Asian and African studies blog

Serat Damar Wulan (MSS Jav 89) is probably the earliest surviving fully illustrated Javanese manuscript, and is full of lively and humorous scenes of everyday life in late 18th-century Java. In this guest blog Dr Fiona Kerlogue examines the clothes and textiles depicted in Serat Damar Wulan, extracted from her new book on the history of batik, Batik: Traces through time (2021), which is illustrated by collections in the National Museum of the Czech Republic.

The earliest compelling evidence indicating how batik was once worn is a copiously illustrated manuscript entitled Serat Damar Wulan (MSS Jav 89) presented to the library of the East India Company (and now in the British Library) by Lieutenant-Colonel Raban, the former Resident of Cirebon, in January 1815. Although the manuscript was said to be 200 years old, watermarks in the paper indicate that it more likely dates from the late 18th century. Whether the manuscript was written and illustrated in Cirebon or elsewhere is another question. The absence in the clothing depicted of three batik patterns generally regarded by modern commentators as quintessential and historic Cirebon designs – megamendung (clouds); taman arum (perfumed garden); and peksinagaliman (a mythical composite animal) – suggests that a Cirebon origin is unlikely.

Figure 1. Damar Wulan kneels before Layang Setra and Layang Kumir, all three wearing jarit, or kain panjang. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library MSS Jav. 89, f. 10r

The legend of Damar Wulan is associated with East Java, centring as it does on the Majapahit kingdom and especially its vassal state Blambangan (now Banyuwangi), which was located in the easternmost part of Java between the 13th and 18th centuries. The story seems to be based on events which took place in the early 15th century, when war broke out between Majapahit and Blambangan, ending in the defeat of Blambangan.

The story is particularly significant in relation to costume, partly because of the changes in status which the characters undergo and how these are reflected in the clothes they wear. The cast includes noblemen and their henchmen, an aristocratic lady, servants, both male and female, soldiers, stallholders and a blacksmith. The central character, Damar Wulan, is a nobleman but is appointed as stable boy to the ruler of Majapahit, and then imprisoned; eventually he himself becomes king of Majapahit. His changes in status are reflected in the clothes he wears; the clothing worn by other actors in the story also indicates their status (Coster-Wijsman 1953).

It seems likely that the clothing in the illustrations, which corresponds quite closely with the descriptions of clothing in Raffles’ slightly later History of Java, published in 1817, reflects quite accurately the type of clothing worn at the time the drawings were made. Had they been drawn to reflect clothing of the age in which the story is set, there would not be the European-influenced styles of buttoned long jackets, trews and hats which characterise the clothing of Damar Wulan’s opponents especially. Some of the batik designs depicted can be identified today.

The main characters in the story are Damar Wulan, the hero; Layang Setra and Layang Kumir, the sons of Patih (regent or chief minister) Logender of the Majapahit empire; and Damar Wulan and his servants (panakawan) Sabda Palon and Naya Genggong. Menak Jingga, Damar Wulan’s rival, who threatens the empire and is eventually slain by Damar Wulan at the request of the queen, plays a key role. When he first appears (Figure 1), Damar Wulan is kneeling before Layang Setra and Layang Kumir, wearing a batik jarit decorated in bands of different motifs, the bands drawn bent to follow his kneeling posture. Layang Setra and Layang Kumir also wear batik jarit, one (on the left) with a parang or ‘knife’ design, the other with a semen pattern. The parang design marks the wearer as a man of high status, an aristocrat, and Damar Wulan’s attitude is appropriately respectful. All three skirt cloths have a dotted or striped border along the lower edge. The elaborately wrapped headcloths worn by the two nobles have pengada borders. The two servants wear skirt cloths with simple triangular and check patterns, probably representing simple country-style batik.

Figure 2. A woman of high status waxing a batik headcloth. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library MSS Jav. 89, f. 5r  

Figure 2, showing a woman of high status waxing a batik headcloth, occurs early in the manuscript. She is the daughter of Ki Buyut Paluhomba, the wife of the minister Patih Udara, who was the brother of Patih Logender and his predecessor as chief minister of Majapahit. The cloth hangs over a wooden or bamboo rack, gawangan, which supports it while the wax is applied. It has a plain white tengahan in the centre, a main field where motifs are set against a ground filled with parallel lines as the filling motif, or isen, and a pengada with short stripes arranged in pairs, separated from the main field by a white border with uneven or wavy edges. Her father’s skirt cloth has a pattern of circular or floral motifs arranged at the intersections of the squares into which the field is divided.

Figure 3. Four captive princesses wearing symmetrical designs arranged in squares on their skirt cloths. Serat Damar Wulan.  British Library, MSS Jav. 89, f. 136r 

Symmetrical designs arranged in squares repeating across the field feature frequently in skirt cloths in the manuscript, as shown in Figure 3. This type of pattern is known as ceplokan, and was one of the most common design types in the 19th century, at least in Central Java. This type of design persisted into the 20th century.

In the manuscript there are frequent depictions of women’s breast cloths, or kemben, with patterned or plain lozenges. These are worn by nearly all the women, including stall holders and court ladies. In one scene Kencanawungu, the maiden queen of Majapahit, on a raised platform on the right, receives the widow of the ruler of Tuban, who is fainting on the left (Figure 4). She is accompanied by her daughter and other women, who wear a variety of designs on their kemben. The queen herself is wearing an exotic upper garment, probably intending to represent a richly embroidered cloth rather than batik. The tall woman at the centre is the bereaved mother. Her kemben is decorated with cemukiran around the tengahan, befitting her status. Elsewhere in the manuscript the most common kemben has a red central lozenge.

Figure 4. The maiden queen of Majapahit receives the widow of the ruler of Tuban. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library, MSS Jav. 89 f. 59r

All of the male characters of high status appear in dodot, in a variety of designs. In one scene, the villain Menak Jingga wears a dodot with a striking cemukiran (Figure 5). His dodot is lifted high, revealing a good length of trouser and reflecting his high status. Menak Jingga tends to wear ostentatious clothing, always with a huge parang design on his dodot as opposed to that worn by the ruler of the smaller polity, Tuban, whose lesser status is revealed in the smaller size of his motifs, and by Patih Logender.

Figure 5. Menak Jingga wearing a dodot with a very large pattern. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library, MSS Jav. 89, f. 106v 

Once his noble birth is revealed Damar Wulan wears a plain red dodot, perhaps symbolic of his courage, and towards the end of the story, when his status is elevated further, cemukiran appear. When Damar Wulan is visited in the stables by Patih Logender’s daughter, Anjasmara, he is wearing a humble lurik skirt cloth (Figure 6); later in the story, as king of Majapahit he wears a dodot (Figure 7).

Figure 6. Damar Wulan (left) wears a simple lurik skirt cloth, while Anjasmara wears batik. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library, MSS Jav. 89, f. 18r 

Figure 7. Damar Wulan, now king, wears a red dodot. Serat Damar Wulan.  British Library, MSS Jav. 89, f. 179r 

His two servants, Sabda Palon and Naya Genggong, begin the story in short trousers made of lurik (Figure 8) but by the end one of them, too, is wearing a dodot (Figure 9). There is humour in this pretentious adoption of the clothing of a man of power, but through his loyalty to his master he has earned the right to wear it.

Figure 8. Damar Wulan’s servants in short trousers of striped lurik early in the story. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library, MSS Jav. 89, f. 116v 

Figure 9. Now ennobled, Damar Wulan’s servants have adopted superior garments, and have servants of their own wearing lurik. Serat Damar Wulan. British Library, MSS Jav. 89, f. 206r 

The patterns drawn in these illustrations reveal the way in which clothing, and in particular batik clothing, was worn to express both status and character in Java at the end of the 18th century. In the century which followed, great changes took place, with the introduction of new ideas and techniques that led to the development of both commercially-produced, low-quality batik for the masses and batik of exceptionally high quality, workmanship and beauty.

Further reading

This blog has been extracted from: Fiona Kerlogue, Batik. Traces through time. Batik Collections in the National Museum – Náprstek Museum. Vydání první. (Prague: National Museum, 2021. ISBN 978-80-7036-673-8), pp. 56-63.

All the pictorial scenes in the Serat Damar Wulan (MSS Jav 89) are described in: Coster-Wijsman, L. ‘Illustrations in a Javanese manuscript’. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 1953, 109 (2): 153-163.

Fiona Kerlogue

Fiona Kerlogue was formerly Assistant Keeper of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum.

This guest blog is by Prof. Peter Carey, University of Indonesia, Jakarta.

As a collector of Javanese manuscripts, the name of Frederik Jacob Rothenbühler (1758-1836), has long been recognised. In 1977, when Merle Ricklefs and Peter Voorhoeve first published their benchmark catalogue of Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain, the German is mentioned in four entries for Javanese manuscripts from the collection of Col. Colin Mackenzie, Chief Engineer from 1811 to 1813 during the British administration in Java (1811-1816).

