Si Tanggang
Malay · mortal · Malay traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Si Tanggang is a poor youth who sails away to seek his fortune, prospers as a ship's captain, and takes a highborn bride. Returning wealthy to his home shore, he is ashamed of his aged mother and denies that the ragged woman who comes weeping to his vessel is any kin of his. Cast off, she prays that her son be punished, and a sudden storm turns him, his wife, and his ship to stone. The tale is told across the Malay world, as Si Tanggang on the Peninsula and as Nakhoda Manis at the petrified ship-rock of Jong Batu in Brunei, and is the Malayic cognate of the Minangkabau legend of Malin Kundang.
Domains
- filial impiety petrifaction
Powers
- be turned to stone by a curse
Sources
- Si Tanggang is the ungrateful son who denies his mother on his return and is turned to stone with his ship by her curse.: W.W. Skeat, Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901). (secondary); R.O. Winstedt, A History of Classical Malay Literature (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1969). (secondary)