WORLD GUIDE TO INDONESIAN MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

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By Henri Chambert-Loir and OmanFathurachman (1 of 5)

Beside the other great treasuresof Indonesia's cultural heritage, manuscripts tend to be ignored. Manuscriptsare commonly looked at as the texts which they contain, hence as the domain ofa very limited circle of specialists, librarians and philologists. As productsof traditions that involve a wide range of competences and social behaviours,the scope and meaning of manuscripts is actually far more important and theydeserve to be considered from many points of view: not only as library items oras texts, which are studied by codicologists and philologists, but also from atechnical point of view, especially the process of making manuscripts out ofrontal leaves, bark or paper.

The aesthetic aspect is no less interesting: a greatnumber of manuscripts contain beautiful illustrations which are however seldommentioned in studies about the history of Indonesian plastic arts. The recentlypublished book Illuminations (see Kumar & McGlynn 1996 in the Bibliography)provides lavish proof that the arts of drawing and painting have a long historyof development and refinement in Indonesia. Yet another aspect of manuscriptsthat is still poorly studied is the variety of scripts which have been used inIndonesia across the centuries, be it scripts of Indian type or Arabic andLatin scripts: we still know very little about the development and the spreadof the scripts used in Sumatra prior to the coming of Islam for instance (thatof Old-Malay inscriptions from the Sriwijaya period, the rencong, Rejang andLampung syllabic writings of South Sumatra, and the Batak script of NorthSumatra).

The manuscripts domain is actually even wider. Whoever isfamiliar with Indonesian manuscripts knows that they contain an unfathomablewealth of information. Manuscripts contain much more than literature taken inthe narrow sense; they include as well material relating to many otherdisciplines like religion, history, law, customs, medicine, technology and alot more. Specialists of these various fields should be able to make use ofthis wealth of information. Jurists and historians have long been aware of thisbut they tend to make use of text editions prepared by philologists, while legionsof unpublished manuscripts lie unused. At best these can be known in limitedways through the use of catalogues.

The manuscripts in existence today, tens of thousands innumber, are difficult to locate and to investigate. Catalogues are supposed togive access to them, but catalogues themselves number in the hundreds and arenot always easily accessible. The simple intent of the present book is toprovide specialists of various disciplines with the necessary tools to approachand peruse the wealth of Indonesian manuscripts. Moreover the best cataloguesare not limited to the description of manuscripts. In the case of somelanguages (Acehnese, Buginese and Makasarese for instance), catalogues are thebest discourse existing on the relevant literatures. Even in the field of Malayand Javanese literatures, the best catalogues (we can mention as examplesPigeaud1967-1980, Behrend [ed.] 1990,Florida 1993, Lindsay et al. 1994, Behrend & Pudjiastuti [eds.] 1997, andWieringa 1998) are far more comprehensive than any other book.

Indonesian manuscripts are now spread all over the world.A great number of them are to be found in the Netherlands and in Great Britainfor obvious historical reasons, but there are manuscripts in Germany, France,Russia and in many other countries as well. This dispersion itself has ahistorical meaning. A few collections are linked to Indonesian communitiesabroad. This is the case of the collections which are to be found in SouthAfrica and in Sri Lanka: some manuscripts were brought from Indonesia andothers copied or written by the Indonesian migrants (or exiles) who settled inthose two countries. All other collections are the fruit of a cultural contactof some sort: most of the (mainly Batak) manuscripts that found their way toGermany were collected by German missionaries working in North Sumatra startingwith the middle of the last century; others were collected by the Germanprivate teacher of the Dutch Governor-General in Buitenzorg (Bogor) around1850. The small but valuable collection held at the Library of Congress inWashington was acquired by an American expedition in Singapore in 1842. As alast example, the collection held by the French National Library in Paris wasoriginally set up by a French scholar who had learned Malay in London in 1845.For that reason, we have tried to collect information about the origin and thehistory of the main collections and we did our best to mention every singlecollection, however small it might be. However we have not as a rule reportedon private collections, first of all because these collections are difficult tolocate, so that the information we might be able to provide would probably bewithout proportion with the real number of the collections, and also becausemany private collectors might not give their consent.

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By Henri Chambert-Loir and OmanFathurachman (2 of 5)

As regards foreign collections, what has proved mostsurprising is not the fact that manuscripts should have been taken abroad inlarge numbers, but on the contrary that there are so many countries which haveenjoyed important historical links with Indonesia which seem to haveinsignificant numbers

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By Henri Chambert-Loir and OmanFathurachman (3 of 5)

The division of the manuscript domain into 18 chaptersbelow relies on various criteria: some chapters (aceh and melayu for instance)are clear linguistic categories; in the jawa and sunda chapters however, nodistinction is made between old and modern languages for the reason that noneis usually made in manuscripts catalogues; the same applies to Buginese andMakasarese which are two different languages from South Sulawesi; and each ofthe three chapters about Balinese, Sasak and South Sumatran languages actuallyconsiders manuscripts in various languages linked by a common provenance. Evenmanuscripts written in one language may display an important regionalvariation: specialists of Javanese literature usually make a distinctionbetween manuscripts originating from Central Java, East Java and the Northcoast, but Javanese manuscripts were also written outside the Javanese culturalarea proper (in West Java, Palembang and in the islands of Madura, Bali andLombok) and show strong local variations in language, script, illustrations,and even in types of contents.