Two manuscripts, both Javanese histories or babad, may have derived from the five-day (20-25 June 1812) plunder of the Yogyakarta court library following the British attack on the Sultan’s palace or keraton. MSS Jav 7, Babad Pajajaran, which was dated by Donald E. Weatherbee (2018: 87) to AJ 1713 (1786), is almost certainly from the Yogyakarta keraton as it has a dated note at the back referring to the Swedish army surgeon, 'Dr Stutzer' (Johan Arnold Stutzer [1763-1821], spelt erroneously as “Studzee” in Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977: 58), who participated in the British attack. The date, 6 July 1812, is just a week prior to the departure of the last British troops, Mackenzie’s engineers, from the Sultan’s capital on 14 July (Carey 1992: 483 note 394).

Babad Pajajaran, 1786. British Library, MSS Jav 7, ff. 3v-4r 


‘From Mr Rothenbühler', pencilled note at the beginning of the volume. British Library, MSS Jav 7, flyleaf.

‘From Djocjokarta / From Dr Stutzer July 6 1812’, note at the end of the volume. British Library, MSS Jav 7, f. 141r 

Another manuscript, MSS Jav 40, Babad Kartasura, is less obviously from the keraton library (it was not identified as such in the listing compiled by Ricklefs) but it is a finely decorated volume and the date of writing – AJ 1723 (31 August 1796) – would be consistent with a Yogya court manuscript taken in June 1812.

Babad Kartasura, 1796. British Library, MSS Jav 40, ff. 4v-5r 

Inscription at the begining of Babad Kartasura, 'received from Mr Rothenbuhler at Sourabaya'. MSS Jav 40, f. 6r

Rothenbühler's name is also linked with two of the most beautifully illustrated early Javanese manuscripts known held in the British Library, MSS Jav 28 and MSS Jav 68, both dated to AJ 1731 (1804/5). Both of these manuscripts are inscribed as belonging to Rothenbühler’s wife, referred to as Nyonyah Sakeber, ‘Mrs Gezaghebber’, her husband’s title as Chief Administrator of the Eastern Salient of Java (Oosthoek), in the decade 1799-1809. The Javanese text reads in both manuscripts: punika serat kagunganipun Nyonyah Sekaber, ‘this manuscript belongs to Mrs Gezaghebber', and in MSS Jav 68 continues, ing panegri Surapringga, 'in the town of Surabaya’ (see Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977: 61, 68).

MSS Jav 28, Serat Selarasa, which has the date 28 Sapar AJ 1731 (8 June 1804), recounts the tale of the Ni Rumsari, the daughter of a respected sage, who dreams of three handsome suitors, one of whom, Raden Sélarasa, eventually becomes her husband. This was one of the first Javanese manuscripts in the British Library to be digitised in 2012, and has since become well known all over the world, adorning numerous covers of books relating to Java.

Serat Sela Rasa, 1804. British Library, MSS Jav 28, ff. 105v-106r 

Newly digitised this year through the Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project is MSS Jav 68, Panji Jaya Kusuma, erroneously dated within the text as 29 Besar AJ 1701 (20 February 1776), which Weatherbee (2018: 95) corrected to 29 Besar AJ 1731 (31 March 1805). Among the sumptuous coloured illustrations in both manuscripts are several depicting contemporary Dutch warships flying the Dutch tricolour from their mastheads and sterns. One wonders if Nyonyah Sakeber, possibly a native of Surabaya, chose these maritime themes herself given her proximity to Surabaya’s Tanjung Perak harbour and the crowded shipping lanes of Java’s foremost naval port?

Panji Jaya Kusuma, 1805. British Library, MSS Jav 68, ff. 34v-35r

All four manuscripts were presented by Rothenbühler to his superior on the Mackenzie Land Tenure Commission (1812-13), Colonel Colin Mackenzie (1754-1821), on different dates: the two illustrated manuscripts being handed over in February 1812, when Mackenzie was passing through Surabaya on his first survey tour of East Java, and the two babad sometime after July 1812.  So, who was Frederik Jacob Rothenbühler, and, more pertinently, who was his wife, the eponymous “Nyonyah Gezaghebber”, and why might they both have been collectors of Javanese manuscripts?

Rothenbühler was born in Zweibrücken (Pfalz), a town in the Rhineland-Palatinate, on 9 November 1758. There are different accounts of under what circumstances he came out to Batavia. One account states states that he arrived in Batavia in 1769 with his parents. When his father, Frederik Hendrik, then serving as a senior surgeon (opperchirugijn) in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) died shortly thereafter (1770), the young Rothenbühler is also said to have joined the VOC. Other, perhaps more reliable, sources (Ketjen 1880-81:71; Encyclopaedia 1905, IV:638; De Haan 1935:634) hold that he joined the VOC as a cadet through the Amsterdam Kamer in the Netherlands on 11 January 1771, having just turned twelve, and sailed for Batavia on the ship Huis te Bijweg, arriving in the colonial capital on 10 August. He then worked his way up through the VOC bureaucracy, applying himself to the study of Javanese and becoming an official VOC translator (Gezworen Translateur) following his move to Semarang in 1780. After promotion as boekhouder (accountant) and secretary of police (secretaris van politie) in the North Coast city, he became Resident of Pekalongan (1794-99). Unlike many aspiring VOC officials who went to the Indies with recommendations from well-placed patrons and soon secured promotion to profitable positions, Rothenbühler was one of those who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. By dint of skill, diligence and linguistic talent he eventually achieved high office. The most important here was his ten-year incumbency of the Gezaghebber (Chief Administrator, 1799-1809) post in Surabaya. He was also more briefly a supernumerary member of Daendels’ Council of the Indies (Raad van Indië, 1809-11) and the Mackenzie land tenure commission (1812-13) established by Raffles’ British interim administration ( Encyclopaedie 1905:638; De Haan 1935:634).

The German was particularly renowned for his love of the Javanese and he appears to have married a local (pribumi), almost certainly a Javanese who most likely conversed with him in her mother tongue and shared his love of Javanese culture. We can surmise this from two sources: first, there is no trace in the very comprehensive Dutch Indies genealogical records of his wife’s name as one might expect if she was a totok or full-blooded Dutch woman or a scion of a prominent local Dutch-Javanese family (although his three childless daughters do make an appearance, one of whom, Frederika Jacoba, married a German from Stuttgart). Secondly, Frederik de Haan (1863-1938), the colonial state archivist (landsarchivaris, 1905-22), described Rothenbühler as “a very handsome man [...] with an exaggeratedly good idea of the natives [een zeer knap man […] met een overdreven goed idee van den Inlander]”, which indicates that he may have been seen, even in the richly diverse mestizo society of the late VOC Indies (1603-1799), as a man who had aligned himself closely with Java’s local inhabitants (pribumi) (De Haan 1935:634). Certainly, he was appreciated by the local inhabitants of Surabaya for his concern for public health and social welfare issues, including public sanitation, the eradication of smallpox (by the provision of vaccination) and the rehabilitation of beggars through the creation of a special community at Kali Pegirian where the urban poor were fed, clothed, housed and provided with pocket money and medical care. He was later credited by no less an authority than Cornelis van Vollenhoven (1874-1933) with writing the first ever description of Javanese customary law (adatrecht) (Van Vollenhoven 1928:47).

An insight into just how richly diverse this society was in late eighteenth-century Surabaya can be found in a document in the Royal Asiatic Society entitled “Miscellaneous memorandum on Surakarta” (circa November 1811) (Carey 2008:181 fn.71). This relates how Ratu Kencana, the mother of the future Pakubuwana VII (born 1796 - died, 1858; r. 1830-58; known as Pangeran Purbaya before 1830), who would later facilitate the copying of Dipanegara’s requested manuscripts in the Surakarta kraton library in the mid-1840s (Carey 2022), was sent to Surabaya for her education in the late 1770s. A daughter of the seventh Panembahan of Bangkalan (West Madura, r.1780-1815; after 21 July 1808 known as Sultan Cakradiningrat I), she was apparently lodged with the family of Ambrosina Wilhelmina van Rijck (1785-1864) who was the wife of Jacob Andries van Braam (1771-1820), no.2 in the Daendels’ administration (1808-11), and, according to some accounts, the Marshal’s secret lover. Born around 1770, Ratu Kencana seems to have spent the period 1778-84 in Surabaya so would not have overlapped directly with Rothenbühler (in post as Gezaghebber, 1799-1809), but her presence in Surabaya in a prominent mixed-blood 'Indo' family, who saw to her education, gives an insight into the relationship between members of the native and Dutch Indies elite in this great East Javanese port city in the waning years of the VOC. Rothenbühler’s wife could well have stemmed from this milieu.

Rothenbuhler’s grave in Surabaya. Wikimapia.org.

