The Achehnese Metre sanja' and the Thai KLƆ:N P∈:T

Abstract

Almost half a century ago I pointed to the similarity between the national Achehnese verse form sanja' and a related Cham verse used in the song of the kadhar (a musician-officiant) at the ceremony of the sacrifice of the buffalo (Cowan, 1933). It will be useful to recall here the main points of that paper.The Achehnese sanja' in its simplest form consists of lines of eight dissyllabic metrical feet or rather four pairs of such feet, whose two middle pairs rhyme with each other, while the final syllable of each line rhymes with that of the following line. Or in other words it is a double-eight-syllable metre with an internal rhyme on the eighth syllable of the first and the fourth syllable of the second half of the verse line, and with a final rhyme at the end of each line. Thus: