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by European scholars, Javanese authors wrote treatises on old types of script, trying to decipher the Old Javanese charters on copper-pates and stone slabs which were found in many places in Central and East Java. The Javanese pundits’ knowledge was deficient, however, and their translations of the old charters were incorrect. By collating the script of the Old Javanese charters with Indian scripts, Dutch scholars succeeded in deciphering the old texts in the last decades of the nineteenth century (v. K. F. Holle, “Tabel van oud- en nieuw-Indische alphabet - “ten”, Batavia 1882). 45.010 Javanese treatise on spelling and aksaras, Sandi Sutra: cod. 2175. 45.020 Notes on different types of aksaras: cod. KITLV Or 214, KITLV H 389. 45.030 Textbook, examples of Javanese writing, quadratic Surakarta script: cod. 2181. 45.040 Kridaksara, Javanese prose treatise on the types of aksaras, Surakarta: cod. 6424. 45.050 Cryptic characters, flourished types : cod. 7730 (without clue). 45.250 Dictionaries and Linguis tic Treatises written by Javanese scholars. In all periods of the history of Javanese culture explanation of words belonged to the most absorbing concerns of scholars. The contact with Indian religion and literature was the cause of the integration of a great number of Sanskrit words in the Javanese vocabulary (see Gonda, “Sanskrit “in Indonesia”, 1952). Dictionaries and glos saries were made to explain them, and Sanskrit lexicographic works were partly

adapted, early in the pre-Islamic period. Sometimes dictionaries and encyclopedias were combined (see 46.500). The same kind of linguistic activity continued in the Islamic period, especially in the eighteenth and nine teenth centuries, at the time of renewed in terest in classical literature (see 00020, era D). The literary idiom of the great pre- Islamic epic poems, called basa kawi, was collected and explained in several kawi dic tionaries. The kawi idiom contained many words of Sanskrit origin, sometimes corrupt, and sometimes used in a sense slightly differ ent from the original in Indian literature. Moreover in kawi dictionaries of the nine teenth century a number of antiquated and dialectical words of Javanese origin, and some Arabic and Malay words are explained. They prove that Central Javanese scholars of the time studied some Javanese literary works belonged to the preceding period of the Pasisir, North Coast, culture, which was already Islamic, in addition to their study of pre-Islamic epic poems. Arabic words also were introduced into the Javanese vocabulary in great numbers, when the Javanese were converted to Islam in the sixteenth century. Several Arabic treatises on theology, mysticism and law were studied by Javanese divines. In many cases Malay translations or commentaries seem to have been the intermediary. Java nese glosses written under the lines of Arabic texts and Kur’an copies are frequently found in manuscripts. But no extensive Arabic- Javanese lexicographic activity, comparable with the compilation of the Sanskrit-kawi dictionaries, is in evidence. Probably this fact is a consequence of the characteristic difference between pre-Islamic Indian in-