Seemingly agnostic in religious matters, and possibly a Free Mason (Jordaan 2019:56, 146), Rothenbühler elected to be buried at the ripe old age (at a time when life expectancy for European males in Java was around 45) of 77 on his Gunungsari estate in Surabaya rather than in consecrated ground. Post-February 1914, when the Surabaya, now Ahmad Yani, Golf Club was opened, his grave abutted on the northern boundary of 18-hole course. Revered to this day as the tomb of “Mbah Deler [Grandfather Edelheer/member of the Council of the Indies]”, memories of Rothenbühler’s deep concern for the cleanliness, health and welfare of Surabaya and its inhabitants remain vivid for contemporary Surabayans, where he is also known as the “Father of Public Sanitation [Bapak Sanitasi]”. These concerns were also expressed in his writings such as his voluminous “Rapport van den staat en gesteldheid van het landschap Soerabaja [Report on the state and condition of the Surabaya area]”, which he left for his successor. His direct contemporary and senior VOC colleague, Wouter Hendrik van IJsseldijk (1757-1817), wrote of him: “if one were to make a recommendation to the next Governor-General regarding the most effective way of managing Java’s domestic economy and containing corruption, Surabaya’s Gezaghebber, Rothenbühler, is, in my view, best placed to introduce the changes and improvements which will correspond most effectively with local conditions” (Ketjen 1880-81:72).

It is thus fitting that this German collector and lover of all things Javanese should live on in the memory of the inhabitants of the East Java city, which he made his home, and in the manuscripts which he presented to his boss, Colin Mackenzie, over two centuries ago.

Peter Carey

Peter Carey is Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford and Adjunct (Visiting) Professor of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia (2013 to present). His latest books (with Farish Noor) are Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia (AUP, 2021) and Ras, Kuasa dan Kekerasan Kolonial di Hindia Belanda, 1808-1830 (KPG, 2022).

Bibliography
Carey, Peter, 1992. The British in Java 1811-1816: A Javanese Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
_________ 2008. The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the end of an old order in Java, 1785-1855. Leiden: KITLV Press.
_________ 2022. Ratu Ageng Tegalreja, Prince Dipanagara, and the British Library’s Serat Menak manuscript. British Library, Asian and African studies blog, 18 July 2022.
Encyclopaedie, 1905. “Rothenbuhler (Frederik Jacob)”, entry in Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, 4: 638.
Haan, Frederik de, 1935. “Personalia der periode van het Engelsch bestuur over Java, 1811-1816”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 92: 477-681.
Jordaan, Roy, 2019. De politieke betekenis van de vrijmetselarij op Java tijdens het Britse Tussenbestuur (1811-1816). ‘s-Gravenhage: Ritus en Tempelbouw. (Quatuor Coronati – Studieblad; 4).
Ketjen, E., 1880-81. “Levensbericht van E.J. Rothenbühler”, Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen 41: 71-73.
Ricklefs, M.C. and P. Voorhoeve, 1977. Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain: A Catalogue of Indonesian manuscripts in British public collections. London: Oxford University Press.
Vollenhoven, Cornelis van 1928. De Ontdekking van het Adatrecht. Leiden: EJ Brill.
Weatherbee, Donald E. 'An inventory of the Javanese paper manuscripts in the Mackenzie Collection, India Office Library, London, with a note on some additional Raffles MSS.' SEALG Newsletter, 2018, pp. 80-111.

In May 2022 the Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project was launched, aiming to digitise a further 120 Javanese manuscripts from the British Library collection. We are delighted to announce that 40 of these Javanese manuscripts have now been published online, and can be accessed directly through the live hyperlinks on the Digital Access to Javanese Manuscripts page or via the Digitised Manuscripts portal. On completion of the project by 2023, all the Javanese and Old Javanese manuscripts written on paper in the British Library – numbering over 200 – will have been fully digitised. Highlighted in this blog are some of the newly digitised Javanese manuscripts.

Sĕrat Gada (Gonda) Kusuma, copied by Tiyangsĕpoh.  British Library, Add 12297, ff. 2v-3r 

The Bollinger project will make accessible a large number of illuminated Javanese manuscripts from the collection of John Crawfurd, many of which may have been decorated in the scriptorium of the Pakualaman court in Yogykarta. The Pakualaman principality was founded in Yogyakarta in 1812 by the British to reward Prince Paku Alam for his support for the British military campaign against Sultan Hamengkubuwana II of Yogyakarta. Paku Alam I was on very cordial terms with John Crawfurd, British Resident of Yogyakarta from 1811 to 1814, a relationship cemented by their shared interests in Javanese literature and history. In addition to his portion of manuscripts seized from the royal library of Yogyakarta following the British attack in 1812 (and digitised in 2019 through the Javanese Manuscripts from Yogyakarta Digitisation Project), John Crawfurd also commissioned many further copies of Javanese texts, and these may have been adorned with illuminated frontispieces or wadana by artists from the Pakaualaman. Two distinct styles of illumination can be distinguished in Javanese manuscripts in the Crawfurd collection.  One is a more classical style with essentially rectangular frames, on which has been superimposed a diamond-shaped outline, in many cases taking the form of ornamental arches on the three outer sides of the text on each page.  A fine example is shown above, on a manuscript of the Sĕrat Gada (Gonda) Kusuma, Add 12297.  These frontispieces derive from the broader Islamic tradition of decorated frames, symmetrical around the central spine of the book, which often adorn the initial double opening pages.

A rather different style of illuminated frontispiece associated only with Yogyakarta has been termed wadana gapura, 'gateway frontispieces', or wadana renggan candhi or ‘frontispieces decorated as temples’ (Behrend 2005: 49), alluding to the temple-like structures of the decorated frames surrounding the text block on each page, with a plinth-like base and architectural features such as columns, arches and windows, often with ‘brick’ detailing. These wadana gapura are identical on each of two facing pages, rather than being symmetrical about the gutter of the book as in the case of the more classical double-page wadana described above. Shown below is another manuscript of the same literary text, Sĕrat Gonda Kusuma, Add 12295, with a temple-style decorated frontispiece.

Sĕrat Gonda Kusuma. Dated jalma muni catur sirna, which must be read from left to right [A.J. 1740/A.D. 1813]. British Library, Add 12295, ff. 1v-2r

In a recent blog, Dick van der Meij has noted that while in Javanese manuscripts in the British Library, the 'classical' wadana  tend to enclose the start of the text which then continues without any hiatus onto the following pages, in manuscripts with 'temple'-style wadana gapura, the illuminated frames are placed a few pages before the start of the text proper, and the text within the decorative frames is written by a different hand from that found in the body of the main text itself. Moreover, the opening lines of the text are usually repeated within the decorative frames, and a small floral marker is then placed at the appropriate place in the main text (probably indicating to a reciter the point where the text from the frontispiece rejoins the main text). These devices all suggest that these temple-style illuminated frames were added after the main text was copied, at a second distinct stage within the manuscript production process.  It could be hypthesized that the examples of 'temple' wadana in Javanese manuscripts in the British Library mark the very beginning of the development of this artistic genre at the newly-formed Pakualaman court in Yogyakarta. 

Sĕrat Gonda Kusuma, 1813, showing the start of the text, in a different hand from that on the illuminated pages, with a small floral marker indicating where the texts join up. British Library, Add 12295, f. 3r (detail)

In addition to the two illuminated manuscripts of Sĕrat Gonda Kusuma highlighted above, there is another copy in the British Library also now available online, Add 12294, and the digitisation of so many Javanese manuscripts greatly enhances the task of comparative literary analysis.  Many Old Javanese texts known today have survived through copies preserved in Bali, which are generally written on palm leaf (lontar). A few manuscripts in the British Library which contain Old Javanese texts on paper appear to be copies made for British patrons from palm leaf exemplars sourced from Bali. Among these is a copy from the Crawfurd collection of the Bhāratayuddha kakawin, the Old Javanese version of the Hindu epic Mahābhārata, which was composed in Java probably around the 10th century. The manuscript shown below, Add 12279, opens with the Old Javanese text, followed by a word-for-word explanation in modern Javanese, but half-way through the volume (from Canto 22 on f. 147r), the text continues in Old Javanese only.

Beginning of Bhāratayuddha in Old Javanese, accompanied by translation into Modern Javanese, 1814. British Library, Add 12279, f. 2v.

Another copy of the Bhāratayuddha (MSS Jav 25), from the Mackenzie collection, gives the Old Javanese text in Balinese script written in black ink, accompanied by an interlinear Modern Javanese translation in red ink, and is dated 28 August 1812. According to the inscription on the first page, this manuscript was sent to Col. Colin Mackenzie by the son the of Panembahan of Sumenep in Madura. This manuscript is also due to digitised as part of the Bollinger project, and will soon be available online.

Opening page of Bhāratayuddha with inscription by Colin Mackenzie. British Library, MSS Jav 25, f. 1r.

