'If not now, when?' Hillel, Pirke Avot, I 14. The text edition which I
hereby submit to the reader has been my constant companion for much of
the last nine odd years. But the relative stability of my main
preoccupation contrasted sharply with my wanderings during this same
span of time. In fact, for most of it I was more or less constantly on
the move, trekking from the Nether- lands to Australia and back again,
then to the United States, with three excursioru; to Indonesia. On all
these trips I carried my notes and kept working on this project, the
conclusion of which continued to elude me. Even today I can hardly
believe it is allover - and in fact it is not, as this volume will soon
be followed by a companion containing a shortened English translation
and dealing in much greater detail with the relationship between the
Malay Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah, its Persian source and Muslim
literature in general. I sincerely regret that technical and financial
considerations have combined to make inclusion of the apparatus criticus
in this edition impossible. A limited number of copies of this apparatus
are avail- able on personal application either direct from the author
(C/o the Indonesian Department, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria
3168, Australia), or from the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde, Stationsplein 10, Leiden, the Netherlands.