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The Great Epics

Rama, Descendant of Adam

In the Malay telling, Allah stands where Brahma stood, and Dasaratha is traced back to the prophet Adam.

In the Malay Ramayana, the line of Dasaratha is traced back to Adam, and the supreme being who sets the story in motion is Allah.

What it is

The Hikayat Seri Rama is the Malay Ramayana. Hikayat is the Malay form for a long prose narrative.

And this one was written down somewhere between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. After the Malay world had become Muslim.

The story itself had arrived long before that. In the Hindu-Buddhist centuries of Srivijaya and the Malay peninsula.

It had been in the region for many hundreds of years, before anyone wrote it down in this form.

The names shifted as it settled: Seri Rama, Siti Dewi, Laksamana, and Ravana as Maharaja Wana.

Read the whole story on Setu

The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.