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since the Pasisir period, Javanese-Indian and Arabic (see 00090). In the mercantile kingdoms of the North Coast, Old Javanese culture was clad in Muslim garb. True, Old Javanese historical and belletristic texts were preserved and copied, but in addition literature was en riched with texts and tales belonging to Islamic-Indian tradition. As in India Islam had been introduced by way of Persia, the literary and historical tradition of the Indian Muslims contained many Persian elements. Probably the maritime districts of Gujarat, on the West Coast of India, were inter mediate stations on the way of Persian Islam to south-east Asia. In Java a literary tradition of old mytho logie tales, partly of Indian, partly of indige nous origin, already existed in the pre- Islamic period. Muslim tradition was added to it, but it did not supersede the older tales. In the Universal Histories, Books of Tales, of the Pasisir period, Islamic histories of Creation were incorporated together with mythic and epic tales of Indian and indige nous origin. In the period of the Surakarta renaissance, in the eighteenth and nine teenth centuries, the two seemingly incon gruous chains of tales were united by means of the ancient concept of dualism in the cosmos. Seen from the point of view of nine teenth century Javanese scholars, Old Java nese Indian, and Islamic tradition repre sented two' aspects, called Left and Right, of eternal and invariable cosmic and social Order. In the period of Pasisir culture this com prehensive view was not yet generally ac cepted. Perhaps as early as the sixteenth century Javanese versions of popular Arabic

texts on the history of the prophets were written. For a long time they coexisted with ancient histories based on Old Javanese tradition of Indian or indigenous origin. No doubt in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen turies in religious circles the histories of the prophets were considered as containing the only true account of facts, and in these cir cles that attitude has prevailed up to modern times. But then, in Javanese culture, Islam was never all-pervading. Old Javanese mythic tradition was never superseded by the histories of the prophets, neither were the latter, in the period of the Surakarta renaissance, completely ousted from their place in literature. The histories of the prophets are called Sërat Anbiya, Book of the Prophets, or sometimes Tapël Adam, The Formation of Adam. Several times the c Umdatu ’1-Ansab, an Arabic treatise on the genealogy of Mu hammad written in Acheh, an epitome of an extensive sixteenth century Persian book, is mentioned as authority (see Voorhoeve, in BKI vol. 108, 1952, p. 207). In many cases of Arabic religious texts being intro duced into Javanese literature, Malay trans lations or versions, made in North Sumatra or in the Peninsula, were intermediaries. It seems probable that the oldest Javanese Anbiya texts have Malay prototypes. In the course of time Javanese authors pro ceeded to remodelling and versifying them according to Javanese literary standards. Sometimes authors of Javanese Anbiya texts continued the tales up to the life of the men who introduced Islam in Java. Javanese Anbiya texts are found in vari ous versions, in prose and in verse. Probably the prose versions have a closer relationship