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The Dictionary that Makes a World of Difference _________________________________________________________________
Phoenix, gryphon and garuda...do they enchant you? Let me share with you the dictionary that reveals a mysterious mythical bird called Jentayu in Bahasa Malaysia. Jentayu derives from a Sanskrit word Jatayu. In the Hindu epic Ramayana written in Sanskrit, Jatayu is a demi-god in the form of a vulture and a friend of the epic's hero, Rama. Despite his old age, Jatayu flew to rescue Rama's wife, Sita while she was being kidnapped by a fearsome demon king, Ravana. Ravana cut Jatayu's wings leaving him mortally wounded to inform Rama of his wife's abduction.
The chivalrous jentayu inspired an award winning song. Listeners like Wan who is touched by the noble jentayu is moved to search the dictionary to find out more. ( Please, don't mention encyclopedia grrrr. Do we have any useful ones in Bahasa Malaysia...yet?) I concluded the jentayu should be a kind of garuda to fit the context of Usman Awang's poem. However, another definition in the dictionary of this bird arouses my curiosity : if jentayu is a kind of bird that yearns for rain, then what does it look like? The other two names given for jentayu are centayu and jantayu. I scratched my head in frustration when I came to this point, what the heck is centayu and jantayu? After exhausting reference sources in modern Malay, I turned to an old trilingual Jawi dictionary entitled A classic Jawi-Malay-English-Dictionary ( Kamus Jawi-Melayu-Inggeris ) compiled by a Malay scholar and educationist, R.J.Wilkinson in 1903. In the dicitionary, the definition in English version for jentayu is: " [ Skr. ( Sanskrit ) jatayu ] A fabulous bird believed to be endowed with the power of calling for rain and dew." Bingo! the Sanskrit origin immediately explained jentayu clearly to me. However, I should let you know Mr Wilkinson also mentioned that the jentayu appears as the steed of Yama, the God of Death in the Hikayat Sang Samba. Anyone who is familiar with Hinduism will be quick to point out that Yama's steed is a buffalo instead of a jatayu. Bear in mind though, Mr Wilkinson merely quoted the Malay epic and Malay epics are influenced by other cultures, related in hmmm different details. According to the Ramayana, Jatayu's father Aruna is the elder brother of Garuda. So that makes Jatayu a newphew of the eagle-god Garuda, and this explains why jentayu is defined as a type of eagle or garuda. Pictures of jatayu often portray him as either a vulture or an eagle. This learning experience teaches me to respect older dictionaries and not to treat them as out-of-date publications. At the preface of the dictionary, Mr Wilkinson writes: " It is often thought that the merits of a Malay Dictionary are to be measured by the number of new words that it contains. This is somewhat narrow view of the matter...The study of little-known dialects such as those of Situl, Perlis or Pattani, would provide innumerable new words, just as the study of Aberdonian might be used to supplement our best English Dictionaries." I agree with him whole-souled. Maybe you are more familiar with other works of R.J.Wilkinson such as An abridged Malay-English dictionary . We don't have to be scholars to understand deep things in the Malay language, thanks to the contribution of people like Mr Wilkinson and many others who have worked hard to make interesting knowledge available to all.
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