...

Photo of Tanjung Tokong in Penang, probably taken in the early 20th Century

This excerpt taken from a Tourism Malaysia website:

In the early days, Malay seafarers were renowned for their adventures on the high seas. Great sailors, these virile young men sailed through uncharted territories to build their empires. One such man was Nakhoda Ragam, a nakhoda or sea captain famed for his sea exploits around the Malay Archipelago. Well-known for his musical abilities Nakhoda Ragam was often seen playing his set of musical instruments on his ship hence the nickname 'Singing Captain'.

It is believed Nakhoda Ragam was the first to give Penang its name while trading in the Straits of Malacca from Lingga to Kedah. As there was no higher or larger isolated island in his travels, he named it Pulau ke Satu directly translated as Single Island. He also gave names to other bays, rivers and points on the island.

At the mouth of the river that flows into the bay, he released a tame bird called Bayan, which led to the origins of Bayan Lepas. Similarly, while passing Pulau Betong on the western coast of Penang, he encountered a heavy gale. At one point, the storm grew fiercer and his wife's face turned pale with fear. From then on the place was referred to as Pucat Muka, which means "pale faced".

From left: Elliot Cowan (Gunner), Marama Corlett (Rina), Dimitry Leonidas (Anwar) and  Elliot Knight as SINBAD, a character quite similar to Nakhoda Ragam?

Some websites (mostly those from Brunei) claim that Nakhoda Ragam was in fact Sultan Bolkiah, another adventurous seafarer and the 5th Sultan of Brunei. However, this claim is highly improbable. For one thing, Nakhoda Ragam is mentioned in the Malay Annals as the son of Demam Lebar Daun, a personage associated with Sang Nila Utama, a prince of Sri Vijaya. According to legend, Sang Nila Utama founded Singapore and Demam Lebar Daun was his minister counselor. Sultan Bolkiah probably lived during the 16th Century -  three centuries after Nakhoda Ragam and Sang Nila Utama. The other stumbling block is that, Nakhoda Ragam died in his wife's arm, on their honeymoon and probably never had any children.

The President of the Philippines on the other hand, claims to be related to Lela Menchanai...

Also, the President Datin Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo confirmed her royal link with Brunei in an interview with the media, while visiting the country. 

Excerpt from report (it's in hardcopy) reads: 

...President Arroyo said: 

"It happened this way. During the 16th century, the first Sultan Bolkiah married a Filipina (Sulu Princess Lela Menchanai), whose grandson is Lakandula (a Manila nobleman), whose cousin went to Brunei in 1575, and whose grandchild is a Macapagal. 

The first Sultan Bolkiah, known as the Singing Captain or Nakohda Ragam, ruled during the golden age of Brunei when its territory reached the Philippines. 

His wife, Princess Lela Menchanai, the daughter of a Sulu ruler, has a school named after her in Kampong Ayer [Brunei], where one of the teachers is Filipina Jhonita Rivero, who has been teaching there for 16 years. 

"In our Pampango dialect, macapagal means something that is 'tiring'. So my cabinet members said it is tiring to work in Malacanang," she said.

Buy online from www.mphonline.com Description of the book: 

http://tutudutta.blogspot.com/2013/01/bibliophobia-eight-treasures-of-dragon.html

I tend to subscribe to the argument that Nakhoda Ragam was in fact Malim Dewa, a Sri Vijayan nobleman who was the son of Demam Lebar Daun (Notes and Queries, edited by W.E. Maxwell, MBRAS 1885 - 1887.) He helped Sang Nila Utama and his retinue, including his own father, Demam Lebar Daun, flee Sri Vijaya and brought them to safety to the island of Bintan. From there, they sailed to Temasik, the old name of Singapore. For the details of the story, read my book, Eight Treasures of the Dragon.

Santubong and Sejinjang an illustration from the children's book, 
Legendary Princesses of Malaysia, 
written by Raman and illustrated by Emila Yusof.

So what was the second adventure to befall Nakhoda Ragam/Malim Dewa? I made a huge leap in speculation and placed him on the island of Borneo where he became entangled in a love triangle with two sisters, Princess Santubong and Princess Sejinjang. He did not know of course that they were sisters, since they were as unlike to each other as night is to day. In my story (in Eight Fortunes of the Qilin) I made Santubong a powerful shaman who could summon the rice spirit and Sejinjang, the magical weaver of dreams. I saw them as archetypes - Santubong represented Day, nature and fertility; Senjinjang represented Night, art and dreams. I also reversed their traditional roles - Santubong pounded padi while Sejinjang weaved cloths. I have a reason for this - Santubong was slashed in the face - this could only have been done by a sharp spindle (which meant Sejinjang wielded the spindle), while Sejinjang had her head smashed (this could have only been done with a heavy object such as a wooden pole,) so Santubong wielded the heavy rice pestle.

The other thing Nakhoda Ragam did not know was that their father was a faerie lord. Nakhoda Ragam sailed away, unaware of the heartbreak and tragedy he left in his wake because the two sisters ended up killing each other. Naturally, the only outcome is a curse.

The third episode in the life of Nakhoda Ragam occurred after he espoused the fabulous Faerie Princess of Mount Ledang or Puteri Gunung Ledang. This story is uncannily similar to that of Lela Menchanai - while sailing in his perahu, Nakhoda Ragam surprised his wife with an embrace while she was sewing his garment and she accidentally stabbed him with a gold needle. He collapsed and died in her arms. The princess was naturally, horrified and heartbroken. At the same time, she was terrified that his crew would discover his death. They were fiercely loyal to him and she feared that they would do her harm. She hid in the cabin with the dead body of her husband and waited for night to fall. Then she quietly went up to the deck, donned her faerie robes and flew to Mount Ledang; vowing never to marry again... this little vignette came from Notes and Queries, edited by W.E. Maxwell, MBRAS 1885 - 1887.

In my version of the story of the Princess of Mount Ledang (in Eight Jewels of the Phoenix), the attempt by the Sultan of Malacca, to win her hand in marriage in order to acquire "a wife who would outshine all the wives of the princes of the world" took place centuries after the death of Nakhoda Ragam. We all know that the Sultan failed miserably to win over the morose beauty. Read an online account of this quest here: http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/melaka3.htm

As for the princess, according to legend, "To this day, the princess is said to reside in a magical cave in Gunung Ledang, where she transforms from a beautiful young girl in the morning to an old hag at night." (parts in quotation came from an article by Joane le Roux, In pursuit of a were-tiger, which appeared in the Nov 2, 2014 issue of the New Sunday Times.)

Puteri Gunung Ledang/Princess of Mount Ledang. Photo by Yaman Ibrahim. National Geographic Your Shot.

Of course, we are now faced with the tantalising clue: Is Lela Menchanai the fabled Princess of Mount Ledang? I put forward this question to Salliza Sideni, a folklore enthusiast from Sarawak, but she didn't think so. I mentioned Salliza because she was the one who pointed out the story of Lela Menchanai to me.