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SYNOPSIS, PART TWO HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY 20.000 Old Javanese Charters.*

The oldest Javanese texts which have come down to* us are Royal charters en graved on stone slabs or copper-plates, issued by Javanese Kings ruling in the ninth century in Central Java. Even in that early period the district was already called Mataram. For clearness’ sake the ancient ninth, tenth and eleventh century rulers are called Old Mataram Kings, in order to distinguish them from the Muslim Mataram dynasts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the founders of the modern Cen tral Javanese line of Kings. There is no evidence of any connection between the Old Maitaram and the modem Mataram dynasty. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Muslim Mataram rulers were unaware of the existence of a preceding line of Kings in the same district. That fact only became apparent in the second half of the nineteenth century as a consequence of the Old Java nese charters being finally deciphered by Dutch scholars. Some manuscripts con taining earlier, unsatisfactory attempts to decipher the Old Javanese script are listed under the head Study of old charters (46.600). In the present survey of historical Java nese literature the old charter of Kalasan, of 778 A.D., cannot be passed by. Though