247

photocopies of a nipah palmleaf manuscript kept in a brown cardboard portfolio

S'ksa Guru, old Javanese moralistic re atise in prose, from West Java, lessons virtues to be practised, given by a mas- er in religious lore (pandita) to his disciples séwaka darma). Unvirtuous people are f eatened w *th punishments (upadrawa). idiom is Old Javanese. The Sundanese 0r 'gin of the scribe is made apparent by his ne glect of the difference between d and d, t a ud t. The first words of the text are: ndah nan warahhakna mami rumuhun ri sag j^Waka darmma katkan kita rumigikna a wiwèn (?) sag hya(g) darmma. The last sentences are: nihan kawuwu- ^ an siksaguru, ha, kayatnakna sag séwaka ar mma, tlasinurath ri désa maha pawitra, ta jak barath kalpa sinpun, malampah ina- P Ur an kanag sasta bucèka di tapak yuyu nag wag ri tasik ulih nlag sinanau pun i s aka hlir twa ya wu. . The désa Maha Pawitra, in Tajak Barat, js not yet located. The indication of the aka year by means of the syllables Hlir Twa Ya Wu is difficult to explain. The Saka

year 1411 (AD 1479) might be meant (lir: appearance: 1; twa: sattwa: the first of the triguna sattwa, rajah, tamah: 1; ya: Yama, the fourth of the astawara Sri, Indra, Guru, Yama, Rudra, Brahma, Kala, Uma: 4; wu: wulan: moon: 1) The photocopies in KITLV Or 422 are enlarged copies of photographs made for Dr J. Noorduyn. The original is a palmleaf manuscript in the KBG collection, Jakarta, registered as lontar no 642. It was not de scribed by Dr Poerbatjaraka, and therefore not entered in the inventory of the collec tion of palmleaf manuscripts in the Museum Pusat, Jakarta, which is included in “Lit. of Java”, vol. II, p. 881 ff. The palmleaves are leaves of the nipah palm (Nipa fruti- cans) thinner than the lontarpalm leaves which make the most common writing ma terial of this kind. The script is of the same type as in LOr 2266 (Kunjara Karna), LOr 2267 (Tiga Jnana), LOr 8515/14.436 (Rasa Carita, Bodleian Library, Oxford) and a Berlin codex (JBMG no 22, Dharma Patanjala), bold semi-cursive ancient West Javanese. It is written with good black ink. A facsimile of a page of LOr 2266 is to be found in “Lit. of Java”, vol. Ill, p • 21. The photocopies in KITLV Or 422 are in full size.