Bhāratayuddha, in Old Javanese in Balinese script written in black ink, with interlinear translation into modern Javanese in red ink. British Library, MSS Jav 25, ff. 6v-7r.

In the late eighteenth century the Old Javanese Bhāratayuddha kakawin inspired the composition of the Bratayuda kawi miring, probably the work of the Surakarta (Solo) court poet Yasadipura II (Tumenggung Sastronagoro, 1760-1844). The term kawi miring or ‘sloping/inclined Old Javanese’ is explained by Barbara McDonald in her Ph.D. thesis (1983: iii) as describing ‘a particular genre of literature which emerged in the Central Javanese courts of Surakarta in the late eighteenth century. As the term literally suggests, texts classified as kawi miring were considered to have been written in a poetic medium that ‘inclined’ towards the ‘kawi’ texts of the Old Javanese period.’ The British Library holds several copies or parts of the text of the Bratayuda kawi miring, including a newly digitised manuscript, MSS Jav 15.

Bratayuda kawi miring. Incomplete, ending at Canto XXI: 10. British Library, MSS Jav 15, f. 5v.

Soon to be digitised is MSS Jav 23, which contains just six cantos of this work. Both these versions can now be compared with an earlier manuscript of the Bratayuda kawi miring, MSS Jav 4, dated 1797, originating from the kraton (palace) library, which was digitised during the earlier Javanese Manuscripts from Yogyakarta Digitisation Project. The late eighteenth-century date of this beautiful manuscript suggests it may be amongst oldest known copies of this text.

Bratayuda kawi miring, 1797. British Library, MSS Jav 4, ff. 2v-3r.

The Modern Javanese version of the Bhāratayuddha kakawin, the Sĕrat Bratayuda, is found in two manuscripts in the British Library, one of which, Add 12326, has just been digitised. According to a note by Crawfurd, this manuscript was copied for him ‘from a manuscript supplied by one of the princes at Djocjakarta (i.e. Yogyakarta)’. A fragment of Serat Bratayuda is also found in MSS Jav 9, which will soon be digitised too.

Serat Bratayuda, early 19th c.  British Library, Add 12326, ff. 3v-4r.

While the Crawfurd collection primarily consists of historical and literary works, the Mackenzie collection is also strong in primbon, compendia of various texts on religious-mystical knowledge.  One such volume is MSS Jav 30, dating from the 18th century, which contains a range of texts including suluk, mystical songs, as well as a primbon with many magical drawings for protection and divination, as shown below.

Primbon, with various rajah or magical drawings, 18th century.  British Library, MSS Jav 30, ff. 136v-137r.

Also newly digitised are a number of Islamic manuscripts, with texts in Javanese written in Arabic (pegon script), including IO Islamic 2448, which contains a work on the mi‘raj, the ascension of the prophet Muhammad.

Colophon to a Javanese text on the Risālah fī al-isrāʾ wa-al-miʿrāj. IO Islamic 2448, f. 65v.

Photography of all 120 manuscripts in the Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project has now been completed, and over the coming months, once all the images have passed the quality control stage, the manuscripts will be published online. Keep on eye on the Digital access to Javanese manuscripts page, where each shelfmark will be hyperlinked as it becomes available online.

Further reading:
T.E. Behrend, Frontispiece architecture in Ngayogyakarta: notes on structure and sources. Archipel, 2005, (69): 39-60.
Barbara McDonald, ‘Kawi and Kawi miring: Old Javanese literature in eighteenth century Java.’ 2 vols. PhD thesis, the Australian National University, 1983.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

This guest blog is by Professor Peter Carey, University of Indonesia.

On 6 March 2019, a blog post by Annabel Gallop focussed attention on Add 12309, one of the Javanese manuscripts digitised in the Javanese manuscripts from Yogyakarta digitisation project. This copy of the Ménak Amir Hamza, the Javanese tale about the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, was highlighted as being remarkable for its sheer size – 1,520 folios on Javanese treebark paper (dluwang) – making it one of the longest single-volume manuscripts in the world, and certainly the longest Javanese manuscript (Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977: 48).

Ménak Amir Hamza, containing 1520 folios of Javanese paper, with original blind-stamped leather covers, is the longest single-volume Javanese manuscript in the world. British Library, Add 12309 

The manuscript’s owner, Ratu Ageng Tegalreja (c. 1732-1803), was also singled out in Annabel’s blog as a “devout Muslim” and daughter of an “Islamic scholar”. As the consort of Yogyakarta’s founding ruler, Sultan Mangkubumi (r. 1749-92), she was indeed a prominent figure in the late eighteenth-century Yogyakarta court. The daughter of a leading kyai (Muslim divine), Ki Ageng Derpayuda, from Majanjati in Sragen by a wife who was a direct lineal descendant of the first Sultan of Bima in Sumbawa, Abdulkahir Sirajudin (1627-82; r. 1640-82), she was renowned as the leading proponent of the Shațțārīyah tarekat (Sufi mystical brotherhood) at the Yogyakarta court in the late eighteenth century. She counted no less than four separate lines of transmission in her Shațțārīyah silsilah (genealogy of spiritual transmission) linking her back to the main murshid (male guide)-founder of the order in Java, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Muhyī (1650-1730), from Pamijahan, Tasikmalaya regency, West Java (Fathurahman 2016: 50-53).

Given this lineage, it is hardly surprising that her name still resonates in modern Javanese history as the guardian (emban) of her great-grandson, Pangeran Dipanagara (1785-1855). Entrusted to her at birth by her husband, Mangkubumi, when he had prophesied the young prince’s remarkable life story within hours of his coming into the world (Carey 2019: xxii-xxiii), Dipanagara followed her to Tegalreja shortly after she moved from the court following her husband’s death on 24 March 1792. Her estate some three kilometers to the northwest of the Yogyakarta kraton set in ricefields, which Ratu Ageng had opened up, became the meeting point of ulama (religious scholars) from all over south-central Java. There her great-grandson was brought up for ten remarkable years (1793-1803) and inculcated with her Sufi Islamic Shațțārīyah teachings until her death on 17 October 1803 (Carey 2019: 88-97).

A famous Javanese painting of Prince Dipanagara, holding a piece of paper inscribed Muhammad rasul Allah / ilah wa rabb wa yab. Late 19th century. Leiden University Library, Or 7398: 2. Wikimedia Commons. 

It was most likely during this time the Ménak manuscript, now in the BL collection, was made for her and she may have used it for the instruction of her great-grandson, who would use the pégon script (Javanese written in Arabic characters) in which it was written for all his literary productions in exile. We know this because, when Pangeran Dipanagara was in Fort Rotterdam, Makassar (1833-55), he asked the Dutch to make a copy of this selfsame Ménak text for him from the Surakarta court library. He intended this as reading material for the education of his own seven children born in exile, whom he wished to bring up as Javanese not as Bugis or Makassarese. Indeed, Dipanagara was apparently so familiar with the text that he could stipulate (in his own handwriting in Javanese script which is visible in the supporting documents to the Governor-General’s besluit [decision] of 25 October 1844 sanctioning the copying), the exact passage from the Ménak which he wished to have copied: Surat Ménak laré kang ngantos dumugi Lakad [the Ménak tale from (Amir Hamza’s) childhood until his war with (Raja) Lakad] (Carey 2008: 744 fn. 263).

The text of Ménak Amir Hamza, written in Javanese in Arabic (pégon) script, ca. 1800. British Library, Add 12309, ff. 335v-336r 

The Ménak text was just one of several texts requested by the prince in 1844. These included another Javanese-Islamic text linked to the Ménak cycle, the Serat Asmarasupi and several other texts related to the Panji cycle of East Javanese romances (Gandakusuma, Angrèni), a treatise on cosmogony and agricultural myths (Manikmaya), and the Serat Bharatayuda, the tale of the “Brothers’ War” in the Purwa cycle of wayang (shadow-play) tales. Interestingly, one text, which is in the British Library collection of Javanese manuscripts and which clearly belonged to Ratu Ageng Tegalreja, the Serat Anbiya (MSS Jav 74), “a history of all the prophets from the Creation including the history of Java (from the time of the fall of Majapahit and the conversion to Islam)”, written on European import paper and running to some 600 folios or just under half the size of the Serat Ménak, was not included in Dipanagara’s list of texts requested from the Surakarta court library (Carey 2008: 744; Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977: 69).

Opening pages of Serat Anbiya. British Library, MSS Jav 74, ff. 4v-5r 

Even if it had been, it is very unlikely the Dutch authorities would have agreed with its copying, as they later rejected the Serat Ménak as being too long and too expensive to transcribe, with the cost of all the copies originally requested by the prince amounting to some 358 Indies guilders (₤4000 sterling in present-day [2022] money], equivalent to a month’s salary for a middle-rank Dutch colonial officer (chief secretary) at the time (Houben:92). Pleading poverty, the Dutch government decided to drop the transcription of one of the texts. Their choice fell on the Serat Ménak not only because of its length and expense of transcription, but also because its subject matter—The Prophet’s life— was just too sensitive. After all, why should the government help the exiled prince to bring up his children as devout Muslims?

