Indonesian Rip Van Winkle
In 1953, the Garrard Publishing Company released a book entitled Far East Stories For Pleasure Reading, written by Edward Dolch, Marguerite Dolch and Beulah Jackson. In this book, a chapter called The Maker of Puppets features a tale that is remarkably like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle.
The main character of the story, Ali ben Yunes, has a nag of a wife. He wanders off into the woods, just like Rip Van Winkle. Instead of coming across the ghost of Henry Hudson, Ali ben Yunes happens upon a pair of people playing a game with “puppets” on a board, which looks a lot like chess, in a deep woodland clearing. Like Rip Van Winkle, Ali ben Yunes comes back to his town to find it radically changed, with years gone by.
The similarities seem too strong to dismiss, but which story came first? Did this book of Asian tales intentionally bring the story of Rip Van Winkle into an Indonesian context, or did Washington Irving update an Indonesian folktale to American revolutionary times?
