How does one write down pantun?
Well, one does not necessarily write pantun. Pantun, as has been emphasized in previous postings, began as an oral tradition. The pantun of the old days is not written down and passed around. It is simply passed around by words of mouth.
But then came writing and writing (the knowledge of it, and the material required to practise it) became more accessible and people realized that recording things is important (partly thanks to the westerners). There’s an increase in awareness to collect the pantun and put it in written form so that it’ll be more tangible, less likely to be lost.
Pantun is thus written. The thing about writing is that it functions to make things easier and more appealing – readable.
When writing down pantun, few things must be considered.
Diction
Structure (the stanza, the lines, indication of rhyme, existence of pembayang & maksud)
Diction is the words used. Well, we're not going to touch much on this here. The way the diction is written down is pretty much the history of Malay writing system; either using the jawi or roman script. In this entry we will cover only those way of writing using the roman alphabet, thanks to to influence brought by the European tradition of writing poetry down.
So, what we will be focusing on is how does one show the structure deemed vital in a pantun? The indication rhyme, the separation of the pembayang and maksud, etc. More importantly, it will be good if one can, at a glance, tells that it is pantun or not.
Of course one can simply write it just like a normal sentence.
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah. Gunung Daik bercabang tiga. Hancur badan dikandung tanah. Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
But then, one might have difficulty to see whether it is pantun or not. Write it this way, one may only realise it is pantun when one is halfway through the pembayang and realized that it is actually a pembayang. Then one may have to start again, to get the intonation right. You know, that sort of things.
Therefore, it will be wise if we try to differentiate it from ordinary sentence, right?
One way to do it, and mostly be done is by writing it in stanza form. Each line in the pantun will have their own line when written. Therefore, an improvement of the above style would look like this
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah. Gunung Daik bercabang tiga. Hancur badan dikandung tanah. Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
Well, this is good. At least it is clear that this is not just a string of sentences. It is in stanza form. It could be a pantun. The above example is an easy one, easy to see that it is pantun.
But what if it is to be more than 4 line?
Permata jatuh ke rumput. Jatuh ke rumput berbilang-bilang. Ditempuh dilanda jangan. Rumput pahit bersela-sela. Dari mata tidaklah luput. Di hati tak mahu hilang. Siang menjadi angan-angan. Malam menjadi mimpi pula.
Well, it is written in stanza, easy to say that it is a pantun. But where do one end the pembayang, where to start the maksud?
If it is pantun 4 kerat, of course it will be easy to see which part the pembayang is, where the maksud start (the 3rd line). But how does one do this identification of pembayang and maksud easily when it is more than 4 line?
One way of doing this is by using indentation. This is done when a line is written to begin a bit farther to the right than where the line usually starts.
There are (so far I’ve encountered) 2 ways of doing this.
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah. Gunung Daik bercabang tiga. Hancur badan dikandung tanah. Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
or
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah. Gunung Daik bercabang tiga. Hancur badan dikandung tanah. Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
The first one is where the maksud is written a bit farther to the right. The second is a bit more artistic in a way, alternate line get the indent.
But wait, it makes sense to follow the first style. If the pantun has more than 4 lines, the it will be clear which part the pembayang, which part is the maksud.
Permata jatuh ke rumput. Jatuh ke rumput berbilang-bilang. Ditempuh dilanda jangan. Rumput pahit bersela-sela. Dari mata tidaklah luput. Di hati tak mahu hilang. Siang menjadi angan-angan. Malam menjadi mimpi pula.
But the second style won’t help, if you simply alternate the line to have indents. Compare;
Permata jatuh ke rumput. Jatuh ke rumput berbilang-bilang. Ditempuh dilanda jangan. Rumput pahit bersela-sela. Dari mata tidaklah luput. Di hati tak mahu hilang. Siang menjadi angan-angan. Malam menjadi mimpi pula.
You still have to count how many group of twos to be the pembayang. It will be more complicated if it was to be pantun 14 kerat (yes, it exists).
The way to remedy this, instead of simply having the indent given to alternating line, the line is structure in a way that the second line of pembayang/maksud falls farther to the right, the next line farther to the right still, the next line still farther to right, so on and so forth.
Or in easy words, the line that follows will be written farther to the right than the previous one, until it meets the maksud, then the cycle begins again. Observe,
Permata jatuh ke rumput. Jatuh ke rumput berbilang-bilang. Ditempuh dilanda jangan. Rumput pahit bersela-sela. Dari mata tidaklah luput. Di hati tak mahu hilang. Siang menjadi angan-angan. Malam menjadi mimpi pula.
See, now it is clear where the pembayang ends. Where the maksud start. You don’t have to know how many line there are. You don’t have to know pantun berapa kerat is this. You can easily point which one the pembayang, which one the maksud.
Now, let’s talk about punctuation.
Which punctuation must be used at the end of every line?
Easy answer – suka hati hang la.
Ok la, serious talk, it really depends on how you perceive the relation between each line.
If you see there’s no need to differentiate each line in term of relation – don’t use any punctuation.
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah Gunung Daik bercabang tiga Hancur badan dikandung tanah Budi yang baik dikenang juga
If you think that each line could stand on its own, in a way that cutting it from others won’t affect its meaning and function, then youn can use full stop at the end of each line.
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah. Gunung Daik bercabang tiga. Hancur badan dikandung tanah. Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
One may take the pembayang to be one continuous sentence, and the maksud to be one, and the pembayang should be separated from the maksud because it functions differently. Then one may opt to have the pembayang and the maksud separated by a full stop, and each line in the pembayang/maksud is separated from each other by comma (the way comma works in a sentence)
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah, Gunung Daik bercabang tiga. Hancur badan dikandung tanah, Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
Or maybe one see that the pembayang and maksud, though functions differently, still tied together to give what we know as pantun. They (pembayang and maksud) are all analogically a sentence. Therefore, the pembayang and maksud should not be separated by a full stop. One could opt to use the semicolon (koma bertitik) to separate the pembayang from the maksud.
Tanda koma bertitik digunakan untuk memisahkan bahagian sampiran pantun atau pembayang maksud daripada bahagian maksud pantun dalam pantun empat kerat atau lebih. Sehubungan dengan ini, tanda koma digunakan untuk memisahkan baris-baris yang membentuk bahagian masing-masing, iaitu bahagian sampiran pantun dan bahagian maksud pantun. (from Canggihnya Bahasa Melayu – Sistem Tanda Baca by Ismail bin Dahaman)
Pulau Pandan jauh ke tengah, Gunung Daik bercabang tiga; Hancur badan dikandung tanah, Budi yang baik dikenang juga.
Thus so far, some ways one could write down pantun, to ease reading. Which one my favourite? I prefer to use the last style, i.e. separation of pembayang and maksud using semicolon, and each line of the part is separated from each other by a comma. As for indentation, I would choose to write each line of pembayang/maksud shifted more to the right than the previous line.
Why? Because this is the first style of writing pantun down, when I first introduced to the world of pantun formally. Therefore, it’s not about which one is right nor which one is more correct. It just a matter of preference.
In conclusion, whenever you’re to write down pantun, just remember that you want it to be easy to be recognized and read. It’s always wise to use the indentation convention, especially when it comes to pantun of more than 4 lines.
In future entry, we shall cover on how does pantun written down when the jawi script was the main medium used for writing by the mass.
Till then.