To conclude, the British Library Serat Ménak copy has a special claim to fame: not only is it the world’s longest single-volume Javanese manuscript, but it was also likely one of the key texts in the upbringing of Indonesia’s foremost national hero (pahlawan nasional) by his Sufi Muslim great-grandmother. It can thus be set in the context of the other Javanese-Islamic texts studied – or read to – Dipanagara, including edifying tales on kingship and statecraft adopted from Persian and Arabic classics, such as the Fatāh al-Muluk (“Victory of Kings”), the Hakik al-Modin and the Nasīhat al-Muluk (Moral lessons for kings), as well and modern Javanese versions of the Old Javanese classics such as the Serat Rama, Bhoma Kāwya, Arjuna Wijaya and Arjuna Wiwāha (Carey 2008: 104-5).

Canto marker in Ménak Amir Hamza. British Library, Add 12309, f. 1494r 

Peter Carey

Peter Carey is Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford and Adjunct (Visiting) Professor of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia (2013 to present). His latest books (with Farish Noor) are Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia (AUP, 2021) and Ras, Kuasa dan Kekerasan Kolonial di Hindia Belanda, 1808-1830 (KPG, 2022).

Bibliography

Carey, Peter 2008, The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855. Leiden: KITLV Press. [Verhandelingen 149.]
_________ 2019, Kuasa Ramalan: Pangeran Diponegoro dan Akhir Tatanan Lama di Jawa, 1785-1855. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
Fathurahman, Oman 2016, Shattāriyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java and the Lanao Area of Mindanao. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Houben, Vincent 1992, Kraton and Kumpeni; Surakarta and Yogyakarta 1830-1870. Leiden: KITLV Press. [Verhandelingen 164.]
Ricklefs, M.C. and P. Voorhoeve 1977, Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain: A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Indonesian Languages in British Public Collections. London: Oxford University Press.

 
(Left) Carey 2008, and (right) the Indonesian translation, Carey 2019.

With the generous support of William and Judith Bollinger, 120 Javanese manuscripts in the British Library are being digitised. The manuscripts date from the 18th to the late 19th centuries, and cover a wide range of subjects, from Javanese literature, history and calendrical traditions to Islamic texts on theology, law and Sufism, and include some finely illuminated or illustrated volumes. A full list of the manuscripts to be digitised can be found here. On completion of this project by 2023, a great milestone will have been reached: all the Javanese manuscripts written on paper in the British Library will have been digitised, and will be freely and fully accessible online.

This project continues and complements the Javanese Manuscripts from Yogyakarta Digitisation Project (2017-2019), supported by Mr S.P. Lohia, which digitised 75 manuscripts originating from the Palace (Kraton) of Yogyakarta, which had been seized by British forces in 1812 and are now held in the British Library. In the present Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project, the great majority of manuscripts to be digitised – over a hundred of the 120 – were also acquired during the British administration of Java from 1811 to 1816, and are thus substantially earlier than most other Javanese manuscripts held in libraries today.

Serat Angling Darma, undated but written on English paper watermarked 1808, with ‘temple’-style illuminated frames with brick pedestals, columns and domes. British Library, Add 12285, ff. 1v-2r

In this new digitisation project, 41 of the Javanese manuscripts are from the collection of John Crawfurd, who was Resident of Yogyakarta from 1811 to 1814. While these manuscripts are not from the Kraton library in Yogyakarta, many of them have royal connections through the Pakualaman, the minor court set up in Yogyakarta under British patronage in 1812 in return for support during the attack on the Sultan's palace. Crawfurd and Prince Paku Alam I enjoyed warm relations founded on a shared interest in Javanese literature and history. The Pakualaman court became renowned as an artistic centre, and many of the manuscripts presented to Crawfurd by Paku Alam are illuminated in the characteristic candi or ‘temple’ style, with decorated frames (wadana) in the form of distinctly architectural constructs, as shown above (Behrend 2005; Saktimulya 2016).

Another British official with an interest in Javanese history was Colin Mackenzie, Chief Engineer in Java from 1811 to 1813, and 43 manuscripts to be digitised in this project come from the Mackenzie collection. In contrast to the Crawfurd collection, which mostly comprises manuscripts from Yogyakarta, a considerable number of manuscripts owned by Mackenzie originate from other regions of Java including the pasisir, the northern coastal strip. Mackenzie received manuscripts from Kudus and Rembang (MSS Jav 90, 99), from the Adipati of Gresik (MSS Jav 12), and from the son of the Panembahan of Sumenep in Madura (MSS Jav 25, 31). Five of Mackenzie’s manuscripts came from Kyai Adipati Sura Adimanggala, the erudite Regent of Semarang (MSS Jav 1, 2, 3, 18, 67), including a divination almanac, Papakem Watugunung, dated 1812 (MSS Jav 67), written and illustrated by Sura Adimanggala himself.

Papakem Watugunung, with illustrations of attributes of each of the thirty wuku or weeks, written and illustrated by Kyai Adipati Sura Adimanggala of Semarang, 1812. British Library, MSS Jav 67, f. 38r

From the Dutch official F.J. Rothenbuhler, former Governor (Gezaghebber) of the Eastern Coast of Java, based in Surabaya, Mackenzie received two of the finest early illustrated Javanese manuscripts known, which appear to have been commissioned by Rothenbuhler’s wife, named in the text as Nyonya Sakeber (i.e. Gezaghebber). Serat Sela Rasa (MSS Jav 28), copied in 1804, was one of the first Javanese manuscripts in the British Library to be digitised, since when its wayang-style drawings have attracted wide attention and adorned numerous book covers published internationally. Much less known is its equally lavishly illustrated sister manuscript, Panji Jaya Kusuma (MSS Jav 68), but its planned digitisation will bring this beautiful manuscript too into the limelight, and is certainly one of the highlights of the project.

Prince Dewakusuma (father of Panji) entering his wife's bed-chamber; her presence is only hinted at, tantalizingly, by her foot peeping out from under the bed-covers. Panji Jaya Kusuma, Surabaya, 1805. British Library, MSS Jav 68, f. 24v

The Mackenzie collection is also rich in Islamic works, written in Javanese in both Javanese script (hanacaraka) and modified Arabic script (pegon). Manuscripts may include texts in Arabic, in some cases with interlinear translations in Javanese. Subjects range from stories of Islamic saints and heroes such as Anbiya (MSS Jav 51) and Carita satus (MSS Jav 73), texts on mysticism and prayer, and Sufi silsilah or chains of transmission of teachings, as well as compilations of prayers and vows. There are also a number of primbon, compendia of religious teachings combined with divination guides, mantras and protective prayers.

Mystical presentation of the name Allah, in a compendium of Islamic works, late 18th-early 19th century. British Library, MSS Jav 69, f. 40v

The manuscripts to be digitised also include 13 from the collection of Raffles, comprising fragments of literary works, copies of Old Javanese inscriptions, and notes on language. Raffles, Mackenzie and Crawfurd all collected manuscripts in order to support their researches. In their publications – such as Raffles’ History of Java (1817) and Crawfurd’s Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay language (1852) and his Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries (1856) – references to the manuscripts in their own collections can be traced, but many other ‘works in progress’ remained unpublished. Mackenzie never published anything of substance arising out of his Javanese collections, while among Crawfurd’s manuscripts to be digitised are three volumes of materials for a planned grammar and dictionary of Javanese which never fully materialised.

A glimpse of an English-Javanese dictionary compiled by John Crawfurd, before 1851. British Library, Add 18577, f. 123r

Punika atur pratela kawula Adipati Sura Adinagara Bupati ing Lasem, ‘Account of the family of the late regent of Tuban’, collected by Raffles. British Library, MSS Jav 100, f. 3r

The Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project will also digitise around 17 manuscripts mostly dating from the second half of the 19th century, comprising more recent acquisitions in the British Library. These include an illustrated volume of Panji stories, probably from the north coast of Java, a collection of drawings of wayang figures, and a number of Islamic texts copied on local treebark paper (dluwang), most likely from an educational (pesantren) milieu.

A foreign Balinese soldier confronting Urawan, who is actually Panji's wife in male disguise; an illustration from a Panji romance, 1861. British Library, Or 15026, f. 69r

Over the coming year, the British Library will be working with partners in Indonesia, especially with the National Library of Indonesia (Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia or Perpusnas), the very active Indonesian Association of Manuscript Scholars MANASSA, and DREAMSEA (Digital Repository of Endangered and Affected Manuscripts in Southeast Asia), to broaden awareness and usage of these new resources, including through a conference to be held in Indonesia.  Selected newly-digitised Javanese manuscripts from the British Library will also be transliterated in cooperation with the Lestari Literary Foundation (Yayasan Sastra Lestari) and will be made accessible through the pioneering portal for Javanese literature, Sastra Jawa.

