Syair and Pantun Prosody

Abstract

Many characteristics of the Malay syair and pantun have become standard items in handbooks and textbooks concerned with classical Malay literature.1 These works uniformly agree that the syair consists of a series of quatrains containing an ongoing story. The final syllable of each line (kerat) within a stanza (bait or rangkap or untai) rhymes with every other final syllable of that stanza (aaaa, bbbb, ....). Furthermore, the line generally consists of four words with a more or less definable caesura (jeda) after the second word. The pantun has all the features of the syair quatrain except that the final rhyme is of the abab type,2 and there is often an alternating internal rhyme (cdcd) between the precaesural syllables. Although pantuns may be linked to form a pantun sequence, most are independent. Also, pantuns may range from two to twelve lines although these are rarer than the four-line variety. The primary difference separating the syair form from that of the pantun, however, is that while the syair has a continuous story throughout the quatrain--and between quatrains--the pantun divides into two parts, the first half (pembayang maksud) having specific, concrete images3 to describe nature or the human world, the second half (maksud) using abstract words to state an observation or maxim.4