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60.010 Schematic figures, diagrams, pertaining to religious speculation in Javanese-Balinese and Javanese manuscripts.

Classification of elements of macrocosmos an -d microcosmos has always occupied an important place in Javanese religious think- ln T Schematic figures are particularly well s uited to visualize the relations between the dements which together constitute the cos- | ll0s according to Javanese religious specu- 10n - As a rule four or eight elements were bought to form a square or an octagon with a fifth or ninth one in the centre.

Evidently the categories of mystic speculation were easily accepted as being of the same order as the classifications of pre-Islamic religious thinking. Javanese codexes concer ned with Islamic mysticism in its typically Javanese form often contain schematic figures as illustrations. One of them is a figure showing three fishes as three spokes of a wheel: the axis is a one-eyed triangular fish-head which the three have in common. Apparently this figure refers to a triad of religious concepts. The central eye, the axis, may be an image of ma c rifa, the supreme vision. In Javanese polite speech a corrupt form of the Arabic word ma c rifa, mripat, is used instead of the common word for eye. In religious literature and in poetry Hyat) Manon, The Seeing, is often found as a designation of God. Concepts pertaining to eschatology, the day of Judgment, Heaven and Hell, were also visualized in pictures. However, they