All the manuscripts to be digitised over the coming year through the Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project are listed on the Digital Access to Javanese Manuscripts page. As each manuscript becomes accessible, the shelfmark will be hyperlinked directly to the digitised images. This post has highlighted some of the most interesting and beautiful manuscripts which will soon be available online to be read in full – or even just to be gazed at and enjoyed as a visual feast.  

References:

T.E. Behrend, Frontispiece architecture in Ngayogyakarta: notes on structure and sources. Archipel, 2005, (69): 39-60.
M.C. Ricklefs, P. Voorhoeve and Annabel Teh Gallop, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: a catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections. New Edition with Addenda et Corrigenda. Jakarta: Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia, 2014.
Sri Ratna Saktimulya, Naskah-Naskah Skriptorium Pakualaman periode Paku Alam II (1830-1858). Jakarta: KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia), Ecole française d’Extrrême Orient, Perpustakaan Widyapustaka, Pura Pakualaman, 2016.
Donald E.Weatherbee. An inventory of the Javanese paper manuscripts in the Mackenzie Collection, India Office Library, London, with a note on some additional Raffles MSS. SEALG Newsletter, 2018, pp. 80-111.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

This guest blog is by Dr Dick van der Meij, Digital Repository of Endangered and Affected Manuscripts in Southeast Asia (DREAMSEA), Hamburg University

How Javanese manuscripts were actually produced is still largely a puzzle, and therefore it is important to describe manuscripts in a way that can shed light on this issue. Comparing manuscripts is also crucial to discover whether manuscripts might be related through their scribes, or in terms of other codicological aspects such as their illustrations, illuminations and bindings.

The start of many manuscripts from Central Java from the royal palaces and from other affluent owners often comprises two facing pages with highly intricate illuminations around a text block that is much smaller than that found in the rest of the manuscript. These illuminations, usually called wadana renggan in Javanese, are hard to interpret for someone not truly versed in Javanese literature and culture. It is generally thought that these illuminated frames are unrelated to the content of the manuscript, but this supposition is often wrong, as may be seen from the work of Sri Ratna Saktimulya from Yogyakarta who has dealt with this issue in many of her publications, most notably in her book on the manuscripts made during the reign of Paku Alam II (1830-1858) of the Pakualaman court in Yogyakarta (Saktimulya 2016).

It appears to be the case that when illumination was planned, the text was usually written first, after which an artist provided the illuminations, with or without consulting the scribe of the manuscript (Van der Meij 2017: 81). In many cases, however, illuminated frames were not added, for whatever reason, and the wide space set aside for the illumination around the text was left blank, as can be seen in the manuscript of the Sĕrat Asmarasupi (MSS Jav 26), written in AJ 1695/AD 1769, shown below.

Two initial pages with blank borders which have not been illuminated in Sĕrat Asmarasupi, 1769. British Library, MSS Jav 26, ff. 6v-7r

Often in Javanese manuscripts the text on the illuminated pages starts with a colophon, which states when the manuscript was made and by whom, or other information the scribe felt the need to tell, such as his emotional state of mind when he or she started writing. The poetic text often also starts on these pages, and then continues without any interruption on the reverse of the page that follows the illuminated one, in the same hand. A typical example is shown below, in a manuscript from the collection of John Crawfurd, British Resident of Yogyakarta, containing legendary tales, Add MS 12300 (Ricklefs, Voorhoeve and Gallop 2014: 47 ).

Illuminated frames (wadana renggan) at the start of a manuscript of legendary tales, AJ 1743/AD 1815 (?). British Library, Add MS 12300, ff. 2v-3r

In this manuscript the text on the first page following the illuminations continues seamlessly, without interruption or repetition, from the text within the wadana. British Library, Add MS 12300, f. 3v

Below we will have a look at three Javanese manuscripts from the early 19th century, which have all been recently digitised through the Javanese Manuscripts from Yogyakarta digitisation project. They are Add MS 12281 of the Sĕrat Panji Angronang Pakualaman, also called Sĕrat Jaya Lĕngkara, written in AJ 1741 (AD 1813); Add MS 12288 of the Babad Sultanan utawi Mangkunĕgaran [Mangkubumen?] (undated); and Add MS 12302 of the Sĕrat Rĕjunawijaya, written in AJ 1729 (AD 1801) (Ricklefs, Voorhoeve and Gallop 2014: 45-47).

In these three manuscripts, something quite different has happened in the preparation of the illuminated pages. In all three, the same scribe wrote the text enclosed within the illuminated frames and, by the look of it, the same artist was at work on the three pairs of illuminated frames, but all three subsequent texts were written in different hands. Also, the texts do not immediately follow the illuminated pages on the verso, but one or more pages between the illuminated page and the start of the main text have been left blank.

Text in the illuminated frame from Sĕrat Rĕjunawijaya, AJ 1728-29/AD 1801-2. British Library, Add MS 12302, f. 2v 

However, in all three manuscripts the illuminated frames contain the exact same text that starts on the subsequent pages. Add MS 12288 contains the first stanza of the first canto written in the long poetic meter Dhangdhanggula, while Add MS 12281 contains the first two stanzas of the first canto of the text in the short poetic meter Mijil. Because the poetic metre Mijil does not have many lines, Add MS 12281 needed two stanzas, as otherwise there would not have been enough text to fill the two illuminated frames. Add MS 12302 has two stanzas in another short metre, Pangkur, as otherwise both text blocks would not have been filled. However, in this manuscript the start of the text after the illuminated pages skips the first stanza that is included in the first illuminated page. In all three manuscripts the text blocks are completely filled with text, which means that the scribe knew exactly how large his letters should be in order to fill the space available precisely. It is also clear that the writing is by the same hand in all three manuscripts, but the scribe used a different pen for each.

Illuminated frames (wadana) at the start of Sĕrat Panji Angronang Pakualaman, 1813. British Library, Add MS 12281, ff. 1v-2r 


The start of the actual text after the illuminated pages in Sĕrat Panji Angronang Pakualaman, in a cursive forward-sloping hand. British Library, Add MS 12281, f. 3r

Opening illuminated frames of Babad Sultanan utawi Mangkunĕgaran [Mangkubumen?], (undated). British Library, Add MS 12288, ff. 2v-3r


The start of the actual text after the illuminated pages in Babad Sultanan utawi Mangkunĕgaran. British Library, Add MS 12288, f. 4v


Double illuminated frames at the start of Sĕrat Rĕjunawijaya, 1801. British Library, Add MS 12302, ff. 2v-3r 


The start of the actual text of Sĕrat Rĕjunawijaya after the illuminated pages. While the illuminated pages open with the indication of the poetic meter that starts the text, Pangkur, this page starts with the Javanese numerals '1 7 2 8' indicating the year 1728 (as stated in the first line: angkaning warsa sinurat, ‘number of the year of writing’) in the Javanese calendar which is equivalent to AD 1801, and omits the indication of the poetic meter. British Library, Add MS 12302, f. 5v 

As can be seen in the illustrations above, in all three manuscripts, the illuminator has added one small golden leaf-shaped ornament on the stanza divider at the end of the text within the illuminated frames, and has marked the identical spot on the first subsequent page of text with a golden leaf on the stanza divider as well. This is possibly to denote to the reader/singer that after having read/sung the text from the illuminated pages, he/she should subsequently continue at the small golden ornament on the following page to avoid repetition of the text.

 
Details of the same small illuminated gold leaf markings at the end of the poetic lines within the illuminated frames, all written in the same scribal hand (left) and the equivalent locations on the first page of full text following the illuminated frames, all in different hands (right); from top to bottom: Add MS 12281, f. 2r and f. 3r, Add MS 12288, f. 3r and f. 4v, and Add MS 12302, f. 3r and f. 5v. 

In the three manuscripts discussed above it is clear that, as happens frequently in Javanese paper manuscrips, pages were left empty at the start of the writing process. This is usually done to avoid text being lost because the opening pages are most prone to damage, and in this case probably also to allow illuminated pages to be executed later. Why this was done in this peculiar way in these manuscripts remains unclear, but the study of many more of these illuminations may shed further light on the writing and illuminating practices of manuscripts in Java.

Further reading:
Dick van der Meij, Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
M.C. Ricklefs, P. Voorhoeve and Annabel Teh Gallop, Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain. A catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections. New Edition with Addenda and Corrigenda, Jakarta: Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Perpustakaan Republik Indonesia, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia, 2014.
Sri Ratna Saktimulya, Naskah-Naskah Skriptorium Pakualaman periode Paku Alam II (1830-1858). Jakarta: KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia), Ecole française d’Extrrême Orient, Perpustakaan Widyapustaka, Pura Pakualaman, 2016.

