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tunes have connections with songs in former times belonging to demurs of referring to them. The name of the rather popular macapat metre asmarandana or asmara dana reminds one of Smara Dahana, a well-known twelfth century Old Javanese kakawin of Kadiri origin (see 30.050). The connection between the metre and the Court poem in Indian metres is not clear. Asmarandana is remark able for being the only macapat metre with a Sanskrit name. It seems possible that some times a metre has been called after one word or several words occurring in the be ginning of a stanza which used to be me morized as an example of the composition of that metre. Macapat metres did not appear all at the same time in the last centuries of pre-Islamic literature in East Java and in the Muslim period. In the beginning poets did not use more than one or a very restricted number of metres in one book; two, three, four or five, and those metres were often repeated. Pav,kur seems to have been a favourite in the beginning of macapat poetry. In the period of the renaissance of Javan ese letters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, macapat metres were studied and polished. Whereas formerly and in outlying districts the number of syllables in the lines and the vowels in the final syllables were subject to variation, strict rules were en forced in the Surakarta Court literature. The place of the caesura in long lines was fixed and in many cases poetical embellish ments in the form of various kinds of al literation (purwa kanti) were applied. In the nineteenth century some poets used to indi cate their own names by using the letters of

the names as initial syllables of the first stanzas of their poems (acrostics). In poems consisting of cantos in different metres it became customary to indicate the name of the metre of the next canto by means of an enigmatic expression of the waf}satan (charade) kind, inserted in the last line of the preceding canto. The wa/iysalan was a clue for the singer how to start the new canto. For instance mundur (backwards) was used as a clue indicating the metre pa^kur, because mundur suggests muqkur (turn one’s back), and mur^kur suggests pav,kur. The number of about fifteen macapat metres was fixed by eighteenth and nine teenth century Surakarta Court scholars. In some poems the poets did their utmost to apply all available metres, but as a rule the number of ten was seldom reached. The dandon, gula metre was a favourite with eighteenth and nineteenth century Central Javanese poets. A theory of the different characters of the metres was developed, and poets were expected to choose metres in accordance with the character of their sub ject: heroic, romantic, amorous, speculative etc. It is dubious whether in olden times macapat metres had special characters. Their probable origin from ancient sacral songs clashes with modern psychological charac terization. The characters of the macapat metres seem to be refinements introduced by Court poets. Beside the fifteen macapat metres accepted by eighteenth and nineteenth century Central Javanese poets, in poems written in West Java, in East Java and in Bali, more metres of the same structure are found. At the Cerbon Court in West Java the writing of