Two more chapters (kalimantan and Eastern Indonesia) aredevoted to a number of regional languages which have no writing traditions butare found in manuscript form as the result of notations written down by outsideobservers. This kind of information has been compiled here, even though it doesnot properly belong to the domain of Indonesian manuscripts, because it is tobe found in the catalogues we are dealing with. However we did not aim at anysystematic inventory in this respect: information about manuscripts from Niasmentioned in Ricklefs & Voorhoeve 1977 and Behrend (ed.) 1998 will not bementioned here.

From a quantitative point of view, writing traditions varyconsiderably: there are tens of thousands of Javanese and Malay manuscriptswhen there are only dozens of them in languages like Wolio and Ternate. Each ofthem will be considered separately as they represent distinct traditions.

Apart from Austronesian languages, three chapters aredevoted to foreign literatures which are intimately linked to Indonesiancultural history as they have been extensively used in Indonesia and even byIndonesians, namely Sanskrit, Arabic and Dutch. Sanskrit has been used forcenturies in the fields of religion and literature in Sumatra, Java and Bali.It is generally to be found in manuscripts in combination with Old-Javanese andKawi. Arabic was even more widely spread over the archipelago and is still tobe found in thousands of Islamic manuscripts, either on its own or in combinationwith an Indonesian language (mainly Malay, Javanese or Sundanese). It goeswithout saying that Sanskrit and Arabic manuscripts written in Indonesia or byIndonesians belong to the domain of Indonesian manuscripts; the case of Dutchis clearly different as it has never been part of the traditional writingtraditions that are the subject of the present book.

The chapter about Dutch manuscripts merely intends togather information about Dutch documents which happen to be kept in Indonesianmanuscript collections (as in the National Library of Indonesia or the Facultyof Letters of the University of Indonesia for instance). We were not able tocollect any significant information about Chinese manuscripts written by thecommunity of Indonesians of Chinese origin, whereas such manuscripts shouldmost probably exist.

As regards the descriptions of manuscripts, they varyconsiderably from one another, from mere lists to lengthy catalogues. In thatrespect we have tried to be comprehensive, even though some descriptions haveelsewhere been shown to be faulty or out of date, so that readers might decidefor themselves what is relevant and what is not. Catalogues are more and morenumerous but new ones are not always better than old ones and even a badmanuscript description can contain valuable information. On the other hand wedid not list text editions (even though they often describe manuscripts withmore details than any catalogue) as they do not deal with collections but witha few manuscripts originating from various collections.

A few endeavours have already been undertaken at listingall manuscript catalogues in specific fields. Among the most noteworthy may bequoted Hooykaas et al. 1950, Chambert-Loir 1980 (Malay catalogues) , Van derMolen 1984 (Javanese catalogues), Ibrahim bin Ismail 1986a (Southeast Asiancatalogues) and Tol 1993 (Islamic manuscripts). Other writers have listedmanuscripts in one geographical area, like Pearson 1954, 1971, National 1959and Howard 1966, while a few bibliographies, mainly Kemp 1990, 1998, includecatalogue references. However this book represents the first attempt atcovering all collections of manuscripts in all Indonesian languages; as aconsequence of being perhaps too ambitious, it may have many flaws; however it seemsuseful to consider all Indonesian writing traditions altogether as they are inreality linked by a multiplicity of ties: many areas have produced texts invarious languages (for instance Acehnese, Malay and Arabic texts in Aceh;Malay, Javanese and Arabic texts in Palembang; Sundanese, Javanese, Arabic andMalay texts in West Java, etc.), many manuscripts are bilingual (usually Arabicplus an Indonesian language) and many kinds of influences and borrowings haveplayed a role between one tradition and another.

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By Henri Chambert-Loir and OmanFathurachman (4 of 5)

The work accomplished in the field on Indonesianmanuscripts during the last twenty years is tremendous. We know of the deeds ofscholars of the past: among many famous names, suffice it to mention those ofC. Hooykaas, Poerbatjaraka, Th. Pigeaud and P. Voorhoeve. C. Hooykaas

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By Henri Chambert-Loir and OmanFathurachman (5 of 5)

This thriving activity goes together with new developmentsin the field of philology in Indonesia. This appears clearly from the handbooksnow available for students (see Baried 1994, Lubis 1996, Mulyadi 1994, Robson1994 and Sudjiman 1995, in addition to the book Illuminations [Kumar &McGlynn 1996], an Indonesian edition of which is under preparation) and fromthe creation of the Manassa society (Masyarakat Pernaskahan Indonesia;Indonesian Manuscript Society) which is based at the Faculty of Letters of theUniversity of Indonesia and organises international seminars on Indonesianphilology on a regular basis.

The present book will hopefully be one more tool forstudents and researchers. A few things need to be explained about itsorganisation. Manuscript collections are discussed in 18 chapters according totheir language. In each chapter they are introduced by country and by city orstate in alphabetical order. All bibliographical references are compiled at theend of the book. (The bibliography observes the Indonesian, Malaysian andWestern name orders according to the origin of the authors.) In addition tothis, all journals referred to in the bibliography are listed separately and anindex of all institutions holding manuscripts refer to the chapters where theseinstitutions are mentioned.

Each chapter starts with a short introduction in which afew among the main references regarding literature and codicology in therelevant language are mentioned. Similarly, a 揼eneral