Dick van der Meij, Leiden 

Today's blog is by guest writer Dr Dick van der Meij, Liaison Officer and Academic Advisor for the Digital Repository of Endangered and Affected Manuscripts in Southeast Asia (DREAMSEA), programme, University of Hamburg.

One of the crucial problems in philology is deciding whether a manuscript is a new creation or an attempt to create a faithful copy of an already existing text, but it is often hard or even impossible to solve this problem because of a lack of information either in the manuscript itself or from external sources. One of the clues that may help solve this puzzle are the mistakes and corrections the scribe or others have made in the manuscript, either at the time of composing/copying, or at a later stage. Another clue may be the actual number of mistakes: if only a few errors are found it may either be due to the faithful copying of an existing manuscript, or the sign of an expert composer who made very few mistakes while creating the text (see Van der Meij 2017, Ch. 5). Combinations are, of course, also possible, and part of a manuscript text may be copied while other parts may be new or partly new creations. Another thing that can help to understand the production process is an assessment of other manuscripts made in the same culture. Some of these philological issues will be explored through the study of errors and their corrections in an early 19th century Javanese manuscript in the British Library, Sĕrat Jaya Lengkara, Add 12310.

Illuminated page at the start of a new canto. British Library, Add. 12310, f. 128v.

This manuscript of Sĕrat Jaya Lengkara was first identified correctly by Ben Arps in the book Golden Letters (1991). The brief description in the catalogue by Ricklefs and Voorhoeve (1977) wrongly describes it as the poem Sĕrat Gondakusuma, and does not mention one of the most interesting aspects of the manuscript: that it is absolutely loaded with clearly indicated mistakes and corrections.

The manuscript starts with various pages that are clearly try-outs, some in a different hand. The text ends abruptly with three pages written up-side-down with two unfinished and uncoloured decorations, while the last inscribed page consists of jottings. The many errors (visible on virtually every page) are clearly marked, mostly scratched though with one to three black lines and provided with wavy red lines above, as will be clear from the illustrations below. The large number of mistakes make me think that this manuscript is perhaps a trial attempt by a person in training to become a professional scribe? At the same time, the manuscript contains many detailed illuminations and canto dividers. This combination of fine decorations and a bewildering number of clearly indicated errors will need to be explained some other time.

Illuminated canto indicator in the form of a mermaid. British Library, Add. 12310, f. 181v.

We will have a closer look at this manuscript of the Sĕrat Jaya Lĕngkara and see if we can make sense of the way the scribe worked. We will start with mistakes in single letters (in Javanese called aksara and pasangan, consonants with added vowel sign) or parts thereof, and continue with larger mistakes.

Mistakes in single letters


Add 12310, f. 85r:  anangkil. Just before the aksara /la/ at the end of the word the scribe noticed that he had started it in the wrong way, and so he struck it through with two black lines.


Add 12310, f. 115r.  Kakang dipati.The word dipati was started with the aksara /pa/ which was wrong, and so the scribe scribbled it out and placed a red error mark above, and the word started again with /di/.


Add 12310, f. 114v:  nĕmbah aturipun. After nĕmbah the scribe started with the aksara /ma/. For a certain reason he crossed it out and put the aksara /ha/ under it making it aturipun rather than maturipun, which is interesting as it means the same and also does not violate the poetic rules of the sentence. It may have been seen after the writing process was finished as there is no red line above.


Add 12310, f. 113v:  mantri tan kĕna ingetung. The scribe thought he was going to write tannana, but when he realized it was wrong he had to cross out both the aksara and pasangan /na/ with red ink, and repeat the aksara /na/ and added pasangan /ka/ beneath with the vowel sign /ĕ/.

Add 12310, 109r:  karasa ing tangani wong (line two in the illustration). The scribe noticed he had forgotten the aksara /sa/ in karasa and added it above. He inadvertently repeated nni, which he crossed out, but then thought he was writing tanganira which again was wrong, causing him to scribble out the aksara /ra/ and add wang, forcing him to extend into the margin.

A plethora of these errors of essentially single letters occurs, and also of single vowel signs. The fact that these errors were seen by the scribe during the inscription process means that he or she was aware of what was being written, but does not offer a clue about whether or not the text is a new creation or a copy.

Larger errors

Add 12310, f. 7r.  In the first line a verse line was added going into the right margin. The next line has two verse lines crossed out and provided with red lines. The correct lines followed to address the mistake. The first mistake ends in ing mang and continued in the next line with ka gene. The vowel sign /e/ was omitted at the end of in the second line. By erasing both lines and adding the correct text in the right margin this error was addressed.

In this particular case the scribe noticed the error when he or she had already completed this section, and therefore was unable to address the mistake within the text block, and so had to resort to adding text in the margin. Examples of this process are found in many places in the manuscript.

Add 12310, f. 90r.  An entire verse line is crossed out and red error marks added on top. The line starts with rĕspati which is the first word of the second line in the stanza that follows. The words angĕmbat madya are the last words of the second line of the stanza that precedes it, which starts with lumampah angĕmbat madya. The scribe seems to have glanced at a page and combined two parts of different verse lines into one, but noticed it in time to correct the mistake. Perhaps this means that in this and similar cases the text was indeed copied from a source, because otherwise the scribe’s eyes could not have wandered over the page. 

Add 12310, f. 92r.   Two lines in the stanza had been forgotten and were added in the top margin. It is preceded by a mark that is repeated in line three of this illustration to indicate where it should be added. This addition means that the scribe was only aware of the omission when he was already further on in the writing process.

In the instances of errors above it is not clear whether the scribe was copying a text, or creating one him or herself. The mistakes could be the result of a scribe knowledgeable in text production and he or she may have noticed omissions because of the requirements of the verse meters. Something of an altogether more complicated nature occurs when whole stanzas were rejected. When they were rejected because they were repetitions it may point to a copying process. However, this is not what we see in this manuscript as no indication can be found why a stanza was rejected and the issue thus becomes more complicated.

Erasures of whole stanzas

Add 12310, f. 175r. A full stanza was rejected because the eye had jumped from one sentence to the next causing a mistake. The first erased line runs pun uwa maos pati kabranan which is a combination of the start in the first line in the stanza in the correct version which runs pun maos and the third line that starts with pun uwa. The scribe saw this error in time to correct it.

Add. 12310, f. 93r. An entire stanza was crossed out and red lines added above. Why it is wrong is a puzzle. It is not a repetition of a stanza before or after it, or indeed anywhere to be found in its vicinity.

Add. 12310, f. 61v. The last line of the stanza was written no fewer than three times, of which two were deemed wrong, while the third was accepted. To make things even more clear, each letter in the incorrect line was provided with the vowel sign /i/ making the letters unreadable because many carry two vowels. This is a way of indicating corrections that we see in carefully executed copies but in this manuscript only in a few cases.

Other types of errors

Add 12310, f. 94r. In this case, corrections have been made in the margin, and then they too were rejected and marked as wrong.

Add. 12310, f. 121v. A new canto has started in the second line in this illustration, but the first stanza was rejected, and was crossed out with red error lines added above. To make things quite clear, a new decorative canto indicator (pepadan) was repeated, and coloured with the name of the poetic metre puh nila wisuda which is apparently an alternative name for the metre mijil. It is not clear where the erased text comes from as it has not been encountered elsewhare in this manuscript.

Add 12310, f. 171r. This is one of the rare occasions when a correction was made in another hand in the margin.

Conclusion

The copy of the Sĕrat Jaya Lĕngkara under discussion is an enigmatic manuscript. Even though it contains many fine illustrations, it is literally littered with minor and major mistakes that were addressed by the scribe and others. This combination of many textual errors with finely executed illuminations is a curious phenomenon and needs more detailed research as to why this happened. The fact that the scribe was aware of the traditional unobstructive way of indicating mistakes, but only used this occasionally in favour of crude crossings-out, suggests to me that the resulting manuscript was not intended to be a cherished final product.

Illustrations on a nautical theme. British Library, Add. 12310, f. 19v.

References:
Annabel Teh Gallop with Bernard Arps, Golden letters: writing traditions of Indonesia. Surat emas: budaya tulis di Indonesia. London: British Library; Jakarta: Lontar, 1991.
Dick van der Meij, Indonesian manuscripts from the islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
M.C. Ricklefs and P. Voorhoeve, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Dick van der Meij

This two-part blog post will examine a striking motif of three interlocking fish with one head, which is found in widely varied locations all over the world. This first post looks at examples in Javanese mystical manuscripts; in the second post, the motif will be traced from ancient Egypt through medieval France to modern Japan.

