“Between a Rock and Reclaimed Land:” A Structural Comparison between Singaporean and Mauritian Petrifaction Myths Between a Rock and Reclaimed Land: A Structural Comparison of Si-Tanggang and the Pieter Both Folktale

Abstract

This paper investigates the folktale motif, "transformation of human into stone," i.e., petrifaction, in two narratives of different oral cultures; the Mauritian myth of the Pieter Both mountain and the Singaporean Malay iteration of Si-Tanggang. While both stories feature a character petrified as punishment for his misdeeds, the Singaporean retelling of Si-Tanggang makes no mention of a specific location nor geographical feature, unlike the Mauritian folktale and other versions of Si-Tanggang recounted elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago. To discover possible reasons for of functionalism as a folk explanation for natural phenomena by the Singaporean narrative, I conduct a comparative analysis of the two, through a lens of form, Propp (1968), field, and function. The comparison reveals divergences between form and field, in that between Singapore and Mauritius, storytelling as a cultural practice differs in its moralistic, nationalistic and ecological functions. The loss of an explicit geographical link in the Singaporean iteration of Si-Tanggang may be explained by how storytelling in Singapore has largely shed its ecological function. These observations also suggest that structural comparisons of folktales can help further our understanding of each individual oral culture, and in particular, how they have been shaped by historical and sociocultural forces.