The motif of three fish with one head is familiar from manuscripts on mystical practices from Java, where it is referred to in Javanese as iwak telu sirah sanunggal, ‘three fish with a single head’.  All known examples occur in texts relating to the Shaṭṭārīyah brotherhood, a Sufi order founded in Persia by Shaykh Sirajuddin Abdullah Shattar (d. 1406) and which spread to Southeast Asia through disciples of the eminent Meccan teacher Shaykh Ahmad al-Qushāshī (d. 1660).  Presented here are a number of examples from Javanese manuscripts in the British Library and also from manuscripts still held in Java digitised through the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme.

The earliest dateable examples of this motif from Java are in two manuscripts from the collection of Col. Colin Mackenzie, who served in the British administration of Java from 1811 to 1813. Both manuscripts containing Shaṭṭārīyah silsilah or spiritual genealogies, one of which is dated 1790, originate from Mataraman in Batavia, present-day Jakarta, situated on the north-west coast of Java. 

Three fish with one head, in a Javanese manuscript from Mataraman, Batavia, containing mystical texts, dated AH 1205 (AD 1790/1).  British Library, MSS Jav 77, f. 16v 

Two later manuscripts containing this motif are from Lamongan on the north coast of East Java, both of which have been digitised through the Endangered Archives programme.  The manuscripts are held in the Islamic boarding school Pondok Pesantren Tarbiyyah al-Thalabah at Kranji, near the tomb of Sunan Drajat, one of the nine wali credited with bringing Islam to Java.  In both the Batavia and Lamongan manuscripts the diagram is used to illustrate the Oneness (tawhid) of God, by visualising graphically the unity of the first three stages of the ‘seven grades of being’ (martabat tujuh), and making this reference explicit through accompanying captions:  aḥadīyah - Allāh / waḥdah - Muḥammad / wāḥidīyah - Adam. 

Three fish with one head, shown on the left-hand page, in a manuscript  (EAP061/2/44-52) containing texts of Sufism, dated in the Javanese era 5 wulan Sawal tahun jawi 1854 (10 May 1924). Pondok Pesantren Tarbiyyah al-Thalabah, Kranji, Lamongan, East Java, EAP061/2/50, f. 34a

The second manuscript from Lamongan (EAP061/2/55-61), which is undated but probably also dates from around the late 19th or early 20th century, has a very finely executed drawing of the three fish with one head.  In contrast to nearly all known diagrams of this motif where the three fish are depicted identically, in the undated Lamongan manuscript, while the two fish labelled Muhammad and Adam are decorated with delicate scales, the fish labelled Allah is left plain and unadorned, most likely to reflect the 'emptiness' associated with the first of the seven grades of being, aḥadīyah.

Three fish with one head in a manuscript containing Sufi texts, ca. late 19th c.; this is the only known example where the three fish are differentiated from one another visually. Pondok Pesantren Tarbiyyah al-Thalabah, Kranji, Lamongan, East Java, EAP061/2/59, f.29b   [This page has been rotated through 180 degrees to allow the reading of the Javanese text.]

According to Mahrus eL-Mahwa, who has carried out a study of this motif in the Cirebon region of north Java, there are three late-19th century manuscripts which are all copies of a text of the Shaṭṭārīyah wa-Muḥammadīyah Sufi order closely linked to the Kaprabonan court (one of the three princely houses of Cirebon which emerged from the sultanate in 1677 following a succession dispute).  In all three Cirebon manuscripts, each fish is labelled with a different descriptor of the stage represented: zat ‘ibarat Allāh - ṣifat ‘ibarat rūḥ/Muḥammad - af‘āl ‘ibarat jasad/Adam (Essence symbolising God / attributes symbolising the soul/Muḥammad / Deeds symbolising the body/Adam).  It was thus probably one such Cirebon manuscript which was cited by the scholar Karel Steenbrink in his discussion of how simple figures and diagrams were used in the Malay world to elucidate ideas about the mystical reality: ‘A quite peculiar example of this style of summarising the totality of being is that of the three fishes, as found in a 19th century Malay tract on the unity of being, according to the Shattariyah brotherhood, composed in Java. The three fishes were given the names of Essence of Allah, Deeds (af’āl) and Attributes (sifāt). The drawing symbolises the unity of the original essence and the first emanations within the divine being … When looked upon from the tails, the figures seem to be different, but in their heads, they are identical. Difference and change have disappeared as so often in the neo-Platonic reasoning that has since long dominated Islamic mystical thinking about God’ (Steenbrink 2009: 69-79).

Mahrus eL-Mawa has suggested that the iwak telu sirah sanunggal diagram has a particular association with the Shaṭṭārīyah order in Cirebon, where it functioned as a suluk or an aid to mystical practice.  There may be a particular association with court culture in Cirebon: the motif of three fish with one head is currently the symbol of the Kacirebonan, the fourth and youngest princely house of Cirebon, which was founded in 1808, while Mahrus’s research also reveals that the past five heads of the Kaprabonan court have all been initiated into the Shaṭṭārīyah wa-Muḥammadīyah order. 

 
Three fish with one head as the symbol of the Kacirebonan court, Cirebon, founded in 1808. Source: Cirebon Insight, 3 June 2011

The motif does appear to be particularly strongly associated with Cirebon: in addition to its appearance in manuscripts it also occurs on batik, wood carvings  and glass paintings.  The ‘three fish with one head’ also appears frolicking alongside ‘ordinary’ fish in two separate scenes in a delightful illustrated late 18th-century Javanese manuscript of the Serat Damar Wulan probably from Cirebon; this is the only known appearance of the motif in a non-mystical manuscript, and may reflect a deep entrenchment in the repertoire of local artists . 

The ‘three-in-one’ fish depicted with soldiers crossing a river, in a Javanese manuscript of the Serat Damar Wulan,  late 18th century. The manuscript was given to the India Office Library in 1815 by Lt. Col. Raban, who had been Resident of Cirebon from 1812 to 1814.  British Library, MSS Jav 89, f. 41r 

Yet the origin and meaning of this motif remains obscure. Even within Cirebon the diagram of three fish with one head is not found in all Shaṭṭārīyah manuscripts, while outside Java, apart from one manuscript in Malay from the Lanao area of Mindanao, the diagram is not encountered in any Shaṭṭārīyah manuscripts from other parts of the Malay world, for example from Aceh or west Sumatra, or in mystical manuscripts in Arabic, Turkish or Persian from the broader Islamic world.   The reason may lie in differing lines of transmission of Shaṭṭārīyah teachings, as traced through the spiritual genealogies (silsilah) contained in manuscripts.  A recent detailed philological study of Shaṭṭārīyah silsilah in Aceh, Java and Mindanao by Oman Fathurahman (2016) reveals four main lines of descent from Aḥmad Qushāshī, most notably demonstrating that not all adherents traced their spiritual genealogy from the famous Acehnese scholar and Sufi Shaykh ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf of Singkil (d. 1661), who is usually associated with the introduction of the Shaṭṭārīyah to the Malay world. 

The proposition that the diagram of ‘three fish with one head’ used to illustrate the Unity of God is linked with one particular descent line of the Shaṭṭārīyah would explain why this motif is only found in a small number of manuscripts found along the north coast of Java, particularly centred on Cirebon.  Nonetheless it remains puzzling that the motif of three fish with one head is unknown in either manuscript or other material cultural manifestations in other parts of the archipelago and even in mainland Southeast Asia, when, as will be shown in the second part of this blog post, it has in fact an exceptionally long history in many far-flung parts of the world, dating back thousands of years. 

The ‘three fish with one head' depicted clustered around the anchor of a ship, at the start of a Javanese manuscript of the Serat Damar Wulan, probably from Cirebon, late 18th century.  British Library, MSS Jav 89, f. 3v

Further reading:

This study of the motif of ‘three fish with one head’ was initiated as part of a research project on Mindanao manuscripts coordinated by Prof. Midori Kawashima, which resulted in the publication: A.T.Gallop, Cultural interactions in Islamic manuscript art: a scholar's library from Mindanao.  The library of an Islamic scholar of Mindanao: the collection of Sheik Muhammad Said bin Imam sa Bayang at the Al-Imam As-Sadiq (A.S.) Library, Marawi City, Philippines:  an annotated catalogue with essays, edited by Oman Fathurahman, Kawashima Midori and Labi Sarip Riwarung.  Tokyo: Institute of Asian, African and Middle Eastern Studies, Sophia University; pp. 205-248.

Karel Steenbrink, Circling around an unknowable truth: on the flexibility of Islamic art.  Visual arts and religion, eds Hans Alma, Marcel Barnard & Volker Küster; pp. 65-78.  Berlin: LIT, 2009.
Mahrus eL-Mawa, Suluk iwak telu sirah sanunggal: dalam naskah 'Syatariyah wa Muhammadiyah' di Cirebon. [Paper presented at: Simposium Internasional ke-16 Pernaskahan Manassa, Perpustakaan Nasional RI, 26-28 September 2016].  Jakarta.
Oman Fathurahman, Shattariyah silsilah in Aceh, Java, and the Lanao area of Mindanao.  Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2016.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Head, Southeast Asia section